Linguistic and Political Entanglements: Rethinking Mid-19th-Century China Through Missionary Translation of International Law

This article examines how missionary translations of international law shaped mid-19th-century China’s interaction with the Western world. Drawing on primary historical archives, it reveals how missionaries intertwined with both American and Chinese political stakeholders through the lens of Religious Studies, Historical Semantics, and International Politics. Centering on Peter Parker’s Geguo-lüli and Martin’s Wanguo-gongfa, it traces their three overlapping roles as missionaries, translators and diplomatic intermediaries in the two Opium Wars. During the 19th-century balance of power, missionary translation endowed Western legal–political terminologies with universalist semantics, thereby facilitating their acceptance and localization by the Qing government. In this process, missionaries served as key mediators of knowledge and national interests. The article concludes that late modern China’s interaction was not merely the product of Western “impact” but a non-linear process open to reinterpretation.