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The National Geographic Magazine 



ten years will show that other causes 

 have more powerfully contributed to 

 this state of feeling. 



It is not to be denied that the intro- 

 duction of Christianity into China has 

 caused disturbances. There, as else- 

 where, and in all ages, its influence has 

 been revolutionary. Its founder de- 

 clared he " came not to send peace, but 

 a sword." Paul, the first and greatest 

 of all missionaries, when he declared 

 the gospel was "the power of God," 

 used the Greek word dunamis, which 

 has been anglicized to designate the 

 most powerful of all modern explosives, 

 dynamite. The teaching of Christian- 

 ity in China tended to the introduction 

 of ideas hostile to the existing govern- 

 mental order and struck at ancestral 

 worship, the most dear-cherished of all 

 Chinese customs. The missionaries also 

 opposed such native practices as slavery, 

 concubinage, support of heathen festi- 

 vals, and foot-binding. But the testi- 

 mony of the best observers is that the 

 Chinese are not inclined to religious 

 persecution, and that their antipathy to 

 the missionaries is not so much on ac- 

 count of their religion as because they 

 are foreigners, and their presence leads 

 to the introduction of foreign methods. 

 Nevertheless, the propagation of Chris- 

 tianity has been attended by serious op- 

 position and bloody riots. 



A careful examination of the history 

 of China, however, will show that the 

 missionaries were far from being the 

 chief cause of the Boxer uprising and 

 the disturbances of the year 1900. 

 History makes it plain that the princi- 

 pal object of securing intercourse with 

 the East by the Christian nations has 

 been the introduction and extension of 

 commerce. On this account China has 

 time and again suffered wars and great 

 humiliation at the hands of powerful 

 European nations. The unwelcome 

 traffic in opium, forced upon China by 

 Great Britain in order to benefit British 

 India, has spread its baleful effects 



throughout the whole land. The estab- 

 lishment of lines of steamships and the 

 construction of railroads have thrown 

 hundreds of thousands of Chinese labor- 

 ers out of employment. The growing 

 importation of American and British 

 cotton fabrics have made idle looms and 

 unfilled cotton fields ; American kero- 

 sene is destroying the husbandry of 

 vegetable oils; and in an infinity of 

 other ways is Western commerce affect- 

 ing the domestic industries, and this 

 with a people who are intensely conserv- 

 ative, wedded to ancient customs, and 

 inveterate enemies of foreign trade. 



The construction of railroads was 

 bitterly opposed by the masses of the 

 people, not only for the reasons just 

 stated, but because it disturbed their 

 venerated ancestral worship. Chinese 

 burial places are not segregated, but are 

 found all over the face of the country. 

 Their desecration is regarded as the most 

 heinous of crimes. It is stated that the 

 Germans, in constructing a line from 

 their port of Kiao-chau, a distance of 

 forty-six miles, though using all the 

 care possible to pass around the most 

 thickly located burial places, had to 

 remove no less than three thousand 

 graves. It is not strange to learn that 

 all lines of railway in their inception 

 had to be guarded by soldiers. 



After the Japanese war a new impetus 

 was given to commercial enterprise. 

 Foreign traders, as well as missionaries, 

 visited the interior, and the Chinese saw 

 their country being overrun by the hated 

 people. A scramble for railroad and 

 mining concessions followed, supported 

 \>y the influence of the representatives of 

 the foreign governments ; grants were 

 made to Russians, French, British, 

 Americans, Belgians, and others, and 

 the whole territory of the Empire seemed 

 destined to be plowed over by the feared 

 and h ated locomotive , and the most profit- 

 able enterprises to be placed in the hands 

 of the despised foreigners. These com- 

 mercial influences contributed much 



