Kurs-Information

In 1807, Robert Morrison, the first Protestant missionary, arrived in China. It was the starting point of the attempt, undertaken by mostly Anglophone Protestant churches, to evangelize the inconceivably vast Chinese empire, an endeavour that lasted until the 1950s and proved much more difficult than its leaders had imagined. Confined to Portuguese Macao and the Thirteen Factories trading neighbourhood in Guangzhou (“Canton”), the only places where foreigners were allowed to reside, Morrison was soon joined by a handful of other missionary hopefuls from Britain and America, as well as by a few Germans and Scandinavians. Most were men, but some married couples and, from the 1840s onwards, unmarried women were of the party, too.
Initially forbidden to proselytize, missionaries moved between private practices of religion and intense engagement with Chinese language and culture, eventually being at the forefront of philology. To be ready when called to go forth, they not only learned the language, but translated tens of thousands of pages of religious writings, tracts, and, most importantly, the Bible – the latter including bitter conflicts about the correct translation of “God” and “Holy Spirit”. They published dictionaries and journals, and many would come to write original texts in Chinese. With the forceful opening of the empire during the Anglo-Chinese War (“Opium War”, 1839-42), they had more options to preach, and missions sprang up all over China, but they never gave up on their study of the Chinese language.
Because of their knowledge of local customs and languages, missionaries are now recognized as important intermediaries, complementing official diplomacy with on-the-ground political navigation. Their involvement in either facilitating imperial interventions or opposing them, as well as their contributions to religious debate and philological developments, have received ample attention, ranging from early hero-narratives to post-colonial criticism.
To draw as near to the life-worlds of the actors as possible and give students the opportunity to work with personal papers, the seminar will complement printed primary sources and secondary literature with archival material from British and American repositories.