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SPREADING PROTESTANT MODERNITY
Perspectives on the Global Past Anand A. Yang and Kieko Matteson SERIES EDITORS
Spreading Protestant Modernity Global Perspectives on the Social Work of the YMCA and YWCA, 1889–1970
Edited by Harald Fischer-Tiné, Stefan Huebner, and Ian Tyrrell
University of Hawai‘i Press Honolulu
© 2021 University of Hawai‘i Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 26 25 24 23 22 21
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Fischer-Tiné, Harald, editor. | Huebner, Stefan, editor. | Tyrrell, Ian R., editor. Title: Spreading Protestant modernity : global perspectives on the social work of the YMCA and YWCA, 1889–1970 / edited by Harald Fischer-Tiné, Stefan Huebner, and Ian Tyrrell. Description: Honolulu : University of Hawai‘i Press, 2020. | Series: Perspectives on the global past | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020010041 | ISBN 9780824884611 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780824886462 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9780824886479 (epub) | ISBN 9780824886486 (kindle edition) Subjects: LCSH: Young Men’s Christian associations—Influence. | Young Women’s Christian associations—Influence. | Civil society. Classification: LCC BV1030 .S64 2020 | DDC 361.7/5—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020010041 University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources. Cover photos: (Front) Sherwood Eddy on a bicycle. Courtesy of Kautz Family YMCA Archives; (Back) Girls at the YWCA. Courtesy of Hoover Institution Archives, Martha Job Papers, box 3.
Contents
Conventions
Introduction The Rise and Growth of a Global “Moral Empire”: The YMCA and YWCA during the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries Harald Fischer-Tiné, Stefan Huebner, and Ian Tyrrell
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Part I. Th e Origins of the YMCA’s and YWCA’s Social Work in Asia: The Social Gospel and Local Interpretations 1 Vectors of Practicality: Social Gospel, the North American YMCA in Asia, and the Global Context Ian Tyrrell
39
2 Proximity, Progress, and the YMCA in Early Twentieth-Century Asia, 1902–1912 Lou Antolihao
61
3 The Japanese YMCA, Christian Masculinities, and Japan’s Colonization of Korea, 1905–1919 Dolf-Alexander Neuhaus
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4 The YMCA’s Message of Public Health and Masculinity, 1910s–1920s: Transnational Impacts of the Physical Education Programs in China, the Philippines, and Japan Stefan Huebner
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5 Mediating Modern Motherhood: The Shanghai YWCA’s “Women’s Work for Women,” 1908–1949 Margaret Mih Tillman
119
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Part II. The YMCA and Internationalism after World War I: The Attempts to Integrate Eastern Europe into a Global Civil Society 6 Returning “Genuine Faith” to Modernity: The Academic YMCA in Interwar Czechoslovakia Ondřej Matějka 147 7 For the “Youth of a Great Nation”: The American YMCA and Nation Building in Greater Romania in the Interwar Period Doina Anca Cretu
169
Part III. Th e YMCA and American Society: Inculcating White Protestant Middle-Class Values 8 The Idiom of Modernity and the Construction of the Native Speaker: YMCA Language Instruction at Home and Abroad Lance Cummings
193
9 Building a “Modern” “American” “Indian”: The Legacy of Y-Indian Guides, 1926–1995 Paul Hillmer and Ryan Bean
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Part IV. The Aftermath of Fascism and World War II: The YMCA’s Social Work in Cold War Africa 10 Education for Leadership: The YMCA in Late Imperial Ethiopia, 1940s–1970s Katrin Bromber 237 Contributors
259
Index
263
vi Contents
Conventions
In the main body of this book, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean names are rendered in their usual order, the family name preceding the given name. In the notes, we follow the Western system.
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INTRODUCTION The Rise and Growth of a Global “Moral Empire” The YMCA and YWCA during the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries Harald Fischer-Tiné, Stefan Huebner, and Ian Tyrrell
T
he Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) was founded in London in 1844 as a shield against the rapid cultural transformations and social disruptions taking place in industrializing Britain.1 The subsequent growth of the Christian lay organization was remarkable: within a decade, countless branches opened in various European countries and particularly in North America, where the gravitational center of the new association soon shifted. As early as 1855, at the first YMCA world conference, held in Paris, its spokesmen declared the Y to be a universal organization. In 1878, the Y World Alliance established its permanent headquarters in Geneva. A sister organization, the YWCA (Young Women’s Christian Association), was established in 1855 and created its World YWCA in 1894. The YWCA would achieve a similarly global reach, especially after the North American branch launched its foreign program in 1906.2 By 1905, a network of more than five thousand YMCAs connected twenty-four countries, 3 and the association kept growing rapidly, in spite of unfavorable geopolitical developments: in 1916, the North American YMCA’s International Committee alone employed 157 “secretaries” in no fewer than fifty-five other countries.4 Two important organizations provided the YMCA with assistance and a transnational moral infrastructure from which they could draw ideas and personnel. These were the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions (SVM) and the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF). There was an overlap of personnel. The peripatetic evangelist and future Nobel Prize winner John R. Mott (1865–1955) was the most important connecting link between these organizations and the YMCA. Founded in 1886 in Northfield, Massachusetts, the SVM recruited university and other college students to be assigned to various mission 1
boards and soon expanded to recruit YMCA international secretaries. The result was to greatly accelerate the American missionary presence abroad. This missionary force trebled over the twenty years from 1889 when members of the SVM began to enter the field in large numbers. By 1900 the United States produced 27.5 percent of the world’s Protestant foreign missionaries, compared to 38.35 percent by 1910 and nearly half by 1925. 5 From the SVM came the impetus for the World Student Christian Federation, created in 1895 in Sweden, specifically for converting, and providing contacts between, university and college students. The networks of the WSCF, in which European, American, and colonial students were partners, provided a receptive audience for the organizational messages of the YMCA. The WSCF had its second international meeting in Williamstown, Massachusetts, in 1897, “assembled with the map of the world spread out before them, studying the problems relating to the evangelization of the college world and the conversion of the colleges into strongholds and distributing centres of Christianity.”6 By 1898, the WSCF movement had spread through Britain, Scandinavia, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, with outposts in China, India, Ceylon, and France. Though not a conventional missionary space like much of the colonial world, Orthodox and Catholic Eastern Europe was a focus where the WSCF’s work helped prepare the way for the YMCA and YWCA. Not imposed from the top down, the WSCF was a federation of national associations. Nor was it created to provide social service functions, but to provide an international evangelical fellowship. The YMCA and YWCA differed, in that, drawing from SVM and WSCF sentiment and personnel, they went beyond a college student clientele and focused their international work in the early twentieth century on alleviating economic distress as well as addressing spiritual needs. AIMS AND SCOPE OF THIS BOOK For a long time, the Y movement has been associated with a predominantly religious agenda and accordingly studied mostly by theologians, historians of religion, or authors who were part of the movement themselves.7 However, recent scholarship suggests that it should be regarded as the harbinger of a new form of a global civil society and a major agent in the worldwide dissemination of modern, “Western” bodies of knowledge, with a powerful secular agenda. The Y movement promoted its vision of a liberal “Protestant modernity” through a wide range of activities that included sports, education, urban social hygiene, and rural development schemes, as well as 2 Fischer-Tiné, Huebner, and Tyrrell
various philanthropic and humanitarian programs. The YMCA and YWCA’s “secular” program was partly rooted in Anglo-American notions of the Social Gospel that became popular during the 1890s.8 In a nutshell, advocates of this agenda, such as Walter Rauschenbusch, argued that the expected consummation of the Kingdom of Christ had to be preceded by a thorough “social reconstruction,”9 the removal of harsh inequalities created by industrialization, and an overall improvement of living conditions. These Social Gospel ideals increasingly influenced the North American Y movement’s activities from the early decades of the twentieth century onward, and the resulting program was soon globally disseminated. Sharing the view recently articulated by Abigail Green and Vincent Viaene “that religion was inside [global] civil society from the start,”10 the editors of this volume hence argue for understanding the Y as one of the first international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) that was effectively pushing a modernization agenda all over the world.11 We submit that international Y activism not only contributed to the emergence of a global civil society, but was also deeply enmeshed in other political agendas that crucially shaped the history of the twentieth century in most parts of the world, such as anticolonial nationalism, late colonial reformism, and postcolonial developmentalism. We argue that multiple educational endeavors, development programs, and social engineering projects in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and other places were crucially shaped by the Y variety of “Protestant modernity.” However, the transformative impact was not a unilateral one, flowing from the movement’s Western headquarters to the global South. David Hollinger has recently demonstrated that US Protestants returning from their mission fields across the globe (many of whom were connected to the Y in some form or other) left an enduring imprint on American public life as diplomats, educators, public intellectuals, or civil society activists.12 Moreover, Sarah M. Griffith has shown that US Y staff, often with transpacific experience or being ethnic Asians, had a strong impact on supporting Asian Americans in their struggle against racism and discrimination.13 Within the wider framework of an increasing awareness of the significance of ecumenical Christian internationalism in general and the entanglements between Protestant lobbies and US foreign policy in particular,14 several other authors have articulated of late a similar reading of the “secular” significance of Y history.15 However, opinions about how precisely to assess the organization’s activities are highly divided. This holds particularly true when it comes to the Y’s ambivalent relationship with imperialism and colonialism. Michael Thompson, for one, highlights the emancipatory power of the Y’s secular gospel, portraying it as part of a new Protestant internationalism that flourished particularly in the interwar period and Introduction 3
successfully promoted an oft-overlooked “anti-imperialism for Jesus.”16 Historian Karen Phoenix is slightly more pessimistic in her judgment. On the one hand, she has argued in her PhD thesis on the transnational reform efforts of the American YWCA that the women setting the organization’s agenda indeed intended to create an emancipatory, egalitarian, and inclusive site, which she calls the “Y-space.” She also concedes that this Y-space reached a considerable number of women in the non-Western world through the global proliferation of YWCA branches. At the same time, however, she shows that the Y-space was never politically neutral and that the Y ideology was shot through with contradictions. Thus, the middle-class habitus, attitudes, and prejudices of the secretaries often obstructed communication with the low-class recipients of the Y Gospel. Moreover, the hierarchies of race, class, and gender that it was designed to overcome more often than not proved to be stubbornly resilient. She concludes that, in the majority of cases, it was only in theory, rather than in actual practice, that the Y-space served to empower local women.17 There are further problematic aspects of this modernizing mission. Coeditor of this volume Ian Tyrrell has earlier stressed the imperial entanglements of the movement by associating the YMCA with the establishment of America’s global “moral empire” during the first three decades of the twentieth century.18 He has forcefully argued that the Y was one among many US organizations “designed for moral uplift” that became active across the globe around the turn of the twentieth century with a view to establish American cultural hegemony, understood as “the exercise of power under a shared moral . . . order.”19 Tyrrell’s concept of the “moral empire” has been widely circulated and very positively received in the academic community—reason enough to use it as our working tool for the exploration of the Y’s global history. Having said that, it is also imperative to point out that it needs to be constantly critically interrogated (and modified, if necessary) in light of our authors’ findings. There is good reason to be cautious with explanations, as the empirical basis on which existing interpretations of the Y are grounded is still rather fragmentary. Although the YMCA and the YWCA, like many other religious organizations of the time, were “key players in some of the most dynamic arenas of internationalist activity,”20 the bulk of existing historical research on the Y movement has focused mostly on the isolated national contexts of the United States, Canada, the British Isles, and, to a lesser extent, China.21 The present volume represents a first step toward filling existing gaps. It breaks new ground by analyzing various aspects of the nonreligious activities of the YMCA and the YWCA on a truly global scale. It examines the role of the two faith-based lay organizations for the worldwide circulation of 4 Fischer-Tiné, Huebner, and Tyrrell
predominantly “secular” bodies of knowledge and practices that stimulated social, cultural, and political transformation processes beyond the familiar Western contexts. By concentrating primarily on the “secular” projects launched by the US-dominated Christian lay organization in multiple regions of the world, the study transcends both the limitations set by established missionary history, a mostly Britain-centered “imperial history,” and a conventional “area history” approach. Next to the obvious significance of our findings for scholars of African, Asian, European, and American history, they raise broader questions about the persistent role of religion in global modernization processes in general and for the accumulation of religiously tinged American soft power in various parts of the world in particular. On the most general level, the case studies assembled in this volume can help further dismantle the still popular though often misleading dichotomy between “the religious” and “the secular.” They forcefully illustrate that what we think of as “secular” often, in fact, is deeply enmeshed in a tangle of religious agendas. Taken together, the contributions to this volume thus vigorously underscore how pervasive the influence of Protestant Christianity has remained in world-making projects all over the globe even well into the second half of the twentieth century. In this introductory chapter, we first attempt to sketch out some key features of the Y’s program before reconstructing the emergence and expansion of the Y’s web on four continents based on the existing scholarly literature. We aim to provide the broader canvas on which the microstudies presented in the following ten chapters can be situated. We briefly introduce the individual contributions in a short chapter preview at the end of this introduction. THE AGENDA OF THE NORTH AMERICAN Y
AND ITS APPLICATION ABROAD
Taken together, our case studies explore the impact of the “scientific” and professionalized type of social and educational work developed by YMCA secretaries on highly diverse societies in Asia, North America, Africa, and Eastern Europe. This wide-angle lens makes it possible to assess commonalities, differences, and connections of the specific trajectories. By thus concentrating on one of the most widespread and influential representatives of what Christopher Clark and Michael Ledger-Lomas call the “Protestant International,”22 our book provides wider insights on the rise and growth of global civil society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, its entanglements with contemporary political regimes and agendas, and its Introduction 5
multifarious legacies for today’s world. Before we look in greater detail into the specific program of the Y, it is important to underscore that the selection of case studies does not lay claim to completeness. As this is a pioneering effort that we hope will trigger more research in the future, there are some obvious gaps, both thematically and geographically. The most obvious lacuna is the relatively poor representation of the Y movement’s female wing in our collection. This volume includes only one contribution that concentrates solely on the work of the YWCA. Equally, there is neither a separate chapter for Latin America nor one for the Middle East, although both regions were important centers of Y presence even before World War I. What, then, were the core features of the world-spanning Y agenda? As indicated earlier, the Christian lay organization was predicated on a common vision of a particular type of “Protestant Modernity” and became crucial in circulating and implementing forms of knowledge and practices related to this vision. The chapters of this book collectively examine the following seven interrelated core areas of the YMCA’s “secular” work: 1. The dissemination of scientific and professional approaches to “improving” and “modernizing” societies 2. The support of philanthropy and humanitarian activities as doorways for successful missionary work 3. The promotion of “muscular Christianity” and “constructive citizenship” training through sports, physical culture, and self-disciplinary bodily practices 4. Leadership training and mass education (focusing on hygiene, democracy and self-government, vocational training, and moral reform) 5. The designing and implementation of agricultural reform programs, village development schemes, and “rural hygiene” measures as self-help practices 6. The shaping of gender norms and ideals 7. The co-optation of Y work by governments and other, rivaling NGOs or INGOs Our studies also chart unexplored territory by assessing the concrete effects of the YMCA’s work for local populations, and, even more important, by analyzing the exact process of the integration (or adaptation) of the YMCA’s “Gospel of Modernity” into non-Anglo-Saxon cultural contexts. For example, the claim to “scientificity” and expert status created hierarchies in social work, which gave especially college-trained Western YMCA workers a prominent position and often delegitimized allegedly less scientific local practices in Asia, Africa, and other parts of the non-Western 6 Fischer-Tiné, Huebner, and Tyrrell
world. Several of the case studies in this volume also analyze how Y missionaries represented non-Western societies, cultures, and religious traditions to Euro-American publics and how such images changed over time. Other cases cover the circumstances in which the Y moved to instill moral values among the youths of Eastern Europe in the wake of the social disorganization of World War I and thereby build the resilience of a fledgling democratic and pro-American civil society among the multiple ethnic groups of the region. Last but not least, the case studies investigate attempts at indigenization and enculturation in non-Western societies, contrasting them with indications of the alleged role of the YMCA and YWCA for the establishment of an Anglo-American cultural hegemony. This critical reevaluation of the Y’s relationship with colonial empires and imperialism is in line with recent studies that have pointed to the need to study the role of Y institutions not only as centers of dissemination for a Western/Christian civilizing mission rhetoric, but also as strategically important hubs for transnational contacts and networking of non-Western elites—among them influential supporters of the Y and local Y staff empowered through higher education in the West—in the phase preceding decolonization.23 Our inquiries, therefore, are always conducted against the backdrop of a changing world order and ever-shifting geopolitical constellations that shaped the period under study. The specific configurations of late imperialism, decolonization, and the Cold War are thus pivotal contexts in which our analysis of the YMCA’s work is embedded. While it is momentous to take this larger global picture into account in order to better grasp the history of Y activities across the world, it remains equally indispensable to zoom in on the specificities of the Y’s “Foreign Work and World Service” and engage with its North American origins.24 This could be demonstrated using a variety of examples of philanthropy, education, or “rural reconstruction,” but let us, for the sake of brevity, focus on what was arguably the Y’s biggest international selling point: sports and physical education. While the international work of the YMCA and the YWCA began during the Protestant missionary outpouring of the late Victorian age, it was increasingly influenced by the modernizing social context of the Progressive Era in the United States after 1900, with its emphasis on “secular” issues.25 Influenced by the prevailing zeitgeist of this era, which favored a “religiously inflected voluntarism”26 over governmental regulation and provision of social work, the North American Y became involved in attempts to improve the living and working conditions of laboring men, women, and children through “industrial work”27 as well as programs designed to strengthen indigenous capacity for “rural leadership,” such as agricultural education.28 However, the most conspicuous “secular” Introduction 7
element of the North American YMCA’s and YWCA’s domestic agenda implemented during this time was the spread of physical education and the related impact on public health and fitness. MUSCULAR CHRISTIANITY AND THE PROTESTANT MODERNIZATION PROJECT The YMCA and YWCA had a substantial influence in spreading physical education as part of its modernization project. Though the importance of physical culture could be construed from New Testament references, the emergence of “muscular Christianity” nevertheless was initially the outcome of Britain’s industrialization and urbanization process, where physical education and particularly sport became, for the first time, tools for Protestant moral education and fitness training. 29 In North America, muscular Christianity gained prominence during the late nineteenth century, and it was there that its methods were developed to perfection. Thereafter, social and economic transformations and ruptures during the Progressive Era caused liberal Protestant reformers to take measures to prevent a deterioration of public health and fitness. The decreasing importance of physical labor on farms and the rising importance of sedentary office work resulted in discussions about a physical degeneration of middle-class white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Industrialization nevertheless also drew the attention of “progressive” reformers toward the unhealthy working and living conditions of the working class. A rising number of Catholic immigrants, mostly becoming part of the urbanized working class and eager to gain more political and economic influence, added a social Darwinist flavor to the discussions. Similarly, the intensification of stress-related mental problems, such as neurasthenia, favored the plans of civil society organizations to use amateur sport as a rational, scientific, and socially desirable form of recreation. Meanwhile, Protestant “bodyas-temple” theology promoted the shaping of strong and healthy bodies as the foundation for leading a more proactive life. Jesus Christ, often invoked as a role model, was said to have hardened his body through his nomadic life as a missionary in the rough landscapes of the Holy Land. Thus, it was no coincidence that three of the most widely circulated books in Asian YMCA branches during the first two decades of the twentieth century were Thomas Hughes’s classic The Manliness of Christ, Bishop Charles Brent’s The Splendor of the Human Body, and Harry E. Fosdick’s Manhood of the Master.30 Conventional Protestant thought of Victorian origin, in contrast, was perceived as too “effeminate,” bookish, and unappealing to young men. 8 Fischer-Tiné, Huebner, and Tyrrell
The growing numbers of physical educators and sports medicine specialists contributed to the increasing scientificity of the field. The YMCA hereby turned into a major force of innovation by adding gyms, swimming pools, and other facilities to many offices, while at its International YMCA College in Springfield, Massachusetts, Luther H. Gulick wrote his nationally circulated book on physical measurements and supported the invention of basketball and volleyball by YMCA physical directors (Y staff responsible for physical education) James Naismith and William G. Morgan.31 The Y’s female branch followed suit before long, and by 1910, team sports such as volleyball and even gyms were part of the standard equipment of most YWCA headquarters in North America. From then on, physical training played a seminal role in the organization’s broader agenda of preparing women for leadership roles in society.32 Corresponding to the Y’s focus on “spirit, mind, and body,” amateur sport’s purpose was not limited to the body, but included Christian character building. The Y agenda promoted Christian internationalism, Christian egalitarianism, and a Protestant work ethic. Disciplining body and mind should serve as a shield against vices, such as alcohol, drugs, promiscuity, and prostitution, which anonymous city life made more accessible than they had been in rural communities. Moreover, conveying norms and values to young Anglo-Saxon men as well as immigrants and African Americans33 served to integrate the latter two into the WASP-dominated social order. The American YWCA’s international institutes established in major US cities during the interwar period, for example, were particularly influential institutions targeted at the “Americanization” of immigrant communities.34 Some of the norms and values they conveyed were very similar to the ones inculcated by physical directors in the Y’s gyms and playing fields: trust in discipline and hard training (or hard work) as the foundation of success in competition with others instead of a belief in luck or fate, as is the case in many forms of gambling. An equally important role was accorded to fitness as a means to increase productivity by being better shielded against sickness and by having a higher life expectancy. Several other positive effects were attributed to the practice of sports; for example, spreading the fair-play ideal was seen as a way to discourage corruption and contribute to good government. Y physical directors were also convinced that equality of opportunity and practical efficiency were produced by selecting athletes based on their competence, not their social background, ethnicity, or family ties. By the same token, team spirit was hailed as the foundation for reaching a collective goal; obedience of duly constituted authority, such as accepting referee decisions, was celebrated as a civic duty; and, finally, the ideals of self-control and Introduction 9
discipline closely connected to the practice of sports were extolled as they purportedly helped reduce interhuman violence.35 Although they often would be modified and “vernacularized” in their respective destinations, the fitness and sports programs exported by the Y throughout the globe continued to stress these values and thus clearly bore the stamp of their origin in “progressive” America. THE EARLY EXPANSION OF THE NORTH AMERICAN Y ’S GLOBAL MORAL EMPIRE In what follows, we attempt to sketch out the more important mission fields of the North American Y and reconstruct the twin associations’ main areas of activity in the respective countries.36 Reflecting the uneven presence of the Y in the various world regions during the period under survey, our eclectic world tour has a strong Oriental bias. We commence our journey in the Philippines, move on to China, continue with the Indian subcontinent, and subsequently explore the Y’s work in Japan and Korea. Then we briefly look at some of the minor mission fields targeted by the movement, namely the Middle East, Latin America, and South Africa. In these regions, the Y was represented from early on, although neither the money invested nor the number of North American secretaries sent out could compare with the main mission fields in Asia—the region with the highest number of non-Christians. That Asia was the region on which the international work of the YMCA was squarely focused had a number of reasons. In its original latenineteenth-century expansion, the association followed the areas of most interest to the Protestant evangelical churches and their various mission societies. Frequently, though not always, these were places marked by European and, slightly later, US or Japanese colonial penetration, either direct or de facto. There, education of a youth cadre was considered vital to the expansion of Christianity in the non-Western world. The Y branches were at first seen as a backup or infrastructural support for the spiritual work of the missionary churches but increasingly aimed to affect larger parts of society. This does not mean, however, that the Y movement just followed the creation of colonial administrations, especially where local administrative structures did not allow indirect colonial influence. Rather, already existing local traditions of institutionalized higher learning, such as in East and South Asia (compared to sub-Saharan Africa), strongly mattered. Such structures facilitated cooperation with local elites and also the training and co-optation of new elites. Obviously, centuries of religious tensions had left their mark as well. Catholic and Muslim societies, colonized or not, 10 Fischer-Tiné, Huebner, and Tyrrell
altogether proved less welcoming to the Y’s project of a Protestant modernity than, for example, again, East and South Asian societies. The US territorial expansion into the Pacific at the end of the nineteenth century intensified the confrontation of East and Southeast Asian countries with the “progressive” ideas of North American Protestant missionaries. Beginning already slightly earlier in the late nineteenth century, their activities prepared the ground for the establishment of an informal “moral empire” in Asia. The Philippines are a particularly fascinating case study in this context, as they represent one of the rare instances where the American Y’s moral empire would coalesce with the United States’ political and military colonial empire—in a predominantly Catholic society. The Philippines The Spanish-American War (1898) and the US annexation of the Philippines contributed to the emergence of a transnational network of YMCAs and YWCAs throughout the Asia-Pacific region. At least initially funded and administered by the North American Y, the Protestant internationalist project’s focus was on transforming seemingly retarded Asian societies according to the abovementioned American Protestant interpretations of democracy and capitalism. For example, pro-annexationists had judged Filipinos to be incapable of self-government. The United States would have the moral duty to colonize the Philippines until a sufficient civilizational “upliftment” of the local population had taken place. Only this way, it was argued, would the archipelago’s independence not end in tyranny, civil war, or anarchy.37 As a result of the annexation, a transpacific naval trade and telegraphic communications route (Hawai‘i, Guam, Philippines) to the Asian continent was realized. As one of the consequences of the US expansion and the related infrastructural and geopolitical changes, North American missionaries became more able to get directly involved in the subsequent modernization efforts not only in the Philippines, but also in other Asian countries, such as China, India, Korea, and Japan. The first group of North American YMCA secretaries had arrived in the Philippines together with the US military to protect the soldiers against what were considered the temptations of long stays abroad in a colonial environment—among them prostitution, gambling, and alcohol. The military remained one of the target groups of the Y; quickly further association buildings were set up for a rising number of newly arriving white civilians working for the colonial administration, working as professionals, or in search of business opportunities. Many of them joined the American- European YMCA in Manila, whose practice of racial segregation increasingly turned into an object of debate between its supporters and opponents. Introduction 11
The latter included Philippine businessmen and philanthropists who supported or personified early efforts toward Philippine leadership in the organization, at least in terms of its representational offices: for example, in 1911 businessman and politician Teodoro R. Yangco became the first national president of the Philippine YMCA. From the early 1910s, a growing number of newly established YMCAs and then also YWCAs focused on providing social work for the local population. Such social work corresponded to the ideas of the International Committee in New York and the YMCA’s citizenship training and “nation-building” programs in other non-Western countries, ranging from hygiene campaigns and Boy Scouting to Bible studies, English classes, and vocational training. One particularly noteworthy program that would later shape similar Y programs in other countries was its physical education program. Freedom of action and support from the US colonial administration in a field in which it lacked experience allowed the Y to engage in extension work that soon weaved through the lives of most young people of the colony. YMCA physical directors and Y-trained teachers introduced physical education and sports for both genders into the public school system. The central person in the endeavor, physical director Elwood S. Brown, then also integrated sports competitions into public festivals, such as the Manila Carnival, and eventually founded the Far Eastern Championship Games (1913–1934). This multinational Asian sporting event later turned into the blueprint for regional games on other continents set up by the YMCA during the 1920s and 1930s in cooperation with the International Olympic Committee. The physical education successes in the Philippines also served to demonstrate to North American philanthropists that the YMCA, if well funded, would be sufficiently experienced to repeat them or even to go beyond them in other regions.38 China North American missionaries’ ambivalent perception of Asians as backward, but also as adaptive and capable of learning, was not limited to Filipinos. They applied very similar stereotypes to the Chinese population, too. The Chinese Revolution (1911) and the founding of the Chinese Republic (1912) incited expectations among them that the new government would take the United States as its role model in a soon-to-be-expected modernization process.39 In the YMCA and YWCA—for both associations China represented the most important non-Western mission field after 1900 40— these hopes reinforced two interrelated processes that were already ongoing: a rapid indigenization policy and an ever stronger emphasis on issues of “social reconstruction.” The first two decades of the Y’s engagement in 12 Fischer-Tiné, Huebner, and Tyrrell
Figure I.1. Conversion as the ultimate goal: in the early phase of the Y movement’s engagement in China, the religious aspect ruled supreme, as this 1912 illustration clearly demonstrates. Source: Kautz Family YMCA Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries.
