Miwa Hirono. Civilizing Missions: International Religious Agencies in China

Beginning of article

Miwa Hirono. Civilizing Missions: International Religious Agencies in China. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. xvi, 262 pp. Hardcover $95.00, ISBN 978-0-230-60897-9.

In her book, Miwa Hirono examines the idea and practice of the Christian civilizing mission in China over time, from the work of Christian missionaries in the early twentieth century to the development projects of contemporary international Christian NGOs. Her focus is on the interactions between ethnic minorities in the provinces of Qinghai and Yunnan in western and southwestern China and the missionaries and international Christian agencies. The first part of the book provides the theoretical framework for understanding the idea of civilization and the civilizing mission, as well as a brief historical account of the theory and practice of the civilizing mission on the part of the Chinese state among ethnic minorities from the Qing to the present. She then discusses the impact of Christian missionary activities in China in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, using Samuel Pollard's work among the A Hmao as a case study. The second part of …