John R. Haddad provides a compelling and useful narrative in the writing of Cultures Colliding: American Missionaries, Chinese Resistance, and the Rise of Modern Institutions in China that pulls the reader through its chapters at a leisurely pace. The book progresses through a deft weaving of chronological as well as thematic development of the Anglo-American mission enterprise between 1860 and 1900. Relying overwhelmingly on primary sources compiled from by English-speaking records and publications, Haddad argues that missionaries between 1860 and 1900, went from “the itinerant model” of preaching missions to reach Chinese ears to an “institutional model” (3) that prioritized the building of schools and medical facilities instead.
Using a biographical approach, the text takes the development of missionary conceptualizations about their role in China and Haddad brings crisp prose that carries hearty citations that make the book a delight to read. Cultures Colliding opens with several chapters detailing missionaries encountering difficulties in their fields as the encountered poorly understood facets of life in China. It continues in its second part to detail the approaches that some missionaries developed to adjust to these difficulties and attempt to make their missions more successful. Haddad's argument deals not only with changing views around tactics of evangelism, but also on the contributions of women increasingly taking charge not only of evangelism but other arenas of institution building that the changes Haddad tracks entailed. For this reason, chapters 8, 9, and 10 provide the reader with a break from the exploits of male missionaries to cover the development of medical training and hospital work performed by women of both Chinese and Western backgrounds. Haddad provides a necessary examination of how female medical training and work helped solidify the transition from strict mission work to social mission work and supports the book's central premise in the process. Finally, Haddad concludes with two chapters on the cementation of a new type of institutionally based missionary and the development of colleges in China as a hallmark venue for exchange between Chinese and Westerners (13). To solidify this point, Haddad concludes that the ultimate collision of cultures came from the Boxer Uprising whose aftermath led to an indemnity paid to the United States that became a source of financial support for Chinese education in the U.S. (267).
While the book's brief historiographic treatment aids it in being such a readable text that does not get bogged down, Cultures Colliding would nonetheless benefit from a more rigorous treatment of texts that cover similar topics. First, Haddad's citation of Lian Xi's Conversion of Missionaries (State College, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997) in the introduction of the text needed closer attention. Haddad cites Lian's text as a “‘transformation of thoughts and attitude’ that amounted to a ‘conversion’ to ‘Oriental life (12).’” As written, the citation of Lian could lead readers to receive an imprecise understanding of an important historiographical contribution to the study of Christianity in China. As Lian's primary argument is not that missionaries found themselves converted to the “Far East,” it was their exposure to Chinese culture via the mission fields that some missionaries practiced a heel-turn on previously held beliefs on conquest evangelism and thereby affected their denominations back home as well as Western social beliefs regarding Asia (Lian 208). In this way, a more rigorous use of Lian also lends greater strength to Haddad's main premise of shifting attitudes among missionaries in nineteenth century China. Lian's text also connects its main premise to the rift that opened between missionaries bringing the Social Gospel to China and those taking the fundamentalist evangelistic approach. Haddad only briefly touches on this and could have instead leveraged more of the book to this discussion as well since his time period informs the period directly preceding Lian's examination. Albert Monshan Wu's From Christ to Confucius: German Missionaries, Chinese Christians, and the Globalization of Christianity, 1860–1950 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016) traces similar perspectival shifts among German missionaries of multiple denominational backgrounds and Haddad's text complements it nicely along with Lian's. Unlike Lian and Wu, however, Haddad adds the contribution of the development of institutions as a result of this diversification of missionary attitudes which is an ever-expanding area of Chinese Christianity studies. For this matter, despite devoting a full discussion to educational institutions, the text completely ignores existing scholarship on the matter like the work of Peter Tze Ming Ng. In sum, in addition to its strengths, the text would have benefited its readers by expanding its historiographic examination by putting these three into direct conversation to help encapsulate the wider phenomenon of developing missionary attitudes between 1860 and 1900.
Aside from the historiographic questions, the book's main premise of the transformation of missionary attitudes and tactics leading to the development of institutions with longstanding impact on Chinese society is a compelling one. This is all the more due to the approach that Haddad takes in drafting the text via many case studies embedded in his twelve chapters. These piecemeal building blocks of Haddad's narrative help him make his point in an incremental fashion that will be easy to follow for both specialized and general readers. This format of following case studies can also help researchers interested in particular personalities or institutional histories as Haddad marks them clearly throughout the text, making them easily identifiable for readers interested in particular historical actors. Overall, this is an enlightening book that continues to fit in the author's wheelhouse of offering examinations of American engagement with China and the ways that American understanding of China changed as a result of that engagement and is recommended reading for all interested in Western and Chinese encounters via Christianity.
