In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

3 Beneficent Imperialists In the summer of 1895, American missionary Hattie Yates Cady wrote her sister: Oh, by the way just let me tell you a compliment (?) I received the other evening . . . . Miss Annber tells me that [the Chinese women] all admired me so much, said I wore Chinese clothes just like a Chinese woman, did not act awkward in them and walked exactly like a Chinese woman (How is that for my small feet?). The only thing needed to make me complete was to do my hair in Chinese style. I think if they could only hear me speak Chinese they would conclude that I was a native of China. . . . They thought Ca Sien-seng [Mr. Cady] must be a very wise man to have chosen a wife so much like a Chinese woman. No remarks allowed.1 Cady’s playful diction and punctuation underscore her ironical amusement at her successful charade. Her impersonation of a Chinese woman was evidently not a genuine attempt at identification or at blending in with the local population. On the contrary, by reiterating three times the phrase “like a Chinese woman,” Cady accentuated the distance, rather than the similarities, between herself and the women around her. The role of a Chinese wife, about which she seemed to invite teasing, presented a particularly sharp contrast in terms of power and cultural status. Like Roosevelt’s phrase “the China of the western hemisphere,” Cady’s repetition of “just like a Chinese woman” actually reinforced the boundaries between her own identity and that of “a native of China.” The intersection of national, cultural, and gender identities formed complex relations of power between American missionaries and Chinese women, a relationship that I call “beneficent imperialism.”2 Confident that they were bestowing the benefits of a more advanced civilization on China, American women missionaries were quite unabashed about trying to impose their culture on the Chinese and expressed little discomfort with either their privileged position in Chinese 83 84 women and constructions of modernity society or the implicit backing they enjoyed from the power of the U.S. government . As agents of “cultural transfer,” therefore, they were in fact wielding one of the most potent forms of American power in China. They were seeking to do nothing less than to bring modernity in the American style to China. At the most basic level, they saw their endeavor as a transformational one; their goal was to affect the daily lives of Chinese women. As beneficent imperialists, the missionaries embodied an inherent contradiction . The United States did not maintain a formal empire in China comparable to the British or French possessions in India, Southeast Asia, and Africa, nor did American missionaries openly espouse the rhetoric of empire and the “white woman ’s burden” as many British women in India did.3 Despite the outburst of jingoism around the time of the Spanish-American War, many Americans prided themselves on what they considered a unique forbearance from imperial enterprises, deeming this enlightened outlook to be additional proof of the high level of development of American society and democratic institutions.4 In the case of China, Americans were fond of asserting that a “special relationship” of sympathy and understanding bound the Chinese and the American people together, such that the Chinese instinctively understood that American expansion into China was motivated by pure friendship and disinterested benevolence, not crass imperialism.5 Nevertheless, the American presence in China cannot be seen as entirely benign or innocuous. Though the United States resorted to military force and diplomatic coercion less often than the European powers in China, still American diplomats pressed to maintain and expand the privileges won through such means, while American businessmen sought to exploit the fabled China market and missionaries endeavored to evangelize the Chinese population.6 None of these aimed to leave China untouched. Whether the aim was to “open,” “modernize,” or “Christianize,” all assumed that their expansion into China would transform that country for the better—in part because they believed in America’s God-given mission to civilize and Christianize the rest of the world, in part because they were convinced of the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race.7 In examining categories of race and gender in both American missionaries and Chinese women, it is evident how the women missionaries in China construed cultural differences. Many Americans held simultaneous and contradictory images of the Chinese as uncivilized heathens and eager pupils, a duality arising from the paradox in Americans...

Share