American Missionaries and the Opium Trade in Nineteenth-Century China

America's earliest missionaries to China in the mid-nineteenth century played a key role in the formulation of early Sino-American relations. This paper explores the changing influence missionaries had on American policy toward the opium trade as reflected in the provisions of the Treaty of Wangxia (1844) and the American Treaty of Tianjin (1858). As missionary attitudes toward the opium issue shifted in a subtle but significant manner in the years following the Opium War, so too did the official position of the American government as embodied in the provisions of these treaties and supplemental commercial agreements.