Beyond the First Glance: Reinterpretation of the Religious and Political Relationship in China through Republican Era Photographs and Archival Sources

• In Event: China through a Missionary Lens: Reconstructing Early Twentieth-Century Chinese History through Photographic Sources

Abstract

Restudy of missionary photography in West Hunan Province China from 1920 to 1955 provides the means to reevaluate the Chinese historical narrative. By going “beyond the first glance”, this presentation based on the recently completed Passionist China Photo Collection argues that reassessment of visual evidence created by American missionaries in conjunction with existing archival sources provides the means to redefine their religious motivation in relation to parameters of political and social change both locally and nationally. Each decade of this era reveals evolving rapport between missionaries in conjunction with He Long as bandit and warlord, local and provincial leaders, Nationalists and Chiang Kai-Shek, as well as the post-1949 Communists. This new visual evidence redefines the place of religion with a much larger and more complex social and cultural setting. It further suggests an important feature of local and state-building relationships to complement established Chinese-western historical narratives.

Author

• Robert Carbonneau, US-China Catholic Bureau