Barwick Dissertation 2011
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University of Alberta The Protestant Quest For Modernity in Republican China by John Stewart Barwick A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy In History Department of History and Classics ©John Stewart Barwick Fall 2011 Edmonton, Alberta Permission is hereby granted to the University of Alberta Libraries to reproduce single copies of this thesis and to lend or sell such copies for private, scholarly or scientific research purposes only. Where the thesis is converted to, or otherwise made available in digital form, the University of Alberta will advise potential users of the thesis of these terms. 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Abstract Elite Protestants were a very small group in Republican China, but they were surprisingly influential among the ranks of Chinese modernizers, with Sun Yatsen as the preeminent example. They represented one of the most significant fruits of Sino-Western cultural exchange in the early twentieth century and left a lasting mark on China, yet as a group they have been largely overlooked in histories of the period. This dissertation, therefore, restores these individuals to history at the same time that it probes a deeper affinity between Protestantism and modernity that helps to explain the rise of this group and their particular vision of a modern China. The first three chapters of this work provide the theoretical framework and necessary background for the study. To start, modernity is carefully defined and its affinity with Protestantism is analyzed in such areas as individualism, modern education, nationalism, democracy, civil society, women’s rights, and the nuclear family. Following this, the role of Protestant mission institutions in transmitting modern ideas and practices into China is examined, with a particular focus on mission schools. Lastly, data on a group of 479 elite Chinese Protestants is carefully analyzed to generate a profile of them as a nationwide group, and they are also compared with Protestant modernizers in other parts of the world at the time. The last three chapters of this project consist of three separate case studies of elite Chinese Protestants in the Republican era that demonstrate concretely the larger themes of this work. The first of these studies is on a woman named Wang Liming, who led the Women’s Christian Temperance Union for many years in China and was a leading advocate of women’s rights. The second is on a prominent church minister and activist educator named Liu Tingfang, who was instrumental in the early history of Yanjing University and edited the leading Protestant journal of the day. And the final chapter is on Zhang Boling, founder of the renowned Nankai Middle School and Nankai University, as well as a prominent lay leader in the Young Men’s Christian Association. In closing, the conclusion explores the question of Protestants and modernity in contemporary China. Acknowledgements The process of writing a dissertation, while often a solitary task, is also in many ways a community affair, and its successful completion requires the support and effort of many people. Recognizing the many debts of gratitude that I have accumulated over the course of my doctoral program, I would like to take this opportunity, as it draws to a close, to acknowledge with heartfelt appreciation those who have helped me along the way. At the University of Alberta, I am grateful to my advisor Ryan Dunch for his guidance and support throughout the program and for his valuable comments on various drafts of my dissertation. I have benefited greatly as well from his scholarship on Christianity in China, as will be evident to those who read this thesis. I am thankful for the help I have received from the three other members of my dissertation committee, Jennifer Jay, Jane Samson, and Jean Debernardi. The courses I took with them and their scholarly input have been very useful in shaping my approach to this project. In addition, I would like to offer a special word of gratitude to Guy Thompson for his support in the early stages of my program. And of course I want to thank my fellow graduate students in the Department of History and Classics, especially Tolly Bradford, David Luesink, and Wu Yang. I am grateful for the generous help I received from scholars and staff at various institutions in Asia during the course of my research. In China, I was affiliated with Beijing Normal University and benefited from the support of this school and of Professor Li Fan in the Department of Modern Chinese History. I also appreciated the active assistance of Professor Zhao Xiaoyang at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. In addition, my search for relevant documents was aided by librarians at the National Library in Beijing, the Beijing University Library, the Beijing Normal University Library, the Shanghai Municipal Library, the Shanghai Municipal Archives, and the Number Two Historical Archives in Nanjing. In Hong Kong, staff at Hong Kong Baptist University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong offered much kind assistance, as did those at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Modern Chinese History in Taiwan. This project also owes much to the generous help of libraries and archives here in North America. This not only included the library resources and support staff at my home institution, the University of Alberta, but other schools as well. Martha Smalley at the Yale Divinity School Library was always supportive in facilitating my use of Yale’s impressive resources, and Joan Duffy in Special Collections there went out of her way on numerous occasions to assist me in locating needed materials. At the Missionary Research Library in New York, Michael Boddy helped me to mine a very rich collection, the most important part for me being the personal papers of Liu Tingfang. At Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, I located a very useful source on Zhang Boling and Nankai University. Finally, with the guidance of Dagmar Getz I found many more valuable documents on Zhang Boling during a trip to the YMCA archives at the University of Minnesota. I am most grateful for the funding that I received over the course of my program, particularly from the University of Alberta, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Ministry of Education of China, and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation of Taiwan. Just as important as the assistance of scholars and scholarships in helping me finish this doctoral program has been the support of family and friends. In that regard, I would like first of all to thank my parents for their steadfast support in many forms during these years of study, and indeed for the value that they place on learning, which has shaped my own commitment to scholarship. I also want to express deep appreciation to Ken and Janet Nielsen for their friendship and support, and to acknowledge the help that Bob Japenga generously gave at various points throughout this journey. Warm thanks to my associates at the Global China Center, especially Wright Doyle, and also Carol Lee Hamrin and Stacey Bieler, who supplied much valuable feedback on early drafts of my dissertation. I am grateful as well for my friends at the Edmonton Chinese Christian Church, who encouraged me and provided practical help in many ways, especially Annie Tao, Wang Yingwu, Eva Chow, Liu Hong, Xue Yuejiang and Dong Xiaoling. In addition, I greatly appreciated the kind hospitality of Luo Jiade in Beijing, Peter and Nora Tong in Hong Kong, and Dick and Joan Ostler in New Jersey.