The Twain–Ament indemnities controversy was a major cause célèbre in the United States of America in 1901 as a consequence of the published reactions of American humorist Mark Twain to reports of Rev.
Dr. William Scott Ament, who had served in China since 1877, became embroiled in a controversy regarding his activities (and those of other Christian missionaries, including Pierre-Marie-Alphonse Favier, Roman Catholic Vicar Apostolic of Northern Chi-li) subsequent to the Boxer Uprising.
Included were Mary Susan Morrill (born 1863 in Portland, Maine) and Annie Allender Gould, were among the eleven foreign missionaries, four children, and about fifty Chinese Christians killed in Baoding from 30 June 1900.
[7] On 11 August 1900, Ament indicated in a letter to his wife that:[8] Mr. Conger told me to-day that on the arrival of the troops he would see that we – our mission – had given over to us that Mongol Fu – palace – just east of us on Teng Shih K'ou.... Our poor people – those who are saved – not many, must be settled in homes and efforts made to secure indemnity for them as well as for ourselves.
No one thinks that mercy should be shown them.On 20 August 1900, Ament with nineteen other American Protestant missionaries sent a note to United States Minister, Edwin H. Conger, demanding:[11] indemnity for native Christians for loss of life and property, education reforms in China, abolition of the literacy test of merit in the civil service and the introduction of suitable branches of Western learning, abolition of the worship of Confucius as a compulsory rite, and reforms of criminal civil processes so that non-Christians and alike Christians had the same rights in court etc.These demands were transmitted to John Hay (8 October 1838; 1 July 1905), United States Secretary of State (1898–1905), with only the demands for indemnities and the abolition of the examination system ultimately included in the Boxer Protocol.
China must be left to work out her own salvation by her own method.On 25 August 1900, Ament revealed his plans to punish the Boxers for their actions:[13] The city is stagnant and only very slowly are people coming out of hiding.
"[17] Ament reported to Mary, his wife, on 18 September 1900:[18] I have been absent on an expedition for five days.... Captain Forsythe and two hundred cavalry troops went – I as guide and interpreter – to Sha Ho and other places east of Peking.
Over and above restoration for the converts there has been gathered a fund for the support of widows and orphans, who have no homes and have no one to look after them.An interview that Wilbur Chamberlin of the New York Sun conducted with Ament elevated the indulgences issue into a cause célèbre.
Some of them are still selling stuff that they individually stole or was stolen by their so-called Christians under their personal direction.Chamberlin's report was subsequently published in the Christmas Eve 1900 edition of New York's The Sun newspaper.
According to Susan Harris:[38] "To the Person Sitting in Darkness," which Mark Twain published in the North American Review in 1901, attacks Western imperialism as it was manifesting itself in South Africa, China, Cuba, and the Philippines.
He put aquafortis on all the raw places, and when it was finished he himself doubted the wisdom of printing it.James Smylie somewhat whitewashed the controversy, saying, "Twain went after the respected Congregationalist minister, Reverend William Scott Ament, director of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.
This article "created a national sensation as well as a savage debate between Twain and the American Board of Foreign Missions; it is a masterful and satiric polemic condemning imperialism and the West for military intervention in China, South Africa, and the Philippines.
At 14 West Tenth Street [Twain's residence] letters, newspaper clippings, documents poured in by the bushel—laudations, vituperations, denunciations, vindications; no such tumult ever occurred in a peaceful literary home.
Though the League reprinted it as a pamphlet (it had the widest circulation of any League publication) League censors excised significant passages, included the author's quotation from the New York Sun on the prevailing squalor in the slums of Manhattan's Lower East Side, as well as his bitter condemnation of the activities of Christian missionaries in China.On 26 January 1901, the editor of The New York Times, in an editorial entitled "Loot and Indemnity in China", after describing the "various unprovoked and unpunished acts of murder, arson, robbery and rape" by the Allied forces, attacked the missionaries in China as "the most vociferous plauditors of the operations, the most implacable demanders of Chinese blood" and indicated that "the accounts that have reached us have represented the missionaries as having been as active in the looting of Chinese property as they had been in instigating the promiscuous taking of Chinese lives.
