1 - D.C. Graham: American Baptist as Chinese Nationalist in Ethnography and Archaeology

D.C. Graham, an American Baptist missionary from Walla Walla, Washington, became leading figure in the advent of modern ethnography and archaeology in Sichuan Province. From his early years among the Miao near Yibin, to his work with the Smithsonian in Xikang, and on to his final years heading the anthropological work of West China Union University in Chengdu, Graham made an impact in both China and on the international stage. Contrary to simplistic understanding of missionary educators as either imperialists or modernizers, this paper argues that Graham’s work contributed most notably not to Western imperial efforts, nor to modernization of the borderlands, but rather to Chinese national interests in the region. By looking at the published and private writings of Graham, we can see that he adopted a Han-centric view of China’s borderlands and equated the expansion of the Han rule with the expansion of civilization, and that his Christian theology accommodated such an understanding. Thus, through the case of Graham, Ryan Dunch’s thesis is confirmed, that it is more apt to understand Western missionaries to China as products and unwitting agents of global modernity than as intentional promoters of Western imperialism.