Olyphant and Opium: A Canton Merchant Who "Just Said 'No' "

Robert Charles

,'. sk a Chinese what he calls Englishmen and he'll tell you so many evils among the people, and yet of so much gain to the fttheY're opium merchants. Ask the same about French­ merchants, that I utterly despair of saying anything on the subject men and he'll tell you they're . The former ruin his that will not be regarded with dislike. I cannot, however, but health at the expense of his finances, and the latter overturn his regard it as one of the many obstacles which hinder the moral ideas," charged Tcheng-Ki-Tong, military attache at the Chinese improvement of eastern India and .,,6 embassy in Paris, in an article published in a French review in Most merchants-"under no control, subject to no law, 1 1884. except that of self-interest," as one explained-looked upon the Had the Chinese diplomat attempted to classify Americans opium trade as an economic necessity, and as such an entirely in China according to the same two stereotypes, he likely would honorable pursuit, for it at least gave them something to sell to have qualified them as honorary Frenchmen. Yet fifty years the self-sufficient Chinese." In the words of William Jardine to a earlier, American merchants, even if not to the extent of their potential investor back in England, the opium trade was "the British counterparts, were endangering the Chinese purse and safest and most gentlemanlike speculation I am aware of." Jardine health through what in 1839 was called "a trade which every publicly defended his character as the leading opium merchant friend of humanity must deplore," what an American contem­ by citing declarations of both Houses of Parliament, "with all porary of the Chinese diplomat deplored as "the darkest stain the bench of bishops at their backs," that it was financially inex­ pedient to abolish the trade." For Bostonian Robert Bennett Forbes, involvement in the opium trade was nothing more than a matter of following "the right example of England, the East India Ask a Chinese what he Company, the countries that cleared it for China, and the mer­ calls Englishmen, and he'll chants I had always been accustomed to look up to as the ex­ tell you that they are ponents of all that was honorable in trade.,~IO Up to 1839 the opium trade "had indeed been an easy and agreeable business opium merchants. for the foreign exile who shared in it at Canton," reminisced William Hunter in the 1880s. "His sales were pleasantness and his remittances were peace. Transactions seemed to partake of upon the Christianity of the nineteenth century," and which more the nature of the drug; they imparted a soothing frame of mind recently has been labeled as "surely one of the longest-con­ with three percent commission on sales, one percent on returns, tinued international crimes of modem times ... a classic symbol and no bad debts!" According to Hunter, "I myself, and I of Western commercial imperialism-foreign greed and violence think I may safely say the entire foreign community, rarely, if demoralizing and exploiting an inoffensive people.r" First im­ ever, saw anyone physically or mentally injured by it. ... As ported in small quantities as a medicine in 1767, then in increasing compared to the use of spirituous liquors in the amounts as a stupefacient, until in 1800 the Chinese government and England, and the evil consequences of it, that of opium was outlawed its importation, opium by the 1830s represented "no infinitesimal.,,11 hole-in-the-corner petty smuggling trade, but probably the largest This complacent, see-no-evil view did not command unan­ commerce of the time in any single commodity ... [and] the imity among the foreign community "in Canton, however. Prot­ economic foundation of the rise of the foreign merchant com­ estant missionaries generally dissociated themselves from the opium munity in China.,,3 trade, which they viewed as a blot on the name of the Christian For Chinese authorities, opium was "vile dirt," "a flow­ West and a curse visited upon the Chinese. "There is a great ing poison" wreaking economic and moral havoc upon the Ce­ trade in opium here, the Chinese having become excessively ad­ lestial Empire and its populace." those who smoked it were no dicted to it," Robert Morrison wrote to friends in Dublin in 1828. different than "reptiles, wild beasts, dogs, and swine," de­ "This poison depraves and corrupts the Heathen and yet clared Commissioner Lin in his first placard after arriving in Can­ Christians activated by the love of gold smuggle immense quan­ ton in March 1839 with a determination to put an end to the flow tities of it into China from our Indian Possessions annually.v" A of "foreign mud.?" The foreign community in Canton, how­ major exception, however, was Karl Gutzlaff, "whose declared ever, was of divided mind on whether to regard the illegal trade horror of the opium trade proved not so strong as his passion for as primarily a moral, or an economic issue. In an 1836 letter to proselytizing.v " Fluent in Cantonese and other dialects, he was The Chinese Repository in Canton, William Milne lamented: "The approached by the English firm of Jardine & Matheson to act as vast consumption of opium on this side of India, is the source of an interpreter for the Sylph, which sailed up the coast in October 1832. In a letter to Gutzlaff, William Jardine stated openly that "our principal reliance is on opium.... The more profitable Robert Charles served during 1980-88 with Mennonite Board of Missions in the expedition, the better we shall be able to place at your disposal Brussels, Belgium, asdirector of Brussels Mennonite Center andeditor ofNATO a sum that may hereafter be employed in furthering your mission, Watch newsletter. Currently he is a Ph.D. candidate in European diplomatic and for your success in which we feel deeply interested." Ac­ historyand international security studies at the Fletcher School of Lawand Di­ cording to Gutzlaff, "After much consultation with others and plomacy, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts. a conflict in my own mind, I embarked on the Sylph." The expe­

