Beyond Orientalism
The
image of David Crockett Graham that emerges from the context of the West China
Border Research Society has several unsavory characteristics. From my account thus far, one could summarize
Graham as an agent of imperialism, a missionary who used science to improve his
craft of conversion, an Orientalist who turned the
people of West China into objects with his measuring
tools, and even an incorrigible grave robber.
This would, of course, be an extreme and unfair representation. Highlighting only the Orientalist
characteristics of an institution in which Graham participated, however
actively, reveals a limited picture of the individual himself. Having seen that D.C. Graham operated within
a unique Orientalist discourse, we can now look more
squarely at Graham's individual work, both published and private, and see
points where he diverged from a standard conception of Orientalism. David Crockett Graham was not a
"textbook" Orientalist, but an individual
person existing in a turbulent time, shaped by not one but a variety of
cultural forces.
As
much as Graham may have objectified the local population through his research,
he also held a rather benign and humanistic view of the people of West
China. He never denied them
the status of full humanity in his writings.
"The Chinese are very human," Graham wrote, as if to stress
their humanness in the face of Orientalist
assumptions of essential inferiority. One could argue that such assertions of
egalitarianism were simply by-products of missionary culture, which often
championed (if only rhetorically) the humanness of foreign peoples. "Missionaries, unlike colonial
politicians and economists, tend to proclaim the equal humanity of Africans and
Europeans, at least in God's eyes and in terms of the hereafter," T.O. Beidelman wrote in his study of East African missions. "Yet this does not ensure any lack of
ethnocentrism or color bar in missionary affairs." W.R. Morse explained this distinction in the
following way: "We may theoretically love a tribesman, but unwashed
clothes that have been worn for decades with their generations of lice, fleas
and bedbugs are neither attractive nor beautiful." The Christian impulse to view Orientals as
equals was largely abstract, as Western values prevailed and led many
missionaries to deem foreign peoples primitive and backward in reality. In human terms, Orientals were equivalent to
Europeans, but in cultural terms they lagged far behind.
Certainly,
the ideals of universalism and equality in Christian theology had to have
played a part in shaping Graham's worldview, but his egalitarian sense seems to
have gone beyond a view that the Chinese were only equal "in God's
eyes." Graham tended to conceptualize
them as sharing universal traits with all people. "Like human brings
throughout the world, [the Chinese] desire and enjoy play, amusement, and
recreation," he wrote in Folk
Religion of Southwest China, a summative work published posthumously in
1961. Indeed, he occasionally even ascribed greater
qualities to the people of China
than to Westerners. For example, in a
brief discussion of Chinese religious history, Graham noted that moral reform
during the Chou dynasty led to protests against human sacrifice. "This was centuries before Roman law
prohibited the sacrifice of human beings among the Druids of western
Europe," Graham wrote, implying that Chinese culture had actually advanced
earlier than Western culture. Graham commended the Chinese in Folk Religion for placing "the
highest value on life in the world." Elsewhere, he contrasted the Chinese and
Westerners more explicitly with the following observation: "The Chinese
have a good sense of humor and enjoy laughing at a good, friendly joke… For
this reason I told many more jokes among the Chinese than I do among
Occidentals." While a good sense of humor may not be
sufficient to elevate Orientals to the level of Occidentals, this
characteristic should not be underestimated, as it was one of many traits that
D.C. Graham appreciated and respected in the Chinese people. A genuine warmth comes through in these and
other Graham writings. D.C. Graham spent
37 years of his life in China
and, during this time, appears to have developed a real appreciation for the
Chinese people. In addition to good
humor, the same section in Folk Religion attributed
to the Chinese characteristics of politeness, gratitude, kindness and
reciprocity.
David
Crockett Graham expressed a similarly positive attitude toward China's
culture, and this mindset had its roots in the intellectual milieu of
Protestant missions in the early twentieth century. "China
has produced one of the world's greatest cultures, in some respects the
greatest," Graham asserted toward the end of his career. "It has produced men of outstanding
ability and character. It has had
several of the world's greatest historians, poets, philosophers, and
artists." This broad-minded sensibility, accepting and
even lauding a foreign culture, resulted from the growth of liberalism's
influence in the Christian community.
