Along with language study, Williams devoted much of his time to the publication of the
Chinese Repository [most volumes are available online]. Launched by Elijah Bridgman and published in Canton on a printing press obtained by Olyphant, the
Repository possessed a clear mission: to inform the people of the West about China in a disinterested fashion. To explain the rationale for the new publication, Bridgman pointed out that China and the West, though adept at the trade in material goods, have enjoyed “so little commerce in intellectual and moral commodities.” With the Repository, Bridgman addressed this intellectual deficit. He did not, however, use the monthly journal to advance the cause of Protestant missions, and for this reason, its articles covered a diverse array of topics, most of which were secular. In fact, with merchants constituting much of the journal’s circulation, Bridgman and other contributors supplied content on matters related to trade and to Chinese policies affecting foreigners.[18]
Along with his responsibilities as the Repository’s printer, Williams also contributed content. Throughout the periodical’s twenty-year run, only Bridgman authored a comparable number of articles. In writing for the Repository, Williams faced the same temptation that confronted all Westerners writing about China. He could easily portray the Chinese as peculiar, and their customs as different from those in the West, and in this way pass simplistic East-West comparisons off as legitimate ethnography. Yet Williams resisted this temptation, choosing instead to hew to the periodical’s mission: to disseminate the most accurate information on China available.[19] Toward this end, Williams wrote more than one hundred major articles between 1833 and 1851.[20] Of course, the prominent storylines he covered during his tenure as writer, editor, and printer revolved around Sino-Western trade relations. But of a mind steeped in natural history, Williams was also able to depart from matters related solely to commerce and politics to explore a diverse array of fields.
In the areas of geography and topography, he described China’s provinces, the largest
cities and towns of the empire, and the most
prominent rivers and mountain ranges. In the area of natural history, he combined his own fieldwork around Canton with the best available published sources; he wrote articles on rocks and minerals, the tea plant, bamboo, lions, horses, bats, flying squirrels, cormorants, bees, and wasps. He reviewed books on China written by European and American authors. Most importantly, he used his articles to paint in piecemeal fashion a colorful portrait of Chinese life: diet, rice cultivation, festivals, the filial behavior of children, female education, dialects, pagoda-building, literature, theater, religion, mythology, and ancestor worship. Finally, Williams also served Canton’s foreign community by composing pieces that were directly related to their interests; he discussed Chinese imports and exports, developments in the various internal rebellions threatening the empire, the status of the Protestant mission, and the ascension of a new emperor to the throne. Of course, many of his topical pieces centered on
opium: the smuggling by merchants, the problem of addiction in Chinese society, the response of Chinese officials, and the British military action.[21]
When taken together, the more than one hundred major articles that he wrote for this periodical, when combined with the thousands of others he edited, formed an unofficial first draft of his future masterwork,
The Middle Kingdom.
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[18] Fred Drake, “Bridgman in China in the early Nineteenth Century,” American Neptune 46 (1986): 38.
[19] Frederick Wells Williams, 62.
[20] After the various treaties that followed in the wake of the Opium War, foreigners were free to live and work in several ports. Thus, by 1851, there was no longer a concentration of foreigners living in Canton that needed the Chinese Repository.
[21] “List of Articles by S. Wells. Williams in the Chinese Repository.” Box 13. Series 2. SWWFP.
