ABSTRACT
The first military threat by Europeans to Chinese territory came not from the sea, but from the Russian settlements in Siberia. Already in the 1640s Cossack adventurers had made their way southwards to the River Amur; and they were so persistent in their attempts at colonization that had there not been at that precise moment a dynasty originating in Manchuria. The forty years from 1800 to the Opium War constitute in some ways the most glorious period of the Catholic church in China. With court patronage altogether removed, a stream of devoted priests, most of them French, entered the country in disguise, trusting their lives entirely to the loyalty of the scattered Christian communities. As was natural, the Protestant missionaries were at first much excited by the news that a Christian sympathizer had set out to win the throne of China, and their emotion was shared to some degree by their governments.