Challenging traditional notions within Protestantism, liberalism
countered the belief in human depravity with enthusiasm for humanity's
potential and a questioning of Christianity's monopoly on spiritual truth. "The Western discovery of the
philosophically appealing 'higher religions' of the Orient, especially Hinduism
and Buddhism, threatened to unsettle traditional smug assumptions of the
superiority and finality of Christianity," Lian
Xi wrote. David Crockett Graham received his education
during the heyday of liberal Protestantism, graduating from Colgate Seminary in
1911. Indeed, Graham studied at the same
seminary that graduated Harry Emerson Fosdick, a
leading voice for liberalism who became "the most influential Protestant
preacher in America"
by the 1930s. Colgate professor William Newton Clarke
suggested in 1900 that Darwinian theory may indicate an intrinsic value in
Chinese civilization, since the culture had survived and persisted for
thousands of years. Fosdick entered Colgate a few
years before D.C. Graham and studied under Clarke, meaning that Graham likely
encountered the liberal views of Clarke and other faculty members during his
education.
In
any case, David Crockett Graham studied theology in an environment that sanctioned
liberalism and encouraged openness to the potential value of other cultures,
predisposing him toward a tolerant view of China's
civilization. The influence of
liberalism shows in Graham's work. While
more conservative missionaries may have rejected the foreign cultures they
sought to transform, D.C. Graham readily embraced certain parts of Chinese
culture. His sensibilities separated the
"wheat from the chaff," so to speak; the wheat was China's
high Confucian culture, the civilization propagated by the educated elite,
while the chaff was the folk culture of the "unsophisticated people"
who made up the majority of China's
population. In his published works he consistently
distinguished China's
"great religions" - Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism,
"Mohammedanism," and Christianity - from the "lesser
religions," under which heading he grouped the religions of minority
nationalities like the Lolos and Tibetans; various Chinese cults; and "the
popular or folk religion of southwest China." The latter he posited as a generalized system
of beliefs and superstitions common among most Chinese, nameless and
"unorganized." He argued that Confucianism, Taoism, and
Buddhism have affected the popular religion, but that the popular religion also
influenced the major, organized religions in considerable ways. "The religion of the common people,
called by some animism, has been referred to as the real religion of China,"
Graham wrote. Interestingly, Graham had little respect for
the "real religion of China,"
and held a measured respect for the "great" traditions, especially
Confucianism.
D.C.
Graham's evaluations and representations of these religious traditions were,
above all, linked to notions of progress.
He was often very explicit in singling out the good and bad
characteristics of different religions, going so far as to close Folk Religion in Southwest China with a
bulleted list of the strengths and weaknesses of each "great
religion," including Christianity.
In the case of Islam, for instance, Graham concluded his inventory with
the observation, "There is no doubt that Mohammedanism is a strong
religion, and will continue for centuries.
Its ultimate usefulness to mankind depends upon its ability to reform and
to improve." For a religion to be legitimate, it had to
prove its "usefulness" to mankind.
Graham explained this concept of utility in the closing words of Folk Religion:
I also believe that
as the Chinese and all the human race become more and more enlightened, those
religions that take advantage of and exploit the ignorance and superstitions
will gradually be abandoned, and that the religions that become the strongest
will be those that contribute the most to ennoble and enrich the lives of
individuals, the family, society, and the world.
In this spirit, he commended Islam for "its treatment
of all races as equal"
and Christianity for "its high esteem of women." Conversely, Graham held out criticism for
those religions that indulged in superstition and magic, particularly Buddhism
and Taoism; he saw these traditions as has having "degenerated" into
primitive practices from their original high ideals.
Oddly,
Graham devoted much of a book entitled Folk
Religion of Southwest China to the "great religions," while
deriding the qualities of the actual folk religion he set out to discuss. Indeed, ignorance and superstition may have
been deplorable in the organized religions, but the religion of the common
people - the "real religion of China"
- was nothing but ignorance and
superstition in Graham's portrayal. He
argued that this common religion "influences and permeates" all the
other religions, generally to ill effect. This perspective reveals a uniquely negative
attitude toward the common people themselves, since they were seen as having a
taste for superstition. Graham wrote,
"Buddhism appealed to the ordinary Chinese people because of its
polytheism, idolatry, and the use of charms, incantations, and magical
ceremonies to exorcise demons, heal diseases, and achieve desired ends" --
in other words, all the elements of China's
folk religion were incorporated into Buddhism's original philosophy, by popular
demand. Graham did give the common
people somewhat more credit, going on to note that these practices became
"severe handicaps" as the people became more enlightened and
progressive in recent years. This perspective - critical of primitive
superstitions, valuing progressive elements in religious culture - appears to
have been common among missionaries of Graham's period. Margaret Byrne Swain described the attitude
of missionary culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in
this way: "Goodness was represented in 'progress, trade, and
industrialization, [while] the rural scene overseas tended to be 'wretched' or 'miserable,'
at best 'simple'; the 'primitive' was bad and superstition, magic, taboo,
nakedness, and other savage customs -- impediments to [good] progress -- were
generally described as 'evil'." Fitting this pattern, Graham denigrated those
traditions that involved "primitive" practices, while praising
religions that could adapt, change, and serve the progress of humanity.
