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Lazich, Michael C.
About the author: Michael C. Lazich earned his PhD in the field of Asian history from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is currently a lecturer in the Department of History and Social Studies at Buffalo State College.
2000 0-7734-7733-0This biography critically examines the life and career of Elijah Coleman Bridgman. Bridgman was sent to the port of Canton in southern China in 1830 as a representative of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. One of the small number of Protestant missionaries who arrived in China prior to the Opium War, he played a key role as a pioneering scholar and cultural intermediary, laying the foundations for American sinology and shaping the development of early Sino-American relations. Editor of the world’s first major journal of sinology, The Chinese Repository, Bridgman became America’s first ‘China expert’. Among his other works was the first Chinese language history of the USA, and he also contributed greatly to the formulation of America’s first treaty with the Chinese government.