China that started in the 1890s had clearly been marked by a sense of US superiority and a “colonial mentality” on the side of the American secretaries. The Western secretaries’ statements and reports leave little doubt that in those early years, the avowed aim of Y engagement in the region was to convert as many “Chinese heathens” to Protestant Christianity as possible.41 Subsequently, however, a growing number of Chinese took over positions of leadership in the association and already by the early 1920s a more dialogue-oriented attitude had developed. Next to attempts to show respect for local customs and traditions and even create a synthesis on the religiouscultural level,42 the new sympathetic attitude also found expression in the designing of innovative programs that were addressing social issues, such as mass-literacy campaigns and the propagation of physical education and Western sports, as well as urban hygiene and rural reconstruction schemes.43 In the case of such mass literacy and rural reconstruction campaigns, Introduction 13
James Yen (Yan Yangchu) played a central role; working for the YMCA during World War I, he had gained experience in teaching literacy to Chinese laborers deployed to aid the Allies on the western front. From the 1920s, his mass education campaigns and then his Rural Reconstruction Movement spread within China until the Japanese occupation slowed it down and the Communist takeover finally halted it. Yen then shifted his work to other countries, such as the Philippines.44 Particularly influential was this “secular strain” in the college work of the YMCA, which attracted a disproportionally high number of Chinese students both at home and abroad.45 Many of them would later become visible in public life. Similarly, the YWCA gained an important role in reorganizing Chinese womanhood, family life, nursing practices, and child welfare—social reforms that the Chinese governments then increasingly appropriated.46 The fact that “the ‘Y’ . . . softened the ‘C’ ” in 1920s and 1930s China, as John Heavens has pertinently paraphrased the association’s toning down of its aggressive religious rhetoric and the pursuit of an increasingly secular modernization agenda,47 turned it into an attractive partner for Chinese political activists of various colors. Thus, the Y program inspired nationalists organized in the Guomindang as well as the Communists during those decades.48 Revealingly, the YMCA’s and YWCA’s activities were tolerated even in the early years of the People’s Republic under Mao Zedong, before the descent of the “Bamboo Curtain” eventually ended them for good in 1952.49 South Asia The example of the Y in India, Burma, and Ceylon (the three South Asian countries were under one administrative umbrella) provides a somewhat similar picture. South Asia’s first branch had been founded by Britishers in Calcutta as early as 1857, but the movement developed only slowly in the region during the following years. Its growth was hampered by the fact that the early branches run by British YMCA members aligned with the official colonial politics of social distance between rulers and ruled. Almost without exception, they were at pains to exclude “natives” from their ranks.50 The spread of the Y movement in the Indian subcontinent gained new momentum only in the 1890s under the energetic leadership of young American missionaries. Just like in China and the Philippines, these new Y secretaries were college trained, some of them graduates of Ivy League universities. They completely restructured the organization from 1890 onward, claiming to afford “its privileges alike to all young men without distinction of race, rank and religion.”51 Their reforms and the new focus on winning the hearts, minds, and bodies of South Asians spurred continuing growth rates over the next thirty years.52 14 Fischer-Tiné, Huebner, and Tyrrell
World War I constituted an important watershed in that the YMCA rose immensely in popularity (and consequently attracted much more funding), owing to its much-acclaimed “army work” during World War I. The association eventually reached the pinnacle of its influence between 1915 and 1930, when Indian Y workers occupied positions of leadership alongside American secretaries as the result of a protracted indigenization policy very similar to the one pursued in the Philippines and China. Predictably enough, the new Indian leadership reinforced the association’s commitment to social reform. It was during these “great decades”53 that several secular lighthouse projects were launched. Most notably, the Madras College of Physical Education (established in 1920) trained hundreds of South Asian sports teachers and cooperated with the colonial government; 54 furthermore, the Marthandam Rural Demonstration Centre, which had been set up in 1924, created a novel “sustainable” village development scheme that attracted the attention of local peasants, Indian princes, and international rural development experts in the making alike.55 In India’s urban centers the YMCA offered various kinds of vocational training courses that proved to be extremely popular.
Figure I.2. Vocational training for India’s urban youth: YMCA typing class in Madras, ca. 1924. Source: Kautz Family YMCA Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries. Introduction 15
The YWCA likewise contributed to the economic advancement and greater public visibility of Indian (and “Eurasian”) women through its multifarious educational and social reform projects. These consisted, among other things, of typing and shorthand writing courses that qualified local women for office jobs, thus helping them transcend the ascribed gender roles. 56 Such relative success stories should not let us overlook that—especially after militant anticolonial nationalism gained momentum on the subcontinent in 1905—not all segments of Indian society were receptive to the Y’s mission. From various sides, the twin Christian associations were attacked as the fifth column of imperialism. Moreover, local religious groups, driven by the fear of an impending wave of conversions to Christianity, created their own clones of the Y outfits, such as the Young Man’s Hindu Association, the Young Man’s Buddhist Association, and the Young Man’s Indian Association. These groups copied key parts of the program and many organizational features of the Christian original but integrated them into entirely different religious frameworks.57 In a way, the existence of such pirate copies illustrates very compellingly how pervasive the influence of the Y’s secular agenda was in the region. In the final phase of India’s anti colonial liberation struggle, some leading Y secretaries, both Indian and American, showed strong sympathies for the Gandhian variety of Indian nationalism.58 It is hence not surprising that the Y’s impact on Indian society persisted into the postcolonial era. Japan and Korea Whereas most American Y secretaries described the Philippines, China, and especially India as backward and benighted areas in the early decades of their commitment in the regions, 59 their perception of Japan was slightly more positive from the beginning. The massive Western-inspired reform process under the Meiji administration had increased the country’s economic and military capacity to such a degree that it became possible to defeat a European great power during the Russo-Japanese War (1904– 1905). For North American Protestant observers, the Japanese “enlightened rule” (one of the meanings of “Meiji”) hence offered a positive contrast to the “degradations of heathenism” in India60 or the “endless dirt and filth” of China.61 In fact, right from the outset of their activities in the country in the early 1890s, Japan constituted the most “civilized” Asian country for North American reformers organized in the Y. The perception of Japan as undisputed “leader of the Orient” notwithstanding,62 the alleged “civilizational gap” vis-à-vis the United States nevertheless meant that Japan, too, became one of the earliest targets of a North American YMCA and YWCA 16 Fischer-Tiné, Huebner, and Tyrrell
“civilizing mission.” It also meant that, just like in China and India, this mission was initially characterized by a strong sentiment of cultural arrogance, regardless of Japan’s supposed exalted status among Asia’s nations. Thus, the self-confident pioneering YMCA secretaries considered it necessary for the country’s “intelligent communities” to be furnished with the American “form or organization and methods of work” before they could aspire to a status of full equality.63 However, even if the Japanese Christians who became active in the YMCA eagerly copied some of those new organizational patterns and methods of work from their self-proclaimed American teachers, such as “industrial work” and caregiving programs for soldiers during armed conflicts, they simultaneously fiercely rejected any form of US religious-cultural imperialism and successfully strove to create a uniquely Japanese variety of Christianity in general and Christian youth work in particular.64 The same stern refusal to surrender completely to American control and cultural ways can also be observed in the Japanese YWCA. Under the energetic leadership of the effective (and patriotic) local secretary Kawai Michi, a rigid indigenization policy was adopted in the 1910s.65 Historian J. T. Davidann has argued accordingly that the American Y mission in Japan was ultimately a failure precisely because it never allowed for “the hinese exercise of power under a shared moral order.”66 Even more than the C and Indian examples, the Japanese case reveals the precariousness and limitations of the US-dominated Christian moral empire in Asia and puts the agency of the “intelligent Eastern communities” at the receiving end into stark relief.67 The Japanese Christians’ sense of uniqueness—or better: chosen-ness— led to a very peculiar situation in Korea, another major destination for American Y secretaries in the early twentieth century.68 Between 1905, when the Japanese established their “protectorate” in Korea, and 1937, when the American Y ended its engagement in the peninsula because of the threatening geopolitical developments, there was a rivalry between American- and Japanese-led Y branches. Japanese-dominated Ys proudly propagated their purportedly “Asian” version of Christianity, while many American Y secretaries working in the country developed a sympathetic attitude toward Korean anticolonialism. Much to the consternation of their Japanese brethren, many Korean Y members subsequently used US-run branches as hubs for anti-Japanese agitation and patriotic self-strengthening activities.69 Perhaps not surprisingly, the American Y’s secular offerings, such as their “masculinizing” sports program, as well as a newly devised rural development scheme, were particularly well received by the nationalistically inclined Korean clientele, as they preferred American paternalism to the Japanese “big-brother” attitude.70 In stark contrast to Japan, the American Y’s liberal Introduction 17
variety of the “gospel of modernity” thus continued to have a strong attraction to the local population until the end. Other Destinations: The Middle East, Latin America, and South Africa As the preceding paragraphs have abundantly shown, the focus of YMCA and YWCA efforts prior to World War I was predominantly on Asia. This does not mean, however, that other areas were totally neglected. Quite a number of both YMCA and YWCA centers operated in the Middle East from the late nineteenth century. Palestine and various other parts of the former Ottoman Empire (where their activities attracted mostly, though not exclusively, members of the non-Muslim minorities) are particularly noteworthy in this respect.71 While the direct influence of the YMCA in Egypt remained somewhat limited, its presence was nonetheless significant inasmuch as it triggered the foundation of another pirate copy. Driven by the logic of mimetic emulation that we have already observed in South Asia, the highly successful Egyptian Young Men’s Muslim Association was founded in 1926. This was not unexpected, considering that, as Heather Sharkey has shown, the Muslim youths who had joined the Cairo Central YMCA felt uncomfortable not with its social programs but with the Christian features of the organization, ranging from the pictures on the walls to the prayers after meetings.72 Unfortunately, our knowledge of these nonChristian Y clones is still very fragmentary. A serious scholarly engagement with these vernacularized versions of the Y’s organizational model remains one of the most pressing desiderata for future research. None of the cases chosen by our authors covers a predominantly Catholic country, except for the Philippines, which was under direct American colonial control. Because Latin America was overwhelmingly Catholic and not, for the most part, under the direct control of any European colonial power, the Protestant-oriented YMCA work did not at first spread extensively in that part of Catholic Christendom. In fact, a YMCA official, Elmer Johnson, noted that Latin America was, due to the multitude of countries, challenging geography, and the institutionally strong position of the Catholic Church “one of the most difficult areas to penetrate.” 73 Such obstacles notwithstanding, Latin American and Caribbean countries were selectively targeted by both the YMCA and YWCA from the 1890s onward. A 1920 funding pamphlet for the international movement shows Y secretaries active in five South American countries, namely, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay. There were branches in Mexico, Cuba, and Puerto Rico as well. That the movement was strongly represented in Puerto Rico—after all, a US colony like the Philippines—should not 18 Fischer-Tiné, Huebner, and Tyrrell
come as a surprise.74 Its success on the South American mainland is more intriguing. Particularly the history of the Y in Argentina, Mexico, and B razil seems worthy of further study, with both the YWCA and YMCA firmly established in two important urban centers, Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires, by the turn of the twentieth century. In South America, the Y centers initially often crystallized around the communities of British or American expatriate workers,75 and the reach of the association on the South American continent remained limited until around 1918, when more funding was made available from the International Committee in New York to push its expansion.76 One of the results of this investment was the setup of the Instituto Técnico, a special training institution for local Y leaders and sports experts, in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1922.77 The institute was designed to render the South American associations and their often Catholic staff less dependent on receiving fellowships and tuition waivers for the rapidly growing educational institutions in the United States, such as Springfield College, the Y’s main school for training physical directors. Related to the YMCA’s post–World War I sports promotion boom, the aforementioned Elwood Brown, who had gained his experience in the Philippines, together with the International Olympic Committee also set up the Latin American Games as a regional sports competition. While taking place only once, they contributed to the creation of national Olympic committees in five South American countries.78 Another field, in which particularly the YWCA became conspicuously active in the 1920s and 1930s and managed to reach a broad (female) urban middle-class audience, was the crusade against alcohol consumption in the countries of the Cono Sur.79 Some spontaneous and short-lived initiatives aside,80 Africa was also not one of the main fields of Y activity during the period under study.81 In most African countries, sustained work on the continent gained momentum only after World War II.82 However, there are a few exceptions. The white settler colony South Africa is the most important case in point in this respect. As in India and Ceylon, the South African Y had started its activities in the country’s big urban centers quite early—the Cape Town branch opened in 1865—but was restricted to an exclusively white clientele for the next half century. It was only in the aftermath of World War I that the first sustained and successful effort to reach out to young Africans was undertaken. It was initiated by the illustrious black secretary Max Yergan from North Carolina.83 Yergan had volunteered for YMCA war work in 1916 and, after a brief stint in India, served in East Africa for several years, coordinating and supervising caregiving work for African troops and porter corps.84 As an African American who had experienced the Jim Crow South in his early years, Yergan was particularly sensitive to the racial tensions in Introduction 19
the young South African Union, and his work soon acquired a political dimension. Between 1922, when he first arrived in Cape Town to take responsibility of the South African YMCA’s newly created Bantu Department, and 1936, when he eventually quit the Y to fully devote his life to the pursuit of leftist politics, he had founded “scores of branch YMCAs” in the region,85 most of which reached out to the black student population. Yet, the limitations of the Y’s emancipatory potential become likewise apparent in this example. According to a recent study, the end of Yergan’s career at the Y and his drift toward Communist circles resulted from his insight that “Christian institutions, if not sentiments, would not sufficiently challenge racist structures.”86 The role of the Y in the hardening racist atmosphere of post–World War II South Africa would make for a fascinating case study to test the contradictory interpretation of the association’s role in politics. However, while the existing literature sheds some light on this pioneering phase, the lack of a detailed account of the Y’s subsequent involvement in the anti-apartheid struggle from the late 1940s to the 1990s remains another lacuna in the historiography on the movement. WORLD WAR I AND ITS AFTERMATH: THE Y ENTERS HIGH POLITICS
IN EASTERN EUROPE AND BEYOND
During the heyday of Yergan’s work in southern Africa in the 1920s, opportunities for the truly global spread of “international” NGOs emerged in other parts of the world as well. The 1920 foreign budget of the YMCA of the United States and Canada had an extraordinarily ambitious range of interests and geographical locations targeted. Its work was to shape nationalism, promote internationalism, and develop the moral and physical capabilities of young “leadership” in many countries.87 The mood of internationalism that accompanied the establishment of the League of Nations expanded the opportunities and the incentive for such NGOs to develop. It was during this era that leading Y functionaries managed to lay the foundations for a “close partnership between philanthropy and diplomacy”88 by establishing intimate ties to the highest political circles in Washington, DC, and various European capitals.89 At the same time, the spread of nationalism in Asia likewise stimulated such social engineering efforts, as European powers began to contemplate the serious threat to the survival of their empires that anticolonial nationalism posed. The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian, German, Russian, and Ottoman Empires, and the new nation-states that emerged from the wreckage of war after 1919, had already demonstrated that the old imperial world order could no longer be taken for granted. 20 Fischer-Tiné, Huebner, and Tyrrell
However, the new position of prominence the Y acquired in the field of high politics during the 1920s would hardly be comprehensible without taking into account the dramatic effects that World War I had on the twin associations’ history—a fact that is increasingly reflected in the historio graphy.90 For the YMCA in the United States and Canada, World War I and the immediate postwar period played a vital role in creating their new global agenda. The American entry to war in 1917 had shifted the moral, political, and social landscape of the modernizing reformers. The war and its disruptive aftermath further massively expanded the possibility for YMCA and YWCA influence on a worldwide scale. The American, Australian, British, and Indian YMCAs, in particular, made a huge contribution to the Allied troops’ morale and comfort by providing reading rooms, makeshift cinema halls, gramophones, food supplies, sports equipment, and, last but certainly not least, counsel on moral issues.91 Next to its widely acknowledged caregiving schemes for Allied soldiers, the Y’s international profile was also raised through its successful work with prisoners of war in South Asia, the Middle East, and various parts of Europe,92 as well as through the humanitarian relief campaigns it conducted in Eastern Europe alongside the Red Cross.93 It was to a large extent due to these rich experiences with various kinds of wartime work that the Y completed its transformation “from a bible-carrying group emphasizing individual salvation into a scientific and professionalized cadre stressing regeneration through social engineering” during the early interwar era.94 One crucial element of this new professionalism that emerged during the war and prepared the association for future global challenges was the development of sophisticated and highly efficient fund-raising techniques. According to a contemporary observer, “It was not strange that the Y.M.C.A., with its enlarging needs for funds, would be the laboratory for methods and the training ground for leadership in Fund Raising.”95 It was also due to the effects of the war that the YMCA and YWCA geographically refocused their modernizing agenda and their attempts at building the capacity of civil society in profound ways. The creation of new nation-states in Eastern Europe heralded a need for building a physically strong and morally trained youth to form the future leadership of the democracies that American and other Allied governments wished to see emerge.96 Such governments would be needed not just for the sake of their own people but to provide stability for the region in the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and threatened revolutions in Germany and the rest of Central Europe after 1918.97 These circumstances provided the context for the attempt to preserve Orthodox Christianity in the “godless” Soviet Union through the provision of edifying religious and philosophical literature.98 Introduction 21
Figure I.3. Sowing “association men” issues across the world: the YMCA’s global ambitions are clearly discernible in this cover image of the journal Association Men from February 1911. Source: Kautz Family YMCA Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries.
They also form the backdrop for the efforts in countries such as Romania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Baltic States to develop training programs for future social workers or spread a physically strong and morally sound leadership through the provision of fitness training and the organization of sports events for the next generation of young adults.99 In pushing these agendas, YMCA and YWCA secretaries hoped not only to “spread the American Dream” around the globe but also to establish a “Modern Religion” for “Modern Men.”100 However, just like in Asia and other, less intensely targeted world regions, the YMCA’s and YWCA’s program in these countries was cut short by the Great Depression, which reduced funding opportunities drastically. Whereas the International Committee of the North American Y could usually dispose of an annual budget of around $2 million for its foreign work during its peak years in the mid-1920s, this 22 Fischer-Tiné, Huebner, and Tyrrell
sum had shrunk to less than $600,000 in the early 1940s.101 The association’s work was still further curtailed by the increasing power of right-wing authoritarian movements, not only in Germany, but throughout Eastern Europe. In the former Ottoman Empire, too, secular nationalism spearheaded by the Kemalist Revolution and Ataturk’s vision of a secular Turkey prevented the YMCA from gaining more than a tenuous foothold. The organization was forced to abandon even a nominal Christianity to continue.102 Here, as elsewhere, the further spread of the international YMCA movement would have to wait for the end of World War II, and even then, the Cold War divided Europe and thereby circumscribed and reshaped the organization’s global visions and aspirations. CHAPTER PREVIEWS While the chapters in this book together invoke a universal Y agenda, they each focus on various concrete aspects of Y history, exploring case studies shaped by temporal and local or regional specificities. The editors have refrained from pressing the richness and diversity of the topics and approaches selected by our authors into the usual constraining thematic or regional containers. Instead, the chapters follow a loosely chronological order. Cautioning against simplistic understandings that would interpret the concept of the moral empire in a way that reduces the YMCA and YWCA to mere handmaidens of US imperialism, Ian Tyrrell takes up the issue of local, non-Western agency in his chapter “Vectors of Practicality.” His study about the Y’s early agricultural initiatives in South Asia in the 1910s and 1920s places these endeavors in the context of the wider Social Gospel discourse that was popular among liberal North American Protestants at the time. It pertinently illustrates that this discourse was not unilaterally shaped by North American actors. As Tyrrell emphasizes, self-confident and assertive Indian Y secretaries such as K. T. Paul and Daniel Swamidoss did not only shape the Y’s experiments with “rural reconstruction” on the Indian subcontinent. They were also in close contact with American and European experts and frequently traveled to Western countries, thus exerting a considerable influence on the nascent transnational rural development regime that would come to full fruition only after the end of World War II. Lou Antolihao also addresses how YMCA influence operated on the ground in Asia. He argues that the ideological dimension of YMCA ideas came not in the content of Christianity but in the production of a discursive field conveying and solidifying the organization’s presence. Studying the role of the YMCA through this mediation of Protestant modernity in the Introduction 23
mission fields of China, Japan, and the Philippines in the early twentieth century, he stresses the role of “spectacle”—prayer sessions, mass lectures, educational lantern shows, banquets, sports tournaments, and the like— which enabled the association to secure the interest of the local population. Thereby the YMCA cemented its legacy as a pioneer in the fields of education, youth mobilization, and social development. In the subsequent chapter, Dolf-Alexander Neuhaus focuses on the conflicting positions of the Japanese YMCA and Korean YMCA, operating in shared spaces of empire and being entangled with Japanese colonialism in Korea. The particular circumstances of the YMCA in Korea and Japan contributed to a paradoxical situation in which the Japanese Protestants referenced universal values of global community of Protestantism but increasingly emphasized the dichotomy of Eastern (i.e., Japanese) and Western Christianity. Neuhaus shows that conceptions of a Japanese Christian bushidō (way of the warrior) widely circulated in YMCA networks, representing ambitions of assimilating Koreans into such ideas of Eastern- Japanese Christianity. In the process, the bushidō functioned to legitimize the Japanese claim to power in Korea not only politically but also religiously between 1905 and 1919. Neuhaus nevertheless also reminds us that despite such endeavors of the Japanese YMCA, the Korean YMCA remained a networking space for the anticolonial fight against Japanese rule. Stefan Huebner’s chapter sheds light on the different trajectories of the YMCA’s transnational physical education programs in Japan, China, and the Philippines, which were born out of the increasing indigenization of Y staff. As Huebner shows, the growing scientificity of physical education that emerged during the US Progressive Era inspired the Y’s social work in the three Asian societies. Such plans to scientifically improve public health and fitness were combined with moral reform and related sports pedagogy, encouraging a Protestant understanding of masculinity rooted in discipline and self-control. Y-trained Philippine and Chinese physical educators largely focused on applying scientific solutions to overcome their countries’ perceived civilizational inferiority vis-à-vis Western countries. Huebner’s example of Japanese physical educator Okabe Heita nevertheless illustrates the conflict potential and the resistance that the YMCA’s internationalist project triggered against the backdrop of rising nationalism in interwar Asia. Margaret M. Tillman’s chapter shifts attention to the YWCA, which like the YMCA played an important role in the transformation of Chinese society between the last decades of the Qing Empire and the Communist victory in the civil war. Putting the Shanghai YWCA into the center of her analysis, Tillman illustrates the role that the 24 Fischer-Tiné, Huebner, and Tyrrell
Protestant-feminist organization’s “women’s work for women” played in shaping “new Chinese girls and women”: as she shows, female education and the provision of nurseries challenged traditional family economies and contributed to the empowerment of female members of society. The two nurseries, a Christian one for professional women and a charity preschool for the poor, thus were part of the Shanghai YWCA’s transnational space for social reform and its broader program of worker activism that, in terms of a number of its female leaders, continued well into the Communist period. While Asia is the focus of the first five case studies, the role of the YMCA in Eastern Europe after World War I is addressed in Ondřej Matějka’s chapter. The novel and fluid political environment in the wake of the Treaty of Versailles prompted North American YMCA concern about the progress of new democratic European states and their moral condition. Stressing democracy, pragmatism, and internationalism as foundational to the new world order in Europe, the YMCA utilized this circumstance. It created a foothold in Czechoslovakia through emphasis on physical training and modernization, but Matějka shows how economics and geopolitical change by the 1930s allowed what amounted to a revised and indigenized version of the YMCA. A Christian theological reaction among YMCA adherents in Czechoslovakia favoring the neoorthodox theology of Karl Barth replaced the priorities of the Social Gospel and gave substance and sustenance to the WSCF thereafter. Thereby, Matějka demonstrates the adaptation and circulation of Christian ideas within the YMCA, first to Europe, and then through changing circumstances back into a global circulation of influences. Complementing Matějka’s chapter, Doina Anca Cretu’s contribution also examines the phase of Y expansion into the newly formed countries in Central and Eastern Europe in the aftermath of World War I. Cretu’s chapter amply illustrates the prejudices and stereotypes regarding the perceived immoral and impoverished character of Romanian youth that informed the Y’s Boys’ Work programs in Southeastern Europe, and how these were strikingly similar to those undergirding the contemporaneous Y efforts in the Philippines, India, and South Africa. Perhaps the only difference was that the Y’s role as mediator of modernity and provider of leadership training was, in this case, seen as supporting an ongoing youth-driven nationbuilding process and not as a means of stabilizing an imperial regime. While the YMCA’s internationalist agenda was apparently at least moderately successful in contributing to the better integration of the Hungarian and German minorities into the mainstream of the newly created Romanian nation, it failed dismally in the attempt to generate greater tolerance toward the Introduction 25