This distinction between high and low cultures corresponded
with a class bias in D.C. Graham's thinking, which manifested itself in both his
collecting and mission works. Records of
Graham's collecting trips for the Smithsonian suggest that he enjoyed a very
comfortable relationship with local elites, while having a much more
contentious relationship with the lower classes from which his helpers
came. On expeditions for the
Smithsonian, Graham had to enlist numerous coolies to carry specimens,
equipment, and provisions, as well as armed escorts to protect against rampant
banditry. Graham was not abusive toward
his coolies, and normally took an equal part in their labor, eschewing a sedan
chair on nearly all journeys. However,
he did often express frequent disdain for his hired help. "The stupidity of the coolie probably
prevented me from securing a wild goose or a very large gray duck," Graham
fumed during his 1928 trip. He often seemed to view the Chinese poor as
having a lesser moral nature.
"Chinese coolies, soldiers, and similar classes of people are
experts at cursing," Graham observed.
"It seems almost necessary sometimes. A coolie or a servant may pay no attention to
exhortations or instructions until the other person gets mad and curses
him." He often suspected the coolies of stealing
from him, and on
at least one trip his armed escorts were former
robbers.
D.C. Graham's attitude toward his coolies and other helpers
vacillated from surprising sensitivity to an inhumane practicality. Graham demonstrated a degree of empathy for
them at times, periodically noting their ailments (sometimes as minor as
headaches) in his diary. "The night before, the collectors were
very grumpy and had to be treated with care," Graham wrote during an
expedition to Tatsienlu. However, his collecting diaries also suggest
that Graham took greater care with his collecting equipment than he did with
employees. After a particularly
treacherous trip down from the village
of Shuang Ho Tsang
in 1929, Graham wrote in his diary, "I consider myself very fortunate that
one or more coolies did not fall down and smash some of the collecting
outfit." The coolies - described as "gaunt and
pale with misery" during the trip - could have fallen to their deaths, but
Graham's primary concern was for the valuable tools they carried. When trying to train a new netter during his
1930 expedition, Graham evidenced a less than humanistic attitude toward the
Chinese common people. "I have
decided that he [Mo Lin] is too dull," Graham wrote, "and that I had
better not try to teach him, but find better material." While the practice of anthropometrics treated
the Chinese as an object to be measured and analyzed, this statement suggests
that the Chinese - at least the "raw farmer boys" whom Graham
employed - were a component to be crafted, used and possibly discarded. The statement echoes the phrase "human
material," which Edward Said used to describe the attitude of Orientalists toward their Oriental subject matter. Graham's collecting diaries suggest that he
held a somewhat more callous attitude toward the poor, the
"unsophisticated" of China.
Graham interacted with higher class Chinese on very
different terms, as his diaries bound with instances of luxurious treatment
from magistrates, military leaders, and other officials. For example, wealthy locals appear to have
invited Graham to a feast at nearly every town he entered during his collecting
trips. The central government exerted little control
during most of Graham's time in China,
and town officials were usually forthcoming in helping Graham mitigate the
dangers posed by travel in the countryside.
"In West China brigands are apt to appear in
almost any place at almost any time," Graham wrote. "For that reason it is necessary, when
using the Smithsonian collecting outfit, to have escorts appointed by the
government officials all the time." At no point in the available diaries does
Graham mention an instance in which officials refused to arrange an escort for
him.
To some extent, this friendly relationship was based on
material exchange, as Graham generally returned favors with gifts. "I simply could not make this trip into Ningyuenfu if I did not have pull enough with the military
officials to get an adequate escort," Graham wrote in July 1928. "To keep this pull I will have to give
presents, which are a necessary part of the collecting expenses." Local elites may have extended the ubiquitous
dinner invitations in anticipation of some kind of reward from Graham. A summer 1929 collecting trip to Mupin suggests how the material generosity of Western
visitors influenced the interaction between visitors and natives. Theodore and Kermit Roosevelt - the American
explorers who famously captured the panda bear in 1929 - had been through the
region the preceding Spring, and Graham learned from the local Chinese that the
Roosevelts "were
exceedingly liberal with money." Their largesse appears to have created a
pleasant atmosphere for Graham, who noted that the Roosevelt
brothers had made a good impression in the community. The people told Graham extraordinary stories
of the Roosevelts' prowess,
perhaps thinking to impress this new traveler and eventually receive the same
generosity from him. "The people
here are very friendly," Graham observed, "so much that it makes a
burden and interferes to some extent in collecting." However, the diaries also indicate that local
leaders extended courtesy to Graham whether or not they got precisely what they
wanted from him. "The local General
Yang has called on me this afternoon, and he gave me a leg of bacon,"
Graham wrote. "He did covet the Newton
high-power rifle, but of course he did not get it. He is quite friendly." In any case, Graham's cordial and friendly
rapport with local elites emerged at least partly from a mutually beneficial
relationship.
