Chinese Oral History & Papers: China Missionaries

China Missionaries Project

The Oral History Program of Claremont Graduate School started this project in 1969 with a 3-year grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. The goal of the project was to assess the influence of the China missionary movement, 1900-1950. About 50 Christian workers of various denominations were interviewed in the project. The interview manuscripts of 44 people were deposited in the project collection, representing such Christian denominations as Methodist (11), Congregational (10), Presbyterian (5), Disciples of Christ (4), Catholic (3), YMCA (2), and YWCA, Society of Friends, Lutheran, Church of the Brethren, Episcopal, Reformed Church of America, Baptist, Seventh Day Adventist, and China Inland Mission.

The recollections covered personal and organizational stories and experiences, conditions in urban and rural China, the interaction between American residents and Chinese communities, and the religious and sociopolitical confluences that shaped modern Chinese history in the first half of the 20th century. The project was funded by the Henry Luce Foundation. According to funding requirements, ten copies of the transcripts were deposited in a number of universities having extensive resources in Chinese history, of which Columbia is one. In addition to finalized manuscripts, archival materials from the interviewees were given to the project and added to the collection, which were listed in appendix to the donor’s manuscript.

Columbia Oral History Office also conducted a few interviews of China missionaries on their own and the finalized reminiscences were deposited in the collection of China missionaries at RBML. Thus, Columbia has a richer oral history collection on China missionaries than other institutions that received copies of the China Missionaries memoirs from Claremont Graduate School. Table 4 lists the Christian workers interviewed, their birth year, and the year the interview was conducted.

Oral History Collections of China Missionaries Project