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Reverend Issachar Jacox Roberts and the Taiping Rebellion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Yuan Chung Teng
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Extract

Reverend Issachar Jacox Roberts was, as far as is known, the only Western teacher ever to instruct Hung Hsiu-ch'üan, the leader of the Taiping Rebellion. Aware of his special relationship with Hung, Roberts was for many years enthusiastic about Hung's undertakings. This article is concerned mainly with an account of the dealings between the two men.

Born in Tennessee in 1802, Roberts studied at the Furman Theological Institution of South Carolina, and was ordained to the ministry in 1828. He preached for some time in Mississippi, where he owned property said to be worth $30,000. Using this property as a financial base, he organized the Roberts Fund and the China Mission Society. Upon arrival in China in 1837, Roberts took the Chinese name of Lo Hsiao-ch'üan (or Lo Heáou-tseuen). For his first five years in China, the missionary worked among the lepers at Macao. When his income became insufficient for his work there, he labored for a time as a saddler, joined the Baptist Mission in 1841, and in 1846 transferred to the Southern Baptist Convention. In 1844 Roberts, who was the first foreigner to live outside the restricted “factory” area, opened a mission in the city of Canton, which he used as a home base for the following twenty-two years of his missionary work. During this period, he returned to the United States only twice. His connection with the Southern Baptist Convention was dissolved in 1852, and thereafter he worked independently. He finally left China in 1866, and died of leprosy in 1871 at Upper Alton, Illinois.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , November 1963 , pp. 55 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1963

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References

1 The China Baptist Centennial 1836–1936, Historical and Miscellaneous Notes, Vol. I Google Scholar, No. 2 (Shanghai).

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8 The missionary was probably Edwin Stevens. See Boardman, Eugene P., Christian Influence upon the Ideology of the Taiping Rebellion, 1851–1864 (Madison, Wisconsin, 1952), p. 99n Google Scholar. The influence of these tracts on Hung is discussed in Ssu-yü, Teng, Historiography of the Taiping Rebellion (Cambridge, 1962), pp. 1–5 Google Scholar, 8.

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17 The translation of this letter probably first appeared in North China Herald, 02 6, 1854 Google Scholar, by Roberts; then in the Anglo-Chinese Calendar for 1855; also in Nye, Gideon, China Question (Macao, 1857)Google Scholar, and Brine, L., The Taiping Rebellion in China (London, 1862)Google Scholar. The validity of this document has been doubted by Kuo Ting-i, T'ai-p'ing T'ien-kuo Shih-shih Jih-chih (Shanghai, 1946–1947)Google Scholar and by Yu-wen, Chien, I, 26–33.Google Scholar

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27 According to A Wylie, Memorials of Protestant Missionaries to the Chinese (Shanghai, 1867), pp. 96–97 Google Scholar, Roberts wrote four tracts in 1840. They are Tzu Pu Chi Chieh (Explanation of the Radical Characters), Wen Ta Su Hua (Catechism in the Macao Dialect), Chen Li Che Chiao (The Religion of Truth), and Chiu Shih Chu Yeh-su Hsin I Chao Shu (New Testament of the Saviour Jesus). The first two tracts were recently discovered in the Department of Oriental Printed Books and Manuscripts, British Museum, London. Tsu Pu Chi Chieh, Shelfmark 15344.c.24; and Wen Ta Su Hua, Shelfmark 15116.d.21.

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