Talk:Protectorate of missions

Neutrality tag

I came to this article, looking to remove the section neutrality tag (if needed). Far from removing the tag, I have expanded it to the whole article. Infidel is just not Christian language, it is more usually used by muslems. Any article that uses this word as a view point of Christianity appears biased. The whole article needs to be checked. It may become more clear when the references are made inline. Op47 (talk) 21:55, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Replaced unsourced language for French religious protectorate in China

An article now exists for the French religious protectorate in China and therefore I have switched the unsourced bit currently in the subject to an excerpt from the French religious protectorate in China article. I am archiving the previous unsourced bit here, in case there's a proponent out there who wishes to find a source and work some of this in:

"The French Protectorate, as far as a regular convention is concerned, dates from the middle of the nineteenth century, but the way was prepared by the protection which French statesmen had accorded the missionaries for almost two centuries. The zeal and liberality of Louis XIV permitted the foundation of the great French Jesuit mission, which in less than fifteen years (1687–1701) more than doubled the number of apostolic workers in China, and never ceased to produce most capable workers. The first official relations were formed between France and China when the missionaries brought there by the Amphitrite, the first French vessel seen in Chinese waters (1699), presented gifts from Louis XIV to the Kangxi Emperor. The two monarchs shared the expense of erecting the first French church at Peking: the emperor donated land within the limits of the imperial city and the building materials, the French king paid for the labor, the decoration and the magnificent liturgical ornaments. Several other churches erected in the provinces through the munificence of Louis XIV increased the prestige of France throughout the empire.

Jean Joseph Marie Amiot arrived in China in 1750. He composed a Manchu-French dictionary. Under Louis XV the mission in China, like many other things, was somewhat overlooked, but the government did not wholly neglect it. It found a zealous protector in Louis XVI's minister Henri Bertin, but it felt keenly the suppression of the Society of Jesus. After the suppression, the Jesuits of Beijing resigned from the Society of Jesus and remained as secular priests. A handful of French missionaries, such as Lazarists or members of the Society of Foreign Missions, assisted by some Chinese priests, also helped preserve the Faith throughout the persecutions of the early nineteenth century, during which several of them were martyred.

When the English, after the First Opium War, imposed on China the Treaty of Nanking (1842), they did not at first ask for religious liberty, but the murder of the Lazarist John Gabriel Perboyre (11 September 1840) becoming known, they added an article stipulating that thenceforth a missionary taken in the interior of the country should not be tried by the Chinese authorities, but should be delivered to the nearest consul of his country.

In 1843, King Louis Philippe sent Envoi extraordinaire Marie Melchior Joseph Théodore de Lagrené to China to negotiate a commercial treaty to secure the same privileges as the British. In October 1844, Lagrené and Qiying concluded the Treaty of Whampoa, which also legalized the practice of Christianity in China.

The Second Opium War was ended by the Convention of Peking, which contained an article which stipulated freedom for the missionaries to preach and for the Chinese to practice Christianity. The French ambassador was made receiver of all property previously confiscated, to be transferred to the Christians of the localities concerned. This recognized the general and exclusive right of protection granted to the French over all the Catholic missions in China.

The foregoing historical sketch shows that the ancient French right of protection over the missions, in both Turkey and China, was established as much by constant exercise and by services rendered as by treaties. For some time, the government continued to preserve the prerogative of its predecessors, and continued to lend protection, though much diminished, to the Catholic missionary undertakings—even to those directed by religious who were proscribed in France (e. g. it subsidized the Jesuit schools in Syria). The advantages of the protectorate were too obvious even to the least clerical of the ministers for them not to attempt to retain them, whatever the resulting contradictions in their policy. France gained through the protectorate in the Levant and the Far East a degree of prestige and a moral influence which no commerce or conquest could ever have given provided." JArthur1984 (talk) 18:12, 10 February 2026 (UTC)