Journal of Three Voyages along the Coast of China, in 1831, 1832 and 1833: With Notices of Siam, Corea, and the Loo-Choo Islands

The Prussian-born Protestant missionary Karl Friedrich August Gutzlaff (1803-51) sought to spread Christianity in the Far East. A gifted linguist, he sailed to Siam and worked on a translation of the Bible into Thai. The British missionary Robert Morrison had fired his interest in China, and Gutzlaff later focused his evangelising efforts there, learning several dialects and distributing translated literature. The present work, featuring an introductory chapter by fellow missionary William Ellis on Chinese attitudes to foreign influence, was first published in 1834. Gutzlaff had left Siam in 1831 in a Chinese junk trading along the coast of China. The next year, as an interpreter aboard an East India Company vessel, he also visited Korea and Okinawa. The third voyage recounted here describes the places and peoples encountered from Canton to Manchuria. Also reissued in this series are Gutzlaff’s Sketch of Chinese History (1834) and China Opened (1838).