66 INTERN ATIONAL BULLETIN OF RESEARCH dition was a success, as was a subsequent one that made a profit full agreement, both the commissioner and his American visitors of over £50,000. In a later book recounting his voyages and mission had reason to be satisfied with their encounter-Lin because up­ activities, Gutzlaff made no mention of the fact that the ships on right foreigners could vouchsafe that the opium was in fact being which he traveled carried opium. 14 destroyed and not saved for resale; King and Bridgman for being Yet just as this exception was to be found to the missionary allowed to witness this magnificent "rebuke administered by condemnation and avoidance of anything to do with the opium Pagan integrity to Christian degeneracy.v'" trade, so also was a nonconformist to the prevailing practice of King's petitions to Commissioner Lin show that Olyphant & his colleagues to be counted among the expatriate merchant com­ Company were clearly in Canton to engage in and prosper through munity. Lamented Morrison to his Dublin friends, "There is trade, an activity that King thought could be carried out only if only one Christian merchant in Canton who conscientiouslx de­ foreign merchants respected Chinese laws and if Chinese au­ clines dealing in the pernicious drug. He is an American." 5 thorities respected the foreigners' property at the Canton facto­ The unnamed American merchant in Morrison's letter who ries. 25 Thus King did not stand aloof from his fellow merchants alone refused the "soothing state of mind" offered by opium when, in November 1838, they drove away Chinese authorities dealing was D. W. C. Olyphant of the firm of Olyphant & Com­ who were preparing to execute a Chinese opium dealer at the pany of New York, who had come to Canton in the 1820s to enter foot of the American flagpole in the square in front of the foreign the tea market;" Under the direction of Olyphant, "a pious factories. The attempted execution was judged by the foreigners devoted servant of Christ and a friend of China" who had been converted during an evangelical revival in 1814, and of his "sober and intense young nephew" Charles W. King, Olyphant & Com­ pany represented a singular combination of scrupulous commerce King and Olyphant saw and Christian conviction;" Olyphant's principled nonparticipa­ tion in the opium trade, "almost the only branch of the China the opium trade as a cloud trade which produced a profit during a good part of the decade over the entire foreign of the 1820s," and his key role in the beginning of American Protestant missions in China "made him such an oddity in merchant community at the Canton environment that old-timers there called the Olyphant Canton. headquarters In. t h e A mencan . fac t ory 'Z' Ion , s Corner. ' ,,18 Why did Olyphant & Company abstain from dealing in op­ ium? Foster Rhea Dulles suggests it was because "this firm "as a wanton interference with their rights to consider the alone looked on the opium question from any other than a purely foreign settlement private property." King participated in the commercial point of view.,,19 Rather than portraying Olyphant attack upon the executioners, despite Olyphant & Company's and King simply as virtuous saints willing to sacrifice profits for strong opposition to the opium traffic, which had bought about principles, however, one should recognize that the firm had solid this official Chinese reaction and which was hanging as a storm commercial and prudential grounds for avoiding what was, after cloud over the entire foreign merchant community at Canton.26 all, an illegal activity. In the opinion of , King opposed the opium trade in print as well, protesting to "Their motive was not so much moral as practical. They feared . Commissioner Lin, in response to criticism that he had not con­ that a traffic forbidden by the Chinese government, however vinced any of his merchant colleagues to hand over their illegal countenanced by its officials, would breed trouble. They were opium, that he had "used his best efforts to dissuade all men right. ,,20 That trouble arrived in March 1839 in the person of from the injurious traffic. ,,27 He compared the fight against opium Imperial Commissioner Lin, who set foot in Canton in early 1839 in China to other battles being waged on other fronts. King took with the mandate and determination to stamp out the opium heart from the fact that "the spirit which has abolished slavery trade, and who was willing to suspend all foreign trade to attain in Europe and is abolishing it in America, and the spirit which his goal. At the end of March, forty-one apparently chastened has given a death-blow to intemperance in America and is ex­ foreign companies promised "not to deal in opium, nor to tending its influence to Europe, is approaching us, and it is a spirit attempt to introduce it into the Chinese Empire"-a pledge on of might, for it is the spirit of truth, and she is destined to over­ which many subsequently reneged." Conspicuous by its absence come all evil.,,28 In The Chinese Repository of January 1837, King from this list of firms was the name of Olyphant & Company, anonymously offered a prize of $400 for the "best essay on whose noninvolvement in theopium trade had been asserted by the opium trade, showing its effects on the commercial, political, King and recognized by the commissioner in a separate exchange and moral interests of the nations connected therewith, and point­ of communications at the end of March. 22 ing out the course they ought to pursue in regard to it." If King's This official confidence in the integrity of Olyphant & Com­ phrasing of the subject was dispassionate, his own views were pany was confirmed in June 1839, when Charles King and Elijah anything but that. Urging the publication to speak out upon this C. Bridgman were allowed to witness the destruction of some "evil of the deepest die [sic]," King noted that "there is 1,600 of the 20,000 chests of opium surrendered by foreign mer­ not a greater barrier to the introduction of the gospel into China chants to Commissioner Lin following his March ultimatum.23 by the hands of foreigners, than the trade in opium by foreigners King, perhaps assuming that his clean hands on the opium ques­ bearing the Christian name.... All our pretensions of doing tion entitled him to special consideration, presented the com­ good are vain while we remain connected with opium. We can missioner with two petitions. The first, a request that his ships only be accounted of by the nation as hollow-hearted hypo­ be allowed to enter and trade in Canton as before, was granted. crites.,,29 King also wrote a pamphlet, published anonymously in The second, that "speedy reparation ought to be made for all London in 1839 and addressed to the British superintendent of the losses that had been unjustly incurred" through the inter­ trade in Canton, warning of the crisis that was brewing, which ruption of his regular trade, and that basic changes be made in in fact led to the outbreak of the Anglo-Chinese Opium War in the Canton trading system, was refused. Despite not reaching 1840.30

