臺勢教會 The Taiwanese Making of the Canada Presbyterian Mission

Book excerpt: "臺勢教會 The Taiwanese Making of the Canada Presbyterian Mission" explores the Canadian Presbyterian Mission to Northern Taiwan, 1872-1915. The Canada Presbyterian Mission has often been portrayed as one of the nineteenth- century’s most successful missions, and its founder, George Leslie Mackay, has been called the most successful Protestant Missionary of all time. Mark Dodge challenges the heroic narrative by exploring the motives and actions of the Taiwanese actors who supported and established the mission. Religious leaders, teachers, doctors, and businessmen from Northern Taiwan collaborated to build a strong and vital mission, whose phenomenal success brought fame and status to Mackay and their cause. In turn, this status provided a protective space in which these Taiwanese patrons were able to exert significant economic and political autonomy in spite of pressures from competing colonial interests. This book will be of particular interest to students and historians of nineteenth-century East Asia as well as scholars of comparative colonialism, with a focus on missionary history and cultural colonialism.