Learning Chinese at Canton in 1805: The Experience of Benjamin Bowen Carter, An American Pioneer in Chinese Studies

Abstract

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, how did an English-speaker who wished to learn Chinese at Canton (Guangzhou) arrange for instruction? The experiences of British students – especially George Thomas Staunton and Robert Morrison – are relatively well known. Until recently, it was believed that the Americans were uninterested in studying Chinese. However, the discovery of the books and documents which belonged to the Rhode Islander Benjamin Bowen Carter (1771–1831) disproves this assumption and at the same time offers an American perspective on teaching and learning Chinese as a foreign language at Canton. In Carter’s time, the common language shared by educated Europeans was Latin. Unless an American learner could find a Chinese instructor who was able to speak English, he had to be prepared for a multilingual curriculum to learn Chinese through the medium of Latin, French, Spanish or other European languages. Carter’s experience of studying Chinese helps us to better understand not only the British experience by way of contrast, but also the multifunctional roles played by the Chinese instructors in teaching and related activities. This paper begins by investigating Carter’s study of written Chinese, including Chinese characters and grammar, and his reading of Chinese classics and literature; then it discusses his study of the spoken language, including both Mandarin and Cantonese, and finally traces how his interest in learning Chinese developed from an intellectual curiosity to his subsequent advocating the use of Chinese proficiency to protect the American interest in China.