APRIL 1992 67 This condemnation of the opium trade as an obstacle to Chris­ came to Canton on the Morrison, named after the missionary. In tian mission highlights the second aspect of Olyphant & Com­ 1834 Dr. and Olyphant himself (who had returned pany's "oddity" in the Canton environment: its important role to New York in 1827, leaving his business in charge of Mr. Talbot) in promoting American Protestant missions in China." arrived on the Morrison. In 1835 Olyphant offered his brig the Soon after arriving in China and meeting Robert Morrison, Huron to Stevens and Walter Medhurst of the London Missionary D. W. C. Olyphant approached the American Board of Commis­ Society for a trip up the coast to the Shantung peninsula with sioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), offering free passage out twenty thousand pieces of Christian literature, and the following and board and room in the American factory to any person the year Stevens and G. Tradescant Lay of the British and Foreign Bible Society made another "tract and Bible voyage" to the East Indies on Olyphant's Mimmaleh. 32 In addition, Olyphant served as the treasurer for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowl­ The Gospel and opium edge in China, formed in 1834 by Bridgman to use "intellectual artillery" to communicate to the Chinese "the richest fruits of IIcame together, have modern invention and discovery" and a knowledge of Western been fought for together, history and affairs. 33 and were finally legalized When the impact of Western trade and Christian missions upon China in the nineteenth century is depicted in broad strokes, together." the appraisal offered at the beginning of this century by Joshua Rowntree unfortunately must stand: the gospel and opium "came together, have been fought for together, and were fi­ board would choose to send. Over the next decade Olyphant'S nally legalized together.v'" Yet as this gloomy canvas is viewed ships transported missionaries and literature in addition to com­ close-up, finer and felicitous counterstrokes are visible. In the mercial cargoes. In late 1829, Elijah C. Bridgman, sent by the 1830s, out of personal religious conviction, enlightened self-in­ ABCFM under the offer made by Olyphant, and David Abeel, terest as traders, and a desire to promote rather than hinder sent by the Seaman's Friend Society, as well as Charles King, Western evangelizing activity in China, Olyphant & Company sailed on an Olyphant boat that "anchored among the opium produced an uncommon blend of merchandising and missions, receiving ships off Lintin" in February 1830. Edwin Stevens, also conforming neither to Chinese stereotypes of the English and sent out by the Seaman's Friend Society in 1832, and S. Wells French nor to the practice of fellow American merchants, standing Williams, trained as a printer and sent by the ABCFM in 1833, alone in "just saying 'no' " to trafficking in opium.

