Caught in Colonial Contradiction: British Missionaries and the Cultivation of Chinese Citizenship amongst Griffith John College Boy Scouts in Hankou, 1915–1925

During the high tide of anti-foreign activities in mid-1920s' China, missionary scoutmasters functioned as transmitters of Western culture at Griffith John College (GJC) – a British missionary school for Chinese boys at Hankou. This article contributes to imperial history, global history and Chinese youth history by looking into the role of scouting in China's socio-political development. It argues that the early Chinese scouting movement was deeply embedded in the spread of the social gospel – a Christian movement within Protestantism that applied religious ethics to social problems. This was evident from the fact that in the eyes of the missionaries scouting was an ‘effective’ means for fostering Christian character-building among Chinese teenaged boys and was also a medium for them to experience religious revelations. Moreover, this article suggests that the GJC missionary scoutmasters’ Eurocentric blind spot worked to prevent the cultivation of an authentic Chinese citizenship even as it obscured colonial violence – the subjugation of China by the West in its semi-colonial state of oppression. The contradiction and the bias inherent in the colonial setting were that although the missionaries preached that the scouts should lift up the country to which they belonged, they worked to inculcate in their scouts only a watery, weak affection for the Chinese nation. Even if their own students only participated in a few demonstrations, the wide range of anti-foreign activities resulted in the temporary evacuation of missionaries and their families in 1925. 1