Nordic Connections: Norwegian and Swedish Missionaries in Changsha in the 1920s

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores the interconnections and relations of Nordic missionaries in early-twentieth-century China. Focusing on encounters in the Hunanese province capital of Changsha in and around the 1920s, it discusses ways in which Norwegian and Swedish missionary workers from four Christian associations made sense of their position as Nordic Lutherans within the international community in Changsha. Using both unpublished and published sources it explores the arrival of the Church of Sweden Mission to China in 1920 and plans to establish a Swedish Lutheran university in China. In conjunction it examines the Nordics as part of the international networks in the city, the evacuation of foreigners in 1927, and the ways in which they were affected by national and imperial ambitions and relations. The exploration of Nordic missionaries as ambivalent actors in a semi-imperial arena contributes to our understandings of the connections, co-operations and power dynamics of the transimperial world of the early twentieth century.