Notes------­

1. The articles appeared under the overall title "La Chine et les Chi­ after Elliott had ordered the British merchants to withdraw to Macao nois" and were published in Paris in Larevuedesdeuxmondes 63 (1884): following the surrender of the twenty thousand chests of opium to 278--305, 596--622, 820-55; a summary appeared in AtlanticMonthly 56 Commissioner Lin in late March 1839. Cited in Dulles, TheOld China (july 1885): 74-84. Trade, p. 158. 2. Captain Charles Elliott, British superintendent of trade, writing to 8. Chinese authorities considered their country to be "happily self­ Lord Palmerston in the Foreign Office, April 6, 1839; William Speer, sufficient, without any need of the foreign goods that the Europeans The Oldestand Newest Empire: China and the United States (Hartford: S. had to sell. She permitted the barbarians to trade with her only out S. Scranton, 1870), p. 378; John K. Fairbank, The United States and of compassion, knowing how bleak if not unbearable their lives would China, 4th ed., enlarged (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1983), p. be without Chinese goods" (Hibbert, The Dragon Wakes, 5). 162. 9. Cited in Greenberg, British Trade and'theOpening of China, pp. 104-5; 3. Michael Greenberg, British Trade and the Openingof China, 1800-1842 Samuel E. Morison, The Maritime History of Massachusetts, 1783-1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951), pp. 104, 107. On the (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1921), p. 278. origins and development of the opium trade at Canton, see Jonathan 10. Cited in Jonathan Goldstein, Philadelphia and the China Trade, 1682­ D. Spence, The Search for Modern China (New York: W. W. Norton, 1846: Commercial, Cultural, and Attitudinal Effects (University Park: 1990), pp. 128--32, 148--52; Christopher Hibbert, The Dragon Wakes: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1978), p. 49. China and the West, 1793-1911 (London: Longman, 1970), pp. 82-89; 11. Hunter, The "Fan Kwae"at Canton, pp. 72-73, 80. Foster Rhea Dulles, The Old China Trade (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 12. Cited in Hibbert, The Dragon Wakes, p. 84. Examples of Christian 1930), pp. 139--60. For a participant's account, see William Hunter, condemnations of the opium trade later in the century can be found The "Fan Kwae"at Canton Before Treaty Days, 1825-1844 (London: Ke­ in Sirr, Chinaand the Chinese, 1, p. vii; 2, pp. 296, 339; and Speer, The gan Paul, Trench & Company, 1882), pp. 64-70. On the role of Amer­ Oldest and Newest Empire, pp. 377-78. ican merchants in the opium trade, see Jacques M. Downs, 13. Hibbert, The Dragon Wakes, p. 88. "American Merchants and the China Opium Trade, 1800-1840," 14. Ibid., pp. 87-89; Maurice Collis, Foreign Mud (New York: Alfred A. Business History Review42, no. 4 (Winter 1968): 418--42. Knopf, 1947), p. 70; Arthur Waley, The Opium War Through Chinese 4. The imperial edict of 1800 banning the importation of opium into Eyes (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1958), p. 228. China, cited in Dulles, The Old China Trade, p. 146; a Chinese mem­ 15. Cited in Hibbert, The Dragon Awakes, p. 84. orialist writing in 1836, cited in Frederick Wakeman, [r., Strangers at 16. Other American companies that came to Canton from New York, the Gates: Social Disorder in South China, 1839-1861 (Berkeley: Univ. of Philadelphia, Boston, and Salem included Perkins & Company, James Press, 1966), p. 33. Oakford & Company, Archer & Company, T. H. Smith & Company, 5. Cited in Henry Charles Sirr, China and the Chinese (London: William Russell & Company, and Wetmore & Company. Olyphant & Com­ S. Orr, 1849), 2, p. 309. pany continued in operation until 1878, even though Olyphant him­ 6. The Chinese Repository 4, no. 12 (April 1836): 556. self died at Cairo, Egypt, on June 10, 1851. 7. Robert Bennett Forbes, explaining to the British superintendent of 17. The description of Olyphant is cited in Immanuel Hsu, The Rise of trade Charles Elliott why he would continue to trade at Canton, even Modern China (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1970), p. 217; on his

