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deaths of Chinese persons within these fourteen personal absences Legge experienced, one stood out over time because it became so formative in shaping Legge's public image in Hong Kong. The images of both Legge and this seminal Chinese figure were first promoted through extracted letters and reading literature of missionary journals where the story about Ch'ea Kam-Kwong first appeared. After Ch'ea's murder, however, it became a festering and frustrating element within the larger political scenario of the unequal treaties period in foreign policy between the Qing Manchurian empire in China and the newly established British ambassador. Legge made the issue all the more prominent in 1863 by publicly challenging British officials' complacence about the matter and condemning attempts by Sir Frederick Bruce (1814-1867), the first British ambassador to the Qing empire, to defuse the whole tragedy by general claims about missionary incompetence.
The period from 1861 to 1863 was pivotal in Legge's missionary-scholar career because of three books and two supremely “felt” public absences. In February and November 1861 he published the first two of the eight-tome-five-volume series he entitled the Chinese Classics. In October and at the very beginning of 1862 he faced news about the deaths of Ch'ea Kam-kwong and his eldest brother George respectively, writing special memorials to both men in the subsequent months. In the latter case, James Legge edited and introduced his brother George's selected lectures and sermons (an introduction of just over 100 pages!), an act of filial respect simultaneously Scottish Nonconformist, Ruist/Confucian, and Victorian in style and content.
2
Yet Ch'ea's death in October 1861 and its consequences had a power over Legge's career he himself could not fully anticipate. So influential was it that in the balance of the decade of the 1860s Legge was regularly referred to in local Hong Kong and overseas missionary literature as "James Legge of Hong-kong and Poklo." Here we will explore the meaning of Ch'ea's death for Legge's life, and the broader implications it had on a surprising range of “larger issues" in the study of cross-cultural interactions during the later decades of the Manchurian Qing dynasty. Part of the significance is shown in a negative fashion in Paul Cohen's early work of the
188
deaths of Chinese persons within these fourteen personal absences Legge experienced, one stood out over time because it became so formative in shaping Legge's public image in Hong Kong. The images of both Legge and this seminal Chinese figure were first promoted through extracted letters and reading literature of missionary journals where the story about Ch'ea Kam-Kwong first appeared. After Ch'ea's murder, however, it became a festering and frustrating element within the larger political scenario of the unequal treaties period in foreign policy between the Qing Manchurian empire in China and the newly established British ambassador. Legge made the issue all the more prominent in 1863 by publicly challenging British officials' complacence about the matter and condemning attempts by Sir Frederick Bruce (1814-1867), the first British ambassador to the Q ng empire, to defuse the whole tragedy by general claims about missionary incompetence.
The period from 1861 to 1863 was pivotal in Legge's missionary-scholar career because of three books and two supremely “felt” public absences. In February and November 1861 he published the first two of the eight-tome-five-volume series he entitled the Chinese Classics. In October and at the very beginning of 1862 he faced news about the deaths of Ch'ea Kam-kwong and his eldest brother George respectively, writing special memorials to both men in the subsequent months. In the latter case, James Legge edited and introduced his brother George's selected lectures and sermons (an introduction of just over 100 pages!), an act of filial respect simultaneously Scottish Nonconformist, Ruist/Confucian, and Victorian in style and content.
2
Yet Ch'ea's death in October 1861 and its consequences had a power over Legge's career he himself could not fully anticipate. So influential was it that in the balance of the decade of the 1860s Legge was regularly referred to in local Hong Kong and overseas missionary literature as "James Legge of Hong-kong and Poklo." Here we will explore the meaning of Ch'ea's death for Legge's life, and the broader implications it had on a surprising range of “larger issues" in the study of cross-cultural interactions during the later decades of the Manchurian Qing dynasty. Part of the significance is shown in a negative fashion in Paul Cohen's early work of the
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