However, David Crockett Graham enjoyed a friendly
relationship with Chinese elites not just because of material exchange, as his
mission work suggests a genuine preference for some Chinese over others. As a church leader, Graham continually sought
after higher class converts, employing a variety of methods to elicit middle
and upper class support for Christianity.
When Graham first arrived at his post in Suifu
in 1911, he found that the local Christian community had only a highly
dilapidated church available for use.
Graham repeatedly beseeched his mission's Foreign Secretary, Joseph
Franklin, over the following years for funds to build a new church. "The fact is that we must get that
church building in some way," Graham insisted. "Only coolies would feel at home in it
as it is." The church was built the following year, and
Graham's enthusiasm showed. "Never
before have the middle and upper-class men been so willing to enroll as
enquirers," he observed in a 1915 report. The following year Graham started his Young
Men's Institute in Chengdu,
which offered a small museum, game room and other amenities in hopes of
attracting higher class young men to Christianity. Perhaps he saw the
"unsophisticated" people who followed China's
folk religion as less apt or prepared to receive Christianity. Indeed, Graham may have seen the more
educated upper classes, who were already acquainted with a system of "high
moral ideals," as more capable of learning a new, superior system like the
Christian religion. Graham may also have
seen the upper classes as more valuable converts, since their social status
might elevate the foreign religion in public opinion. The American Baptist Foreign Mission
Society's 1920 entry on Graham seems to support this supposition, pointing out
that the Young Men's Institute was "gradually interesting influential
young men in the Christian religion."
The
political position occupied by D.C. Graham and his colleagues in China
had its roots in their perspective on Chinese culture and society. As we have seen, the ideal of
"progress" provided the basis for his assessment of different
religious traditions and cultural practices; in his ethnological works, Graham
represented religions that could reform and better humanity positively, while
taking a far more critical and judgmental tone toward "primitive" or
"backward" folk traditions. In
his view, the Chinese had developed a great civilization with many admirable
and moral characteristics, which was mostly the province of the educated few. This respectable tradition was not as ideal
as Christianity and other aspects of Western culture, but it was
comparable. Chinese civilization only
needed revisions from the West - the Gospel, for instance, or scientific
rationalism - in order to be perfected.
Graham saw the twentieth century as the time when these changes could
finally come about. "Primitive
ideas and types of thought were very prevalent in the past among the uneducated
and unsophisticated Chinese," Graham wrote. "A new age of enlightenment is now
dawning, when primitive customs and types of religion will no longer be
acceptable to the people." China's
growing embrace of Western civilization could solve these problems. A quotation from Theodore Roosevelt - with
whom Graham competed (unsuccessfully) to bring the first live panda to the West
- neatly articulates this perspective: &quuot;China
has suffered greatly from intellectual inbreeding," Roosevelt
wrote. "Now that she is able to
marry her thoughts to those of other peoples there should be a great
change." In a sense, David Crockett Graham's life and
work in China
proposed such a "marriage."
This
perspective at least partly formed a political alignment with those forces that
sought to westernize China,
or, at least, groups that might be seen as introducing Western
civilization. It is little wonder, then,
that Graham and his colleagues tended to favor the Guomindang
or Nationalist Party. Graham applauded
the progressive reforms that the Nationalist Government attempted to put in
place, such as ending the practice of foot-binding. "Mr. Graham spoke of
the marvelous changes in the lives of women, formerly of subjection, now more
of equality, and of the doing away of the horrible practice of foot
binding," an observer at a missionary meeting wrote. Missionaries enthusiastically greeted these
efforts, associating progressive policy in China
with the Nationalists. Graham also
appreciated the Nationalists' 1928 ban on opium planting and smoking, although
he observed that the policies were plainly not enforced. "Today and yesterday we passed by and
through field after field of growing opium, of which much more is being planted
than last year," Graham wrote in 1929.
