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James Legge

Marilyn Bowman (2015)


Vancouver Canada
Simon Fraser University
This is a biography of James Legge (1815-1897), the great 19th century
missionary and scholar who achieved international fame as a translator of
the Chinese Classics at a time when Britain and China were engaged in
diplomatic and trade struggles that included two hot wars. After retiring
from mission life, from 1876 Legge was a Fellow of Corpus Christi College
and the first Professor of Chinese at Oxford.
Legges story includes every powerful and romantic theme of the role
of educated Scots in the 19th century British Empire, starting from its
earliest reaches into the truly unknown Chinese Empire. Legge went to
China and at a time when sailing ships, pirates, opium wars, the
swashbuckling East India Company, cannibals eating missionaries, and the
opening of Qing China to trade and ideas, were exotic aspects of Britains
expansion of trade into Asia.
My book is a historical biography, following Legges life but with an
emphasis on the 31 years he spent in Hong Kong (1842-1873) during the
tumultuous decades of the early engagements between Britain and China.
Legge was there as a non-denominational missionary sent by the London
Missionary Society, but he worked from before dawn daily on his true
passion, mastering ancient Chinese text at a time when there was not yet
any good Chinese-English dictionary. During the day he created Chinese
and English congregations, churches, and schools for the LMS that have left
enduring institutions.
Legges concerns were broader than his mission work. He became a
core founder of the Hong Kong public school system starting with its
Central School (now Queens College), building an effective foundation that
educated Chinese students who became business and government leaders in
Hong Kong and reformers in China. He argued for the creation of the first
public library, while supporting mission doctors in Hong Kong, Canton and
Shanghai who were transforming medical treatment and training for the
Chinese.

Legge had the idea, revolutionary for its time, that mission men
should not presume to preach their foreign message to the Chinese without
learning the wealth of social and moral ideas that had formed Chinese
culture for millennia. Over nearly sixty years Legge mastered reading the
classical and ancient Chinese texts, translated them into English, and wrote
major essays and books explaining them. Anyone who is familiar with the
phrase the Analects of Confucius is using a term Legge selected for these
writings. Legges contribution went far beyond translation, as his elegant
essays explaining the historical, political, geographical and social aspects of
the cultures of each text, examined all these features with an empirical eye.
He checked dates and claims of the traditional commentaries against others
and against external evidence, his work representing the first time any
scholar in China or the west, had done such a scientifically-oriented
examination of the writings.
In the end he published his eight major volumes of the Classics in
Hong Kong from 1861-1873, then many more during his Oxford years
ending with his death. Oxford University Press published the major 1892
revisions of his eight-volume Classics, and his translations remain the gold
standard to the present day. In 1962 these books were republished by Hong
Kong University, and now in commemorating his work for the 200th
anniversary of his birth, new republications are planned in China.
Legge's life was so rich, so complex, and so intricately bound with the
geopolitics of the first major encounters between Britain and China, that my
book handles his remarkable life and the surrounding turmoil in a relatively
direct manner. His life included many dramatic events, both personal and
highly public. He was the object of vilification from more fundamentalist
mission men who disagreed with his favourable views about Chinese
culture, morals, and beliefs. He risked beheading on two different occasions
when he intervened to help Chinese individuals being terrorized during the
Taiping Rebellion, and his most steadfast Chinese admirer was murdered
and dismembered by an hysterical mob less than a week after Legge had
gone deeply inland to protect him. Legge became so ill from fevers that his
life in Hong Kong was at risk when he was only 29 and he was forced to
return briefly to the UK to save his health. He soon recovered and his group
of three talented Chinese students attracted such public interest that they
were invited to a private meeting with Queen Victoria. Legge thrived to an
old age despite other illnesses, bad accidents, and dangerous political
encounters. Across his life he lost five of his 11 children and his two wives to

premature deaths, he survived cholera epidemics, numerous typhoons, and


massive fires in Hong Kong. He was poisoned twice in a famous scandal,
helped save a sailing ship from fire on the high seas, took in a bohemian
Qing scholar on the run from the dynasty, foiled a bank-bombing plot, and
earned enmity in the colony for providing court testimony about translation
that favoured accused Chinese men rather than the colonial authorities.
Legge responded to these events with resilience and incredible
productivity, buoyed by the passion he had developed at the age of 23 for
understanding the culture of China as written in its ancient texts, a passion
that lasted until his death at 81.
The challenging historical and personal events that James Legge
experienced seemed to fit peculiarly into my own life-long interests, my
own peculiar department, as Legge described his interests. My professional
life as a psychologist has centred on two broad themes of interest,
individual differences in cognitive abilities and in responses to adverse
events. As I learned more about James Legge, it was clear his life provided a
rich blend of these themes. I also realized that I wanted more people to
know about the dazzling Dr. Legge despite the modern distaste for dead
white males, especially for Victorian Christian missionaries, and despite
my own absence of faith.
Although I am a Professor of Psychology (Emerita; PhD McGill) and a
clinical psychologist by training, my book is not a psychoanalytical
speculation about Legges early inner conflicts and possible links with his
adult behavior. Rather, it describes his richly eventful years in Hong Kong,
and only in a small review chapter considers the sources of his wonderful
resilience and productivity.
My research involved significant archival work at SOAS, the
Wellcome Library, the New York Public Library (which owns all Legges
Chinese books), in Hong Kong libraries, and in the Bodleian. In Oxford, Sir
Tim Lankester, former Master of Corpus Christi, has been repeatedly
helpful and friendly toward me and my task over some years. I have also
had wonderful cooperation from Legge's great-grandson Christopher Legge
in London, with family archives and friendly encouragement.
In recent years three books have been published about Legges work.
My book is different from these. It is not a summary of his institution-

building in Hong Kong as done by Tim Wong in Hong Kong (1996), not the
complex Taoist-Victorian analysis of his years at Oxford published by
Norman Girardot (1997), and not the intricate examination of Legges
Scottish commonsense-philosophy done in the two-volume set by Lauren
Pfister (2004). It also differs from the hagiography that his daughter Edith
Legge published in 1905.
I have completed the entire text. Its intended audience is the general
educated public interested in lives lived, dealing directly with Legges life
and times rather than with more esoteric philosophy or psychology. While I
have avoided a major academic superstructure of citations and footnotes, I
have included some notes and some specific reference to works or
comments when they seemed appropriate.
Our Western world is facing growing involvement with China and its
culture, and the things that Legge learned are becoming part of our lives.
The kinds of Western conflicts with China in the 19 th c. are surprisingly
relevant today, starting with trade imbalances and problems of mutual
incomprehension relating to values that mix familiar and different in
shifting ways. Legges translations, incorporated into major volumes with
his careful essays and notes, continue to provide rich insights into deep
cultural traditions that continue today. I understand that the major
publishing project to re-publish Legges work underwayin China involves
the Beijing Foreign Studies University and Hong Kong Baptist University,
but I have no details. My biography would serve to complement that work.
Those interested in Britains colonial history in Hong Kong and with
China, those interested in the complex life of an exceptionally talented Scot
confronted with challenging events, and those interested in Legges vast and
wise studies of Chinese culture should find the book interesting and
enjoyable.

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