Elijah Coleman Bridgman

Elijah Coleman Bridgman (Chinese name Bi Zhiwen 裨治文, also known as Gao Liwen 高理文 and Bei Man 贝满; 22 April 1801 – 2 November 1861) was a missionary of the American Board. Responding to the appeal of the Englishman Robert Morrison, the first Protestant missionary to China, he became the first American missionary to come to China.

Life

On 25 February 1830 he arrived in Guangzhou from Boston. At that time open evangelism in China was not yet possible, and he chiefly studied Chinese with Morrison and made other preparations. He served as editor of the English-language Chinese Repository, introducing China's culture, history, language and customs to the West, enriching Americans' knowledge of China and laying the foundations of American sinology. He also put his skills to use in the work on the 1844 Treaty of Wangxia and the 1858 Treaty of Tianjin. His best-known work written in China is Meilige Hesheng Guo Zhilüe (美理哥合省国志略), an introduction to the United States (first published in Singapore in 1838, revised in 1846 as Yameilijia Hezhongguo Zhilüe 亚美理驾合众国志略, and revised again in 1861 as Da Meilianbang Zhilüe 大美联邦志略).

Bridgman was one of the first Western missionaries to take up the problem of the opium trade in China, and he expressed great indignation at its evils. In March 1832 he published an article in the Missionary Herald attacking the harm the opium trade did to China, describing opium as “the greatest source of evil afflicting Chinese society” and giving an in-depth account of the severe spread of the drug in China. This was the first time an American missionary publicly commented on the opium trade in China in a Western magazine, and the first time the American public learned, to its shock, of the opium smuggling of Western merchants in China.

In 1841 he received a Doctor of Divinity degree from New York University. After 1847 he moved to Shanghai and took part in translating the Bible, remaining there until his death in Shanghai in 1861. The completed Bridgman Version (in classical Chinese) translated “God” as Shen (神) rather than Shangdi (上帝). This version is generally considered more faithful and closer to the original text than earlier translations.

In May 1854 he accompanied the American Minister to China, Robert McLane (麦莲), from Shanghai into territory held by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom on a tour of inspection; on returning to Shanghai he published a report that rejected the Taiping movement.

During his years in Shanghai, alongside his Bible translation, he and his wife Eliza Bridgman (裨爱利莎) founded Shanghai's first girls' school, the Bridgman Girls' School (裨文女塾; 1850, outside the Old West Gate; later the Bridgman Girls' Middle School). After Bridgman's death his widow Eliza founded the Bridgman Girls' School (贝满女塾) in Beijing in 1864.

Writings

• Elijah Coleman Bridgman, Samuel Wells Williams (1842). The Chinese Repository, Volume 11. Printed for the proprietors.
• Elijah Coleman Bridgman (1841). A Chinese Chrestomathy in the Canton Dialect. S.W. Williams. p. 693.
• Da Meilianbang Zhilüe (大美联邦志略), by Bridgman