Frederick - The Life of My Missionary Grandfather in Manchuria

Frederick - The Life of My Missionary Grandfather in Manchuria by Mark O'Neill Joint Publishing (HK)

Like the Opium wars and the Macartney mission to Qianlong's court, Westerners have mostly forgotten the massive missionary enterprises they sponsored in China for roughly a century before 1949's communist revolution.

This is unfortunate, because the Chinese have most certainly not forgotten. Missionaries might have felt their intentions were pure; Chinese were acutely aware that without their countrymen's drugs and navy, these barbarians would never have been permitted such a free hand on Chinese soil. The experience has tainted the perception of Westerners and Western religion to this day.

This gap in perception is what makes Mark O'Neill's engaging missionary micro-history a worthwhile read. In telling the story of his grandfather Frederick - a Presbyterian missionary to Manchuria whose career spanned the first half of the 20th century - O'Neill provides a snapshot of a pivotal period in Chinese history.

Consider Manchuria, homeland of the ethnically Manchu Qing dynasty ruling China when Frederick arrives in 1897, but also contested terrain between aspiring imperialists Russia and Japan, and initially lightly settled by Han Chinese. Manchuria's complexities are sensitively explicated in O'Neill's easily readable prose. The savage murders of the Boxer Rebellion, collapse of the Qing dynasty and rise of warlords, Russian control of the railroads and Japanese encroachment all touched upon the small town of Faku where Frederick spent four decades of his life.

Or consider Belfast: the institutions and attitudes that launched the missionary enterprise from an unlikely corner of Britain will sound familiar to some readers today. The desire to 'change' China, or 'win' Chinese souls - or market share - persists today.