Ecclesiastical Colony: China’s Catholic Church and the French Religious Protectorate by Ernest P. Young (review)

Overseas Chinese Christians, whether imbued with zealous evangelical passion or not, may bring in new religious ideas or introduce various resources that can change local Chinese Christianity through everyday interactions, informal contacts, or mutual engagement in other forms. Although this is sensitive in the current religious regulation system, ethnographers have reported that this kind of interaction between the overseas and the native in Chinese Christianity has proceeded significantly, maybe by using different tactful strategies to circumvent the political supervision. In sum, this carefully executed case study provides several well-stated interesting findings, which should not be missed by those who are interested in Overseas Chinese, Christianity in China, and economic behaviors related to religious values. KE-HSIEN HUANG Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen ERNEST P. YOUNG, Ecclesiastical Colony: China’s Catholic Church and the French Religious Protectorate. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. xii, 383 pp. US$74 (hb). ISBN 978-0-19-992462 This excellent monograph is no cure for the summer time blues; in fact, the more the central theme of the work is developed over the eleven chapters, the more depressed this reader felt. The growth of the Catholic Church in China from the nineteenth century until the ultimate demise of foreign control in the 1940s is shown to have been the product of scandalous behavior on behalf of the predominantly French religious and bureaucratic institutions that relied so heavily on the French Religious Protectorate. Furthermore, Professor Young works his way carefully through a thicket of bilingual treaties to show that both the foundation and the maintenance of this protectorate occurred through dubious legal means. I write more on the deliberate obfuscations of the French parties below. For now, I must also state that for all the heaviness of the work—one filled with rigorously documented tales of sexual malfeasance by priests, political intrigue, property theft, and blatant racism—there are also some rays of hope. Young’s work argues that even in the midst of an oppressive colonizing regime, the members of the Chinese Catholic Church were able to exercise their own agency and eventually take significant control of their destiny. Along the way we meet famous Chinese Catholics like Ma Xiangbo 馬相伯 and Ying Lianzhi 英斂之, foreign supporters like Vincent Lebbe and Anthony Cotta, and Vatican diplomats like Celso Costantini and Mario Zanin. The aptly named Ecclesiastical Colony is also marked by extensive use of Chinese voices to flesh out the narrative. Even this feature is notable as the privileging of local actors is not routine in works about Christian history in what were once mission lands (although the more recent secondary sources Young cites by authors like Robert Tiedemann, Henrietta Harrison, and Daniel Bays, among others, do strive hard to achieve this). The development of an inculturated church was a painful, uncertain process. Furthermore, even when Chinese Catholics had finally seen off the worst of the Protectorate’s influence, they were then faced with the militantly atheist 254 BOOK REVIEWS Communist Party. Yet, even so, the church communities have survived even this challenge. Young’s work shows how these communities weathered the troubles of the Protectorate and the terrors of their subsequent persecutions. While this work does not deal with the post-1949 period, Young’s persuasive argument illustrates how the Chinese Catholic Church was able to endure the vicissitudes of its existence. This book is thus essential reading for all who wish to understand the history, presence, and vitality of Chinese Catholicism today. So what then was the French Protectorate, and why did it matter? Young quotes the words of a French diplomat, Monsieur G. Cogordon writing to a superior in 1886, after a series of treaties between 1842 and 1865: ‘‘Thanks to this ingenious scheme that gives the appearance of Chinese ownership to lands bought by the missionaries, the latter could make themselves purchasers of real estate without any difficulty’’ (p. 32). The protectorate essentially revolved around defending two supposed rights. First, missionaries travelling under a French passport could journey wherever they wished in China. Second, they could not only buy new properties but also lay claim to church buildings that had been owned in earlier...