He mostly attributed this failure to the local government in Sichuan,
which Graham said actually penalized farmers for not planting opium.
Other
factors shaped this political alignment, including class and religious
considerations. The Guomindang
found its greatest support among the upper classes that D.C. Graham so actively
courted for conversion. Moreover, it did
not hurt that Chiang Kai-shek converted to Christianity, instantly endearing
himself to many Westerners in China,
especially missionaries. (For its part,
the West China Border Research Society made the Generalissimo and his wife
"honorary members" in 1935.) As alternatives went, the Communist movement
offered little to the mission community.
One of the earliest mentions of Communism in Graham's writings appears
in a 1928 collecting journal, in which Graham described a student
demonstration. "The radical or
communistic students are putting up nasty anti-Christian placards in Yachow," he observed, "calling Chinese Christians
foreign slaves, the walking dogs of foreign devils, etc." Taking both an anti-foreign and
anti-Christian stance, Chinese Communists posed a critical threat to the security
of Western missionaries like Graham. The
Graham family did not return to Sichuan
during their third term of service, between 1927 and 1930, out of fear of
"the anti-Christian movement fostered by Communists." During this period, David Crockett Graham
himself stayed on in Suifu, serving initially as the
only foreign missionary there.
Additionally, the Communists tended to vilify the Confucian traditions
that Graham actually appreciated and admired, providing another point of
contention. "They [Communists]
challenged practically everything that was old and asserted that communism had
something better," Graham wrote in 1961.
"One saying was 'Society is all bad. We will destroy it and build a new
society.'" Given this conflict of
visions, one may be little surprised that D.C. Graham and his peers tended to
support the Nationalists over the Communists.
Although they favored cultural change - in the form of
westernization and Christianity - Graham and his peers actually occupied a
conservative place in Chinese life, culturally as well as politically. Graham entered China
in the midst of the Revolution of 1911, which toppled the Qing
dynasty, and left shortly before the Communist Revolution of 1949 took
hold. The period in between was marked
by a series of failed regimes, warlordism, and
rigorous questioning of Chinese tradition among many Chinese, particularly
intellectuals. Jonathan Spence described
this time as "a period of political insecurity and unparalleled
intellectual self-scrutiny and exploration," as Chinese tried to discern
flaws in their civilization and sought new ideas to save China
from ruin. Historians have generally called this
phenomenon the May Fourth Movement. The
name comes from demonstrations that Beijing
college students staged on May 4, 1919
to protest the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which infuriated many Chinese
by handing Germany's
rights in Shandong province over
to Japan.
The
tumultuous context of revolutionary China
turned the traditional dynamic between missionaries and the missionized
culture on its head, as many Chinese came to criticize their culture more
thoroughly than missionaries did.
Missionaries normally occupied an iconoclastic position in relation to a
foreign culture, but the social and political environment of China
during Graham's tenure actually situated some missionaries in the role of defending Chinese culture. Many Chinese, especially the young, were
questioning and rejecting much of Chinese tradition, so Graham's appreciation
for Confucian ideals set him in tension with them. Chinese leaders undertook aggressive action
to undermine traditional religion, as in the "anti-superstition"
drives of the 1920s, which denounced religion as "obsolete" and
subjected religious properties to state control. The Nationalist Party, especially prior to
Chiang Kai-Shek's leadership, led many of these
assaults, backing groups such as the Anti-Religious Federation and the Great
Federation of Anti-Religionists. In this
spirit, Nationalist founder Sun Yat-Sen declaimed,
"Religious authority is an obstacle to the development of a people and
social progress."
This
environment, hostile as it was to religious sentiment and authority, placed
D.C. Graham and his colleagues in a difficult position. They advocated social progress and
westernization, like Sun, but valued religion; this included elements of
Chinese spirituality in the case of Graham and other like-minded
missionaries. Traditional values, such
as filial piety, were often seen as valuable and useful by missionaries. Take, for instance, A.J. Brace's article in The Journal of the West China Border
Research Society, in which Brace and Chinese Christian leaders sought to
preserve the notion of filial piety (albeit separating it from "ancestor
worship"). D.C. Graham came to the
defense of filial piety on many occasions.
For instance, a Bishop Soong approached in
Graham in the 1940s, to commend him for his work in promoting this Confucian
value. (Soong,
for his part, had been blasted by Chinese Christians as a "Confucian
bishop" for his own views in support of filial piety.) "I want to thank you for that
article," Soong said, referring to a piece
Graham published in Christian Quarterly. "You see some good in filial piety, but
there are some Chinese who see no good in it."