country’s Jewish citizens. In the climate of growing anti-Semitism prevailing in interwar Romania, the American Y secretaries’ appeals for tolerance cost them much “street credibility” among the local student population and indirectly contributed to the emergence of a fascist youth organization providing a chauvinistic alternative to the liberal agenda of the Y. The next two chapters deal with the YMCA in the United States, but in ways that invite comparisons with the Y’s hierarchical mediation of Protestant modernity and traditional cultures in Asia as well. Paul Hillmer and Ryan Bean focus on the use of American Indian play manuals designed for father-son bonding; the program flourished in the United States from 1926 to the 1960s, before the civil rights movement and the rise of new American Indian protests began to make it a liability for the YMCA. Ostensibly valuing the unique American qualities that could be found in the precolonial world of Amerindian peoples, the manuals functioned as a remedy for anxieties over the ills of the modern, industrialized, and increasingly urban United States. Yet the Y Amerindian guides also showed hierarchies and contradictions inherent in this imaginative play similar to those found in the mission fields of Asia. While the guides program was designed to enhance youth development, its appeal and impact came at the expense of American Indian youth by promoting stereotypes and perpetuating racial hierarchy. Lance Cummings’s consideration of the YMCA in the “global community” explicitly broaches the subject of a US internal colonialism that shared transnational processes with the external variety. He studies the role of YMCA English-language classes that aimed at assimilation to a modern American culture. Beginning with its first recorded YMCA language classes for immigrants in 1856, education and language instruction in the YMCA became by the early twentieth century a way to exert what Cummings calls “powerful modernizing discourses” among “non-native” speakers of English “at home and abroad.” English was regarded as a language suitable for business and for modernized communication, and one in which native speakers were privileged. The hierarchical notion of a “native speaker” had social and cultural connotations for the shaping of body, mind, and soul, the YMCA’s ostensible objectives. Because of its extensive institutional and missionary coverage in the United States and abroad in the early twentieth century, the YMCA played a global role in developing notions of the “native speaker.” By focusing on the example of Ethiopia, Katrin Bromber’s chapter, finally, explores the role of the North American YMCA’s International Committee as a service in citizenship training for what were called “third world” countries in the Cold War era. In the late 1940s, Ethiopia’s emperor 26 Fischer-Tiné, Huebner, and Tyrrell
Haile Selassie sought, in person, the support of the YMCA for the project of training a committed and able elite of youthful leaders that could rebuild the country after the short but devastating interlude of Italian colonial rule (1935–1941). The chapter zooms in on the various schemes (Boys’ Work, leadership camps, physical education programs) that were implemented over the subsequent three decades to achieve this goal. Bromber’s pioneering study gives a nuanced account of the Christian association’s close entanglements with the US State Department’s strategy to contain Communist influence in Africa (and the third world at large) by advertising the advantages of the American version of modernity, while at the same time bringing out the niches and interstices in which local Ethiopian agency could unfold. NOTES 1. Geoffrey D. Spurr, “The London YMCA: A Haven of Masculine Self-Improvement and Socialization for the Late Victorian and Edwardian Clerk,” Canadian Journal of History 37, no. 2 (2002): 275–301. For a comprehensive history of the British origins of the YMCA, see Clyde Binfield, George Williams and the YMCA: A Study in Victorian Social Attitudes (London: Heinemann, 1973). 2. Nancy Boyd, Emissaries: The Overseas Work of the American YWCA 1895–1970 (New York: Woman’s Press, 1986), 29–32. 3. Nina Mjagkij and Margaret Spratt, “Introduction,” in Men and Women Adrift: The YMCA and the YWCA in the City, ed. Nina Mjagkij and Margaret Spratt (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 3. 4. C. Howard Hopkins, “The Kansas-Sudan Missionary Movement in the Y.M.C.A., 1889–1891,” Church History 21, no. 4 (1952): 314. 5. Ian Tyrrell, Reforming the World: The Creation of America’s Moral Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 67; Kenneth Scott Latourette, “Missionaries Abroad,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 368 (November 1966): 21–30. 6. Luther D. Wishard, The Students’ Challenge to the Churches: A Plea for a Forward Movement in World Evangelization (Chicago: Fleming H. Revell, 1899), 15. Tyrrell, Reforming the World, 63, 68–69, 85, 90–91, 196; Johanna M. Selles, The World Student Christian Federation, 1895–1925: Motives, Methods, and Influential Women (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2011), 2–4, 8–9; Ruth Rouse, The World’s Student Christian Federation: A History of the First Thirty Years (London: S.C.M. Press, 1948). 7. For early influential examples of such “in-house histories,” see Sherwood Eddy, A Century with Youth (New York: Association Press, 1944); Anna Rice, A History of the Young Women’s Christian Association (New York: Woman’s Press, 1947); Clarence Prouty Shedd, History of the World Alliance of YMCAs (London: SPCK, 1955); and Kenneth Scott Latourette, World Service: A History of the Foreign Work and World Service of the Young Men’s Christian Associations of the United States and Canada (New York: Association Press, 1957). 8. On the Social Gospel in the United States generally, see Christopher A. Evans, The Social Gospel in American Religion: A History (New York: New York University Press, 2017); Introduction 27
Janet F. Fishburn, “The Social Gospel as Missionary Ideology,” in North American Foreign Missions, 1810–1914: Theology, Theory, and Policy, ed. Wilbert R. Shenk (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2004), 217–242; and Susan Curtis, A Consuming Faith: The Social Gospel and Modern American Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991). 9. Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Present Crisis (New York: Macmillan, 1907), 208–210. 10. Abigail Green and Vincent Viaene, “Introduction: Rethinking Religion and Globalization,” in Religious Internationalism in the Modern World: Globalization and Faith Communities since 1750, ed. Abigail Green and Vincent Viaene (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 4. 11. For a similar assessment, see Thomas Davies, NGOs: A New History of Transnational Civil Society (London: Hurst, 2013), 35–36. 12. David A. Hollinger, Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World but Changed America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017). 13. Sarah M. Griffith, The Fight for Asian American Civil Rights: Liberal Protestant Activism, 1900–1950 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2018). 14. See, for instance, Gina A. Zurlo, “The Social Gospel, Ecumenical Movement, and Christian Sociology: The Institute of Social and Religious Research,” American Socio logist 46, no. 2 (2015): 177–193; Gene Zubovich, “The Global Gospel: Protestant Internationalism and American Liberalism, 1940–1960” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2014); Andrew Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012); Andrew Preston, “The Religious Turn in Diplomatic History,” in Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations, 3rd ed., ed. Frank Costigliola and Michael J. Hogan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 284–303; and William Inboden, Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945– 1960: The Soul of Containment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 15. See most recently A. G. Hopkins, American Empire: A Global History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018), 323. 16. Michael G. Thompson, For God and Globe: Christian Internationalism in the United States between the Great War and the Cold War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), 27–46; and Michael G. Thompson, “Sherwood Eddy, The Missionary Enterprise, and the Rise of Christian Internationalism in 1920s America,” Modern Intellectual History 12, no. 1 (2015): 65–93. 17. Karen Phoenix, “ ‘Not by Might, nor by Power, but by Spirit’: The Global Reform Efforts of the Young Women’s Christian Association of the United States 1895–1939” (PhD diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2010), 3–18. 18. Ian Tyrrell, “American Protestant Missionaries, Moral Reformers, and the Reinterpretation of American ‘Expansion’ in the Late Nineteenth Century,” in Outside In: The Transnational Circuitry of US History, ed. Andrew Preston and Doug Rossinow (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 105–110; and Tyrrell, Reforming the World. 19. Tyrrell, Reforming the World, 2–3. 20. Abigail Green, “Religious Internationalism,” in Internationalisms: A TwentiethCentury History, ed. Glenda Sluga and Patricia Clavin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 17. 21. One noteworthy exception to this observation is an edited volume on the YMCA’s wartime efforts: Jeffrey C. Copeland and Yan Xu, eds., The YMCA at War: Collaboration and Conflict during the World Wars (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018). 28 Fischer-Tiné, Huebner, and Tyrrell
22. Christopher Clark and Michael Ledger-Lomas, “The Protestant International,” in Religious Internationalism in the Modern World: Globalization and Faith Communities since 1750, ed. Abigail Green and Vincent Viaene (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 23–52. 23. Klaus Koschorke, “Vielfalt der Vernetzungen: Christliche Internationalismen um 1910,” in “To Give Publicity to Our Thoughts”: Journale asiatischer und afrikanischer Christen um 1900 und die Entstehung einer transregionalen indigen-christlichen Öffentlichkeit, ed. Klaus Koschorke et al. (Wiesbaden: Harassowitz Verlag, 2018), 278–280; Silke Martini, Postimperiales Asien. Die Zukunft Indiens und Chinas in der anglophonen Weltöffentlichkeit 1919–1939 (Berlin: De Gruyter-Oldenbourg, 2017), 413; Stefan Huebner, Pan-Asian Sports and the Emergence of Modern Asia, 1913–1974 (Singapore: NUS Press, 2016), 39–43. 24. Latourette, World Service. 25. Mayer N. Zald and Patricia Denton, “From Evangelism to General Service: The Transformation of the YMCA,” Administrative Science Quarterly 8, no. 2 (1963). The YWCA was even described in a recent study as “one of the most progressive women’s organizations” of the early twentieth century on account of its strong emphasis on social and labor reforms; see Eileen Borris and Jennifer N. Fish, “Decent Work for Domestics: Feminist Organizing, Worker Empowerment, and the ILO,” in Towards a Global History of Domestic and Caregiving Workers, ed. Dirk Hoerder, Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, and Silke Neunsinger (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2015), 535. 26. Green and Viaene, “Introduction,” 2. 27. For a study of the Y’s role in the defense of North American workers’ rights (while at the same time curing political radicalism), see Thomas Winter, Making Men, Making Class: The YMCA and Workingmen, 1877–1920 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2002); and Thomas Winter, “Contested Spaces: The YMCA and Workingmen on the Railroads, 1877– 1917,” in Men and Women Adrift: The YMCA and the YWCA in the City, ed. Nina Mjagkij and Margaret Spratt (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 65–85. For a non-Western example of industrial work involving the YWCA, see also Elizabeth Littell-Lamb, “Engendering a Class Revolution: The Chinese YWCA Industrial Reform Work in Shanghai, 1927– 1939,” Women’s History Review 21, no. 2 (2012): 189–209; and Elizabeth Littell-Lamb, “Caught in the Crossfire: Women’s Internationalism and the YWCA Child Labor Campaign in Shanghai, 1921–1925,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 32, no. 3 (2011): 134–166. 28. Thus, in 1910, the journal Rural Manhood was launched with the aim of targeting rural communities in the United States and Canada; see C. Howard Hopkins, History of the Y.M.C.A. Movement in North America (New York: Mission Press, 1951), 480–481. 29. On muscular Christianity in Britain, see Bruce Haley, The Healthy Body and Victorian Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978); and Donald E. Hall, ed., Muscular Christianity: Embodying the Victorian Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 30. Thomas Hughes, The Manliness of Christ (London: Macmillan, 1879); Harry E. Fosdick, Manhood of the Master (New York: Association Press, 1914). Cheap editions of these books were later reprinted by the YMCA Press in Calcutta, among others. See also David P. Setran, The College “Y”: Student Religion in the Era of Secularization (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 121–123. On Brent, between 1902 and 1918 bishop in the Philippines, see Charles H. Brent, The Splendor of the Human Body: A Reparation and an Appeal (New York: Longmans, Green, 1904). See also Clifford Putney, Muscular Christianity: Manhood and Sports in Protestant America, 1880–1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 56–57. Introduction 29
31. On muscular Christianity and “progressive” social reformers, see William J. Baker, Playing with God: Religion and Modern Sport (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007); Dominick Cavallo, Muscles and Morals: Organized Playgrounds and Urban Reform, 1880–1920 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981); Elmer L. Johnson, The History of YMCA Physical Education (Chicago: Association Press, 1979); Tony Ladd and James A. Mathisen, Muscular Christianity: Evangelical Protestants and the Development of American Sport (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1999); David I. Macleod, Building Character in the American Boy: The Boy Scouts, YMCA, and Their Forerunners, 1870–1920 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983); Putney, Muscular Christianity; Clifford Putney, “Luther Gulick: His Contributions to Springfield College, the YMCA, and ‘Muscular Christianity,’ ” Historical Journal of Massachusetts 39, nos. 1–2 (2011): 144–169; and Setran, The College “Y.” On American masculinity more generally, see Michael Kimmel, Manhood in America: A Cultural History, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). 32. Boyd, Emissaries, 13–15. 33. On the YMCA programs targeted at the African American population, see Nina Mjagkij, Light in the Darkness: African Americans and the YMCA, 1852–1946 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1994); and National Council of the Young Men’s Christian Associations of the United States of America, Bureau of Records, Studies and Trend: Negro Youth in City YMCAs: A Study of YMCA Services among Negro Youth in Urban Communities (New York: YMCA, 1944). On this topic see also the chapters by Ryan Bean and Paul Hillmer and by Lance Cumming in this volume. 34. Zornitsa Keremidchieva, “From International to National Engagement and Back: The YWCA’s Communicative Techniques of Americanisation in the Aftermath of World War I,” Women’s History Review 26, no. 2 (2017): 280–295. 35. On horizontal mass sports as a tool for “democratization” more generally, see Paul Christensen, Sport and Democracy in the Ancient and Modern Worlds (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). On sport and shrinking interhuman violence, see Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning, eds., Quest for Excitement: Sport and Leisure in the Civilizing Process (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993). 36. As indicated earlier, even this broad overview leaves out important areas of Y activities such as Southern Europe or British settler colonies Australia and New Zealand, to name just two examples. The main reason is the paucity of existing literature beyond uncritical in-house publications. 37. Susan K. Harris, God’s Arbiters: Americans and the Philippines, 1898–1902 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Paul A. Kramer, The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), chap. 2. 38. Everett S. Turner, Nation-Building (Manila: Capitol Publishing House, 1965); Stefan Hübner, “Muscular Christianity and the Western Civilizing Mission: Elwood S. Brown, the YMCA, and the Idea of the Far Eastern Championship Games,” Diplomatic History 39, no. 3 (2015): 532–557; Stefan Hübner, “Donors and the Global Sportive ‘Civilizing Mission’: Asian Athletics, American Philanthropy, and YMCA Media (1910s–1920s),” Itinerario 40, no. 1 (2016): 29–54. See also Stefan Huebner’s and Lou Antolihao’s chapters in this volume. 39. Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China (New York: Norton, 1990), 282–283. 40. C. Howard Hopkins, John R. Mott, 1865–1955: A Biography (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1979), 185. 30 Fischer-Tiné, Huebner, and Tyrrell
41. Jun Xing, “The American Social Gospel and the Chinese YMCA,” Journal of American–East Asian Relations 5, nos. 3–4 (1996): 283–284. 42. Rick Nutt, “G. Sherwood Eddy and the Attitudes of Protestants in the United States toward Global Mission,” Church History 66, no. 2 (1996): 516–517. 43. The most comprehensive general accounts of the YMCA in China are Jun Xing, Baptized in the Fire of Revolution: The American Social Gospel and the YMCA in China, 1919–1937 (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 1996); and the somewhat uncritical Shirley S. Garrett, Social Reformers in Urban China: The Chinese YMCA, 1895–1926 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970). Another thorough and sophisticated study of American Y work in China is unfortunately still unpublished: John E. Heavens, “The International Committee of the North American Young Men’s Christian Association and Its Foreign Work in China, 1895–1937” (PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 2013). Specifically on the main fields of “secular” work in China, see, for instance, Charles W. Hayford, To the People: James Yen and Village China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990); Chieko Nakajima, “Health and Hygiene in Mass Mobilization: Hygiene Campaigns in Shanghai,” Twentieth Century China 34 (2008): 42–72; Andrew D. Morris, Marrow of the Nation: A History of Sport and Physical Culture in Republican China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); Stefan Hübner, “ ‘Uplifting the Weak and Degenerated Races of East Asia’: American and Indigenous Views of Sport and Body in Early Twentieth-Century East Asia,” in Race and Racism in Modern East Asia, vol. 2, Inter actions, Nationalism, Gender and Lineage, ed. Walter Demel and Rotem Kowner (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 196–217. 44. Yurou Zhong, “ ‘Sacred, the Laborers’: Writing Chinese in the First World War,” Cross-Currents 22 (2017): 135–159. 45. Martini, Postimperiales Asien, 220. 46. Aihua Zhang, “Chinese Christian New Women’s Practicality, Social Service, and Broad Cooperation: A Case Study of YWCA Women in the 1920s and 1930s,” in Christianity and the Modern Woman in East Asia, ed. Garrett L. Washington (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 38–61; Margaret M. Tillman, Raising China’s Revolutionaries: Modernizing Childhood for Cosmopolitan Nationalists and Liberated Comrades, 1920s–1950s (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018). See also Margaret Mih Tillman’s chapter in this volume. 47. Heavens, “International Committee,” 266–267. 48. Charles A. Keller, “The Christian Student Movement, YMCAs, and Transnationalism in Republican China,” Journal of American–East Asian Relations 13 (2004–2006): 55–80. 49. Heavens, “International Committee,” 271. 50. Editorial, Young Men of India, April 3, 1923, 18. 51. Box 89, folder “A Brief History 1854–1900,” International Work: India, Kautz Family YMCA Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries; E. C. Worman, “A Brief History of the Young Men’s Christian Association in India Burma and Ceylon 1854–1900” (unpublished manuscript, n.d.), 12. 52. Susan B. Harper, In the Shadow of the Mahatma: Bishop V.S. Azariah and the Travails of Christianity in British India (Richmond, UK: Curzon Press, 2000), 49–53. 53. M. D. David, The YMCA and the Making of Modern India: A Centenary History (New Delhi: National Council of YMCAs of India, 1992), 96. Next to David’s factually reliable but rather uncritical account, there is also an older “in-house” history of the Indian YMCA: J. H. Dunderdale, 100 Years of Service with Youth (New Delhi: Y.M.C.A. Publishing House, 1962). Introduction 31
54. See Harald Fischer-Tiné, “Fitness for Modernity? The YMCA and Physical Education Schemes in Late Colonial South Asia (circa 1900–40),” Modern Asian Studies 53 no. 2 (2019): 512–559. 55. See Harald Fischer-Tiné, “The YMCA and Low-Modernist Rural Development in South Asia, circa 1922–1957,” Past and Present 240, no. 1 (2018): 193–234; and A. Kanakaraj, The Light Houses of Rural Reconstruction: The History of the Y.M.C.A.’s Integrated Rural Development in South India (New Delhi: Indian Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2000). See also Ian Tyrrell’s chapter in this volume. 56. David Arnold, Everyday Technology: Machines and the Making of India’s Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 91–93. For a general account of the YWCA’s female empowerment strategy in the region, see Karen Phoenix, “A Social Gospel for India,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 13, no. 2 (2014): 200–222. For some connections to the Girl Guides, see Kristine Alexander, Guiding Modern Girls: Girlhood, Empire, and Internationalism in the 1920s and 1930s (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017). 57. J. N. Farquhar, Modern Religious Movements in India (New York: Macmillan, 1915), 80, 125, 278, 329, 343. See also Emily S. Rosenberg, Transnational Currents in a Shrinking World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 76. 58. H. A. Popley, K. T. Paul: Christian Leader (Calcutta: Association Press, 1938); and Atula Imsong, “Christians and the Indian National Movement: A Historical Perspective,” Indian Journal of Theology 46, nos. 1–2 (2004): 99–107. 59. See, for instance, Sherwood Eddy, India Awakening (New York: Missionary Education Movement of the United States and Canada, 1912). 60. Box 19, folder “Eddy, G. Sherwood, Report Letters 1896–1898,” letter no. 5, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 61. Hopkins, John R. Mott, 185. 62. Sherwood Eddy, The Challenge of the East (New York: Rhinehart & Farrar, 1931), 112. 63. Quoted in Hopkins, History of the Y.M.C.A., 332. 64. Jon Davidann, “YMCA Cultural Imperialism in Korea and Manchuria after the Russo-Japanese War,” Journal of American–East Asian Relations 5, nos. 3–4 (1996): 255. 65. Jon Thares Davidann, The Limits of Westernization: American and East Asian Intellectuals Create Modernity, 1860–1960 (London: Routledge, 2018), 140–142. 66. Tyrrell, Reforming the World, 2–3. 67. Jon Thares Davidann, A World of Crisis and Progress: The American YMCA in Japan, 1890–1930 (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 1998); and Jon Thares Davidann, “The American YMCA in Meiji Japan: God’s Work Gone Awry,” Journal of World History 6, no. 1 (1995): 107–125. 68. See also Dolf-Alexander Neuhaus’s chapter in this volume. 69. Davidann, “YMCA Cultural Imperialism in Korea,” 270–272. 70. See, for instance, Albert L. Park, Building a Heaven on Earth: Religion, Activism, and Protest in Japanese Occupied Korea (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015), 120–130; Albert L. Park, “Reclaiming the Rural: Modern Danish Cooperative Living in Colonial Korea, 1925–37,” Journal of Korean Studies 19, no. 1 (2014): 115–151; Koen de Ceuster, “Wholesome Education and Sound Leisure: The YMCA Sports Programme in Colonial Korea,” European Journal of East Asian Studies 2 (2003): 53–88; Koen de Ceuster, “The YMCA’s Rural Development Program in Colonial Korea, 1925– 35: Doctrine and Objectives,” Review of Korean Studies 3, no. 1 (2000): 5–33; Michael I. Shapiro, “Christian Culture and Military Rule: Assimilation and Its Limits during the 32 Fischer-Tiné, Huebner, and Tyrrell
First Decade of Japan’s Colonial Rule in Korea, 1910–19” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2010). See also the related chapter by Dolf-Alexander Neuhaus in this volume. 71. Latourette, World Service, 340–345; and Resul Çaltabaş, “ ‘Young Men’s Christian Association’ in Türkiye’deki Faaliyetleri,” Ankara Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi 55, no. 1 (2014): 101–122. See also Kenneth A. Steuer, Pursuit of an “Unparalleled Opportunity”: The American YMCA and Prisoner of War Diplomacy with the Central Powers during the First World War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 21–27. A helpful general discussion of American missionary endeavors in the late Ottoman Empire can be found in Hans-Lukas Kieser, Nearest East: American Millennialism and the Mission to the Middle East (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010), 63–97. 72. Wilson Chacko Jacob, Working Out Egypt: Effendi Masculinity and Subject Formation in Colonial Modernity, 1870–1940 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 108; Heather J. Sharkey, American Evangelicals in Egypt: Missionary Encounters in an Age of Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), mostly chap. 4. 73. Claudia Guedes, “ ‘Changing the Cultural Landscape’: English Engineers, American Missionaries, and the YMCA Bring Sports to Brazil—the 1870s to the 1930s,” International Journal of the History of Sport 28, no. 17 (2011): 2599; Year Book of the Young Men’s Christian Associations of North America for the Year May 1, 1920 to April 30, 1921 (New York: Association Press, 1921), 22, 27–28. 74. On the “physical program” of the Y in Puerto Rico, see Antonio Sotomayor, “The Triangle of Empire: Sport, Religion, and Imperialism in Puerto Rico’s YMCA, 1898– 1926,” Americas 74 no. 4 (2017): 481–512. 75. Latourette, World Service, 203. 76. Guedes, “Changing the Cultural Landscape,” 2599; Year Book of the Young Men’s Christian Associations of North America, 22, 27–28. 77. Eddy, Century with Youth, 103; and Tomáš Tlustŷ, “The American YMCA and Its Physical Education Program—First Steps to World Expansion,” Studies in Sports Humanities 20 (2016): 42–43. 78. Stefan Hübner, “Muscular Christian Exchanges: Asian Sports Experts and the International YMCA Training School (1910s to 1930s),” in Global Exchanges: Scholarships and Transnational Circulations in the Modern World, ed. Ludovic Tournès and Giles ScottSmith (New York: Berghahn, 2018), 97–112; Cesar R. Torres, “The Latin American ‘Olympic Explosion’ of the 1920s: Causes and Consequences,” International Journal of the History of Sport 23, no. 7 (2006): 1088–1111. 79. Sönke Bauck, Nüchterne Staatsbürger für junge Nationen: Die Temperenzbewegung am Rio de la Plata (1876–1933) (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2018), 161–162, 214–216. 80. See, for instance, Hopkins, “Kansas-Sudan Missionary Movement”; Latourette, World Service, 337–338; and Boyd, Emissaries, 119–129. 81. Latourette, World Service, 333. 82. See, for example, Katrin Bromber’s chapter on post–World War II Ethiopia in this volume. 83. David Henry Anthony III, “Unwritten History: African Work in the YMCA of South Africa,” History in Africa: A Journal of Method 32 (2005): 435–444. On Yergan’s checkered biography, see David Henry Anthony III, Max Yergan: Race Man, Internationalist, Cold Warrior (New York: New York University Press, 2006). 84. K. J. King, “The American Negro as Missionary to East Africa: A Critical Aspect of African Evangelism,” African Historical Studies 3, no. 1 (1970): 8–11. Introduction 33
85. Anthony, Max Yergan, 3. 86. Tracey Rizzo and Steven Gerontakis, Intimate Empires: Body, Race and Gender in the Modern World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 128–129. 87. Why Spend 1,500,000 Million? The 1920 World Work Budget of Young Men’s Christian Associations of the United States and Canada (New York: Foreign Department, International Committee of Young Men’s Christian Associations, n.d. [1920]). For an interesting analysis of the YWCA’s flourishing activities in Argentina during the 1920s and 1930s, see Phoenix, “ ‘Not by Might,’ ” 136–175. 88. Sherwood Eddy, Eighty Adventurous Years: An Autobiography (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1955), 128–148; See also Erika Cornelius Smith, “The YMCA and the Science of International Civil Statecraft in Post–World War I Czechoslovakia,” in Copeland and Xu, YMCA at War, 115. 89. See also Thompson, For God and Globe; and Thompson, “Sherwood Eddy.” 90. See several contributions in Copeland and Xu, YMCA at War. 91. Copeland and Xu, YMCA at War; Harald Fischer-Tiné, “ ‘Unparalleled Opportunities’: The Indian Y.M.C.A.’s Army Work Schemes for Imperial Troops during the Great War (1914–1920),” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 41, no. 1, (2018): 100–137; Emma Hanna, “Putting the Moral into Morale: YMCA Cinemas on the Western Front, 1914–1918,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 35, no. 4 (2015): 615–630; Emma Hanna, “Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA),” in 1914–1918-online: International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. Ute Daniel et al. (Berlin: Freie Universität Berlin, 2015), doi: 10.15463/ie1418.10544; E. G. C. King, “E.W. Hornung’s Unpublished ‘Diary,’ the YMCA, and the Reading Soldier in the First World War,” English Literature in Transition, 1880–1920 57, no. 3 (2014): 361–387; and William Howard Taft and Frederick Morgan Harris, eds., Service with Fighting Men: An Account of the Work of the American Young Men’s Christian Associations in the World War, vol. 2 (New York: Association Press, 1922). 92. Steuer, Pursuit of an “Unparalleled Opportunity.” 93. Tyrrell, Reforming the World, 205–208. 94. Emily S. Rosenberg, Spreading the American Dream: American Economic and Cultural Expansion, 1890–1945 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982), 109. 95. Lyman L. Pierce, “Philanthropy, a Major Big Business,” Public Opinion Quarterly 2, no. 1 (1938): 142–143. 96. Tracy Strong, “The World’s Alliance in a Changing World,” in Shedd, History of the World Alliance, 482–483. 97. Pierce, “Philanthropy, a Major Big Business,” 142–143. 98. Mathew L. Miller, The American YMCA and Russian Culture: The Preservation and Expansion of Orthodox Christianity, 1900–1940 (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2012); and Mathew L. Miller, “A Hunger for Books: The American YMCA Press and Russian Readers,” Religion State and Society 38, no. 1 (2010): 53–73. See also Jennifer Ann Polk, “Constructive Efforts: The American Red Cross and YMCA in Revolutionary and Civil War Russia, 1917– 24” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2012). For a more concise overview of the origins of the Y’s engagement in 1910s and 1920s Russia, see also Kenneth A. Steuer, “The YMCA and War Work Service in Russia in the First World War and the Russian Civil War,” in Copeland and Xu, YMCA at War, 73–100; and Donald E. Davis and Eugene P. Trani, “The American YMCA and the Russian Revolution,” Slavic Review 33, no. 3 (1974): 469–491. 99. Tomáš Tlustŷ, “The YMCA Organisation and Its Physical Education and Sports Activities in Europe during the First World War,” Kultura Fizyczna 14, no. 1 (2015): 34 Fischer-Tiné, Huebner, and Tyrrell
27–44; and Erika N. Cornelius Smith, “American Women’s Transnational Volunteerism in Czechoslovakia” (PhD diss., Purdue University, 2014). See also Doina Anca Cretu’s chapter in this volume. 100. Rosenberg, Spreading the American Dream, 109–111; Ondřej Matějka, “Erziehung zur ‘Weltbürgerlichkeit.’ Der Einfluss des YMCA auf die tschechoslowakische Jugend der Zwischenkriegszeit.” In Jugend in der Tschechoslowakei. Konzepte und Lebenswelten (1918—1989), ed. Christian Brenner, Karl Braun, and Tomáš Kasper (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2016), 153–179. See also Ondřej Matějka’s chapter in this volume. 101. Eddy, Century with Youth, 103–104. 102. Samuel David Lenser, “Between the Great Idea and Kemalism: The YMCA at Izmir in the 1920s” (master’s thesis, Boise State University, 2010), 81–83.
