The book Scottish Missions to China: Commemorating the Legacy of James Legge (1815-1897) was published by Brill in May, 2022.
As a volume of Theology and Mission in World Christianity series, the book pools together studies on the legacy of Scottish missions to China, with a focus on James Legge (1815–1897), an extraordinary missionary, scholar and Protestant sinologist.
Edited by Alexander Chow of the University of Edinburgh, the book brings together essays by leading Chinese, European, and North American scholars in mission history, sinology, theology, cultural and literary studies, and psychology.
The book “challenges the simplistic caricature of Protestant missionaries as Orientalizing imperialists, but also shows how the Chinese context and Chinese persons “converted” Scottish missionaries in their understandings of China and the broader world”, introduced Brill, the publisher.
The book is composed of four parts. Part 1 explores the life and research of James Legge. Essays in part 2, “Scottish Missions to China” introduce the activities of William Chalmers Burns, female missionaries in Manchuria, as well as the Anglo–Chinese College. Translation activities of James Legge and translators in his time are given due presentation in Part 3, including an article exploring Matteo Ricci and James Legge’s different approaches of translating the term God. And Part 4 reviews Legge and his legacy.
“It calls attention to how the historic enterprise of Scottish missions to China presents new insights into Scottish-Chinese and British-Chinese relations”, said the publisher.
