ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at three incidents in which missionaries played a role on the fringes of diplomacy in Formosa, Korea, Japan and England. As long-term residents who possessed both language skills and local knowledge, the Foreign Office could itself ask missionaries for advice in specific matters, as was illustrated at the time of the March First 1919 independence movement in Korea under Japanese colonial rule. Missionary leaders were also aware of overseas missions being helpful to the Foreign Office in maintaining British presence and prestige abroad. The first incident is an example, and perhaps the last British example, of gunboat diplomacy in southern Formosa in 1868, which was partly sparked by an attack on an English Presbyterian missionary doctor by an angry Chinese crowd. The second study also has connections to the maritime story in that the English Church Mission in Korea had as its first bishop Charles Corfe, the former naval chaplain to the Duke of Edinburgh.
