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  Heaven in Conflict: Franciscans and the Boxer Uprising in Shanxi

  Anthony E. Clark

  One of the most violent episodes of China’s Boxer Uprising was the Taiyuan Massacre of 1900, in which rebels killed foreign missionaries and thousands of Chinese Christians. This first sustained scholarly account of the uprising to focus on Shanxi Province illuminates the religious and cultural beliefs on both sides of the conflict and shows how they came to clash. Although Franciscans were the first Catholics to settle in China, their stories have rarely been explored in accounts of Chinese Christianity. Anthony Clark remedies that exclusion and highlights the roles of Franciscan nuns and their counterparts among the Boxers―the Red Lantern girls―to argue that women’s involvement was integral on both sides of the conflict. Drawing on rich archival records and intertwining religious history with political, cultural, and environmental factors, Clark provides a fresh perspective on a pivotal encounter between China and the West.

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  A Voluntary Exile: Chinese Christianity and Cultural Confluence Since 1552

  Anthony E. Clark

  Western missionaries in China were challenged by something they could not have encountered in their native culture; most Westerners were Christian, and competitions in their own countries were principally denominational. Once they entered China they unwittingly became spiritual merchants who marketed Christianity as only one religion among the long-established purveyors of other religions, such as the masters of Buddhist and Daoist rites. A Voluntary Exile explores the convergence of cultures. This collection of new and insightful research considers themes of religious encounter and accommodation in China from 1552 to the present, and confronts how both Western Europeans and indigenous Chinese mitigated the cultural and religious antagonisms that resulted from cultural misunderstanding. The studies in this work identify areas where missionary accommodation in China has succeeded and failed, and offers new insights into what contributed to cultural conflict and confluence.

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  China's Saints: Catholic Martyrdom During the Qing (1644-1911)

  Anthony E. Clark

  While previous works on the history of Christianity in China have largely centered on the scientific and philosophical areas of Catholic missions in the Middle Kingdom, China's Saints recounts the history of Christian martyrdom, precipitated as it was by cultural antagonisms and misunderstanding. Anthony Clark shows that Christianity in China began and grew under similar circumstances to those during the Roman Empire, with the notable exception that Catholic missionaries were not successful at producing a "Chinese Constantine." One of the principal results of Catholic martyrdom in China was the increased indigenization of Christianity.This book contributes to a deeper understanding of cultural and religious interaction, and provides an account of an heretofore unstudied chapter in the history of Christianity on the global landscape.

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  Beating Devils and Burning Their Books Views of China, Japan and the West

  Anthony E. Clark

  Beating Devils and Burning Their Books considers several topics germane to today's social and intellectual climate. Is religio-cultural conflict innate in religious belief? Is "difference" necessarily an antecedent of conflict? And on a purely expository level, how have governments, intellectuals, and religious devotees represented Asia or the West, and how did they distort those images in order to present diminutive representations of "the Other"? Following works such as Edward Said's "Orientalism" and John Dower's "War Without Mercy," this important volume seeks to continue needed dialogue regarding how China, Japan, and the West have historically viewed and represented each other.

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  Ban Gu's History of Early China

  Anthony E. Clark

  In this first book-length critical study of Ban Gu and his works, Anthony Clark provides both biographical and historical information about Ban Gu and his political context, while also reflecting on how that context formed his portrayal of history. Clark's book argues that the precarious position court scholars and ministers occupied motivated Ban Gu to restructure long-hallowed Confucian political ideas into an entirely new notion of Heaven's Mandate (tianming). Unlike the earlier model, which held that Heaven assigned or removed its sanction based upon moral merits, Ban's new Mandate model held that the ruling dynastic family's Mandate was permanently bestowed, and thus irrevocable, regardless of the ruler's good or bad behavior. This book offers new insight to previous scholarly assumptions regarding the ancient Chinese idea of Heaven's Mandate, while also providing historical information about Ban Gu and his family during the Han dynasty. Ban Gu's History of Early China is an important book for anyone interested in the history, philosophy, and literature of early China.