Introduction 35
ONE Vectors of Practicality
Social Gospel, the North American YMCA in Asia, and the Global Context Ian Tyrrell
L
ocal agency matters in the historiography of missions and imperialism. The colonial-centered way of seeing Asian history in the age of European empires through the lens of imperial initiatives and Asian responses gave way long ago to the idea of local initiative.1 However, beginning in the 1990s the collapse of the categories of East and West, aligned and nonaligned, developed and undeveloped, and other geopolitical dualisms both registered and spurred the beginnings of a new transnational and transcultural history. Distinctive characteristics are the recognition that the exchange between metropolis and colony, and so on, should be seen as reciprocal and part of regional and global networks. 2 This move back toward global history should, however, incorporate local agency, because a danger remains that Western historians, for reasons of available resources and topical and regional specializations, will still engage in metropole-centered histories of the global history of encounters between Asia and the West. This chapter takes up the challenge by recognizing two different but neglected levels of analysis: firstly, the multilateral nature of contacts across empires and, secondly, what might be termed the transnational spaces in the interstices of colonial empires. Missionary organizations provide data and models for the cultural history of these processes. While all missionary groups deserve further study, American Protestants have an important place in this global story due to the new methods and new organizations they brought to the mission fields. Facilitated by patterns of late nineteenth- century globalization, American Protestant groups were active in transnational organizing in the early to mid-twentieth century, a time of enhanced nationalism and interwar internationalism. By their work, they made a major 39
contribution to the emergence of a Christian internationalism in the 1930s. Utilizing the American Social Gospel, Christian organizations such as the Student Volunteer Movement, the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), and the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) crossed national and imperial boundaries in missionary work. The collective history of such transnational and transimperial NGOs remains largely to be written. Here I outline a pattern of operation for the United States, giving due weight not only to the local and indigenous as agents in mediating the effects of colonialism and Western cultural penetration, but also to the global effects of these encounters through transnational organizing. I treat “transnational” as a shorthand term for organizing across nations, colonies, and empires, and “international” for the formal contacts between states. South Asia is taken as a specific case study of these global and transnational trends. Asian intercultural contacts within the Social Gospel movement raise the question of whether “Asia” is merely a figment of the Western imagination. The groups discussed in this chapter did not simply lump all “Asians” together but saw certain parts of the landmass of the Asian continent as key leverage for a “conquest of Asia.” They articulated a geopolitical slant in the age of high imperialism (1870s–1918), before a new interwar Christian internationalism developed out of their endeavors in the 1920s and 1930s. This metamorphosis came as a result of local agency and missionary experience. For Americans, China loomed large as a potential market for goods and souls, but in the 1880s India and Japan were equally or more important. Especially in India, because of the shared language of English, and the growing Indian education and syncretic religious movements, the field was thought ripe for conversion among the young, yet a danger at the same time. There was widespread acceptance that any Christian conversion must accept some indigenization, due to the sheer numbers to be persuaded, and this theme came to the fore after 1900 as nationalist movements grew in strength. The concept of Asia functioned in the minds of missionary strategists as a productive field for transnational synergies, with ideas, techniques, and projects sweeping across colonial boundaries. For Americans, networks of communications were vital in taking advantage of these opportunities for cultural change. This topic adds therefore to our understanding of transnational history and its global networks. The question of Asia and the Social Gospel should be seen in this light. The Social Gospel became closely identified with the history of the YMCA.3 It was also linked with those Protestant churches that displayed in the twentieth century broadly liberal sympathies. These were the groups that had led the North American (and to some extent British) Protestant missionary outpouring of the 1880s onward, which, in turn, identified in 40 Tyrrell
the US case with American cultural expansion, and even with formal US imperialism. This cultural hegemony of mainline Protestantism survived in the United States until the 1960s and subsequently withered upon the decline in liberal Protestant identification, leakage to the faith-based churches, and the secularization of liberal academics away from formal adherence to churches.4 The connections between missionaries and the social service focus of the Social Gospel have escaped the examination they deserve. 5 What work does exist deals with the outward expansion of American power and the projection of American ideas. It assimilates the Social Gospel to the interpretation of American imperialism as a modernizing project in its colonies, protectorates, or spheres of influence. It concedes the impact on, or parallels between, the Social Gospel and “secular missionaries” engaged in “modernization” as a unilinear process of Westernization.6 Make no mistake, Protestant missionaries were either directly or indirectly implicated in European imperialism in the 1890s to 1920s, but the relationship was a complex and changing one. US history texts routinely cite Josiah Strong’s 1885 work, Our Country, as both a source of Social Gospel ideas and a rationale for American imperialism. It is strangely not considered a problem that Strong’s work predated the Spanish-American War by thirteen years, and that Strong did not consider overseas colonies in 1885 but, rather, anticipated a demographic race of survival under Darwinian theory. Not until Expansion under New World-Conditions (1900) did Strong sanction territorial aggrandizement abroad—after the United States had already acquired a formal empire—and even then he did not make missionary work there central to his argument.7 In clarifying the Social Gospel’s career abroad, using Strong’s version and school of thought as a causal factor in the rise of American formal imperialism is therefore dubious at best. Relatively absent in existing scholarship is the impact of the nonEuropean experience of missions on US missionary strategies. The 1890s to the 1920s marked the high point of so-called mainline Protestant missionary effort with widespread impacts on American society through furloughs, returnees, and the activities of boards organizing the missionary enterprise. Asia lay at the heart of this Protestant ambition to create a more Christian world—to realize the Social Gospel ideal of the “kingdom of god” on earth through “social service” as a social practice.8 China, India, and Japan were chief targets because those regions were undergoing the most intense economic disruption under the influence of Western cultural and economic penetration. They were the biggest fields, but Southeast Asia, the Straits Settlements, and the kingdom of Siam figured in mission calculations too. Some of these colonial or quasi-colonial settings saw nationalist movements Vectors of Practicality 41
present alternatives to imperialism in ways that most of Africa did not at that time. This missionary work opened spaces for social and economic innovation, particularly in the sector of agriculture where American missionaries and their allies working in China, Korea, and India started social service programs to promote agrarian development.9 Mobilizing the rural population of Asian countries for Christianity with the aid of a practical Social Gospel began before World War I. By 1900, medical missionary work and the building of hospitals and schools were common in American missions and, in some cases, went back decades earlier. But dealing with the social problems that the development of European colonialism presented was not the initial work of the evangelizing forces of the Student Volunteer Movement of 1886 and the YMCA of North America, which sent out officials to Japan and India from 1889. As Social Gospel theologian Walter Rauschenbusch wrote in 1912, “The Young Men’s Christian Association used to stand for religious individualism. The mere mention of ‘sociology’ once excited ridicule.”10 That organization aggressively pushed religious conversion and targeted students to develop an educated cadre of leaders able to self-Christianize the Asian continent. Only in the late 1890s did the Social Gospel begin to flourish in the missionary setting, and the experience of famine and its relief enhanced this change.11 Though there were different temporal rhythms for different Western missionary groups, a common factor was the role of local missions in discovering, through experience, the need for practical agrarian assistance. For example, Samuel Higginbottom arrived in India with a BA from Princeton in 1903 as an earnest, Gospel-oriented evangelical teacher but quickly found that he needed an agriculture degree to make any headway. Higginbottom went back to the United States for this purpose and returned to start what became an agricultural college in 1910 in Allahabad.12 Historian Gary Hess sees Higginbottom’s work as a precursor to the Point Four Program of technical assistance initiated by the Truman administration in 1949.13 All over India and in East Asia, changes in outlook of this kind were occurring around 1900–1918. In his pioneering book, The Stubborn Earth, historian Randall Stross shows a similar process in mission-assisted agricultural education beginning around 1908 to 1912 in China.14 The major stimulus in India was the famine of 1897–1900, and communication to home boards on the growing Indian population and the inability of Indian agriculture to deal with these demographic problems. Realizing that handouts and other palliative measures were not enough during the 1900 famine in Maharashtra, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) began under the initiative of local 42 Tyrrell
missionaries at Ahmednagar in 1902 to devise agricultural education programs for mission stations—to create “industries as will be of commercial value, [and] at the same time making the destitute children of the mission independent.”15 Even though the Social Gospel had diverse roots that included experience in American and British cities,16 the YMCA or Christian missionaries received practical training as Social Gospelers abroad by responding to local conditions, to the local population, and to the changing political situation of the colonial state. In this context, the YMCA became chiefly significant as a vector for carrying new ideas to other places and for internationalizing Social Gospel work and social services such as agrarian reform. With improved knowledge of famine conditions as a result of enhanced communications, both local missions and YMCA leaders became increasingly aware that, with the vast majority of Indians living in rural areas, any hope of converting these people required addressing their material circumstances. Though I concentrate on India and on American YMCA missionaries in what follows, famine also occurred in many other places, especially China.17 In Shanxi Province in China in the mid- to late nineteenth century, British missionaries went through a similar experience of responding pragmatically to the on-the-ground need to address the social and economic plight of the peasantry.18 The decisive innovation of the YMCA in the 1890s was organizational. Only when the North American YMCA penetration of Asia began in 1887 was the American infrastructure laid down for the systematic publicizing of the need for more than palliative responses to famine. That is to say, though American Christian missionary boards came relatively late to social service work in the European empires, it was the YMCA’s programs that transformed the American section of the philanthropic relief responses in the Euro-American empires by 1900–1914. As far as immediate famine relief went, the American Christian Herald newspaper was the key missionary supporter in mobilizing famine relief on a large scale in the 1890s. Its editor and moving force, Louis Klopsch, drew the home churches’ attention to the problem in an unprecedented fashion.19 There were local contexts other than famine and overpopulation shaping the international missionary shift toward a Social Gospel priority: one was the interaction of material need with rising nationalism. Though especially obvious in India, this nationalism was a transimperial phenomenon. YMCA strategists viewed their role as necessary to build on and take advantage of the transimperial wave of nationalisms, so as to bring forth a crossfertilizing of Christian movements within the Asian world. This synergy was precisely what the YMCA could do with its international organizing and Vectors of Practicality 43
networking. YMCA traveling secretary George Sherwood Eddy put it plainly in his New Era in Asia (1913), where he tied economic modernization and improved communications to the nationalist awakening.20 For Eddy, Japan had led the way in opening up Asia, and that nation’s significance as a military power and empire was widely discussed among missionaries as well as geopolitical strategists. When it came to nationalism, however, the increasing prominence of the Indian National Congress was the social phenomenon that most stimulated Eddy’s awareness of the need to embrace social and economic reform across the region in the interests of targeting audiences for Christian conversion. If missionaries were to take advantage of the situation, they had to become attentive to the rural masses but channel energies into a Christian version of social service. Mobilizing the rural poor was key, as it was clear there were not enough educated elites to convert. Moreover, the mass of converts were, especially in South India where the Protestant missions had made inroads in the 1890s under the impact of famine, centered on the lower castes of landless and tenant farmers. But mission and local priorities diverged. While the former favored externally generated agricultural expertise, Indians pushed the missions and the British government to see the problem of famine in ways that made the local social context central rather than the palliative relief of individual improvidence or critique of Indian cultural insufficiency. Missionary boards condemned traditions such as the sacredness of cows and saw Western intervention, including by the British government, as a modernizing force. In 1902, when the ABCFM sent their first missionary specifically to educate Indian farmers on modern agricultural practice in the wake of the famine, the stress was on the moral failures of Indians and the need for individual change.21 The reports back home did not identify as key the role of the British in shifting the agriculture of India to cash crops, exported by railroads and supported by irrigation.22 American missionaries generally endorsed such economic development as likely to prepare the way for their own spiritual and humanitarian endeavors. Thus, the missionary teacher Benjamin Hunnicutt, a pioneer in the field of agricultural education, extolled Britain’s contribution to India’s modernization through railroads and other engineering projects in a much later (1931) report to the Missionary Education Movement of the United States and Canada.23 The alternative to top-down development was a more Indian-centered approach, which acknowledged the complexities of the caste structure and communalism and criticized the profound inequalities prevalent under the British Raj. This alternative argument was made manifest by agitation from below. While not rejecting technology, Indian converts emphasized working 44 Tyrrell
within Indian traditions and practicalities concerning knowledge transfer. Rather than stressing the role of experts, they focused in the 1910s on the delivery of social services and made the socioeconomic problem of unequal access to economic and other resources the critical point.24 These dynamics were clear in the case of Eddy, who was closely identified as a leader of the American Social Gospel tradition. Eddy’s Social Gospel beliefs as social service flourished only after he became a YMCA national secretary for India in 1897. There, he initially maintained his continuing commitment to the primacy of the Gospel’s spread, the importance of personal conversion, and the essential “Christward” nature of necessary change.25 By 1911 he had tempered, but not overturned, his Christian individualism. He recognized that the “overcrowding of population, with poor methods of agriculture, naturally lead to poverty. The hoarding of wealth instead of placing it at interest, the tying up of money in jewels, the prevalence of debt, and the tendency to litigation, also rob the country of its resources.”26 But this appreciation of economics and social forces did not mean Eddy jettisoned Christian values; rather, he advanced them as inseparable from the secular economic purpose as the key to overcoming poverty through cultural change.27 He emphasized the need for Indian culture to abandon its traditional approaches to poverty and modernize with the “Occidental principles of liberty.” That would allow individuals to rise in the “social scale.”28 In this continuing focus on the need for Western-induced change, Eddy’s role in agrarian initiatives remained necessarily reactive to local conditions. As traveling secretary for Asia, he was never in one place long enough to do otherwise, as it would have required extensive local research on his part. Only by 1915 did Eddy become clearly associated with rural reform from the bottom up, and his role was to support, fund, and publicize the local initiatives. The source of this new emphasis on indigenous input came from within India. The Christian churches in South India led the rural work through microfinancing. From the establishment of agricultural extension services and village cooperatives, albeit assisted by YMCA officials from the United States, Canada, and Britain based in India, these works were underway in the YMCA’s rural department by 1913. The leaders of the rural program included two notable indigenous Christians29 who advocated credit banks and arranged “for instruction and demonstration in practical agri culture.”30 Daniel Swamidoss trained as a lawyer but worked from 1914 for the YMCA’s rural department. He later became a traveling lecturer and fund-raiser (and influenced YMCA official Leonard Elmhirst, who in turn appears to have influenced Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore to adopt a rural reconstruction approach to Indian national revitalization).31 Better Vectors of Practicality 45
known is K. T. Paul, who headed the YMCA’s rural work from 1913 and was, from 1916, national secretary of the Indian YMCA.32 As the first indigenous YMCA leader in India, he pushed for a formally constituted rural reconstruction program after 1918. Colleagues averred that he did “the heavy part of the administrative work” and had “enlisted the present secretaries, the co-operation of the leading men in the districts and secured the necessary funds.”33 The groundwork was laid through plans for “strategic” centers providing agricultural and educational extension services via village associations established from 1914 onward. These built upon the cooperative credit arrangements put in train by the British government in 1904.34 In fact there were already twelve thousand cooperatives and only one was based upon a mission station, showing that the North American YMCA was reactive to changes in Indian society as well as imperial British policy.35 Indigenous officials served as go-betweens on agricultural methods and marketing with the rural cooperatives. These cooperatives were “the means whereby the principles of the programme in rural economics” were “spread and made available to large numbers of people.” The YMCA considered their cadre as adding value to this indigenous approach by giving the work “a distinct advantage over similar enterprises of the government that suffer from inadequate publicity.”36 Building on this grassroots basis before US entry to World War I, the Indian YMCA established, under Paul’s initiative, the Rural Demonstration Centre led by Dr. Duane Spencer Hatch at Marthandam from 1924.37 While this local initiative was key, the specific program and nomenclature of “rural reconstruction” had a multilateral and transnational genealogy. Paul did not invent the term “rural reconstruction,” though he so claimed. It came from experience of YMCA humanitarian aid in Europe at the end of World War I, which officials such as Eddy had witnessed.38 Kenyon Butterfield, the Massachusetts Agricultural College expert who became the chief spokesman for the internationalization of the Indian and other mission initiatives in agricultural development in the 1920s, started to think about an explicit program of “rural reconstruction” as a result of his war service for the YMCA in the United States, illustrated in his book, The Farmer and the New Day (1919). He already had missionary contacts from pre–World War I summer institutes on agriculture that the American YMCA held, but his international interest expanded in the 1920s.39 As part of the China Educational Commission, a missionary-sponsored body with both British and US membership, Butterfield gathered material for his 1922 book, Education and Chinese Agriculture, where he advocated social and economic reconstruction grounded in village units. This recommendation attempted to generalize the Indian YMCA strategy from before the war.40 46 Tyrrell
The cooperationist ideal also had international sources beyond the American involvement. The Danish cooperative movement was the gold standard of such farming, and the Indians admired the Danes’ work.41 Also influential was the Irishman Horace Plunkett.42 Plunkett’s ideas about a multifaceted program of rural regeneration appealed to Social Gospelers in the United States, especially through the impact of Theodore Roosevelt’s Country Life Commission, which was also inspired by Plunkett. The YMCA in the United States took up this program with alacrity after 1910 in the aid of what they explicitly called “rural manhood,” arguing that the farmer and his sons had been forgotten in the Social Gospel’s drive to aid city youths. A key link between US agricultural policy and the YMCA was Roosevelt’s right-hand man, Gifford Pinchot, a rich Episcopalian who embraced the Social Gospel as part of his influential conservation reform at home.43 Pinchot wrote in the YMCA’s Rural Manhood about the need for “modern” farmers, emphasizing both technical and scientific as well as cultural shifts, along with the need for better recreational opportunities for young men. Pinchot also encouraged missionary activity through the socalled Forward Movement of Christian businessmen.44 The Indian YMCA and its indigenous converts absorbed much from this swirl of Euro- American thinking, but they combined it with awareness of colonial restiveness evident in the campaigns of the Indian National Congress. K. T. Paul was a broad-ranging and strategic thinker with a strong commitment to Indian nationalism. With Gandhian sympathies, he argued that Christians must be part of the nationalist movement but reasoned that they could not lead that movement because Indian Christians were such a small minority of the Indian population. This limited Paul’s potential influence within the larger national struggle, which partly explains the historiographic neglect of his legacy.45 Rather than dominate, the Christian students’ role would be to negotiate between and serve as interlocutors among the deeply divided communal interests. For this, Paul championed education as an Indian responsibility under the new “Morley-Minto” reforms of the British government and argued that the future lay not with a small elite but in mass social transformation.46 Though Paul won the praise of England’s Spectator magazine for his later embrace of cooperation in the devolution of the British Raj, this was an advocacy that brought him into conflict with Gandhi and the noncooperationist movement in the 1920s.47 For this reason, too, his work became marginalized and later largely forgotten, but its impact on the YMCA and Eddy’s advocacy of an international program was considerable. Eddy responded to the indigenous ferment in which Paul took a key role.48 While Eddy continued to give priority to evangelism in his speeches Vectors of Practicality 47
back home, in India he toured the villages and championed the cooperative banks that indigenous Christians were anxious to start. He gave money for the founding of the Madras Christian Co-operative Bank49 and reported on its work to the American YMCAs in articles published in the YMCA magazine Rural Manhood. This banking enterprise was a form of microfinancing, endorsed by the YMCA’s international leadership. 50 As Eddy documented, the origins of the idea lay in the indigenization of the Indian YMCA. This work was done mostly by Indian males though not limited to them. The gendered and masculinist nature of the YMCA was apparent in Paul’s stress upon the “full, completed manhood” required for Indian regeneration. Applying the YMCA’s triangular symbol, its slogan of mind, body, and spirit, and its attempts to introduce physical fitness programs to its target audiences across Asia, Paul worked to see the youths of India “ever fit and efficient” for “Christlike service to others.”51 But the gendered nature of the Indian YMCA also touched on local traditions. Raised in a Telugu village by a single mother, Swamidoss spoke directly of women’s role in society. He represented women in his speeches as heroic, sacrificial figures and deployed traditional cultural tropes. When he told the tale of his own mother, she stood for all India, and his appeal to such stereotypes won praise among foreign supporters. At a meeting in Adelaide, Australia, in 1927, Swamidoss left “scarcely a dry eye in the church as he told the story of this heroic Indian mother” and her sacrifice to ensure that he could serve India. “That is why,” he concluded, “they call me Swami-doss, which means God’s servant.”52 But even as gender stereotypes were adopted by the YMCA in India, one must remember that the rural work was aimed at families rather than individuals. Swamidoss “gathered around him at Nellore district the most promising of the young men and their wives within a 10-mile radius.” In a model village at Indukurpet, one hundred miles from Madras (now Chennai), he taught them “how to read and write.” He gave “practical medical instruction” as well as “tuition in different vocations” and encouraged self-sufficiency of the village and the family, with spinning and weaving classes for women.53 The YWCA supplemented this male-dominated presence. Its first missionary to India arrived in 1895, but its rural initiatives developed from the YMCA models in the 1920s. The YWCA’s work in India has been interpreted as the export of an American Social Gospel ideal applied to Indian circumstances rather than a multilateral set of exchanges. But the YWCA in India was modeled on the decade-long indigenous YMCA program. Its attention to the teaching of spinning and weaving was a strategy similar to the rural reconstruction movement under YMCA leadership that 48 Tyrrell
tried to synchronize with the awakening of the Indian masses, as advocated by Gandhi’s protest movement. The input of indigenous Christian converts such as the Columbia University–educated Dora Mohini Maya Das was important in the process.54 Though the North American YMCA was not the source of these innovations, it was a suitable vehicle for local, educated Christians to further their aspirations for local revitalization of rural communities. Paul and others turned to American YMCA and Student Volunteer Movement mentors, such as the well-known John Mott, who toured India with Paul before World War I, for financial assistance and advice. Locals seized upon the opportunities that the missionary phalanx offered for the indigenization of a student cadre. Paul emphasized that the American YMCAs were able to avoid the close association with the British rulers of India and therefore could in some measure escape from the suffocating impacts of caste and racial prejudice that imperial rule rested upon. The YMCA was better suited for this work than the missions themselves because it displayed “no preference by reason of caste, colour and creed, of wealth or poverty, of urban or rural status.”55 An Indian judge stated that “the Indian Church in Travancore can never be strong until it is led by Indian leaders. To my mind the Young Men’s Christian Association is much better fitted than the Mission for raising up and training that leadership.”56 The judge sensed the YMCA’s strength, rooted in its nondenominational approach in missionary fields, and its commitment to indigenization from 1913. Its focus on youth and education brought it credibility as an innovative organization. Its “most outstanding thing,” Paul recognized, was “the wonderful adaptability of the Movement to a new situation.”57 Though the YMCA also had a reputation for its ability to access wealthier sources of funding, derived from its philanthropic contacts in the United States, even more important was the capacity of its interdenominational work to transmit knowledge about agrarian reforms between different denominational missions and to other transnational organizations.58 These characteristics made the North American YMCA a crucial vector for the young Indian YMCA officials who took positions in the Indian organization from 1913 to 1924. The YMCA indebtedness to the indigenous movements went beyond the Christian cadre that joined its own ranks. It extended to the larger social environment. The mobilization began among not only Protestant Indians but also Catholic Indian Christians such as Louis Dominic Swamikannu Pillai. It was he who started the first cooperative bank (the Salem District Union Bank) in Madras Presidency, in 1904. Pillai was registrar of the Cooperative Credit Societies of Madras and “a pillar of the Catholic Vectors of Practicality 49
Church.” He served as president of the Madras Legislative Council.59 At a time when the ABCFM still exhibited bigoted attitudes toward the Catholic missions in India as depraved and idolatrous competitors, Paul did not limit his work to cooperation with evangelical Protestants but pursued a nondenominational Christian path. Paul’s and Swamidoss’s work did not emerge in a social and political vacuum. Rather, it reflected a wider agricultural reform, signaled in the British Raj’s passage of the Co-operative Credit Societies Act in 1904 and modified in 1912 as an act that gave “such societies . . . the sanction and protection of Government.”60 Paul wanted to advance the cooperative movement’s objectives and realized that the district cooperative banks created under British law would not loan to local communal groups or societies without adequate property security, which poor farmers did not have. Caste disability also deprived many peasants, including Christians, of membership in government cooperative credit societies, and hence access to cheap loans. This was why Paul turned to the YMCA and to Eddy’s personal wealth. While the cooperatives that Paul organized were not exclusively for Christians, the presence of “rural Christian communities” across southern India with a sufficiently large number of adherents was key.61 These village communities supplied a disciplined core of officials and agents to educate lower castes in the new methods of credit. They were trained “by . . . government experts in the bookkeeping of co-operative loan societies, the auditing of books and general business principles.”62 That is not to deny that the strategy was still influenced by evangelical Protestantism’s North American moral agenda. Widely circulated in the mission stations, the literature of the Young People’s Society of Christian Endeavor and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union was utilized by the YMCA.63 At first glance, this connection imparted paternalistic elements to the rural reform. Alcohol consumption among loan applicants was discouraged, for example. The cooperatives were also used to reallocate outlays on dowry money and traditional wedding feasts.64 But YMCA officials believed that indigenous committees in the village cooperatives, not distant officials, could best persuade Indian peasants to divert their money from such nonproductive expenditure. It was not a strategy imposed by Euro-Americans, though it did reflect the view of an indigenous, educated elite. Swamidoss pushed the anti-alcohol policy, using traditional Indian concerns about the “five devils of India, dirt, debt, drunkenness, demons and disease.”65 This program of rural reconstruction exposed a key tension. The drive to utilize local knowledge and Indian traditions was potentially in conflict with the YMCA objective of using European and American agricultural 50 Tyrrell
