West China Missions Digital Repository

INSTITUTION

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

ACCESS

open access

URL

https://chinamiddlekingdom.siue.edu/omeka-s/s/westchinamissions/page/westchinamissions

DESCRIPTION

West China Missions Digital Repository at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville documents Canadian and American Protestant missionary activity in Sichuan Province from the late 1880s through 1951. Beginning as a small stream in the 1880s, missionary numbers swelled to hundreds by the 1920s, driven by Social Gospel theology emphasizing practical social reform through medicine, education, and community development rather than solely evangelization. Numbers dwindled during the 1930s due to civil unrest and WWII, before explusion by the communist government in 1951. The repository presents open-access resources by and about West China missionaries, particularly photographs and ephemera from families of their descendants - materials often unavailable in institutional archives. The collection is compiled and researched primarily by Cory Willmott, emerita professor of anthropology. Materials document missionary daily life, medical work, educational institutions (West China Union University), interactions with Chinese communities, wartime experiences, and the complex legacies of missionary presence.

SOURCE LIST

ACLS Open Database Resource Guide

LAST MODIFIED

2026-01-16