Blessed Are the Placemakers: American Presbyterians as Imperial and Local Actors in Jinan, China, 1881–91

Between 1882 and 1892, a small group of American Presbyterian missionaries in Jinan, the capital of Shandong Province, found themselves entangled in a series of thorny property disputes that demonstrated equally the limits of American diplomatic power in China and the commitment of the missionaries to their cause. Scholarship on such conflicts tends toward understanding missionaries as outsiders to local society and culture. My study of the Jinan property dispute instead illuminates the extent to which missionaries, while imperial agents, were inherently local actors engaged in practices that re-made Jinan as a place that was especially meaningful to them. These practices – purchasing land, constructing necessary buildings, carrying on their lives and work – brought them into conflict with both the local elite and their own compatriots, including American diplomats in Beijing, fellow Presbyterian missionaries in Shandong, and the mission board at home, all of whom were involved in their own place-making projects. Disputes over how to make Jinan into a habitable and workable space even infiltrated the small body of missionaries residing in the city. Localizing the history of missionaries in China in this way will help us better appreciate the complexity of foreign involvement in China and the ways in which missionaries’ place-making activities mirrored, contradicted, and converged with those of indigenous actors. My paper will demonstrate the utility of a transnational approach as an entry point into the local history of even a place that was not a major hub of cross-cultural or transnational connections.