expertise to improve rural conditions. Some (Euro-American) officials of the Indian YMCA felt that Paul’s efforts to empower the indigenous might threaten the Raj and, in so doing, bring the YMCA into conflict with British power at a time of increased Gandhian agitation. In response, Paul left the YMCA to pursue a more overtly political approach but died prematurely in 1931.66 Within the YMCA, ostensibly apolitical expertise began to take precedence, as illustrated in the career of Spencer Hatch. Yet adaptation to Indian village circumstances remained important, as shown in the work of Swamidoss. Despite these internal YMCA tensions, the idea of village-based rural reconstruction became a YMCA mantra. Indigenous adoption of transnational missionary themes on moral reform spurred reciprocal flows to the United States and dissemination of rural reconstruction in other parts of the developing world, such as Latin America. By the 1930s, the work had impacts on the entire structure and strategy of the Protestant mission activity, underlining and reinforcing ecumenism along with an internationalist ideology. The nature of the Social Gospel ideology, especially its emphasis on practical application and participation, facilitated these transfers of knowledge, which helped to push the ideology into areas of secular reform. This indigenous movement had implications in the United States by way of the YMCA’s own global network. The YMCA served this purpose when officials returned home to work in the committees and bureaucracy of the Ys as well as in local churches. Little-known Otis Stanchfield, a Michigan-raised YMCA official who trained the new indigenous rural secretaries from 1913 to 1919 in Bangalore, later married a China missionary and served the American YMCA’s International Committee for two decades from 1920 after his return from India, chiefly as a fund-raiser.67 At the other end of the spectrum of visibility was Eddy, who in the 1930s promoted cooperative farming in the Mississippi delta in a manner reminiscent of the South Asian experiments.68 Feedback also occurred when Spencer Hatch returned to the United States from India in 1952 and applied his knowledge to the Hopi Native Americans in Arizona.69 The feedback effects were not simply one-directional from any one country to the United States but multilateral. Not only did American YMCA representatives return home to continue YMCA work; indigenous leaders in India developed strong contacts in other Western countries. K. T. Paul traveled to Britain in 1918–1919 and 1931 and to the United States twice and was a leading figure in the World’s Conference of YMCAs in Finland in 1926 and the International Missionary Council meeting in Jerusalem in 1928.70 Swamidoss went to Australia in 1918 and 1926–1927 to raise funds and spread news of the work. Certainly the United States was a Vectors of Practicality 51
major recipient of feedback from the missionary fields, but it was not alone. Even when Swamidoss traveled to North America in 1922–1923 to advocate for the cooperative credit system, he attended an international forum in New York gathering experts on diffusion of agricultural education and technology across the world. There, Swamidoss “spoke on ‘Rural India’ ” but also “explained the rural life situation of other Asiatic countries.”71 He met Kenyon Butterfield, the American agricultural representative who had already undertaken a survey of missionary and agricultural conditions in China in 1921.72 Butterfield became an advocate in international forums for American support of rural reconstruction in the 1920s, drawing in part on the experience of the Indian YMCA.73 The impact of the missionary movement on the United States was both multifaceted and multilateral. It helped shape the theology of the Social Gospel and spread its appeal. To Rauschenbusch, the most distinguished but by no means the only Social Gospel theorist, the missionaries’ work bolstered his arguments for realization of the Kingdom of God concept through social action. As late as 1907, he still assumed the central role of metropolitan missions in setting the tone for global work, but by 1912, he contended that the social and political structure of the world must be changed in the light of missionary experience. “To-day the leaders of the missionary movement are teaching a statesmanlike conception of the destiny of Christianity as the spiritual leaven of the East and the common basis of a world-wide Christian civilization.” 74 Beyond the impact on the Social Gospel’s theology in the United States, the experience in Asia, particularly India but also China, influenced international missionary programs. The global institutions of Christian missions were changed in the process, contributing to the toolbox of ideas from which post–World War II secular US and UN developmentalism drew. The Protestant mission boards at home established or encouraged new international institutions after World War I. The International Association of Agricultural Missions (IAAM) was organized in 1919 as a result of Benjamin Hunnicutt’s initiative. In 1907 he was the “first agricultural missionary to South America” and, on a global level, “one of the first missionaries appointed to any field for specifically agricultural work.” 75 Representing the home and foreign mission boards of the United States and Canada, the IAAM served as a clearinghouse for global dissemination of ideas on rural reconstruction. Its conferences in the 1920s brought the subject to the attention of many churches, particularly in the Anglo-American world. This cross-missionary fertilization produced a shift in strategy for Protestant missionary leaders in the United States and other Western countries, revealed in the Jerusalem meeting of the International Missionary 52 Tyrrell
Council. Christian internationalist John Mott had toured the world as a key instigator of that 1928 council and its theme of “Rural Problems.” 76 Thereby he pressed ideas originally generated at the local level in Asia, turning what was essentially an Asian revitalization movement into a global program. From 1915 to 1928, Mott was general secretary of the International Committee of the YMCA and from 1926 to 1937 was president of the World Alliance of YMCAs. From 1928 to 1946, as chair of the International Missionary Council he used his key position at the apex of transnational organizations feeding information on missionary endeavors to and fro, making peasant uplift central to a revised global missionary plan.77 This was a transformed version of his Evangelization of the World in This Generation (1900). Instead of an outward thrust of Western knowledge and the primacy of evangelical conversion, the new program envisaged an interlocking network of organizations responding to and facilitating rural and industrial change in the developing world. This revision was articulated in Mott’s Present-Day Summons to the World Mission of Christianity (1931) based on the principles of the 1928 International Missionary Council meeting.78 Mott recommended that “on every considerable rural field[,] special Christian rural institutions or rural departments of general Christian colleges or universities should be developed, together with adequate facilities for experimental work.”79 Historians working on these feedback mechanisms into an internationalist discourse of the interwar Christian churches will still need to sort out the complicated relationship between international influences in agrarian reform and national ones. Not only did a strong tradition of rural reform emerge domestically in the United States from the Progressive Era conservation movement led by Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot. The idea of a village-centered rural reconstruction in India arose more or less simultaneously with the domestic program of rural reform in the United States that Roosevelt sponsored under the Country Life movement.80 But the flow of influence was never purely outward. The development of schools in the United States at which agricultural missionaries were trained came from mission-driven demands. The American agricultural colleges catering to missionary education did not commence until 1924, at Cornell, a decade or more after the YMCA rural reconstruction programs began, and well after such agricultural colleges started in the mission fields of India (1910) and China (Canton College, 1907).81 The YMCA official, missionary, and international traveler Professor Basil Mathews of Boston University noted in a 1938 comparative study that the “rural reconstruction” movement was worldwide, not tied to a specific mission field. But “the model plan” was, Mathews stated, conceived in India Vectors of Practicality 53
by K. T. Paul and “developed out of world-wide experience” by Kenyon Butterfield. In the 1930s, this plan was “adopted and adapted in China, Japan, and Africa.” As a holistic program, it treated “a group of villages as a unit—a community, to be served by a trained pastor-teacher-agriculturist and his wife.”82 Mott’s and Mathews’s work was part of a new Christian internationalism that sought distance from the formal imperialism overshadowing internationalism before World War I.83 In 1931, Mott proclaimed this new internationalism through “the world mission of Christianity.” Led by “tens of thousands of missionaries, as ambassadors, interpreters, and mediators,” this “Christian internationalism” was, Mott claimed, “doing more than any other one factor to throw out strands of understanding friendship and unselfish collaboration between the peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America on the one hand and those of Europe, North America, and Australasia on the other.”84 In his view, the missionary enterprise had built pathways to multilateral cooperation. Mott’s international proposal drew authority from the 1928 meeting, where the “social content of the Christian Message” addressed the economic problems of the era, as it never had before institutionally, thus rendering the Social Gospel internationalist in content. K. T. Paul and other non-European delegates had been vocal at that conference. This Christian internationalism as a social practice was, as Mott noted, “powerfully seconded or supported by such auxiliary agencies of the churches as the World’s Student Christian Federation.”85 He added that the YMCA was particularly well-known and recognized for its interdenominational work.86 To be sure, this Christian internationalism has to be assessed in terms of its efficacy, its implementation in the 1930s, and the context of competing versions of internationalisms. Interwar Christian internationalism had origins in the era of high imperialism of the late nineteenth century through the reaction to the missionary experience of colonialism and nationalism. It took sustenance from and was facilitated by the spread of new globalizing technologies of transport and communications. But only in the 1920s could it hope to be freed from the assumptions of overt imperialism. This change did not occur automatically. The engagement with the indigenous made a difference. One aspect of this liberation of internationalism from imperialism was the Social Gospel and its tradition of embedding the Christian mission in a social practice, but shaped in profound ways by exposure to the colonial world. Another aspect was the ability of the YMCA (and the YWCA) to act as interlocutors forging a more internationalist version of that practice. Within this broader shift away from formal imperialism to a world in which secular international organizations began to play a larger role after 54 Tyrrell
World War II, the YMCA was a crucial vector for the transnational transmission of Social Gospel ideas, due to its organizational and practical characteristics. Especially important were the nondenominational and international nature of Y work and the activities of traveling and national secretaries. Whereas even recent revisionist discussion of the Social Gospel concerns mainly its internal gestation and impact, through the YMCA there was a substantial engagement of the Social Gospel across national boundaries. While this work moved in multilateral directions, the core of attention was very much on Asia because of the imperatives of the American Protestant missions. This work opened spaces of social and economic innovation, particularly in the agricultural sector, where Americans and their allies in China and India started programs to combat famine and promote agrarian development before World War I. Though paternalist in certain ways, these programs made central the roles of indigenous workers and, because of the breadth and depth of missionary contacts, were able to draw upon a wider range of influences than the churches and missionaries alone. In turn, this transnational work spurred reciprocal flows to the United States. The work had impacts on the entire structure and strategy of mission activity in the United States by the early 1930s, underlining and reinforcing ecumenism and an internationalist ideology. The Social Gospel facilitated these transfers of knowledge and developmental policies, even as these policies became detached from their (Christian) ideological roots after World War II. NOTES 1. The initial spur came from the late J. C. van Leur, whose Dutch writings on Asian trade and the Dutch East Indies were summarized for English readers in W. F. Wertheim, “Early Asian Trade: An Appreciation of J. C. van Leur,” Far Eastern Quarterly 13 (February 1954): 167–173. 2. For a reassessment of Asian and global economic history using these new analytical approaches, and their impacts on the trends that Van Leur set, see Giorgio Riello and Tirthankar Roy, eds., How India Clothed the World: The World of South Asian Textiles, 1500– 1850 (Leiden: Brill, 2009). 3. Ronald C. White Jr. and C. Howard Hopkins, The Social Gospel: Religion and Reform in Changing America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1976). 4. For the historiography of the Social Gospel, see Ralph E. Luker, “Interpreting the Social Gospel: Reflections on Two Generations of Historiography,” in Perspectives on the Social Gospel: Papers from the Inaugural Social Gospel Conference at Colgate Rochester Divinity School, ed. Christopher H. Evans (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1999), 1–13; Susan Hill Lindley, “Deciding Who Counts: Toward a Revised Definition of the Social Gospel,” in The Social Gospel Today, ed. Christopher H. Evans (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 17–26. 5. C. H. Hopkins, The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism 1865–1915 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1940), 3; cf. Donald W. Treadgold, The West in Vectors of Practicality 55
Russia and China: Religious and Secular Thought in Modern Times, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 2:72; Jun Xing, Baptized in the Fire of Revolution: The American Social Gospel and the YMCA in China, 1919–1937 (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 1996), 14. 6. Recent work on economic development and US foreign policy post-1945 acknowledges the legacy of the Social Gospel tradition, but in some cases the term “missionary” is used chiefly as a metaphor. Larry Grubbs, Secular Missionaries: Americans and African Development in the 1960s (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009); David Ekbladh, The Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction of an American World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 18–19, 171. 7. Josiah Strong, Expansion under New World-Conditions (New York: Baker and Taylor, 1900), 10. 8. Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis (London: Macmillan, 1907), 53, 59–60, 309, 301; Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianizing the Social Order (1912; New York: Macmillan, 1926), 101–102. 9. Janet F. Fishburn, “The Social Gospel as Missionary Ideology,” in North American Foreign Missions, 1810–1914: Theology, Theory, and Policy, ed. Wilbert R. Shenk (Grand Rapids, MN: William B. Eerdmans, 2004), 218, 222. 10. Rauschenbusch, Christianizing the Social Order, 17. 11. Ian Tyrrell, Reforming the World: The Creation of America’s Moral Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 111. 12. Sam Higginbottom, The Gospel and the Plow: Or the Old Gospel and Modern Farming in Ancient India (New York: Macmillan, 1921), 64. 13. Gary R. Hess, Sam Higginbottom of Allahabad: Pioneer of Point Four to India (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1967); “A Guide to the Additional Papers of Sam Higginbottom and Jane Ethelind Cody Higginbottom 1844–1971,” University of Virginia Library, http://ead.lib.virginia.edu/vivaxtf/view?docId=uva-sc/viu03396.xml. 14. Randall Stross, The Stubborn Earth: American Agriculturalists on Chinese Soil, 1898–1937 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987). 15. Ninety-Second Annual Report of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions . . . 1902 (Boston: American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 1902), 74; Gerald H. Anderson, “Hume, Robert Allen,” in Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, ed. Gerald H. Anderson (New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 1998), 309–310. 16. A later rural manifestation is treated in Erik Gellman and Jarod Roll, The Gospel of the Working Class: Labor’s Southern Prophets in New Deal America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011). 17. Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World (New York: Verso, 2001), 71–72, 271; Charles M. Pepper, Life-Work of Louis Klopsch: Romance of a Modern Knight of Mercy (New York: Christian Herald, 1910), 165– 180; Lillian M. Li, Fighting Famine in North China: State, Market, and Environmental Decline (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007); Lillian M. Li, “Famine and Famine Relief: Viewing Africa in the 1980s from China in the 1920s,” in Drought and Hunger in Africa: Denying Famine a Future, ed. Michael H. Glantz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 421. 18. Peter Tze Ming Ng, Chinese Christianity: An Interplay between Global and Local Perspectives (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 120–121; Brian Stanley, Protestant Missionaries and British Imperialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Leicester: Apollos, 1990). 56 Tyrrell
19. Tyrrell, Reforming the World, chap. 5; Heather Curtis, Holy Humanitarians: American Evangelicals and Global Aid (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018). 20. Sherwood Eddy, The New Era in Asia (New York: Missionary Education Movement of the United States and Canada, 1913), 8. 21. Ninety-First Annual Report of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (Boston: American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 1901), 74; Ninety-Second Annual Report of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions . . . 1902, 78. 22. Cf. Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts. 23. Benjamin H. Hunnicutt, The Story of Agricultural Missions (New York: Missionary Education Movement of the United States and Canada, 1931), 21–22, 25. See also C. C. Hatfield, “India with America in Rural Progress,” Rural Manhood 4 (September 1913): 243. 24. Douglas E. Haynes, Small Town Capitalism in Western India: Artisans, Merchants and the Making of the Informal Economy, 1870–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 179. 25. Sherwood Eddy, India’s Awakening (New York: Missionary Education Movement, 1911), 11, 89; “A Great Year for Missions,” Outlook, March 1, 1916, 493; F. W. Harold, “National Missionary Congress,” Herald of Gospel Liberty 108, no. 18 (May 4, 1916): 573; Eddy, New Era, 24. 26. Eddy, India’s Awakening, 22. 27. Eddy, India’s Awakening, 25. 28. Eddy, India’s Awakening, 11, 25. 29. “Mr K.T. Paul,” Spectator (London), April 18, 1931, 14; Susan Billington Harper, In the Shadow of the Mahatma: Bishop V.S. Azariah and the Travails of Christianity in British India (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2009), 54–62. 30. Leonard Dixon, “From the Villages of Travancore, India,” Rural Manhood 6 (January 1915): 31. 31. Graduated from the University of Madras in 1914, Swamidoss started working for the association village banks and their microloan programs that freed rural poor from moneylenders. “Daniel Swamidoss,” lantern slide, Springfield College Collection, accessed October 6, 2017, http://cdm16122.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p15370coll2 /id/3158/rec/19. Nandini Chatterjee, The Making of Indian Secularism: Empire, Law and Christianity, 1830–1960 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 159, 287; Leonard K. Elmhirst, Poet and Plowman (1979; Kolkata: Visva-Bharati, 2008), 17. See also Daniel Swamidoss, “A Way Out for Rural India,” Asia: The American Magazine on the Orient 23, no. 3 (1923): 198–203. 32. Chatterjee, Making of Indian Secularism, 153–154, 224; H. A. Popley, K.T. Paul, Christian Leader (Calcutta: Y.M.C.A. Publishing House, 1938). 33. Otis O. Stanchfield, “My First Year in India,” Rural Manhood 5 (December 1914): 434–437. 34. Ian Catanach, Rural Credit in Western India, 1875–1930: Rural Credit and the Co-operative Movement in the Bombay Presidency (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970); Archibald C. Harte (National Secretary, YMCA, for India and Ceylon), “For Economic Advance in Christian India,” Rural Manhood 5 (December 1914): 419, 420; Stanchfield, “My First Year in India,” 434–437. 35. Harte, “For Economic Advance in Christian India,” 420. Vectors of Practicality 57
36. A. E. Holt, A Study of the Y.M.C.A. of India, Burma & Ceylon, Made as an Integral Part of the International Survey (Calcutta: National Council Y.M.C.A., 1933), 43. 37. Hatch’s work is best treated in Harald Fischer-Tiné, “The YMCA and LowModernist Rural Development in South Asia, c.1922–1957,” Past and Present 240, no. 1 (2018): 193–234, https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gty006. 38. Year Book of the Young Men’s Christian Associations of North America for the Year May 1, 1920 to April 30, 1921 (New York: Association Press, 1921), 39. 39. Kenyon Butterfield, The Farmer and the New Day (New York: Macmillan, 1919), 17, 226. 40. Kenyon Butterfield, Education and Chinese Agriculture (Shanghai: China Christian Educational Association, 1922), 39. 41. Albert L. Park, “Reclaiming the Rural: Modern Danish Cooperative Living in Colonial Korea, 1925–37,” Journal of Korean Studies 19, no. 1 (2014): 115–151. 42. Horace Plunkett, “Iowa Rural Regeneration,” North American Review 214 (October 1921): 470–476. 43. Henry Israel, “Why Do Boys Leave the Farm?” Rural Manhood 1 (October 1910): 18–20; Laurence L. Doggett, “Professional Training for Secretaries,” Rural Manhood 5 (October 1914): 350–351. The missionary movement and conservation in the United States were linked; Butterfield, The Farmer and the New Day, 21. See Ian Tyrrell, Crisis of the Wasteful Nation: Empire and Conservation in Theodore Roosevelt’s America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), esp. 158–159. 44. Gifford Pinchot, “Rural Religious Problems,” Rural Manhood 7 (January 1916): 3. Note that the term “rural reconstruction” was not used then. See also Report of the Commission on Country Life, with an Introduction by Theodore Roosevelt (1911; repr., New York: Sturgis and Walton, 1917). 45. Chandra Mallampalli, Christians and Public Life in Colonial South India, 1863– 1937: Contending with Marginality (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), 24, 111, regarding stereotypes of Indian Christians as “anti-national or colonial.” 46. K. T. Paul, “Indian Christian View of Constitutional Reform,” Indian Christian Student 5, no. 3 (1919–1920): 44–47. 47. “Mr K.T. Paul.” For context, Abraham Vazhayil Thomas, Christians in Secular India (Cranbury, NJ: Associated Universities Presses, 1974), 104–109. 48. Sherwood Eddy to K. T. Paul, January 26, 1918, box 1, folder 3, Eddy Papers, Yale University, cited in Rick Nutt, The Whole Gospel for the Whole World (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1997), 131. 49. Sherwood Eddy, “Famine Stricken India,” Rural Manhood 10 (June 1919): 243–247. 50. Sherwood Eddy, “Rural Work in India,” Rural Manhood 7 (July 1916): 92–93. 51. “The Y.M.C.A.: What It Stands Fore [sic],” Times of India, August 24, 1918, 10. 52. “God’s Servant,” Australian Christian Commonwealth, February 11, 1927, 9. 53. “Home-Loving Indians,” Register (Adelaide), December 16, 1926, 10; A. Kanakaraj, The Light Houses of Rural Reconstruction: The History of the Y.M.C.A.’s Integrated Rural Development in South India (New Delhi: ISPCK, 2000). 54. “To Carry Light to Native Land,” Sun (St. John, New Brunswick), December 6, 1909, 3. For Mohini Maya Das (she adopted the Christian name Dora Maya Das), see Karen Phoenix, “A Social Gospel for India,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 13 (April 2014): 200–222. For a fuller sense of the tensions between missionary expansionism, gender and racial aspirations, and internationalism, conflict that played out in the meetings 58 Tyrrell
of the international missionary organizations, see Renate Howe, “The Australian Student Christian Movement and Women’s Activism in the Asia-Pacific Region, 1890s–1920s,” Australian Feminist Studies 16, no. 36 (2001): 311–321; Karen Phoenix, “ ‘Not by Might, nor by Power, but by Spirit’: The Global Reform Efforts of the Young Women’s Christian Association of the United States, 1895–1939” (PhD diss., University of Illinois, 2010), 2, 5; and Marion Cuthbert, Juliette Derricotte (New York: Woman’s Press, 1933), 33, 41, 44–45. 55. Times of India, August 24, 1918, 10. 56. Dixon, “From the Villages of Travancore, India,” 32. 57. Times of India, August 24, 1918, 10. 58. Ruth Rouse, The World’s Student Christian Federation: A History of the First Thirty Years (London: S. C. M. Press, 1948); Johanna M. Selles, The World Student Christian Federation, 1895–1925: Motives, Methods, and Influential Women (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2011); Renate Howe, A Century of Influence: The Australian Student Christian Movement, 1896–1996 (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2009). 59. “A Tale of Two Presidents,” Hindu, February 3, 2014, http://www.thehindu .com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-metroplus/a-tale-of-two-presidents/article5646565.ece. 60. Dixon, “From the Villages of Travancore, India,” 31. 61. Dixon, “From the Villages of Travancore, India,” 31. 62. Harte, “For Economic Advance in Christian India,” 420. 63. Selles, The World Student Christian Federation, 87; Ninety-First Annual Report of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, xviii. 64. Harte, “For Economic Advance in Christian India”; “Archibald C. Harte,” Digital Commonwealth, accessed October 6, 2017, https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org /search/commonwealth-oai:w37638544. 65. Quoted in “The Y.M.C.A. in India,” Port Pirie Recorder, August 27, 1930, 3; Harte “For Economic Advance in Christian India,” 420. 66. “Y.M.C.A. and Politics,” Times of India, February 26, 1927, 20; “Mr K.T. Paul.” 67. Hatfield, “India with America in Rural Progress,” 244; Evening Independent (St. Petersburg, FL), May 24, 1945, 11. 68. Valerie Grim, “Black Farm Families in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta: A Study of the Brooks Farm Community, 1920–1970” (unpublished thesis, Iowa State University, 1990), Retrospective Theses and Dissertations, Paper 9441. It is likely that the influences upon this later venture in rural reconstruction were more complex than a purely South Asian origin. Eddy traveled widely in the 1910s, reporting on YMCA policies across Asia. Moreover, he later toured Soviet and other cooperative farms. Fred C. Smith, “Shadows over Goshen: Plain Whites, Progressives and Paternalism in the Depression South” (unpublished dissertation, University of Southern Mississippi, 2008), 226–251; A. James McDonald to William Amberson, April 20, 1939, Cox Collection, series 7, fl. 2h, Delta and Providence Cooperative Farms Papers, 1925–1963, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina (digitized files); Sherwood Eddy to “My Dear Friend,” March 15, 1939, “Delta Cooperative Farm Rochdale Folder,” series 7, Delta and Providence Cooperative Farms Papers; Will D. Campbell, Providence (Waco, TX: Baylor University, 2002), 13. 69. Fischer-Tiné, “The YMCA and Low-Modernist Development,” 38. 70. K. T. Paul, The British Connection with India (London: Student Christian Movement, 1928); Jonathan S. Barnes, Power and Partnership: A History of the Protestant Mission Movement (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2013), 178; “Conference of YMCAs: The Work Done. Indian Delegate Experiences,” Times of India, September 8, 1926 (World Vectors of Practicality 59
YMCA Conference, August 1–6, 1926, Finland). Paul corresponded with the Australian YMCA concerning funding and famine relief, and broadcast on New York radio with Sherwood Eddy in 1923, pleading for extra funding. Transcript of a radio broadcast printed as World’s Work Broadcasting Station—YMCA (New York: Foreign Division, International Committee Y. M. C. A., 1923). 71. “T. C. Entertains Rural Gathering,” Columbia Spectator, November 11, 1922; Des Moines Register, December 23, 1922, 25. 72. Butterfield, Education and Chinese Agriculture. This came from the work of the China Continuation Committee formed out of the World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh, 1910. 73. Kenyon Butterfield, The Christian Mission in Rural India. Report and Recommendations (New York: International Missionary Council, 1930); Basil Mathews, The Church Takes Root in India (New York: Friendship Press, 1938), 119; Finney Paramanandam, “Agricultural Missions in India” (master’s thesis, Boston University, 1939), 89. 74. Rauschenbusch, Christianizing the Social Order, 101–102; Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis, 318. 75. Hunnicutt, The Story of Agricultural Missions, vi. 76. Kenyon Butterfield, The Christian Mission in Relation to Rural Problems: Report of the Jerusalem Meeting of the International Missionary Council, March 24–April 8, 1928, vol. 6 (London: Oxford University Press, 1928). 77. “John R. Mott—Biographical,” Nobelprize.org, accessed August 5, 2018, http:// www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1946/mott-bio.html. 78. John R. Mott, The Present-Day Summons to the World Mission of Christianity (Nashville, TN: Cokesbury Press, 1931), 63. 79. Mott, Summons, 66; Paramanandam, “Agricultural Missions in India,” 89; Mathews, The Church Takes Root in India, 119–120. 80. This movement produced the Commission on Country Life, on which body agricultural educationists sat. At the heart of this Country Life movement was a religious revitalization, according to Kevin M. Lowe, Baptized with the Soil: Christian Agrarians and the Crusade for Rural America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). 81. Lowe, Baptized with the Soil, 2–4. 82. Mathews, The Church Takes Root in India, 119; Spectator, March 7, 1931, 335. 83. Michael Thompson, For God and Globe: Christian Internationalism in the United States between the Great War and the Cold War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015). 84. Mott, Summons, 91. 85. Mott, Summons, 21, 91; Daniel Gorman, “Ecumenical Internationalism: Willoughby Dickinson, the League of Nations and the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches,” Journal of Contemporary History 45 (January 2010): 51–73. 86. Mott, Summons, 20.
