Overview

The French Religious Protectorate was an institutionalized and enduring policy of the French government, based on a claim by the French state to be guardian of all Catholics in China. The expansive nature of the Protectorate's claim across nationalities elicited opposition from official and ordinary Chinese, other foreign countries, and even the pope. Yet French authorities believed their Protectorate was essential to their political prominence in the country. This book examines the dynamics of the French policy, the supporting role played in it by ecclesiastical authority, and its function in embittering Sino-foreign relations. In the 1910s, the dissidence of some missionaries and Chinese Catholics introduced turmoil inside the church itself. The rebels viewed the link between French power and the foreign-run church as prejudicial to the evangelistic project. The issue came into the open in 1916, when French authorities seized territory in the city of Tianjin on the grounds of protecting Catholics. In response, many Catholics joined in a campaign of patriotic protest, which became linked to a movement to end the subordination of the Chinese Catholic clergy to foreign missionaries and to appoint Chinese bishops. With new leadership in the Vatican sympathetic to reforms, serious steps were taken from the late 1910s to establish a Chinese-led church, but foreign bishops, their missionary societies, and the French government fought back. During the 1930s, the effort to create an indigenous church stalled. It was less than halfway to realization when the Chinese Communist Party took power in 1949. Ecclesiastical Colony reveals the powerful personalities, major debates, and complex series of events behind the turmoil that characterized the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century experience of the Catholic church in China.

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9780199924622

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Reviews

<br> Ecclesiastical Colony is a fascinating study of the system of foreign privilege institutionalized in China through the French Religious Protectorate of the Catholic church. Ernest Young's astute use of the voluminous archival record provides a vivid account of the church's slow and painful progress toward indigenization. --Joseph W. Esherick, Professor Emeritus of History, University of California, San Diego<p><br> A tour de force, Ecclesiastical Colony is the best overall synthesis of the history of Catholicism in modern China, between the Opium Wars in the mid-nineteenth century to the establishment of the People's Republic of China. The genius of Young's study is to focus on perhaps the central aspect of this history: the declaration of political protection for all Catholic missionaries, regardless of nationality, by a French diplomacy in China that was backed up by the use of force. Ecclesiastical Colony is an original and deep work of scholarship that will be one of the best books in the field in a long time. --R. Po-chia Hsia, author of A Jesuit in the Forbidden City: Matteo Ricci, 1552-1610<p><br>

Ernest P. Young has given us a deeply researched, wide-ranging, and highly judicious account of the rise and fall of the French Religious Protectorate, a mechanism whereby the French government took it upon itself to be the guardian of Catholic interests in China. In doing so, he has added yet another excellent work to a growing body of new literature that explores Christianity in China in all of its complexity. ... Young wisely gives us an overview of the wide sweep of the history as well as a tight focus on the key events and personalities. The result is a history that is both institutional and personal and composed of dramas (p. 2) - dramas that show how the Catholic community in China went from being an ecclesiastical colony to an increasingly indigenous church. --American Historical Review [A] skillful and lively narrative of the painstaking French upholding of the religious protectorate, and of its withering but still obstructive impact in the course of some major events on the Chinese scene, in the Vatican's policies, and inside Catholic missions in China during the first half of the twentieth century. ... This is indeed a forcefull book, written with great talent, full of detailed and reliable information: a most useful background reference on Chinese Catholicism to have on one's shelf. --Sino-Western Cultural Relations Journal Ecclesiastical Colony is a fascinating study of the system of foreign privilege institutionalized in China through the French Religious Protectorate of the Catholic church. Ernest Young's astute use of the voluminous archival record provides a vivid account of the church's slow and painful progress toward indigenization. --Joseph W. Esherick, Professor Emeritus of History, University of California, San Diego A tour de force, Ecclesiastical Colony is the best overall synthesis of the history of Catholicism in modern China, between the Opium Wars in the mid-nineteenth century to the establishment

Ecclesiastical Colony is a fascinating study of the system of foreign privilege institutionalized in China through the French Religious Protectorate of the Catholic church. Ernest Young's astute use of the voluminous archival record provides a vivid account of the church's slow and painful progress toward indigenization. --Joseph W. Esherick, Professor Emeritus of History, University of California, San Diego A tour de force, Ecclesiastical Colony is the best overall synthesis of the history of Catholicism in modern China, between the Opium Wars in the mid-nineteenth century to the establishment of the People's Republic of China. The genius of Young's study is to focus on perhaps the central aspect of this history: the declaration of political protection for all Catholic missionaries, regardless of nationality, by a French diplomacy in China that was backed up by the use of force. Ecclesiastical Colony is an original and deep work of scholarship that will be one of the best books in the field in a long time. --R. Po-chia Hsia, author of A Jesuit in the Forbidden City: Matteo Ricci, 1552-1610

Author Information

Ernest P. Young is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Michigan and author of The Presidency of Yuan Shih-K

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