Elijah Coleman Bridgman

Who was Elijah Coleman Bridgman?

Elijah Coleman Bridgman was the first American Protestant Christian missionary appointed to China. He served with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. One of the first few Protestant missionaries to arrive in China prior to the First Opium War, Bridgman was a pioneering scholar and cultural intermediary, and laid the foundations for American sinology. His work shaped the development of early Sino-American relations. He contributed immensely to America's knowledge and understanding of Chinese civilization through his extensive writings on the country's history and culture in publications such as The Chinese Repository — the world's first major journal of sinology, which he began and edited. Bridgman became America's first "China expert." Among his other works was the first Chinese language history of the USA: "Short Account of the United States of America" and "The East-West Monthly Examiner". As a translator he contributed greatly to the formulation of America’s first treaty with the Chinese government under the Qing Dynasty.