Missionary status helped Europe rank states by civilization and justify unequal treaties

Evidence

When the Second Opium War ended with the 1858 Treaties of Tianjin, traders were granted almost unlimited access to China’s territory, and missionaries were guaranteed the freedom to evangelise their faith. The status of missionaries had long played an important role in European attempts to determine which states were sufficiently ‘civilised’ to enter the family of nations, and the forcible imposition of unequal treaties was a consequence of falling short of this standard in European eyes. The imposition of this standard meant the coercive transformation of China’s legal, political and economic systems to make its territory safe for commerce, conversion and capital accumulation. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 134

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to scholarship on the ‘standard of civilization’ in international law (Gong) and to postcolonial critiques of the 19th-century law of nations. — connects to: American missionary institutions reproduced the imperial character of European counterparts; Colonial universalism disguised European Christian values as transcendent truths — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 49
• SHARE: Good for anyone working on international legal history or the China ‘century of humiliation’.

Broader Connections

• American missionary institutions reproduced the imperial character of European counterparts #corroborates (0.85)
• Colonial universalism disguised European Christian values as transcendent truths #expands (0.78) — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 49