“His Dominion” and the “Yellow Peril”: Protestant Missions to Chinese Immigrants in Canada, 1859–1967 (review)

This is one of the major studies on the history of Protestant missions to the Chinese in Canada. As hinted at by the title of the book, Jiwu Wang attempts to present the argument that Protestant missions to the Chinese in Canada had only one obvious objective: to convert them into Christians and, therefore, good citizens of Anglo-Saxon Canada. This book tells us stories of missionaries and their relationship with their sending churches. It also informs us of the strategies adopted by the missionaries and the Chinese responses. As the chapters unfold, they disclose successes as well as failures in addition to the ambiguities and various motivations of the people involved in this church enterprise.

This book is historical and sociological in nature, and it is composed of six chapters: 1. Chinese Immigrants and Their Lives in Canada; 2. Individual Missionaries’ Efforts to Reach Chinese Immigrants in Canada since 1859; 3. Establishment of the Missions: The Organized Work among the Chinese from 1885 to 1923; 4. Crisis and Development: Missions from 1923 to 1967; 5. Response to Chinese Immigrants and Motives and Methods of Protestant Missions; 6. Chinese Response to the Protestant Missions.

First, Wang introduces the Chinese immigrants in the period 1859–1967. The Chinese first came to British Columbia during the gold rush in the 1850s. Then more were brought in to build the Canadian Pacific Railway in the 1880s. These were all single males who were brought in for the sole purpose of providing cheap labour for the Dominion. After the railroad was completed, many Chinese workers stayed, and some moved east to small towns and big cities across Canada. In order to make a living, they took up other jobs such as miners, cannery workers, farm labourers, laundry workers, loggers, cooks, domestic servants, and barbers.

Wang finds that as early as 1859 a Methodist missionary started to evangelize the Chinese in New Westminster, British Columbia. However, mission work by church bodies was not organized until 1885. On May 4, 1923, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by the House of Commons. Wang describes the mission work during this time as follows: although church leaders and missionaries often attributed their lack of success to a chronic lack of financial and human resources, the real reason was the anti-Chinese sentiment that always cast a shadow over the missions (66). He also states that “the situation was exacerbated when racial prejudice against the Chinese was stamped upon the thought of some Protestant members of the clergy and missionaries” (ibid.). In other words, Wang suggests that it was racism that adversely affected the mission work.

The Chinese were generally considered a danger — the “Yellow Peril”— to Canadian social and religious homogeneity. Consequently, the missionaries had the responsibility for saving them from “heathenism” and simultaneously protecting and promoting the Anglo-Saxon uniqueness of Canada. The mission to the Chinese was started by teaching them English in addition to preaching. There was also a mission to rescue Chinese slave girls from their owners. Assimilation into the then Anglo-Saxon way of life was the major objective.

The Christian love and humanitarianism of the missionaries impressed the Chinese. It is fair to say that missionaries were concerned about the Chinese immigrants’ spiritual health, moral welfare, and physical well-being. However, Chinese resistance to Christianity was great because conversion to Christianity did not guarantee them full acceptance by the larger society. Chinese Christians found that although they escaped from the old Chinese ideas, the new faith did not provide a new spiritual shelter in the larger society. Worse, they felt they were eliminated from both the traditional Chinese way of life and the new Canadian culture (139). In other words, they were not accepted by either the Chinese or the Canadian societies. They were torn between the two cultures: to the Chinese, they were traitors, and to the Canadians, they...