Samuel Wells Williams Thought

Since the early years of the 19th century, the American missionaries have come to China. They are familiar with Chinese language, words and customs, so their activities and speech in China in early us-china diplomatic relations plays a great role, and the comments objectively deepened Americans of Chinese traditional cultural awareness. Williams is one of early American missionaries in China, he started accepting American embassies, began his minister position in Chinese diplomats in 1855, and this period identity is exactly the time of formation of the U.S. policy toward China. During this period, what Williams did played a very important role in the establishment of U.S. foreign policy toward China, so we can better understand the early us-china diplomatic relations with the study of Williams.Williams is the important characters in Sino-American relations. He lived in China for 43 years, and he is missionaries, diplomats, scholars and America's first sinology professor. This paper main part is divided into four chapters. The first chapter mainly discusses the source of Williams's thoughts. His thoughts are mainly affected by the traditional national culture, the Christian thought and family environment influence; these make him a strong evangelical zeal and national pride. The second chapter basically introduced the content of Williams's thoughts. As a protestant missionaries, when Williams western values and Chinese traditional Confucianism had essentially conflict, he critical accept Confucian culture of China, while more persistence "Christ instrumentalism" civilization. The third chapter briefly introduces the practice of Williams's thoughts. The "tolerance terms" make missionaries missionary no limits in Chinese trade port. The fourth chapter discusses the influence of Williams thought. His missionary activities and works, speech not only affects the Americans to Chinese understanding, but also in the formulation of U.S. policy toward China played an important role.This paper argues that, as a missionary, Williams is still the spokesman of U.S. national interest. The American church's career and America's Far East expansion policy share common interest's goal, so Williams becomes the important tool to exploit overseas market. Williams's missionary activities in China have both positive and negative influences. He put the western advanced knowledge of science and value concept into China, what stimulate the Chinese people of insight. And in the meanwhile his missionary's identity limited his vision and reduced the western scientific value. Not only is he participants in establishing Sino-American diplomatic relations, he also was the promoters of the diplomatic relationship between the two countries; not only did he dominate the American diplomatic policy on China, he also influence the concept of Chinese intellectuals.The paper is focus on Williams's missionary movement and political activities, what created the influence of Sino-American relations. The innovation of this paper lies in that the paper analyses Williams from the perspective of Sino-American relations. When the paper elaborates the thoughts of Williams, it emphasizes the influence of U.S. policy toward China. All touchable Chinese and English document , source material, FRUS, the biography, Christian history and Sino-us cultural exchanges will be used in this research.