60 Tyrrell
TWO Proximity, Progress, and the YMCA in Early Twentieth-Century Asia, 1902–1912 Lou Antolihao
H
“
is sense of theater seems to have been formidable,”1 wrote one American missionary in describing Clarence H. Robertson’s prominence as a YMCA lecturer in China during the early twentieth century. “Big Robbie,” as he was fondly called, was truly a larger-thanlife character who is known for various accomplishments: college athlete, engineer, inventor, religious leader, and educator. He served for thirty years (1902–1932) in China, where “he taught millions . . . to read and write with audio-visual aids far in advance of his day.”2 Robertson is credited for pioneering the use of science and technology in the YMCA educational courses and community lectures. These topics were proven to be widely popular among the Chinese, including the non-Christian majority. The work of the YMCA in the early twentieth century represents the rise of a new missionary ethos that showed a crucial shift from an emphasis on conversion to one on education, expanding its role from religion to a broader involvement in “mediating modernity.” This transformation was partly influenced by the spread of religious liberalism, particularly by the concept of the Social Gospel in the United States during the late nineteenth century. However, the paradigm shift from conversion to education was, more significantly, spurred by the necessity to engage diverse populations that were separated from American Protestant values by seemingly insurmountable social and cultural barriers. Across Asia, there was an overall feeling that the American missionary movement had stalled and was in dire need of a new catalyst to move things forward. YMCA secretaries, such as Clarence Robertson, laid the path for a more progressive strategy to “convert” the YMCA to better conform to the local social and cultural terrains. The YMCA secretaries in Asia at the turn of the t wentieth century represent a new breed of missionaries whose work went beyond the 61
traditional emphasis on proselytizing to broader humanitarian and development work. This chapter is a comparative historical analysis of the YMCA in Asia during the early twentieth century, particularly in its role in mediating modernity in China, Japan, and the Philippines, based on the analysis of field reports from YMCA missionaries between 1902 and 1912, the period when the organization started to expand and consolidate its activities in the region. It argues that the association’s widespread influence and enduring legacy rested not on its success in bringing its mission to the core of local societies but on its playing a key role in mediating the “nearing” not only of their home countries and their mission areas but of a whole range of geo graphies of knowledge. This mediation of modernity was achieved by deploying what I would call “proxetechs” (or technologies of proximitization). This neologism refers to communicative and discursive instruments that facilitate individual and institutional encounters by enhancing the visual and perceptual proximity of the Other. The nearing displays a sense of merging while simultaneously revealing the impossibility of oneness. The encounter, therefore, is kept in relative distance and is sustained through the production of spectacles. In the context of the YMCA missions in Asia, proxetechs refer to the mass lectures, educational lantern shows, grandiose banquets, sports tournaments, lively prayer sessions, and other innovations that provided a coterie of captivating spectacles that enabled the association to capture the interest of the local population and, eventually, cemented its legacy as a pioneer in the fields of education, youth mobilization, and social development. Proxetechs stem from a larger theoretical project that seeks to develop an alternative frame in which to understand the processes of imperialism and globalization through the concept of “proximity.”3 This theoretical frame is a critique of a whole range of theories that appear to rush to the actual contact between geographies of knowledge, discounting the crucial stage of nearing. From the theories of “clash of civilization” to “hybridity,” scholars tend to highlight either political antagonism or cultural fusion, ignoring the fact that most of these geographies of knowledge remained distant and distinguishable from each other.4 In his postmodern reading of global-local relations, Ian Stronach analyzed the process of nearing as “adjacency,” through which he proposed that one agent has to be viewed as “with” rather than “against” the other. Its emphasis on “the co-production of meaning” is important, but, again, adjacency refers to the actual contact rather than the process of nearing.5 In the context of proximity, nearness is neither “with” nor “against” but refers to a period when agents come “within sight” of each other. Fundamentally, it refers to one’s ability to interpret or become aware of something near through the senses, primarily through visual perception. 62 Antolihao
Proximity, therefore, puts emphasis on the autonomy of agents in engaging the other, and on how their conceptions and actions are not shaped solely by their political or cultural standpoints. YMCA missionaries, for instance, are known for their independence, practical expertise, and commitment to developing local leadership, which often ran into conflict with church teachings and organizational policies. Both Robert Swift, the first secretary in Japan, and Willard Lyon, the first secretary in China, had frequent disagreements with officials from the YMCA’s International Committee in New York as a result of their insistence on adapting to local social and cultural conditions.6 The missionaries’ proximity to their mission areas had also brought them far from home and from their moral and ideological roots. Moreover, proximity expands the analysis of imperialism and globalization beyond the empire/colony, foreign/native, and global/local dichotomies. This postbinary position is attained by highlighting how these processes facilitate the emergence of regionalism.7 The ontologies of “sighting” and “appearing” are not autonomous but are exercised in relation to a larger network of adjacencies. The ontological proximity of the YMCA to its mission areas in Asia was facilitated by its nearness to Western colonial structures, the expanding world economic system, and the growing influence of internationalism in the region. The movement of ideas, items, and individuals did not merely oscillate between the YMCA New York headquarters and its mission areas but circulated globally, especially among the adjacent Asian countries. Chinese YMCA branches were established in Tokyo (1906) and Manila (1922), and the Shanghai YMCA had a separate Japanese Department (1904). When the Manila YMCA held its second conference in 1901, Dr. J. M. Phipps, a YMCA secretary who previously served the US troops in China, was among those who participated.8 Six years later, Galen Fisher, the YMCA secretary of Tokyo, was one of the speakers during the opening of the association’s branch in Manila,9 highlighting the mobilities within the region, which only intensified in the early twentieth century. Through the lens of proximity, the nearing of the YMCA and its mission areas demonstrates how the prevailing conceptions of colonialism and Westernization reduced the complex web of transregional relations into constricted empire/ colony, foreign/native, and global/local binaries. MODERNITY AND MOBILITY Colonialism, imperialism, and eventually the rise of nationalism in the nineteenth century have redefined the meaning of progress from internal and cross-border alliances and rivalries to larger transregional geopolitics. Early Twentieth-Century Asia 63
For most Asian societies, the basis of progress has shifted away from internally developed knowledge and material resources to externally produced imported expertise and technologies that are largely associated with modern Western societies. What did not change, however, is progress’s elusiveness. A society can never attain progress but is often near it—for some, it is within grasp; for others, it is a distant sight. The promise of progress, therefore, is about proximity. At the turn of the twentieth century, the major urban centers in the region were at the forefront of the intensifying capitalist world system. As the early YMCA missionaries arrived in Asia, what they encountered were not backward settlements but fast-growing cities that were coping with the advent of modernity. Writing about his impression of Manila in 1908, General Secretary William Tener described how “the city is taking on a more modern aspect.” The development included the establishment of a new $2 million water and sewage system, a $1 million ice plant, a new harbour that cost $3 million, forty miles of advanced tram system, a telephone system, two new steel bridges, and paved roads, as well as parks and playgrounds.10 In the same way, modernity was not distant in the buzzing port cities of China or in the budding industrial centers of Japan when the YMCA opened its missions in the late nineteenth century. As both a product and an agent of modernization, the YMCA was part of the larger nearing transformation that simultaneously captivated and threatened the local population. More important, there is a fundamental ethos that binds the association intimately with the tenets of modernity, and more distinctly with urbanity—its work with sojourning young men. The YMCA was founded in London in 1844, during the height of industrialization, when an unprecedented number of people, mostly young men, moved to cities to find jobs in factories, merchant houses, and various commercial establishments. This period also expanded the influence of formal education from the exclusive university to a host of educational institutions offering courses that would prepare individuals for jobs in factories, offices, and other modern institutions. In addition, the increasing militarization that resulted from the different imperial, anticolonial, and national movements at the turn of the twentieth century had brought an unprecedented number of young soldiers to temporary postings in many urban centers around the world. Conversely, the sense of independence, thrill, and moral detachment made these young men more susceptible to the allure of drinking halls, prostitution dens, and other vices of the city. In Asia, these problems had been magnified, according to one YMCA secretary in Shanghai, by “the added host of evils and dire influences directly traceable to the proximity of the heathen” (emphasis mine).11 Underscoring the YMCA’s initial work 64 Antolihao
with the American and European population in Asia, Manila YMCA secretary William Tener narrated how the process of nearing makes young men more vulnerable to temptations. He touches at ports in China and Japan and comes in contact with the immodesty and uncleanliness of the East where vice is made easy and where men laugh at things he held sacred in his home and at college. He arrives in Manila and is welcome by the men among whom he has to work. Not unlikely his fellows, in their effort to make him feel “at home” and to show him the town, will take him to the worst districts of the city which are supposed to be one of the sights of most cities of the Far East.12
Apart from the social problems that were brought about by the emergence of modernity, the YMCA was also concerned about the moral impact of increasing mobility. “Young men come and go constantly,” wrote Shanghai YMCA secretary Barrie in his report in 1902.13 The movement of young people from Europe and America to the rest of the world as part of Western imperialism posed a problem, as American Protestant leaders clearly believed that the farther a man went from home, the greater his tendency to succumb to moral decadence. These young men were the face of the “moral empire” that the United States was trying to advance along with its political and economic expansion.14 This connection created a dilemma. On one hand, it facilitated the YMCA’s passage into Asia; on the other, its identification with the wider imperialist projects resulted in suspicion and even resistance among the local population. The expanding transregional proximity brought the YMCA closer to Asia, but its imperial connections kept the organization distant from the local population. Most of the YMCA’s missions in Asia initially catered to the Western residents before expanding to serve the local population. Even in Japan, which along with India was chosen as one of the American YMCA’s first foreign mission areas in 1889, the association still allotted time in its early years to establish an American and European branch in the port city of Yokohama.15 Eventually, “native” branches were set up shortly after their “foreign” counterparts in Shanghai and Tientsin (Tianjin) but it took fourteen years before a Filipino branch was established in Manila. There were even distinctions between Western residents who had just arrived and those who grew up in Asia or were born of mixed parentage. Highlighting the degree of separation rather than the nearness between the West and the East, a YMCA report noted how “Eurasians are ever seeking to pose as English or American and are persistently beaten back.” On the other hand, the Eurasians would not mix with the Chinese, a divide that the association Early Twentieth-Century Asia 65
seemed to have exacerbated in its separate ministries to different racial groups. The association’s introduction of modern sports appeared to have made things worse. In Shanghai, a YMCA secretary reported a tendency to draw team membership along racial lines, which resulted in passionate rivalries among different groups.16 On one hand, the presence of the Eurasians in many Asian port cities symbolizes the closeness of the East to the West. On the other, their presence served as a barrier that kept the limited number of missionaries functionally distant from the native population. The resulting racial segregation was based on early YMCA missionaries’ assessment that “it is impossible to combine Foreign and Native associations.”17 In China, YMCA reports noted the “distance between local and foreign Y workers,” since locals were largely viewed as helpers (emphasis mine). This persistent gap made some secretaries realize that the “real Association constituency is among British and American residents.”18 In the Philippines, YMCA secretary William Tener warned that young Filipinos will have “a feeling of resentment that they are not given equal privileges with the foreign.”19 Thus distance was not only calculated as geographical positions but also gauged as racial standings. Since “mission” implied a sense of superiority that was equated with imperialism, religious groups were often treated with suspicion, even hostility, by the local population. The necessity to subdue its “foreignness,” along with its reliance on local support, had pushed the YMCA to work on building the capabilities of its local leaders. Eventually, local secretaries were recruited, and they increasingly took on greater responsibilities in managing the organization. Local secretaries-general took over in 1915 in China, in 1921 in Japan, and in 1940 in the Philippines. These developments underscored the crucial transformation of the YMCA, which saw its recognition as the first Protestant mission to establish an indigenous institution in Asia.20 Nonetheless, looking into its early history reveals that the indigenization is characterized more by struggles than by a smooth transition to local leadership. Both Robert Swift and Willard Lyon, the first missionaries to Japan and China, had long-running conflicts with key administrators from the YMCA headquarters regarding their desires to pass on greater responsibilities to local staff.21 Some YMCA secretaries in Asia were also not supportive of the indigenization of the local branches. Fletcher Brockman, for instance, expressed that “it is perilous to commit the YMCA to locals without the guidance of a foreign secretary,” noting the tendency of the Chinese YMCA leaders to turn to business.22 Simultaneously, a struggle between foreign and local secretaries over the control of national YMCA leadership was reported in Japan when the samurai-class Christians sought to gain equal recognition 66 Antolihao
with American missionaries.23 It was relatively late when local YMCA leaders started to play key roles during the American period in the Philippines. However, the Philippines became the first YMCA organization in Asia to employ a completely local staff after Domingo Bascara was appointed as the first Filipino national secretary in 1940. It was the emergence of Western-educated leaders among the local population and the larger nationalist movements in the Asian region, beginning at the turn of the twentieth century, that resulted in the locals’ increasing demand to gain more control of the organization. Overall, the capacity of the local YMCA members to rise and confront the Western hegemony in the organization was a result of the same development that gave their American and European counterparts a new sense of independence and purpose—mobility. Particularly, Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino students who were educated in the United States or in other foreign universities returned to their home countries to take on active roles as Christian evangelizers, including some who ended up as YMCA secretaries. Tokyo YMCA secretary Galen Fisher noted how the number of Japanese “graduates from America has increased . . . playing prominent roles in the evangelization of Japan.”24 Nearby, another American missionary wrote how “Chinese students and missionaries organize associations when they return home” after spending some time overseas.25 One of these “mobile” local YMCA leaders was A. S. F. Chur, a Chinese who was born in Honolulu but returned to China and received his education in Shanghai. After his studies, he worked for five years in an English company before moving to work with the YMCA in China’s commercial capital.26 In 1904, he left for the United States for a one-year training course in the YMCA’s Springfield College in Massachusetts. Chur’s mobility, as well as that of many young people in Asia during that period, fostered a sense of intimacy with modernity and Western ideals that enabled many young Asians to assimilate the values of citizenship, cosmopolitanism, and even Christian evangelism. Theoretically, this social transformation demonstrates how the concept of proximity accounts for multiple agencies and channels of mobility, which are crucial to the autonomy of individual actors and the sense of distance between them. Despite the central role that mobility played in the work of the YMCA, most of its leaders longed for a certain stability and wished to foster a deeper sense of commitment to their mission areas. As the PhilippineAmerican War came to a close in 1902, a secretary emphasized the need to discontinue the deployment of short-term and traveling missionaries, saying that the YMCA secretary’s role was “not that of an itinerant entertainer, lecturer, or evangelist.”27 Four years later, Tianjin secretary Robert Gailey Early Twentieth-Century Asia 67
complained about the “note-book and camera business” of visiting International Committee representatives, emphasizing the need to spend more time with local branches to get a better understanding of the situation in the mission areas.28 Limited personnel and the various opportunities to expand their work to different areas had kept the missionaries on their heels. Even the fundamental step of acquiring a working knowledge of the local language was often forgone because of the urgency of moving the mission forward. The evangelical banner of the nearness of God’s kingdom echoes the modern call about the proximity of progress, and the YMCA was caught in mediating these two closing ideas that were playing crucial roles in the transformation of many Asian societies at the turn of the twentieth century. FROM EVANGELIZATION TO EDUCATION The conflation of the meanings of proselytization and progress in the work of the YMCA was expressed in the crucial shift in its emphasis from evangelization to education. YMCA secretary George Gleason’s description of the Osaka Technical School as a “church” in 1903 is perhaps one of the best examples of this convergence.29 The important role that education played in the YMCA, however, goes back to its founding more than half a century earlier. As young men moved to urban centers to work in new industries and commercial establishments, the acquisition of new skills became a necessity. The YMCA services grew from providing Bible studies and furnishing reading rooms to the establishment of night schools in order to accommodate the educational needs of working young men. Many of these night schools were eventually expanded to full-time educational institutions, and several colleges and universities around the world were initially established as YMCA vocational schools.30 These early educational institutions provided classes in business writing, bookkeeping, and steno typing, among many other vocational courses. The acquisition of these skills allowed students to obtain jobs or gain promotion from their existing employment. In Japan, a YMCA missionary noted how “the old apprentice system is giving way to modern methods of employment,” giving an ideal condition for the association to promote its educational classes.31 In Shanghai, banks and merchants were assisting the YMCA schools financially and sending employees for classes.32 In addition, local entrepreneurs also enrolled in these classes to help their businesses keep up with new developments and to expand their networks, especially to the increasing number of foreign establishments. Among the various educational classes, language courses, especially the English modules, were the 68 Antolihao
most popular.33 Apart from its practical use, knowledge of English signified a person’s education and affinity with the values of modernity in a number of contexts. Reports from Japan, China, and the Philippines expressed how “young men come to Bible classes to learn English.”34 Following sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s argument, operating a typewriter and blurting out English phrases were some of the ways through which modernity was embodied and deployed as social capital.35 The YMCA’s literary campaign, which was deeply rooted in the tenets of Protestantism, at times coalesced with the larger agenda of the empire. In the Philippines, the YMCA started the first English-language law school, which was eventually incorporated into the new state university that was established by the American colonial government in 1908. Since each YMCA mission received limited support from its home institution, earnings from its educational department covered a significant percentage of its operating cost. In 1903, Charles Harvey reported that income from its educational “classes paid about one-third of the expenses”36 of the Shanghai branch. One year later, Harvey affirmed his earlier report by noting how “education offers the best opportunity to reach the brightest men and constitute our [the YMCA’s] chief basis of financial support.”37 In the neighboring city of Tianjin, its YMCA secretary reported on the association’s success in obtaining local support, noting that donations “are from men who have no interest in Christianity, but are interested in educational work.” Among the fifty-two local donations that YMCA received in 1902, forty-six were from Chinese officials and merchants.38 This capability to mobilize local support had been used to underscore the organizational and management skills of YMCA secretaries, especially when placed vis-à-vis the ordained missionaries, who were largely deemed too traditional to establish a sustainable mission program. When Robert Gailey explored the possibility of setting up a permanent display of scientific artifacts, he visited a successful museum run by the Presbyterian mission in Tsingchow (Qingzhou). The YMCA official came home impressed but criticized the fact that the museum was entirely funded by US donations. The lack of local support, he reported, “is the weakness” of the project.39 However, the strong support the YMCA received from the nonChristian locals had its trade-off. Although Asian YMCAs were increasingly becoming more financially independent from the New York headquarters, they were becoming more politically dependent on their local supporters. In Nanking (Nanjing), for instance, Robertson warned that the “popularity and influence [of the YMCA] is a temptation for many to use us to further their own ends.”40 Echoing Robertson’s warning, other YMCA secretaries from Japan and the Philippines had also warned about similar Early Twentieth-Century Asia 69
cases when local patrons tried to use the association to further their business and political agendas. On one hand, local support, especially from the elites, provided an important source of funding, patronage, and network necessary for the organization’s self-sufficiency. On the other, it subjected the YMCA to potential influence and intervention from these individuals, most of whom were influential government and business leaders. Moreover, various conflicts that emerged out of expansionism, anti colonial movement, and clashes between national and local powers disrupted the conduct of formal education. Japan’s incursion into Taiwan in 1895 resulted in its militarization, mobilizing an unprecedented number of young people. Their arrival in many urban centers in Japan, and eventually in its colonial outposts in Taiwan, Korea, and northeastern China, provided the YMCA with more students for its various educational programs. Interestingly, this development paralleled what occurred in the United States as it grew to become a major power by 1898. The Boxer Rebellion (1900–1901) disrupted classes in formal educational institutions in China. These disruptions led to the popularity of YMCA classes as alternative channels for language and technical training. The defeat of China also persuaded the new Chinese leaders, many of whom supported the Western powers, to accept Western and modern standards in reforming the country. Finally, the end of the rebellion also allowed more Chinese students to study overseas, especially in the United States, where part of the indemnity money was used to set up a scholarship program. YMCA educational programs further benefited from the demand for English classes as students prepared for admission to American universities, which further enhanced the popularity of the language among the Chinese population. Nearby, the outcome of the Philippine-American War (1899–1902) and the resulting colonization of the archipelago saw the arrival of a new era, when English replaced Spanish as the official language of the state. Following similar development in the region, the YMCA’s educational department became a popular venue for language training as well as for business and technical courses, which were largely associated with modernity. As the YMCA’s educational offerings thus, once again, converged with the goals of US imperialism, Protestant organizations, including the YMCA, preached a new religion that was more inclusive and more oriented toward personal and social development.41 Congruently, the new American regime tried to promote its rule as benevolent and modernizing to distinguish itself from the old Spanish regime, which it regarded as exploitative and repressive. Overall, the YMCA’s education work enabled the locals to read the complex teachings of Protestant Christianity, giving them a sense of c ultural literacy not only of a Western religion but also of its linkages to the broader 70 Antolihao
principles of democracy and modernity. On the other side, education enabled the missionary to show Christianity as a modern religion that would lead converted countries to progress—the building of God’s kingdom on earth. Since progress is something proximate, within sight but always distant, its promise was effectively conveyed through the employment of proxetechs: in this case, the lantern shows, scientific exhibitions, and other spectacles were utilized to captivate an audience of ardent supporters and potential converts. FROM MIRACLES TO SPECTACLES “The attendance was better when I used the stereopticon with the lecture on the Life of Christ,” Robert Gailey noted in his 1902 report as the secretary of Tianjin YMCA.42 This statement not only revealed the novel use of a visually mediated technology in evangelizing but underscores the shift of emphasis from conversion to education, highlighted earlier as crucial in the growth of the YMCA in Asia in the early twentieth century. In this case, the life of Jesus was narrated not solely on the “miracles” typical of evangelical missionary work but through the use of audiovisual technologies, which made Christ’s story an enthralling depiction of photographic images and sound effects. The use of such technologies not only made Christian teachings more captivating but also aligned Protestant Christianity with the ideas of modernity. The efficacy of these proxetechs so impressed Gailey that he expanded his report the following year to include “scientific apparatus, museum, libraries, lantern slides, maps, etc. which we could use to our great advantage to get men to come and see.”43 Apparently, these proxetechs not only were useful as tools in religious services but also were popular spectacles in themselves as part of the new modern knowledge. His report reflects a similar desire from a fellow missionary, who also concurred that “some apparatuses illustrating Western science and civilization would make it possible for them to attract a larger number” of people.44 This development mirrored the rising importance of films in the YMCA programs in the United States, which led to the creation of a Bureau of Motion Pictures and Exhibits in 1907.45 The YMCA, however, was not the first institution to establish this evangelical and educational method in Asia. J. S. Whitewright, a British educator from the Baptist Missionary Society, pioneered this type of work. In 1887, he opened a museum in Shandong to showcase Western science and technology “to engage the Chinese people and open channels of communication.”46 Robert Gailey wrote about his visit to Whitewright’s museum in 1904 and suggested that the Tianjin YMCA, which was Early Twentieth-Century Asia 71
moving to a new building, “make a start in the museum line, buy some apparatus, books, and magazines.” He added that the association “could open the new quarters with a face, which could give [it] a standing in the city.”47 As the presentation of the Gospel shifted from the narration of miracles to the production of spectacles, the YMCA’s face was no longer limited to traditional architecture and rituals but had evolved to include accessories associated with modernity. This makeover was pushed to the extreme in Shanghai when its secretary, Robert Lewis, left out the character for Jesus on the YMCA entrance sign.48 Such action reflected the association’s attempt not only to soften its “outward religious manifestation” but also to highlight its image as a mediator of modernity. Moreover, this image makeover is also reflected in how the YMCA participated in scientific expositions and cultural carnivals in the region. Its local branch participated in the Fifth National Industrial Exposition, held in Osaka in 1903, where it showed “pictures, printed matters and charts, the only religious exhibit” in the event.49 In the Philippines, the association played a key role in promoting national sports competition when Manila YMCA physical director Elwood Brown was tasked to organize an athletic tournament as part of the 1911 Manila Carnival. 50 The carnival was an annual fair organized by the American colonial administration to showcase the Philippines’ agricultural, industrial, and commercial development. Two years later, Elwood Brown used the YMCA network in the region to organize the first Far Eastern Championship Games, which saw teams from Japan and China compete with the host country during the 1913 Manila Carnival. As early YMCA missionaries in Asia realized the interest of young people and the intellectual class in Western science, they started to press the International Committee for new missionaries who were more capable of expanding its educational work. In response to the request of Fletcher Brockman, Clarence H. Robertson was recruited to start a lecture program in China. Robertson differed from early missionaries, who were ordained pastors and theologians. In contrast, his expertise was in mechanical engineering, and he was known for his patented inventions.51 He arrived in China in 1902 and soon became a prominent lecturer among the local public because of his interesting presentations on science and technology and his charismatic personality. More important, his popularity stemmed from his capability to bring science closer to the people by highlighting its practical applications. In time, the subjects of his lectures expanded from science to other aspects of modern life.52 From chemistry and physics, the YMCA educational lectures expanded to topics on personal hygiene and mass literacy. This expansion follows the principle of proximity. By presenting science as 72 Antolihao
part of people’s everyday lives rather than a distant body of knowledge and intellectual tradition, the YMCA was able to underscore greater relevance to the local population. By 1912, a full lecture bureau was organized, inspired by an earlier objective of “interpreting to the leaders of the nation ‘the deeper meaning of modern civilization.’ ” During this period, Dr. William W. Peter, a public health expert and an amateur photographer, and George H. Cole, a science lecturer and “gifted tinkerer,” joined the bureau and worked with Robertson to establish it as one of the most influential social development institutions in early twentieth-century China.53 Following his reassignment to the larger city of Tianjin in 1904, Robertson also mapped out a plan to build a museum based on Whitewright’s project in Shandong.54 Through this project, he was able to build a permanent institution that would complement the sense of mobility that defined Christian missions, especially in his role as a traveling lecturer. Museums also fed on the increasing mobility of local people. As recreational and educational attractions, they served as intermediary spaces that allowed both actors—the YMCA and the local people—a sense of agency in accomplishing their respective aims. The YMCA was able to push the Protestant mission forward by opening communication channels, whereas the local people were able to assess the relevance of Christianity and modernity in their lives with greater discursive freedom. Apart from science lectures, the production of spectacles occurred through the hosting of banquets, conventions, sports competitions, and other events. Anniversary meetings were held with great pomp, and prominent political, military, and business leaders were invited to grace the events. In 1903, Fletcher Brockman reported a well-attended anniversary banquet, adding that “no such meeting was ever held [before] in Shanghai.” Local prominent guests included a navy admiral, the president of the Imperial University, and some members of the chamber of commerce.55 Food, music, lantern lectures, and film showings provided an ensemble of entertaining and enthralling activities that created a bond between the YMCA hosts and their local guests while demonstrating the ascendancy of Western techno logy and culture. In Japan, the Tokyo YMCA used automobiles for street evangelism and advertising, utilizing another form of modern technology to broaden its mass appeal.56 The influence of this novel method, however, failed in comparison to the success of regular conventions and meetings that were held around the country. These gatherings not only attracted the attention of the Japanese but enabled them to participate and display their capacity to deal simultaneously with the various facets of Christianity and also with the different qualities of modernity. Because of the upper-class backgrounds of Early Twentieth-Century Asia 73
most Japanese Christians, they showed more desire to play prominent roles in YMCA activities. The annual summer school, for instance, became an important venue for them to influence its programs and activities. On one occasion, the American YMCA leaders were surprised when the Japanese organizing committee members chose topics that focused more on intellectual and social issues than on evangelism.57 This change not only reflected the desire of the local YMCA members to appropriate what they deemed was more relevant to their social and moral needs but also embodied the shift from conversion to education that defined the overall engagement of the association in the Asian region in the early twentieth century. These local and national conventions became so enormously popular by 1912 that the YMCA operated a permanent conference center in a beautiful estate close to Mount Fuji. This development was a stark contrast to its Chinese counterpart, which remained largely mobile. Nonetheless, this magnificent structure along with a new “worthy headquarter building”58 in Tokyo served as important tools in the production of spectacles to stage the preeminence of Protestant Christianity and Western modernity. Writing from the Philippines in 1912, YMCA secretary J. M. Groves noted the “social instinct” of the Filipinos that the YMCA catered to through their religious services, educational classes, and recreational programs.59 If lectures were influential in China and conventions were popular in Japan, the form of spectacle that captivated the Filipinos was sports competition. Gaining a comparable influence to Clarence Robertson in China was Elwood S. Brown, Manila YMCA’s physical director from 1910 to 1918. Through the YMCA, he introduced the modern sports of basketball, volleyball, and athletics; was tapped by the colonial regime to design sports programs for government employees and public school students; founded the Philippine Amateur Athletic Federation; and organized the regional Far Eastern Championship Games, the precursor to the Asian Games. Under Brown’s leadership, the YMCA played a crucial role in the American colonial government’s “play and display” strategy to employ sports as a pedagogical and political tool as well as a spectacle to demonstrate the putative preeminence of American values and civilization.60 Overall, sports enabled the YMCA to appease the resistance from the predominantly Catholic population by cultivating a new moral ethos that centered on the development of personal character, health, and citizenship. As a pedagogical tool, sports also embodied the shift from conversion to education, emphasizing the need for a healthy body in attaining spiritual strength. Finally, sports played an important role in bringing the Americans and the Filipinos within a proximate distance to each other, allowing the United States, as a budding superpower, to promote its role as a modernizing empire 74 Antolihao
while allowing the Philippines to experiment with modernity and promote the country’s political and cultural position in the region. MODERNITY AND CRITICAL PROXIMITY The Other is a spectacle in itself. Collectively, the objects of YMCA proselytizers served as crucial reference points in constructing local identities and in providing the boundaries of their sense of self. Some remain distant or drift away from their immediate sphere of consciousness, while others move closer, some reaching a point of “critical proximity.” Through the entangled channels of evangelism, imperialism, and modernization, the YMCA came to a “critical proximity” with a number of Asian countries in the early twentieth century. This crucial stage summoned individuals and societies to either reject what was deemed as an imminent intrusion, or embrace the Other in an intimate union, or maintain a relative distance. Recently, the histories of imperialism and globalization have been described through a paradoxical relation of conquest and cultivation, of assimilation and resistance, which pertinently captures the continuing theoretical conflicts and contradictions that stemmed from these historical processes. This chapter, however, puts emphasis on how the processes of imperialism and globalization, as demonstrated by the work of the YMCA in early twentieth-century Asia, are about maintaining distance. In particular, the deployment of proxetechs—lively prayer sessions, mass lectures, grandiose banquets, sports tournaments, and other innovations—served as important resources that enabled the YMCA not only to obtain local support but also to maintain “critical proximity.” The YMCA has been recognized as the first Western organization to transform itself into an indigenous institution.61 In China, the association became immensely influential during the republican period (1912–1949). For instance, when Chiang Kai-shek’s cabinet was inaugurated in 1927, seven out of ten members were former YMCA leaders and activists.62 Moreover, the association also pioneered the establishment of education, health, and welfare programs as well as community development mobilization.63 In Japan, the YMCA provided a venue for local Christians to take on active roles while working to reconcile Christianity with Japanese values and traditions. The idea of Christian nationalism allowed the Japanese to employ the YMCA, and its linkage to the modern values of social responsibility and moral uprightness, in highlighting the potential role of Christianity in bringing the Japanese society to progress. When Japan eventually embarked on an expansionist agenda in the Asian region, Christianity was used to promote its action as “benevolent imperialism.” This idea, they argued, was Early Twentieth-Century Asia 75
something that was based not on domination but on liberation and progress. In 1907, Japanese YMCA leaders expressed and eventually realized their plan to open missions in their occupied territories of Korea and Manchuria.64 In the Philippines, the indigenization of the YMCA was initially held by American colonization and the strong opposition from the Catholic Church. Due to the presence of the US colonial administration, the need to administer to a sizable American population in the country had delayed the expansion of the YMCA to the Filipinos. Despite these challenges, however, the association has left a lasting legacy through its work in sports promotion and social development. The indigenization of the YMCA, nonetheless, did not entail a complete conversion into Chinese, Japanese, or Filipino institutions. Despite its early advances, the organization eventually declined just as Protestantism failed to advance in these three countries. There were things that “the Other” could not fully bestow, just as there were things that the self could not fully incorporate. In his seminal work on the concept of spectacle, Guy Debord underscored the importance of separation as “part and parcel of the unity of the world.”65 This sense of separation is crucial to the concept of proximity. The YMCA in early twentieth-century Asia, especially in its role as a mediator of modernity, came intimately close to the Chinese, Japanese, and Filipinos. Historical transformations, the YMCA’s imperial baggage, and particularly the undergirding preassumption of the fundamental otherness of Asians, however, had ultimately kept it distant from these societies, resulting in its eventual decline in the second half of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, its lasting legacies in youth mobilization, education, and social development have shown that critical proximity can eventually transform into constant proximity. Today, as technology continues to advance, people are now closer than ever before and progress has brought distant societies into a world of constant proximity. NOTES 1. Shirley Garrett, Social Reformers in Urban China: The Chinese YMCA, 1895–1926 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970), 99. 2. Mary A. Sego, Clarence H. Robertson Papers, 1901–1960, 1, Purdue University Libraries, Archives, and Special Collections. When he returned to the United States, he patented scores of his devices. His own automobile had sixty-four Robertson-developed gadgets. He is credited with building and using one of the first golf caddie carts. 3. There are two theories related to the concept of proximity, the law of proximity (experimental psychology) and proxemics (social anthropology). The former refers to how objects that are near, or “proximate,” to each other tend to be grouped together. The latter is defined as the study of space and how we use it, how it makes us feel more or less comfortable, 76 Antolihao
and how we can arrange objects and ourselves in relation to space. See Max Wertheimer, Productive Thinking (New York: Harper, 1945). Also see Edward T. Hall, “A System for the Notation of Proxemic Behaviour,” American Anthropologist 65, no. 5 (1963): 1003–1026. 4. I am broadly using these two theories as the opposing ends on the continuum that articulates on the processes of imperialism and globalization. See Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996); Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994). 5. Ian Stronach, Globalizing Education, Educating the Local: How Method Made Us Mad (London: Routledge, 2010), 175, 180. 6. See Jon T. Davidann, “The American YMCA in Meiji Japan: God’s Work Gone Awry,” Journal of World History 6, no. 1 (1995): 107–125. Also see Garrett, Social Reformers in Urban China. 7. Lou Antolihao, Playing with the Big Boys: Basketball, American Imperialism, and Subaltern Discourse in the Philippines (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015). 8. Young Men’s Christian Association, Minutes of the Second YMCA Conference (Manila: YMCA Office, September 17, 1901), American Historical Collection, Rizal Library, Ateneo de Manila University. 9. William A. Tener, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1908, 390, Records of YMCA International Work in the Philippines, Kautz Family YMCA Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries. 10. Tener, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1908, 381. 11. H. G. Barrie, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1902, 18, Records of YMCA International Work in China, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 12. Tener, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1908, 384. 13. Barrie, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1902, 16. 14. Ian Tyrrell, Reforming the World: The Creation of America’s Moral Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010). 15. V. W. Helm, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1902, 106, Records of YMCA International Work in Japan, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 16. Barrie, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1902, 18. 17. Robert R. Gailey, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1903, 61, Records of YMCA International Work in China, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 18. Gailey, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1904, 56–57, Records of YMCA International Work in China, Kautz Family YMCA Archives; Robert E. Lewis, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1904, 77, Records of YMCA International Work in China, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 19. Tener, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1908, 394. 20. Jun Xing, “The American Social Gospel and the Chinese YMCA,” Journal of American–East Asian Relations 5, nos. 3–4 (1996): 277–304. Also see Garrett, Social Reformers in Urban China. 21. Davidann, American YMCA in Meiji Japan; Garrett, Social Reformers in Urban China. 22. Fletcher Brockman, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1902, 25, Records of YMCA International Work in China, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 23. Davidann, The American YMCA in Meiji Japan. 24. Galen M. Fisher, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1903, 144, Records of YMCA International Work in Japan, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 25. Brockman, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1902, 25. Early Twentieth-Century Asia 77
26. Lewis, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1904, 77. 27. Young Men’s Christian Association, Minutes of the Second YMCA Conference, 6. 28. Gailey, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1904, 59–60. 29. George Gleason, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1903, 157, Records of YMCA International Work in Japan, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 30. In 2010, the International Coalition of YMCA Universities was established to coordinate the major YMCA educational institutions from seven countries. See http:// ymcauniversitiescoalition.org/news/. 31. G. S. Phelps, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1903, 162, Records of YMCA International Work in Japan, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 32. Charles W. Harvey, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1903, 50, Records of YMCA International Work in China, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 33. Gailey, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1902, 34. 34. C. V. Hibbard, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1903, 165, Records of YMCA International Work in Japan, Kautz Family YMCA Archives; Gailey, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1902, 34. 35. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984). 36. Harvey, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1903, 50. 37. Charles W. Harvey, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1904, 67, Records of YMCA International Work in China, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 38. Gailey, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1903, 62. 39. Gailey, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1903, 47. 40. Clarence H. Robertson, Annual Report of Secretaries, 1903, 68, Records of YMCA International Work in China, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 41. Antolihao, Playing with the Big Boys. 42. Gailey, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1902, 33. 43. Gailey, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1903, 63. 44. Brockman, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1903, 37. 45. Ronald Walter Greene, “Y Movies: Film and the Modernization of Pastoral Power,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 2, no. 1 (2005): 20–36. 46. Martha L. Smalley, “Missionary Museums in China,” Material Religion 8, no. 1 (2012): 105–107. 47. Gailey, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1904, 54. 48. Garrett, Social Reformers in Urban China, 81. 49. Helm, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1903, 152. 50. Antolihao, Playing with the Big Boys; Stefan Huebner, “Muscular Christianity and the Western Civilizing Mission: Elwood S. Brown, the YMCA, and the Idea of the Far Eastern Championship Games,” Diplomatic History 39, no. 3 (2015): 532–557. 51. Sego, Clarence H. Robertson Papers. 52. Garrett, Social Reformers in Urban China, 140. 53. Garrett, Social Reformers in Urban China, 140–145. 54. David W. Lyon, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1904, 29, Records of YMCA International Work in China, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 55. Brockman, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1903, 34. 56. Galen M. Fisher, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1912, 542, Records of YMCA International Work in Japan, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 57. Davidann, The American YMCA in Meiji Japan. 78 Antolihao
58. Fisher, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1912, 542. 59. J. M. Groves, Annual Reports of Foreign Secretaries, 1912, 641, Records of YMCA International Work in the Philippines, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 60. Antolihao, Playing with the Big Boys. Also see Stefan Huebner, Pan Asian Sports and the Emergence of Modern Asia, 1913–1974 (Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 2016. 61. Tyrell, Reforming the World; Jon T. Davidann, A World of Crisis and Progress: The American YMCA in Japan, 1890–1930 (London: Associated University Press, 1998); Garrett, Social Reformers in Urban China. 62. Xing, “American Social Gospel and the Chinese YMCA,” 278. 63. Garrett, Social Reformers in Urban China. 64. Jon T. Davidann, “Japanese YMCA Cultural Imperialism in Korea and Manchuria after the Russo-Japanese War,” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 5, nos. 3–4 (1996): 255–276. Also see Davidann, American YMCA in Meiji Japan, 107–125. 65. Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle (New York: Zone Books, 1994), 13.