68 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH conversion and Charles W. King, see Peter Fay, TheOpiumWar, 1840­ 26. Dulles, The Old China Trade, p. 153. Also Hibbert, The Dragon Wakes, 1842 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1975), p. 84. See pp. 107-9. For an eyewitness account of this incident, see Hunter, Hunter, The "Fan Kwae" at Canton, p. 115, for personal observations The "Fan Kwae" in Canton, p. 27. on Olyphant, in whose ships Hunter made several New York-Canton 27. The Chinese Repository 7, no. 12 (April 1839): 637. voyages. For this study I did not have access to Thatcher Thayer's 28. The Chinese Repository 5, no. 9 (january 1837): 416. For Olyphant & tribute, A Sketch of the Lifeof D. W. C. Olyphant (New York: Edwin O. Company, fighting opium in China must have seemed like an exten­ Jenkins, 1852). Another partner in the firm was Charles N. Talbot, sion of the fight against alcohol and slavery in North America-a con­ who for a while served as the U.S. consular agent in Canton. nection that King makes explicit. For the social and evangelizing activism 18. James C. Thomson, [r., Peter W. Stanley, John Curtis Perry, Senti­ inspired by the Second Great Awakening (1795-1820), see Robert T. mental Imperialists (New York: Harper & Row, 1981), p. 35. Handy, A HistoryoftheChurches in theUnitedStates andCanada (Oxford: 19. Dulles, The Old China Trade, p. 148. Clarendon Press, 1976), pp. 162-82. 20. Morison, TheMaritime Hisioru of Massachusetts, o. 278. 29. From King's anonymous article in TheChinese Repository 5, no. 9 (Ian­ 21. The entire text of the communication from the merchants to Com­ uary 1837): 41~18. missioner Lin is found in British Foreign and State Papers, 1840-1841, 30. [Charles King], Opium Crisis: A LetterAddressed to Charles Elliott, Esq. vol. 29 (London: James Ridgway & Sons, 1857), pp. 996--97. (London, 1839). 22. The commissioner did chide King, however, for failing to convince 31. On Olyphant's support of missions, see Kenneth Scott Latourette, A the other foreign merchants to hand over their opium. See TheChinese Historyof Christian Missions in China (London: SPCK Press, 1929), pp. Repository 7, no. 12 (April 1839): 637-38. 217-19; Edward V. Gulick, Peter Parker and theOpening ofChina (Cam­ 23. An account of the visit, written by Bridgman, appeared in TheChinese bridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1973), pp. 21, 64-65. Repository 8, no. 2 (lune 1839): 70-77. 32. Fay, The Opium War, pp. 84-91; Gulick, Peter Parker and the Opening 24. Cited in Fay, The Opium War, p. 77. of China, pp. 64-65. 25. What in fact did Olyphant & Company sell in Canton? Perhaps their 33. Fred W. Drake, "Protestant Geography in China: E. C. Bridgman's China-bound ships carried goods similar to those inventoried by Wil­ Portrayal of the West," in : Early Protestant Mis­ liam Hunter when he sailed from New York on Thomas H. Smith's sionary Writings, ed. Suzanne W. Barnett and John K. Fairbank (Cam­ Citizen in late 1824: the cargo consisted of "350,000 Spanish dollars bridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1985), p. 94. in kegs (no letters of credit on London bankers then existing), furs, 34. Joshua Rowntree, TheImperial DrugTrade (London, 1908), p. 242, cited lead, bar and scrap iron, and quicksilver" (The "Fan Kwae" at Canton, in Harold R. Isaacs, Scratches on Our Minds: American Images of China p. 2). William Jardine was sure that Olyphant & Company smuggled and India (New York: John Day, 1958), p. 134. in everything else other than opium (Fay, The Opium War, pp.121­ 22).