[44] On 5 February 1901, The New York Times reported that Ament had been arrested (along with two British subjects) on a charge of "endeavoring to extort money from the Chinese villagers" near Tungchow (now the Tongzhou District, Beijing).
"[46] The New York Times, in an editorial of 7 February 1901, echoed the previous criticisms of Ament: "The plain fact is that the ministers of the gospel of Christ have been a disturbing factor in the Chinese situation."
The Times concludes: "Upon the whole, it seems safe to say, that the Rev, Mr. Ament has missed his vocation, and that, for the particular function which incumbed on him, of propagating the Christian Gospel in foreign parts, he was not the most eligible person that could have been imagined or even secured.
Events such as the months of September, October and November brought to China have carried war back to the Dark Ages, and will leave a taint in the moral atmosphere of the world for a generation to come".
It may serve no good purpose to stir this matter up, but how can Christianity reform its mission work as long as it persists in its present hallucinations.Supporters of Ament attributed Millard's critique to prejudice.
"[66] Charles Fletcher Lummis, editor of The Land of Sunshine, agreed with Twain's assessment of the situation: "Dr. Ament, American missionary to China, who extorted from innocent paupers a manifold retribution in blood and money for the sins of the Boxers.
"[68] In the same publication, however, referring to Ament: "The truth of the matter is, that the missionary has been made the scapegoat by conspiring and corrupt native officials, and by immoral foreigners now in China and their ignorant brethren here in the United States.
Gilbert Reid (born 29 November 1857; died 1927) (founder of the Mission among the Higher Classes in China (MHCC))[74] wrote an article entitled "The Ethics of Loot" in the July edition of Forum, in which he justified the motives and methods of the missionaries in collecting indemnities.
Some of it, moreover, seems to be recklessly and even libellously untrue.... Mr. Ament, against whom Mark aims the hasty shafts of his ridicule and denunciation, is one of the heroic men of peace who distinguished themselves in the defense of the British Legation.
In common decency, is it not time that if at home the full meed of honor cannot not be given them they be at least shielded from deprecating apology and unjust disparagement?Edwin Hurd Conger (7 March 1843 – 18 May 1907), the United States Minister to China (1898–1905), consistently defended the actions of Ament and the other missionaries.
There were houses of men who had been firing on the foreign quarter; their property had been abandoned as a result of a state of war, and it was taken in order to succor hundreds of suffering and destitute Chinese whose lives the original owners had been laboring to destroy.
"[48] Missionary colleague Nellie Naomi Russell (born 31 March 1862 in Ontonagon, Michigan; died 22 August 1911 in China) records:[92] ... when he was weary in body and mind, there came like a thunderbolt the article by Mark Twain in the North American Review.
A brave, masterful man he was, ever ready to relieve, not to add to the sum of human suffering, and while in some things he may have been unwise, his mistakes, whatever they may have been, were of the head and not the heart.After Twain's initial article, ABCFM secretary Judson Smith wrote to Agent, and enquired as to the propriety of missionaries collecting indemnity; Ament and Tewksbury both replied that the Chinese themselves preferred this to being subjected to extortionate measures from local officials.
"[96] On 30 March 1901, the New York Tribune, reported Ament's rationale for his actions:[97] There seemed very little hope of native Christians receiving anything through the instrumentality of their officials, nor did the foreign powers think they were called upon to provide indemnity for these.
If a missionary, by means of his personal influence and by the assistance of the local official who might be friendly to him, could bring the neighbors of his persecuted people to see the error of their ways, and persuade them to contribute money for the rebuilding of destroyed houses and for the support of the survivors of the families, I think he was justified in so doing.Ament arrived back in the United States on 25 April 1901.
[83] In this article, Ament admitted:[98] the American and English missionaries looted the premises of Prince Yu and other Chinese magnates and sold the plunder for the benefit of the missions, the sale lasting two weeks.