Early Twentieth-Century Asia 79
THREE The Japanese YMCA, Christian Masculinities, and Japan’s Colonization of Korea, 1905–1919 Dolf-Alexander Neuhaus
I
n the period under study, the relationship between the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in Japan and the YMCA in Korea was characterized by asymmetrical power relations that resulted from the colonial setting. At the turn of the twentieth century, Japanese missionaries associated with the Japanese YMCA began to contemplate the possibility of evangelization in Korea. Concomitantly, Japan’s expansion in East Asia was ideologically undergirded by the self-affirmative philosophy of bushidō, which flourished as a means of explaining the moral foundations of Japan’s resounding successes in the wars against China (1894–1895) and Russia (1904–1905). Encompassing notions of masculinity and moral rectitude, the reinvented ideological concept reverberated well among Japanese Christians of the time, who endeavored to combine their “foreign” religion with the supposedly “native” spirit of bushidō.1 Leading Japanese Christians were convinced that they possessed a distinctive approach to Christianity, which resulted from the successful amalgamation of the Christian belief and Japanese cultural tradition epitomized by the concept of bushidō.2 Over the past decade, the historiography of Protestant Christianity in Japan and Korea has developed into a thriving field of research comprising a plethora of transnational studies.3 Yet scholarship on the history of the Japanese and Korean YMCA in European languages is still conspicuously meagre. This seems astonishing, given the fact that the case of the evangelization efforts of the Japanese Protestants in Korea between 1905 and 1919 constitutes one of the rare historical occasions in which the missionaries did not originate from Europe or North America. As Ian Tyrrell has stressed, the work of missionaries exhibited the transnational influences upon the sending societies.4 This particularly pertains to Japanese missionaries, who constantly needed to position themselves vis-à-vis the West as well as the non-Christian majority at home. 80
Untangling the intricate connections that link Protestant Christianity, the YMCA, and Japan’s colonial project in Korea, this chapter explores how conceptions of Japanese Christian bushidō functioned to legitimize the Japanese claim to power in Korea not only politically but also religiously between 1905 and 1919. Undeniably, the ensuing debates were embedded in broader discourses on Japan’s perceived civilizational superiority embodied by bushidō and its ideals of masculinity. Some Japanese Christians of the YMCA sought to harness the belief in the superiority of Japanese civilization by incorporating the concept of bushidō into their missionary approach toward Korea and other Asian countries within the purview of Japanese imperialism. While it is imperative to acknowledge that missionaries and the YMCA were not mere appendices of colonial governments and regularly pursued their own ends, the Korea mission largely depended on funding from the governor-general. This chapter is divided into three sections: the first section delineates the historical trajectory of Protestantism in Japan and Korea from the second half of the nineteenth century to the early twentieth century; this is followed by a closer inspection of the relation between Christianity and masculinity as symbolized by bushidō. The last part zooms in on the journal Kaitakusha (The Pioneer), the main publication of the Japanese YMCA. Based on the salient example of Okada Tetsuzō, it discusses how Japan’s civilizing mission in Korea was envisioned before the anticolonial March First Movement of 1919, after which Japanese “military rule” (J. budan seiji) segued into “cultural rule” (J. bunka seiji) and secret funding for Japanese missionary work in Korea was discontinued. PROTESTANTISM IN JAPAN AND KOREA AROUND 1900 The inexorable encroachment of the Euro-American powers amplified ongoing internal crises of East Asian societies during the second half of the nineteenth century. The ensuing encounters, and at times even violent clashes, with Euro-American powers helped to precipitate the unraveling of the existing East Asian world order and the traditional way of diplomatic and cultural interaction. This spurred pervasive and thoroughgoing transformations in the realms of politics, culture, religion, and society in both Meiji Japan and late Chosŏn Korea. The concomitant influx of missionaries from Europe and North America who devoted themselves to the propagation of Christianity in Asia had a profound impact on education, including sports and notions of masculinities.5 In Japan, the erosion of the entrenched value system of the Tokugawa state, in the wake of Commodore Perry’s arrival and the subsequent turmoil, prompted many to look for suitable Japanese YMCA 81
answers in new religious movements. In the eyes of many contemporary Japanese, reverence for the imperial institution, which was closely linked to the indigenous Shintō religion, as a vehicle for national unification failed to provide suitable answers to essential questions regarding individual and societal challenges.6 After the ban on Christianity was lifted in 1873, Protestantism began to percolate in Japan through the efforts of American missionaries and quickly established itself as an influential force in Japanese education. During the 1860s and 1870s predominantly young scions of the former warrior class converted to Protestant Christianity while attending missionary schools.7 These imparted knowledge to their pupils that was thought to be of great benefit to the technological and social progress of Japan. Members of the Meiji elite associated Christianity in general with the elements of modernity, as exemplified by the prosperous and flourishing countries of Europe and North America, which they tried to emulate.8 Hence, when Christianity became an official religion in 1899, it enjoyed greater freedoms than Shintō and Buddhism.9 The situation in Japan coincided with missionary revivalism in the United States, at the core of which sat the American YMCA and the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA). Both organizations were propelled to international prominence during the last two decades of the nineteenth century after assuming the leading role in the global missionary crusade and the movement for moral and physical education. In keeping with the YMCA’s aim of developing the individual’s body, mind, and spirit, the association had positioned itself as one of the major sporting bodies in the United States by the end of the nineteenth century.10 The momentous Northfield meeting of 1886 galvanized many American student volunteers into committing to the millenarian cause of “Evangelization of the World in This Generation.”11 The ensuing missionary impulse directed itself to Asia, the Pacific, and to a lesser degree Africa, which became the key targets for proselytization. The prospect of success seemed particularly promising in Japan, resulting in the prioritization of the country as a crucial field of missionary work. In 1889, the American YMCA established its presence in Japan through the initiative of Luther D. Wishard.12 Among educated young men, Christianity had already gained popularity, culminating in the establishment of the Japanese YMCA in Tokyo, which became a full member of the World Alliance of YMCAs as early as 1891.13 However, firstgeneration Japanese Protestants, who, according to their place of conversion, were categorized into the Kumamoto, Yokohama, and Sapporo bands, became gradually more theologically independent from their American teachers after the 1870s.14 Faced with constant criticism from the nationalist Right, the nascent Christian movement in Japan struggled to maintain its 82 Neuhaus
influence on politics and education. While the Japanese YMCA’s early work consisted mainly of publishing magazines and holding meetings on religious subjects, it devoted itself to the national cause during the Russo-Japanese War by providing recreational services to the Japanese Imperial Army.15 The global expansion of the YMCA brought in its wake the dissemination of concepts such as “muscular Christianity” to Japan and Korea. As the original purveyors of sports, Euro-American missionaries in Japan and Korea were actively involved in the introduction of baseball, promoting physical fitness as a template for upright Christian living. During the closing decades of the nineteenth century, the adoption of athletic programs by most YMCAs and the invention of “character-building” sports such as basketball and volleyball were important factors in the spread of muscular Christianity. This process was aided by the imperialistic urge to forcefully extend American Christianity overseas through “manly” missionaries.16 Initially coined in 1857 in a review of Charles Kingsley’s Two Years Ago, the phrase “muscular Christianity” famously appeared in Thomas Hughes’s novel Tom Brown’s School Days.17 In Japan, Abe Isoo, who was an ordained minister, professor of international relations, socialist, and famed “father of Japanese Baseball,” took up the concept while managing the Waseda University baseball team.18 In a similar vein, the Korean Imperial Rescript was intended to promote individuals’ physical and intellectual capabilities and inculcate them with emperor-centered patriotism. Later, during the colonial period, the health of the individual acquired national significance, as an article in Ch’ŏngnyŏn (The Young Korean), the organ of the Korean YMCA, pointed out in language that was very reminiscent of “muscular Christianity.”19 Western missionaries poured into Korea from the early 1880s, when the Chosŏn court lifted the ban on evangelization in accordance with international treaties. By concentrating on improving the educational and medical systems, Presbyterian and Methodist missionaries in Korea mapped out new and effective strategies for evangelizing the natives. The so-called Nevius plan proposed that Korean converts should be responsible for supporting and governing their own churches.20 Many Koreans were receptive to such messages. After all, they were struggling to preserve their national independence after Japan had emerged victorious from the Sino-Japanese War in 1895 and made determined efforts to advance its economic and political objectives on the Korean Peninsula by strengthening its influence on the Korean government.21 As the neo-Confucian state ideology incurred a loss of plausibility during the profound internal and external crises in the mid-1890s, some Korean reformers of the Independence Club (Kor. Tongnip Hyŏphoe) were sympathetic to the adoption of Christianity, which they saw as the prerequisite for the strength and affluence of Euro-American countries.22 Many of Japanese YMCA 83
the reformers had been educated in recently established American missionary schools and campaigned for reforms that affected vital aspects of administration, economy, and society, challenging its rigidly hierarchical structure.23 Eventually, the so-called Kabo reforms (Kor. Kabo kyŏngjang) were marred by factional strife within the government, and public outrage was ignited, particularly by regulations pertaining to the cutting of the traditional topknot (Kor. sangtu), a key symbol of Korean masculinity. By the time the Korean YMCA (also known as Hwangsŏng or Capital YMCA) was founded in 1903 (it became a full member of the World Alliance in 1905), American and Japanese missionaries had already established a firm presence in Korea and rates of conversions soared. However, the YMCA in Korea quickly became entangled in the political vicissitudes of the day. Rather than being an autonomous entity, the Korean YMCA entered into an organizational affiliation with the Chinese YMCA in Shanghai upon its inauguration. After the victory over Russia in 1905, Japan resolved to tighten its imperial grip on Korea by transforming the country into a protectorate, which would pave the way for annexation in August 1910.24 In 1907, Niwa Seijirō, who had previously been the secretary of the Tokyo YMCA, established the Keijō (Seoul) YMCA as a branch of the Japanese association in order to provide spiritual nourishment to the growing number of Japanese settlers in Korea. Faced with the double c onstraints of Japanese imperialism and cultural imperialism of Western missionaries, Korean Christians were looking for viable alternatives. The countrywide evangelical movement, which culminated in the P’yŏngyang Revival in 1907, and its involvement in the March First Independence Movement in 1919 engendered the effective amalgamation of nascent Korean nationalism and Protestantism.25 Influenced by evangelicalism, which had emerged from the Third Great Awakening in the United States (1880–1910) as a new Christian theology, the majority of American missionaries and Korean Christians placed the burden of conversion and attaining salvation on the individual.26 Through “industrial education departments,” the YMCA attempted to promote a strong work ethic and turn Korean converts into hard and diligent workers. The YMCA and Protestant churches thus created an “alternative sphere to the non-existing civil society as well as to colonial political society.”27 During the colonial period this greatly enhanced Christianity’s appeal, and the foundations of Protestant ascendancy in contemporary South Korea were laid. Whereas the “rule of colonial difference” was a key concept in many Euro-American colonies,28 Japanese colonial authorities in Korea asserted racial similarities and common ancestry (J. Nissen dōsōron) to construct unity between colonizer and colonized as the ideological groundwork for 84 Neuhaus
assimilation policy.29 In Japanese colonial ideology, the main dividing line was not drawn between Japanese and Koreans but rather between Japan and Korea on one side and the Western nations on the other.30 Japanese imperialism was nevertheless based on the assumption of Korean inferiority. When they embarked on the “Korea mission” between 1910 and 1919, Japanese Christians drew on this narrative by emphasizing the difference between Japanese, or Eastern, Christianity and Western Christianity. Early on, the Japanese Protestants sought to capitalize on the growing Japanese influence in Korea. In 1896, Japanese Protestant educators Honda Yōichi and Oshikawa Masayoshi organized the creation of Kyŏngsŏng Haktang (Seoul Academy) with the political and financial backing of powerful figures of Japan’s political and economic elite, such as Itō Hirobumi, Ōkuma Shige nobu, Shibusawa Eiichi, and the Mitsui family. The school was linked to the Theological Department of Dōshisha University, the first Christian university in Japan, where selected Korean students trained as ministers.31 In 1899 an alumnus of the university and Japanese YMCA official, Watase Tsuneyoshi, became warden of the Kyŏngsŏng Haktang, serving until its shutdown in 1907.32 The creation of Japanese Protestant schools in Korea invariably pursued the tacit goal of influencing young Korean converts in favor of Japan in an attempt to thwart the impact of Western missionaries.33 In spite of strong nationalist dispositions among Korean Christians, leading Japanese clergymen like Watase and his mentor Ebina Danjō tended to assume that they preached a unique form of Protestantism that enabled them to act as translators of Christianity for East Asian countries.34 On that note, Ebina Danjō explained to the readers of the Christian journal Shinjin (New Man) in August 1904 that after Japan’s anticipated victory against Russia, the most urgent task for Japan lay in the “Japanization” of Koreans and Manchurians.35 In October 1904, the annual meeting (J. sōkai) of the Japan Congregational Church (JCC) decided to extend its reach beyond the borders of Japan and “very naturally the choice fell upon Korea.”36 Along with a similar resolution made by the synod (J. daikai) of the Japan Presbyterian Church in the same year to sanction incipient efforts to evangelize in Korea, this decision engendered a considerable amount of debate among Japanese Protestants regarding the potential benefits and the best method of Christianizing the Koreans.37 BUSHIDŌ, CHRISTIANITY, AND MASCULINITY IN JAPAN, 1899–1910 At the end of the nineteenth century, European portrayals of East Asian countries oftentimes depicted the inhabitants as whimsical, childlike, or politically inept.38 In his book Bushido: The Soul of Japan, Nitobe Inazō set Japanese YMCA 85
out to masculinize the Japanese nation vis-à-vis the Euro-American powers in an attempt to refute the persistent rendering of Japan as “effeminate.” Referring to older codes of behavior of the aristocratic warrior class and their militaristic ethos, many Japanese authors defined bushidō as the essence of Japaneseness by construing it as a worthy counterpart to Western chivalry and gentlemanliness.39 The ethics of the samurai, Nitobe and others argued, still dwelled in modern Japanese citizens. However, earlier works on bushidō such as the eighteenth-century Hagakure (In the Shadow of Leaves) tended simply to give examples of the good warrior rather than clearly demarcating a codified concept of morality. Bushidō was therefore essentially an invented tradition.40 First published in 1899 in English, Bushido: The Soul of Japan was clearly directed at Western audiences. Translated into several languages including Japanese, German, and French, the book enjoyed tremendous popularity in Japan and around the world.41 Nitobe, who converted to Christianity as a student in Sapporo and later became a practicing Quaker during his sojourn in the United States, earned a PhD in Germany and subsequently became a colonial administrator in Taiwan.42 He later served as the first chair of colonial policy at Imperial University of Tokyo and as undersecretary at the League of Nations after the First World War. Apart from his official duties, Nitobe was also a major figure at the Japanese YMCA. Nitobe was a prolific writer, and his self-proclaimed goal was to be a “bridge across the Pacific.” His claim that bushidō had completely permeated modern Japanese society after the Meiji Restoration resonated well with Western readers who were seeking an explanation for Japan’s successful self-strengthening and its military victory over Russia. At the end of the nineteenth century publications on bushidō abounded. Fusing national and gender identities, bushidō has profoundly affected the Japanese self-perception as few concepts have. Yet, it was Nitobe’s book that predominantly shaped the foreign imaginations of Japan. Enumerating the samurai’s principal moral qualities, including courage and veracity, benevolence and politeness, and honor and loyalty, Nitobe’s bushidō bore a striking resemblance to the ideals and philosophy of chivalry and the miles Christianus (Christian soldier) of medieval Europe. In his reasoning, the samurai and bushidō represented the epitome of Japanese manliness and virility, and these knightly values still thrived in modern Japanese citizens.43 While the warriors during the Warring States Period (J. Sengoku Jidai) had honed their masculinities through the constant physical challenges of battle and “strenuous efforts,” modern Japanese men had added a layer of civilization to this atavistic earlier version of masculinity.44 In the verbose essay “Samuraiism: The Moral Ideas of Japan,” Nitobe averred that “the morality of 86 Neuhaus
bushidō was based on manhood and manliness. As the old Romans made no distinction between valor and virtue, so was bushidō the apotheosis of strong manhood and of all manly qualities, which by no means exclude the tenderer side of our nature.”45 Since Roman civilization represented the foundation of modern Europe and America, Nitobe stresses the parity of Japanese and Western civilizations. To be sure, the perception of bushidō as the quintessence of Japanese masculinity had been burgeoning in Meiji Japan before Nitobe published his seminal work. The active promotion of Western tastes and styles during the 1870s and 1880s by the Meiji government significantly affected the traditional perceptions of gender and identity. “Japanese gentlemen” or “dandies” populated the streets of Japanese cities, mimicking Western male fashions and materialism.46 By the same token, however, political opposition to the government also expressed itself through bodily practices. Many followers of the Freedom and People’s Rights Movement (J. Jiyū Minken Undō) embraced a “masculinized” masculinity that prided itself on its commitment to the Japanese nation while resisting the lures of Western material culture.47 In connection with the movement, the phenomenon of the sōshi (lit. “manly warrior”) gained popularity, exuding a vigorous masculinity as a differing response to modernity. Their propensity to violence was buttressed by their unfashionable appearance and a general proclivity to bear clubs. Sōshi attempted to create continuity with the past by romanticizing the spirit of the rōnin (masterless samurai) and contributing to a renaissance of martial arts.48 Subsequent to the promulgation of the Meiji constitution in 1889, nationalist energies were diverted outside the Japanese archipelago. Imperialists and ultranationalists drew a large portion of their followers from the former sōshi movement; they reassembled in secret societies like the Gen’yōsha (Dark Ocean Society) and Kokuryūkai (Amur River Society), which assertively pushed for continental expansion in Korea and beyond.49 During the First Sino-Japanese War a group of so-called tairiku rōnin (continental adventurers), led by Uchida Ryōhei, a chief ultranationalist in prewar Japan, crossed the Tsushima Strait to proactively support the Tonghak Uprising, an anti-Western, anti-government social movement with religious traits in Korea.50 Closely associated with this nationalist culture was the phenomenon of bankara (lit. rough and uncouth vigor) students, who radiated roughness and vulgarity. The magazine Bōken sekai (Adventure World) decisively influenced this ideal of masculinity celebrating feats of strength, national spirit, and heroism.51 Science fiction author and ardent baseball enthusiast Oshikawa Shunrō, who copublished the magazine, was the son of Oshikawa Masayoshi, an early Japanese Christian and educator, but he himself maintained an Japanese YMCA 87
ambivalent relationship with the faith throughout his life. In the so-called baseball controversy, across all major newspapers of Japan, Oshikawa confronted Nitobe, who publicly criticized baseball as “a game of thieves.”52 The debate made apparent the competing and conflicting interpretations of bushidō that coexisted in late Meiji Japan: Nitobe’s hybridized, more philosophical version was pitted against the imperialist heroism of Oshikawa. Although no standardized formulation of “Christian” bushidō existed, the attempt to reconcile Christianity and bushidō took place within the context of perceived foreign threats coupled with an assertive nationalism that gave rise to accusations against Japanese Christians. Journalist and Christian educator Uchimura Kanzō’s purported refusal to bow before the portrait of the emperor during the ceremonial presentation of the Imperial Rescript of Education at an elite school in Tokyo generated public controversy concerning the loyalty of Christians toward the emperor and the nation. 53 The text of the rescript was displayed in every classroom next to a portrait of the emperor and recited by teachers and pupils. The rescript thus posited the state as a “national family,” with the emperor as the benevolent father figure at its head. 54 This national family, referred to as kokutai, was arranged around two key concepts, filial piety and loyalty to the emperor. Filial piety was usually associated with Confucianism, whereas loyalty was one of the core aspects of bushidō.55 In the ensuing intellectual clashes, nationalist philosopher Inoue Tetsujirō excoriated Christianity as irrational and incompatible with modern Japanese nationalism, which combined filiality with loyalty and patriotism (J. chūkun aikoku). As metaphorical foreigners, prominent Christians like Ebina Danjō and Uchimura were constantly at risk of losing their status as members of the emperor’s family. 56 As a result of this forced reassessment of their relationship with the nation, Christians, like Buddhists, resorted to the nonreligious, allegedly authentically Japanese ideology of bushidō to accommodate their faiths with the Shintō-dominated order and become more insistently Japanese.57 Uchimura wrote in 1916: Bushido is the finest product of Japan. But Bushido by itself cannot save Japan. Christianity grafted upon Bushido will be the finest product of the world. It will save, not only Japan, but the whole world. Now that Christianity is dying in Europe, and America by its materialism cannot revive it, God is calling upon Japan to contribute its best to His service. There was a meaning in the history of Japan. For twenty centuries God has been perfecting Bushido with this very moment in view. Christianity grafted upon Bushido will yet save the world.58 88 Neuhaus
After resigning from his teaching position in 1891 because of allegations of disloyalty, Uchimura launched the Non-Church Movement (J. Mukyōkai Undō) in Japan. Reinforced by his pacifist worldview, he evolved into a principal critic of Japanese imperialism while still considering himself an ardent patriot. Therefore, the amalgamation of Christian belief and bushidō was not merely a way of reconciling his inner conflict between “foreign” and “native” traits. Even if one concedes that this piece was written under the impression of the cataclysmic self-destruction of the Christian nations in Europe during the First World War, Uchimura’s remarks succinctly encapsulated the strong exceptionalist thinking of Japanese Christianity. It was from this confidence that Japanese Christians’ Sendungsbewusstsein (sense of mission) derived. Not all Japanese Christian authors approved of such idealistic formulations of bushidō: Anglican priest Imai Toshimichi (John Toshimichi Imai) attempted to downplay the significance of bushidō in his book Bushidō: In the Past and in the Present (1906), which, like Nitobe’s book, was published in English. Although Imai clearly built and improved upon many of Nitobe’s themes and concepts, he contended that bushidō was not a coherent philosophical concept but rather a simple set of ethical practices. Rather than being an alternative, bushidō according to Imai required Christianity in order to become a practical ethic for the twentieth century.59 Congregationalist Ebina Danjō, on the contrary, espoused an explicitly Christian interpretation of bushidō, which emphasized compassion.60 Nevertheless, Ebina was among the staunchest Christian apologists of Japanese expansion, endorsing the imperialist rhetoric of the state. The merger of bushidō and Christianity in Japan became a cornerstone of the debates surrounding the Christian contribution to the Japanese civilizing mission in Korea. THE YMCA JOURNAL KAITAKUSHA AND
THE DEBATE ON CIVILIZING KOREA
When it became increasingly apparent that Japan would emerge victorious from the Russo-Japanese War, self-assertive voices began to dominate the public discourse demanding a civilizing mission in Korea: “The settlement of Corea [sic] must be given special attention. A poor effeminate people, with no political instinct, with no economic ‘gumption,’ with no intellectual ambition, is [to] become the Brown Japanese Man’s burden. Something must be done to resurrect a dead nation. Statesmen alone cannot do it. Teachers and agriculturists, preachers and engineers, can work more wonders than diplomats and generals.”61 Here Nitobe, who wrote this paragraph at the height of the RussoJapanese War, in 1905, portrayed Korea as Japan’s feminized other, which Japanese YMCA 89
lacked the wherewithal to modernize. Japan, on the contrary, was construed as the virile protector of emasculated Asian nations. Hence, the author implied that Japan is not effeminate but astute in economics, politics, and intellectual pursuits, including religion.62 Moreover, for Nitobe, preachers formed an important part of the intended Japanese civilizing mission but nevertheless lagged behind in Korea compared to their highly successful Western counterparts. The victorious war stimulated interest in sending Japanese missionaries to Korea, in part to counter the influence of Western missionaries. Despite the popular view that Protestantism in Korea constituted a considerable anti-Japanese political force, Japanese Protestants were optimistic. The chairman of the Japan YMCA, Honda Yōichi, reported from Korea in 1907 that while “we have often heard that Korean believers enter [the faith] for political reasons . . . having traveled to that country and witnessed the situation there, it seems to me that they are making relatively sound progress.”63 Honda’s and Komatsu Takeji’s 1907 report to the World Student Christian Federation, sponsored by the Japanese YMCA in Tokyo, explicitly formulated the aim that the latter was to become the main missionary vehicle for Japan’s new imperial acquisitions in Korea and East Asia.64 While the various Japanese denominations held different views on the missionary activities in Korea, among them the Congregational Church under the aegis of Ebina and Watase emerged as the main proponent of the evangelization of Koreans. The denominational leadership of the Congregational Church enthusiastically welcomed the annexation of Korea in August 1910. On the heels of annexation, Ebina released an editorial in the widely distributed news paper Tōkyō asahi shinbun in which he hailed the annexation as the longawaited solution to the lingering “Korea problem.” Against the backdrop of the rising presence of Christianity in Korea, Ebina stressed that it remained crucial to divert the political spirit of Koreans toward religion through education and assimiliation.65 Fostered by the newly appointed governor- general, Terauchi Masatake, the JCC immediately after the annexation set up a Korea mission, which received secret funds from the governor-general’s office until the mission was disbanded in 1921. Initially, the governor- general of Korea hoped that evangelization of Koreans would prove conducive to colonial policies that were designed to transform Koreans into well-assimilated subjects of the Japanese emperor. Furthermore, the problem of evangelizing Korea was closely c onnected to the question of the Korean YMCA’s status. Due to its affiliation with the Chinese YMCA and the resulting dominance of American officials, the Korean YMCA initially enjoyed a certain amount of protection from 90 Neuhaus
