ABSTRACT
Before 1815, the Chinese press had experienced no Western involvement. In August of that year, Robert Morrison, a Protestant missionary from the London Missionary Society,1 set up the China Monthly Magazine, which has been widely recognized as China’s first modern journal. The word ‘modern’, though much debated in the social sciences, is used here to stress the contrasts between the official Imperial Gazette and the unofficial missionary press. These contrasts imply a much deeper set of cultural meanings which we shall explore in later chapters.
