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Drawing on the remarkable personal archive of a French Catholic missionary, Alfred Marie Caubrière (1876-1948),
At the Frontier of God's Empire examines Manchuria during the tumultuous early twentieth century. With vivid vignettes illustrating everyday interaction between indigenous Chinese people and international players, each story and record personalizes the Catholic Church's expansion in East Asia, the interplay of missions and empire, the intense transformation of Chinese local society, and their profound consequences in the making of modern China.
Sommario
- Preface
- Introduction: Missionary and Empire: A Grassroots Narrative
- Chapter 1: Manchuria: Migration and Christianity
- Chapter 2: Letters and Conversations
- Chapter 3: The Missionary
- Chapter 4: The Village
- Chapter 5: The Battlefield
- Chapter 6: The Church
- Chapter 7: The Bandits
- Conclusion: The Murder and the Imperial Legacy
- Glossary
- Bibliography
Info autore
Ji Li is Associate Professor of History at The University of Hong Kong. Her research areas center on the history of Christianity, religion and local society, and women and gender in late imperial and modern China.
Riassunto
To a lively cast of international players that shaped Manchuria during the early twentieth century, At the Frontier of God's Empire adds the remarkable story of Alfred Marie Caubrière (1876-1948). A French Catholic missionary, Caubrière arrived in Manchuria on the eve of the Boxer Uprising in 1899 and was murdered on the eve of the birth of the People's Republic of China in 1948. Living with ordinary Chinese people for half a century, Caubrière witnessed the collapse of the Qing empire, the warlord's chaos that followed, the rise and fall of Japanese Manchukuo, and the emergence of communist China. Caubrière's incredible personal archive, on which Ji Li draws extensively, opens a unique window into everyday interaction between Manchuria's grassroots society and international players. His gripping accounts personalize the Catholic Church's expansion in East Asia and the interplay of missions and empire in local society.
Through Caubrière's experience, At the Frontier of God's Empire examines Chinese people at social and cultural margins during this period. A wealth of primary sources, family letters, and visual depictions of village scenes illuminate vital issues in modern Chinese history, such as the transformation of local society, mass migration and religion, tensions between church and state, and the importance of cross-cultural exchanges in everyday life in Chinese Catholic communities. This intense transformation of Manchurian society embodies the clash of both domestic and international tensions in the making of modern China.
Testo aggiuntivo
A deeply researched, charming and very moving account of a French missionary's long life in a Manchurian village from 1900, when he experienced the Boxer Uprising, to 1948 when he was murdered shortly after the Chinese Communists took over the area. At the Frontier of God's Empire is impressive for its deep knowledge of both the Chinese and French context and uses these materials to engage interestingly with recent discussions of empire and the interactions of the local and the global.