The Legacy of A. B. Simpson

Gerald E. McGraw

here should a pastor locate if his highest priorities for born of Scottish Presbyterian ancestry on December 15, 1843. At W the 1880s included missionary promotion and the evan­ age three and a half, he was transplanted by his stern, religious gelizing of unreached masses? From what American port did family to a farm near Chatham in southwestern Ontario. overseas missionaries sail? To what harbor were nearly a million , What influences ignited his missionary zeal? With fervent de­ immigrants arriving annually to seek a new life? The answer, sire but Calvinistic submission, his godly mother Jane had prayed obviously, was New York City, which was both the haven for before Albert's birth for a son who should become a minister or new settlers and the hub of missionary departures, arrivals, and missionary if God willed and the child was so inclined. 1 Jane and information. her husband, James, a Presbyterian elder, had gained a concern Yearning to spread the Gospel abroad as well as to neglected for missions through their pastor at Cavendish, Prince Edward people nearer, an innovative middle-aged Louisville clergyman Island, John Geddie, who would in 1846sail for the New Hebrides known for captivating preaching, Albert Benjamin Simpson (1843­ as one of Canada's first foreign missionaries. When Geddie had 1919), began a pastorate at Manhattan's Thirteenth Street Pres­ baptized young Albert, in his prayer he had also dedicated him byterian Church on December 9, 1879, the dawn of a decade when to the ministry or to missionary service." In his teenage years, American urban population increased by fifty percent. Two months Simpson sensed a call to preach. Subsequently, amid physical, later Simpson launched The Gospel in All Lands, North America's emotional, and spiritual stresses he found assurance of personal first illustrated missionary magazine. salvation after reading Walter Marshall's Gospel Mystery of Sanc­ It is difficult to imagine a more vivid contrast than the dis­ tification. He studied classics in high school and with tutors, taught parity between the serenity of the isolated, rural Prince Edward school, and entered Knox College in Toronto for college and sem­ Island of Simpson's birth and the teeming New York commercial inary. metropolis where his major ministry would occur. Albert was On furlough twenty one years after baptizing the lad, Geddie inquired from Albert's father the whereabouts of the boy he had dedicated. Upon learning that he was serving as pastor of Knox Gerald E. McGraw is Director of the School of Bible and Theology, and Fuller Presbyterian Church in Hamilton, Ontario, Geddie immediately E. Callaway Professor of Biblical Studies at Toccoa Falls College, Toccoa Falls, visited Albert." "Towards the end of his own life and ministry Georgia. Simpson recognized Geddie as probably the strongest influence

APRIL 1992 69