Abstract

Following the footsteps of the Jesuit activities in China, nineteenth-century Protestant missionaries also saw the significance of writing works in Chinese on “secular” subjects. This dedication to publishing works in Chinese formed part of a strategy of indirect evangelism that sought to facilitate China’s conversion to Christianity by influencing the Chinese understanding of their position in the world. This paper contributes to the topic by examining the transmission of Protestant information about Latin America in nineteenth-century China, with a particular focus on the missionary works published from 1819 to approximately 1860. Using a textual-historical approach, this paper analyzes Protestant information about Latin America within the political and religious contexts of the early nineteenth-century interaction between the British Empire, the United States, and China, as well as their views about Latin America. The paper contends that the depiction of Latin America was significantly influenced by an Anglocentric bias, as well as anti-Catholic, and anti-French, anti-Portuguese, and particularly anti-Spanish biases. These biased portrayed the regions as burdened by structural problems, in contrast to the United States and British colonies in America. The missionaries emphasized that this situation partially improved only after Latin American regions broke free from Catholic colonizers’ control. Overall, the paper argues that both positive and negative discourses about the conditions of the region served the missionaries’ aim of opening China up for trade and proselytizing. This was achieved by showcasing aspects of Latin America that China was urged to avoid, while emphasizing other that were encouraged to adopt or adjust.