“An Entirely New Idea for Chinese Women”: Conceptualizations of Relationships between American Missionaries and Chinese Christians in the Context of American Missionary Medical Education for Chinese Women in Guangzhou, 1879–1915

This paper will explore the medical education for Chinese women under the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions in Guangzhou from its inception in 1879, through the founding of the Hackett Medical College for Women in 1901, until a crisis that occurred in 1915 which resulted in the founder of the Hackett, Mary Fulton, leaving the institution.   Over the past twenty years, scholars exploring mission schools and hospitals in China have increasingly emphasized the way that Chinese Christians influenced and adapted these programs.   However, the focus on “adaptation” still suggests that the projects originated with the missionaries, and were later changed by the Chinese involved.  Medical education for women in Guangzhou does not fit this model, as it originated with a request by Chinese women to receive training as physicians before they had witnessed American women missionary doctors.    Even though Mary Fulton had official charge of the Hackett Medical College and Hospital for women, there is evidence from a variety of sources that Chinese graduates of the school did most of the surgical work and essentially ran the school and hospital.  This would change after 1915 with the growing hegemony of “scientific medicine” in both the United States and China.   Looking at this earlier period, this paper challenges the standard portrayal of missionary medical education for Chinese women as exclusively or even primarily a Western export.  At its broadest level, this paper addresses questions of how scholars conceptualize relationships between Chinese Christians and American missionaries and the need to look beyond official rhetoric when exploring the complex web of power in mission institutions.