A01=John J. Harney
American Catholics in China
Author_John J. Harney
Category=NHF
Category=QRM
Category=QRVS4
Catholic missionaries
Catholicism
China
China missionaries
Chinese history
Christian missionary history
Congregation of the Mission
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Global History
global history of Christianity
History
History of Americans abroad
History of Christianity
imperialism
imperialorthodoxy
Interwar history
Interwar US history
Missionary History
modern China
Modern Chinese History
modern democracy
nineteenth-century imperialism
Orientalism
Religion
religious history
Republican Era Chinese History
St. Vincent de Paul
US and Asia
US-China relations
Western perceptions of East Asia
Product details
- ISBN 9781496237743
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 01 Oct 2025
- Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
The Congregation of the Mission, a Catholic order known as the Vincentians after their founder Saint Vincent de Paul, began missionary work in China in 1699. First run by French priests and nuns, American priests took over a large vicariate in the south of China in 1921. French envoys of nineteenth-century imperialism had given way to American priests who ascribed to an idealized vision of a modern democratic China. For the Americans, China was a dream: a place liberated from centuries of imperial orthodoxy, a nascent democracy, a country that would forever be free and democratic-and thus one that would inevitably be capitalist and more friendly to Catholicism.
In Dreams of a Young Republic John J. Harney examines the perceptions and expectations of this group of American Catholic missionaries between the 1911 revolution that created the Republic of China and the communist revolution of 1949 that led to the collapse of that republic on the Chinese mainland. The Vincentians experienced warlordism, Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek’s partial unification of the country, Japanese invasion during World War II, and communist revolution. Through all this they clung to a vision of a free, democratic China friendly to the West. As Harney contextualizes the Vincentians’ observations and desires, he provides insight into the China that came to be and offers a history of a Sino-American relationship with much deeper roots than the antagonisms of the Cold War and the decades that have followed.
In Dreams of a Young Republic John J. Harney examines the perceptions and expectations of this group of American Catholic missionaries between the 1911 revolution that created the Republic of China and the communist revolution of 1949 that led to the collapse of that republic on the Chinese mainland. The Vincentians experienced warlordism, Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek’s partial unification of the country, Japanese invasion during World War II, and communist revolution. Through all this they clung to a vision of a free, democratic China friendly to the West. As Harney contextualizes the Vincentians’ observations and desires, he provides insight into the China that came to be and offers a history of a Sino-American relationship with much deeper roots than the antagonisms of the Cold War and the decades that have followed.
John J. Harney is an associate professor of history at Centre College. He is the author of Empire of Infields: Baseball in Taiwan and Cultural Identity, 1895–1968 (Nebraska, 2019).