solicitations from the Japanese for a strategic merger. Yet, the Japanese efforts to thoroughly smother resistance immediately after annexation raised serious concern among missionaries in Europe and North America. The forced dissolution of the clandestine patriotic organization Sinminhoe (New People’s Association) and the subsequent judicial persecution of its leadership, which included high-profile Korean Christians and YMCA members, unsettled the missionaries, who were anxious not to be deprived of the fruits of their work.66 Even though Watanabe Tōru, supreme judge in Korea and a practicing Presbyterian, assured the head of the YMCA in Japan, Galen M. Fisher, that the crackdown was not anti-Christian in nature, missionaries feared that the affair had the potential to negatively redound to Christianity’s reputation.67 Following the annexation, Niwa Seijirō, secretary for the Japanese YMCA in Seoul, and the leadership of the association began campaigning for the amalgamation of the Korean and Japanese YMCAs. The merger finally occurred in April 1913, when the “Terms of Affiliation” were agreed upon and signed by leading Japanese Protestants, which included Nitobe Inazō, and Korean representatives, with John Raleigh Mott acting as witness.68 However, the agreement left little room to maneuver for the Korean YMCA, because many of its leaders, including the first general secretary and president of the Korean YMCA, Yun Ch’iho, were imprisoned in the wake of the Sinminhoe incident. In 1922 the Korean YMCA withdrew from the agreement and became autonomous.69 The Japanese YMCA through its official monthly publication, Kaitakusha, took part in the debate concerning the annexation of Korea and the role of Japanese Christians in the assimilation process. Kaitakusha published articles in Japanese on religion as well as reports concerning the YMCA, but every issue also included a small section in English. The topos of bushidō was a recurring theme in the contributions to the journal. Prior to annexation, Okada Tetsuzō outlined the prospects of Japan and East Asia in an article entitled “Bushidō to Tōyō shimei” (The mission of the Orient and the bushidō): “My country [Japan] has released the brightness of a new civilization which is the fountainhead of the Orient and is founded on elementary achievements. . . . The various nations of the Orient that delay progress should see the opportunity which can be attained in this realization of the Orient, by awakening resolutely and following the leadership of Japan.”70 For the author, Japan’s accomplishments were based on the ideology of bushidō: “If they relinquish their ego in favor of greater devotion as many daimyō did in the Tokugawa period, the [Korean] leadership cannot avoid practicing the principles of our bushidō.”71 Okada envisaged an Asian community under Japanese leadership. As Japanese Christianity coalesced with the ancient tradition of bushidō, it entailed a strong sense of mission.72 Japanese YMCA 91
In another opinion piece in November 1910, entitled “The Problem of Civilizing Korea,” Okada specified the most pressing issues for Japanese Protestants in the newly acquired colony: for the Koreans to become healthy and diligent, the Japanese would have to instruct them with “bushidō-like Spartan-like hard pedagogic” until they were fit to “fulfil their duties alongside the Japanese army on the battlefield” and thus become “new Japanese” (J. shin Nihonjin).73 Okada was a well-known Anglicist and army captain who for some time also served as an official of the Kokura (modern Kitakyūshū) YMCA. Okada believed that instilling into Koreans the values of bushidō and toughening them through military drills reminiscent of ancient Sparta would ensure the ultimate success of assimilation policy. At the time, the hardened virility of ancient Sparta was in vogue among late Victorian military officers and sports enthusiasts alike.74 The idea equally resonated with Western-educated Japanese proponents of bushidō, like Nitobe, who in 1909 linked the spirit of the samurai to Spartan education: “It is only to be expected from the martial character of bushidō that Valor should play an important part. In early youth the samurai was put to the task of bearing and daring. Boys, and girls also—though naturally to a less [sic] extent—were trained in a Lacedemonian fashion to endure privation of all kinds.”75 Okada employs this idea in a similar vein to imply that Korean pathetic effeminacy could be remedied through tough military education. However, Okada reckoned that such training would not be an easy task but believed that its success would hinge on the extent to which Japanese educators could nurture Koreans’ love for and loyalty to the Japanese emperor and nation (J. chūkun aikoku), which for Japanese nationalists became increasingly synonymous with imperial bushidō.76 However, similar efforts had led to only modest success in Taiwan, Okada admitted. In fact, he cautioned, strengthening the Koreans’ minds and spirits through education had the potential to backfire dangerously on Japan. In Taiwan, Japanese missionaries pursued a strategy of “civilizing” through evangelization, which particularly targeted indigenous groups such as the Atayal people inhabiting the island’s mountainous interior.77 To prevent a similar dilemma in Korea, Okada hoped to persuade the Koreans of “the responsibility to synergistically and unanimously contribute to world civilization by reminding them of the historical competition between East and West.” Okada linked Protestantism with bushidō as the fundamental ideology to solidify Japanese supremacy in East Asia. To counter the West’s current superiority, Orientals (J. Tōyōjin) had to understand that in one way or another they needed to strengthen their spirit and join forces for the whole world to progress.78 Although he never precisely fleshed out what the “Oriental spirit” entailed, Okada claimed that Japanese Christians’ assistance 92 Neuhaus
would prove beneficial. Foreign missionaries by and large either had delivered almost no education to Koreans or had failed to instill the Korean Christians with an “Oriental mentality” (J. Tōyō no seijō). For Okada, Asia within the confines of the Japanese Empire would be evangelized by Japanese Protestants, whose brand of Christianity had to be Japanese–East Asian in character.79 Nitobe primarily addressed a Western audience to prove the compatibility of Japanese values with modern civilizations, whereas Okada, who wrote in Japanese, pandered to the Japanese public and the authorities for moral and financial support. In fact, his rhetoric dovetailed neatly with the official position of the Japanese colonial state, as well as emerging PanAsianist ideas. Since the 1910s, Pan-Asian activists increasingly conjured up connotations of Asian unity opposite the West in order to masquerade the Japanese oppression in adjacent Asian countries. Okada had argued in a similar fashion at a meeting of leading Japanese Christians at the YMCA hall in Tokyo. He was quoted as saying that “the existing denominational differences had lost their significance, the old creeds had become outgrown even in the West, and we should cease to be dependent upon foreign ideas and influences, building up an entirely Japanese church, absolutely independent, and becoming an example in our doctrinal and ecclesiastical systems for the rest of the world.”80 His suggestion to build a Christian university independent of missionary influence was included in the program of the league.81 A strong advocate of an independent and unified Japanese church, Okada shared the view of many contemporary Japanese Protestants that the successful fusion of Western religion with Eastern cultural essence had created a unique and potent form of indigenized Christian belief.82 Yet in actuality, the overwhelming majority of Korean Christians remained recalcitrant anti-Japanese nationalists who eschewed Japanese churches. Despite substantial funding from the governor-general and a passionate Pan-Asian rhetoric, the orchestrated proselytizing efforts of the JCC to expedite assimilation thus ended in ignominious failure.83 If anything, the Korean YMCA’s branches in Seoul and Tokyo evolved into hotbeds of independence activism. Moreover, during the countrywide Korean March First Movement, which the Japanese authorities were only able to quell by force of arms, it became obvious that a high proportion of Protestants were among the leaders of the movement. When the governor-general ceased financial contributions in 1921, the JCC eventually abandoned the Korea mission, instead shifting its focus to Koreans in Manchuria and China.84 Japanese Christians utilized the multifaceted concept of bushidō, which originated from the desire to refute the Western perception of Japanese Japanese YMCA 93
effeminacy and inferiority, to legitimize their own exceptionalism. In their minds, this new “masculine” strength, accrued from the fruitful merger of ancient Japanese values and a European religion, equipped them with the ability to facilitate the assimilation process of Korea as harbingers of a distinctive East Asian Christianity. Although there was dissent within the YMCA and the Protestant denominations of Japan, the leaders of the JCC enthusiastically hailed the annexation of Korea as an opportunity to demonstrate to Japanese society and the world the civilizing power of Japanese Protestantism. In part, this was a reaction to the stigmatization of Japanese Christians by nationalists during the 1890s. The particular circumstances of the YMCA in Korea and Japan contributed to a paradoxical situation in which the Japanese Protestants preached universal values of an imagined global community of Protestantism but increasingly emphasized the dichotomy of Eastern (i.e., Japanese) and Western Christianity. By combining the Protestant belief, perceptions of muscular Christianity, and the genuinely Japanese ideology of bushidō, Nitobe and Okada were able to construct Japan as a masculine educator of a feminine Korean Protestantism. In the end, the Congregational Church squandered the opportunity to coax Korean Christians into collaboration, and the assimilation strategies proposed by commentators like Okada failed dismally; while the Japanese YMCA in 1911 succeeded in taking over the Korean association, the latter remained a haven for Korean nationalism and resistance against Japanese rule on the Korean Peninsula. This became strikingly apparent when Korean Protestants took a leading role in the events that unfolded during March 1919. NOTES Parts of this chapter are based on my earlier article Dolf-Alexander Neuhaus, “Assimilating Korea: Japanese Protestants, ‘East Asian Christianity’ and the Education of Koreans in Japan, 1905–1920,” Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education 52, no. 6 (2016): 614–628. 1. Oleg Benesh, Inventing the Way of the Samurai: Nationalism, Internationalism, and Bushidō in Modern Japan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 140. 2. Jon Thares Davidann, “Japanese YMCA Cultural Imperialism in Korea and Manchuria after the Russo-Japanese War,” in “Bridging an Ocean: American Missionaries and Asian Converts Reexamined,” special issue, Journal of American–East Asian Relations 5, nos. 3–4 (1996): 255. 3. These include Emily Anderson, Christianity and Imperialism in Modern Japan: Empire for God (London: Bloomsbury, 2014); You Jae Lee, Koloniale Zivilgemeinschaft: Alltag und Lebensweise der Christen in Korea (1894–1954) [Colonial civil community: The everyday way of life of Christians in Korea (1894–1954)] (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 2017); see also Garrett Washington, “Pulpits as Lecterns: Discourses of Social 94 Neuhaus
Change within Tokyo’s Protestant Churches, 1890–1917,” Japanese Studies 29, no. 3 (2009): 381–399. 4. Ian Tyrrell, Reforming the World: The Creation of America’s Moral Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 3. 5. Vladimir Tikhonov, Social Darwinism and Nationalism in Korea: The Beginnings (1880s–1910s). “Survival” as an Ideology of Korean Modernity (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 167–194; Jason G. Karlin, “The Gender of Nationalism: Competing Masculinities in Meiji Japan,” Journal of Japanese Studies 28, no. 1 (2002): 41–77. 6. Washington, “Pulpits as Lecterns,” 383. 7. Jon Thares Davidann, A World of Crisis and Progress: The American YMCA in Japan, 1890–1930 (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 1998), 55. 8. Washington, “Pulpits as Lecterns,” 385. 9. Washington, “Pulpits as Lecterns,” 384–385; Sheldon Garon, “State and Religion in Imperial Japan, 1912–1945,” Journal of Japanese Studies 12, no. 2 (1986): 278. 10. Koen de Ceuster, “Wholesome Education and Sound Leisure: The YMCA Sports Programme in Colonial Korea,” European Journal of East Asian Studies 2, no. 1 (2003): 58. 11. Tyrrell, Reforming the World, 50, 69. 12. Davidann, A World of Progress, 40. 13. For the history of the YMCA in Japan, see Koji Hattori, Nihon no toshi YMCA ni okeru supōtsu no fukyū to tenkai: Taishōki kara shōwaki (senzen) wo chūshin toshita YMCA no “taiiku jigyō” [The popularization and development of sports at the Japanese city YMCAs. Focusing on the YMCA’s “Physical Education Project” during the Taishō and (prewar) Shōwa periods] (Hiroshima: Keisuisha, 2015), 34–56. 14. Satoshi Nakamura, Nihon Kirisutokyō Senkyōshi: Zabieru izen kara Kyō made [A missionary history of Japanese Christianity. From before Xavier to today] (Tokyo: Inochi no Kotobasha, 2009), 144–158. 15. Davidann, A World of Progress, 112–117. 16. Clifford Putney, Muscular Christianity: Manhood and Sports in Protestant America, 1880–1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 3–4. 17. Cited by Putney, Muscular Christianity, 11; Putney defines the concept simply as “a Christian commitment to health and manliness,” which originated from the New Testament’s sanctioning of “manly exertion.” 18. Ikuo Abe, “Muscular Christianity in Japan: The Growth of a Hybrid,” International Journal of the History of Sport 23, no. 5 (2006): 720. 19. De Ceuster, “Wholesome Education,” 74. 20. Albert L. Park, Building a Heaven on Earth: Religion, Activism, and Protest in Japanese-Occupied Korea (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015), 39; Klaus Dittrich, “The Beginnings of Modern Education in Korea, 1883–1910,” Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education 50, no. 3 (2014): 268–269. 21. Carter J. Eckert et al., Korea Old and New: A History (Seoul: Ilchohak Publishers, 1990), 201. 22. Chung-shin Park, Protestantism and Politics in Korea (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003), 24. 23. A detailed overview is given in Eckert, Korea Old and New, 224–229. 24. See, for example, Peter Duus et al., The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895–1910 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Hilary Conroy, The Japanese Seizure of Korea 1868–1910: A Study of Realism and Idealism in International Japanese YMCA 95
Relations (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1960); Shigenori Moriyama, Nikkan Heigō [The Japanese annexation of Korea] (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1992). 25. Lee, Koloniale Zivilgemeinschaft, 15; a cooperative venture between foreign missionaries and Korean converts like Kil Sŏnju, the P’yŏngyang Revival was a watershed moment in the history of Korean Protestantism, which, while centering on Bible classes and the repentance of the individual, helped forge a Korean church. An excellent overview is provided by Timothy S. Lee, Born Again: Evangelicalism in Korea (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2010), 15–23. 26. Park, Building a Heaven on Earth, 45. 27. Park, Building a Heaven on Earth, 49. 28. Park, Building a Heaven on Earth, 45–49; Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 16; see also Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, eds., Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 11–22. 29. Eiji Oguma, A Genealogy of “Japanese” Self-Images, trans. David Askew (Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, 2002), 64–80. 30. Lee, Koloniale Zivilgemeinschaft, 61. 31. Deok-Joo Rhie, “Shoki Dōshisha Daigaku Shingakubu no Kankokujin Ryū gakusei ni kansuru Kenkyū (1908–1945)” [A study on the early Korean students in the School of Theology of Dōshisha University (1908–1945)], Kirisutokyō Kenkyū 73, no. 2 (2011): 14. 32. Dittrich, “The Beginnings of Modern Education in Korea,” 269. 33. An early (1892) example from Fukuin Shinpō is Hyōdayū Shimanuki, “Yukite Chōsen o Dendō seyo” [Let’s go and proselytize Korea], in Nikkan Kirisutokyō Kankeishi Shiryō: 1876–1922, ed. Keiji Ogawa and Myŏng-gwan Chi (Tokyo: Shinkyō Shuppansha, 1984), 18–23; see also Rhie, “Shoki Dōshisha Daigaku Shingakubu no Kankokujin Ryūgakusei ni kansuru Kenkyū,” 3. 34. Tetsuzō Okada, “Chōsen Kyōka no Mondai” [The problem of civilizing Korea], Kaitakusha (November 1910): 34–36. 35. Takayoshi Matsuo, “The Japanese Protestants in Korea, Part One: The Missionary Activity of the Japanese Congregational Church in Korea,” Modern Asian Studies 13, no. 3 (1979): 404. 36. Nihon Kirisutokyō Kyōgikai, The Japan Christian Yearbook, 2nd issue (Yokohama, 1904), 122. 37. Nihon Kirisutokyō Kyōgikai, Japan Christian Yearbook, 2nd issue, 124. 38. Michele M. Mason, “Empowering the Would-be Warrior: Bushidō and the Gendered Bodies of the Japanese Nation,” in Recreating Japanese Men, ed. Sabine Frühstück and Anne Walthall (Berkeley: University of California Press), 72. 39. Bushidō literally translates as the “way of the warrior.” The term was coined after the Meiji Restoration based on various treatises and moral guidebooks from the Tokugawa era. Lacking a coherent or comprehensive doctrine, the concept was charged with an ideological timbre that helped legitimize Japanese fascism during the Pacific War. 40. For differences in the concept of bushidō in the Imperial Army and Navy, see Kō Takashima, Guntai to Supōtsu no Kindai [Modern military and sports] (Tokyo: Seikyūsha, 2015). 41. Benesh, Inventing the Way of the Samurai, 125. 42. Davidann, A World of Progress, 72. 43. Mason, “Empowering the Would-be Warrior,” 73. 96 Neuhaus
44. Mason, “Empowering the Would-be Warrior,” 73. 45. Inazō Nitobe, “Samuraiism: The Moral Ideas of Japan,” in Thoughts and Essays (Tokyo: Teibi Publishing, 1909), 329. 46. Karlin, “The Gender of Nationalism,” 51. 47. The multifarious Freedom and People’s Rights Movement comprised a broad spectrum of ideological motivations and backgrounds. Apart from former members of the government such as Itagaki Taisuke, it also attracted impoverished farmers. The uniting element was the call for parliamentary and constitutional government during the 1870s and 1880s. 48. Karlin, “The Gender of Nationalism,” 61; Eiko Maruko Siniawer, Ruffians, Yakuza, Nationalists: The Violent Politics of Modern Japan, 1860–1960 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008), 56. 49. See Conroy, Japanese Seizure of Korea, 413–441. 50. Tonghak essentially means “Eastern Learning”; see Park, Building a Heaven on Earth, 23–38. 51. Karlin, “The Gender of Nationalism,” 74. Oshikawa also published the journal Bukyō sekai [World of heroism]. 52. Abe, “Muscular Christianity in Japan,” 723. 53. Carol Gluck, Japan’s Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), 132; Garon, “State and Religion in Imperial Japan,” 278. 54. Benesh, Inventing the Way of the Samurai, 115. 55. Benesh, Inventing the Way of the Samurai, 115. 56. Gluck, Japan’s Modern Myths, 135. 57. Gluck, Japan’s Modern Myths, 137–138; Benesh, Inventing the Way of the Samurai, 140; Garon, “State and Religion in Imperial Japan,” 279. 58. Kanzō Uchimura, “Bushido and Christianity,” Seisho no Kenkyū (January 10, 1916), 186. 59. Benesh, Inventing the Way of the Samurai, 142. 60. Benesh, Inventing the Way of the Samurai, 138. 61. Nitobe, “Post-Bellum Work,” in Thoughts and Essays (Tokyo: Teibi Publishing, 1909), 120. 62. Mason, “Empowering the Would-Be Warrior,” 75. 63. Michael Isaac Shapiro, “Christian Culture and Military Rule: Assimilation and Its Limits during the First Decade of Japan’s Colonial Rule in Korea, 1910–19” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2010), 58. 64. Davidann, “Japanese YMCA Cultural Imperialism in Korea and Manchuria,” 262, cited by Davidann, A World of Crisis and Progress, 136. 65. Danjō Ebina, “Chōsenjin ha Nihon ni Dōka shiuru ka?” [Can Koreans be assimilated to Japan?], Tōkyō asahi shinbun, August 25, 1910, 5; article also cited by Mark E. Caprio, Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea, 1910–1945 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009), 82. 66. Davidann, “Japanese YMCA Cultural Imperialism in Korea and Manchuria,” 271. 67. “More about the Korean Trials,” Missionary Review of the World, February 1913, 140; Johannes Witte, “Die Verschwörung in Korea und das Christentum“ [The conspiracy in Korea and Christianity], Zeitschrift für Missionskunde und Religionswissenschaft. Organ des Allgemeinen Evangelisch-Protestantischen Missionsvereins (1912), 181–183. Japanese YMCA 97
275.
68. Shapiro, “Christian Culture and Military Rule,” 40. 69. Davidann, “Japanese YMCA Cultural Imperialism in Korea and Manchuria,”
70. Translation by Davidann, A World of Progress, 137. 71. Translation by Davidann, A World of Progress, 141. 72. Translation by Davidann, A World of Progress, 141. 73. Okada, “Chōsen Kyōka no Mondai,” 34–35; Neuhaus, “Assimilating Korea,” 622. 74. J. A. Mangan, The Games Ethic and Imperialism: Aspects of the Diffusion of an Ideal (Harmondsworth: Viking, 1986), 185. 75. Nitobe, “Samuraiism,” Thoughts and Essays, 339. 76. Benesh, Inventing the Way of the Samurai, 115–116. 77. Akira Kaneko, “Taiwan Senjū Minzoku to Kirisutokyō Dendō. Toku ni Taiyaru zoku no Chōrōkyōkai ni tsuite” [Aboriginal peoples of Taiwan and Christian mission: The case of the Presbyterian Church of the Atayal people], Tenri Daigaku Oyasa to Kenkyū Nenpō 22 (2015): 23–47. 78. Okada, “Chōsen Kyōka no Mondai,” 35. 79. Okada, “Chōsen Kyōka no Mondai,” 35–36. 80. The Conference of Federated Missions, The Christian Movement in Japan, 9th annual issue (Tokyo: Kyōbunkwan, 1910), 465. 81. The Conference of Federated Missions, The Christian Movement in Japan, 465. 82. Davidann, “Japanese YMCA Cultural Imperialism in Korea and Manchuria,” 262. 83. Davidann, “Japanese YMCA Cultural Imperialism in Korea and Manchuria,” 257. 84. Anderson, Empire for God, 158.
98 Neuhaus
FOUR The YMCA’s Message of Public Health and Masculinity, 1910s–1920s
Transnational Impacts of the Physical Education Programs in China, the Philippines, and Japan Stefan Huebner Q. [Question]: Did you convert him [Kanō Jigorō] personally? A. [Answer]: Absolutely, that is[,] it was this way—he was President of the Tok[y]o Higher Normal School where the government teachers are trained and his influence was very great. You see all the government teachers went out of this school with this other idea [bushidō, “way of the warrior”] and now the biggest single volley ball league in Japan is in his school. He ditched the whole thing and I remember his swan song when he did it.1
O
n January 5, 1920, in an interview that lasted for several hours, Elwood S. Brown was questioned about his previous activities for the North American branch of the YMCA. Brown, born in Cherokee, Iowa, in 1883 to a Baptist minister, provides a prime example of a transnational career as a YMCA leader in amateur sports, fitness, and public health.2 For most of his adult life, he had played a central role as a YMCA physical (education) director in the North American YMCA’s foreign department, staffed and supported by both the US and the Canadian YMCA. The first part of the interview illustrates that the YMCA War Historical Bureau was strongly interested in Brown’s cooperation with the US military. Between 1918, when he left Asia for France, and 1919, he provided services to the American Expeditionary Forces. Among other tasks, Brown had co-organized two major sporting events for the large number of soldiers who after the armistice in November 1918 awaited demobilization. The American Expeditionary Forces Championships and later the Inter-Allied Games, an international event held among the Allied countries’ militaries at the newly constructed Pershing Stadium close to Paris, served not only to provide participants and spectators with recreation and entertainment. Like Brown’s earlier activities in East and Southeast Asia, the games were also 99
characterized by the missionary and pedagogical aims of the YMCA, such as democratic citizenship training and improving public health and fitness. Muscular Christianity, a sports concept strongly related to the YMCA, had gained in importance from the second half of the nineteenth century. Its supporters used amateur sports as a tool to promote a concept of masculinity that was based on three American Protestant ideals:3 Christian internationalism, Christian egalitarianism, and a Protestant work ethic, which included pursuing a healthy and productive body. To promote the ideals in Asia, Brown had founded the Far Eastern Championship Games (FECG), which, reminiscent of a world’s fair, initially served as a public relations event and a tool for communicating the YMCA’s activities. The FECG took place a total of ten times between 1913 and 1934 and constituted the largest regional sporting event regularly held during the interwar period. The games were of eminent importance for Asians, who gradually garnered interest in Western sports, and their later hosting drew hundreds of thousands of spectators to the venues, in addition to being covered in newspapers, radio broadcasting, and the cinema.4 In another regard, the FECG’s success is less obvious, since less consensus between historical actors existed. North American YMCA physical directors for more than a decade sought to establish their ideals among their Asian colleagues and opponents from China, Japan, and the Philippines. For example, the question concerning Kanō’s “conversion,” which opened this chapter, did not refer to a formal change of faith, but to the acceptance of Y ideals. After all, especially in opportunistic cases, changing one’s faith could remain without any further spiritual or physical consequences. Instead, the religious aspiration was to change behaviors and cultural systems, based on making Japanese society embrace Protestant American amateur sports ideals. A formal conversion to Protestantism would normally not take place in the process. For Brown, Kanō seemed to be the ideal “convert” to muscular Christian ideals. Kanō was not only in close contact with the Japanese Ministry of Education and thus held considerable influence in deciding the types of physical education that could be taught and sponsored at public schools. He was also the first Asian to be co-opted into the International Olympic Committee, in 1909. However, Kanō’s “conversion” did not result in an unlimited embrace of American Protestant amateur sports. A main reason was due to Kanō’s interest in traditional Japanese philosophy and its corresponding physical education and fitness practices, which led to his invention of judo. Kanō’s non-Christian concept of the bushidō (way of the warrior), closely related to his invention of judo, came into conflict with the concept of muscular Christianity. Inspired by Japanese traditional cultural elements, his bushidō concept was strongly Japan 100 Huebner
oriented and focused on educating loyal and efficient subjects of the emperor. In contrast to other popular concepts of the bushidō, he did not try to connect it to a Japanese understanding of Christianity.5 But according to Brown, the hosting of the Third FECG (Tokyo, 1917) marked a partial “conversion” of Kanō, illustrating his growing acceptance of the idea of team sports, such as the YMCA-invented volleyball and basketball, and his shrinking aversion to American Protestant amateur sports ideals. However, this meant that the YMCA’s sports-related “civilizing mission,” targeted at East and Southeast Asia, had only overcome its very first obstacle.6 This chapter addresses the North American and local YMCAs’ aim of spreading modern, Western amateur sport in East and Southeast Asia.7 More information on the importance of sport for the YMCA in North America is provided in this volume’s introduction. Spreading Protestant amateur sports ideals in East and Southeast Asia served as a large-scale social engineering project based on transferring the abovementioned ideals of Christian internationalism, Christian egalitarianism, and a Protestant work ethic. I conceptualize this endeavor as a “civilizing mission.” In the words of Jürgen Osterhammel, a “civilizing mission” describes “a special kind of belief with, sometimes, practical consequences. It includes the selfproclaimed right and duty to propagate and actively introduce one’s own norms and institutions to other peoples and societies, based upon a firm conviction of the inherent superiority and higher legitimacy of one’s own collective way of life.”8 Hence, the following analysis covers both North American and Asian YMCA officials who were involved in the expansion of what co-editor Ian Tyrrell called the American “moral empire.”9 I also pursue the activities of US and East and Southeast Asian elites, ranging from bureaucrats to politicians and especially sports experts, who during the 1920s dealt with the transfer of these amateur sports ideals. My case studies on China, the Philippines, and Japan illustrate the wide range of reactions, ranging from acceptance to selective appropriation to rejection.10 In the process, I shed light on the YMCA’s contribution to self-government and, related to it, later to decolonization. In addition to two cases of cooperation, I analyze one contrasting case of nationalism-inspired resistance against the civilizing mission. Kanō’s case illustrates that the civilizing mission’s altogether liberal and benevolent character—if compared to the civilizing mission claims of many colonial administrations—was rejected as an undesirable form of Protestant American paternalism. This chapter argues that the YMCA’s amateur-sports-related civilizing mission served to implement a large-scale social, cultural, and political transformation process in the Catholic Philippines as well as in Japan and China, both non-Christian countries. In the process, the initially paternalistic Public Health and Masculinity 101
project served to increase the capacity for self-government—using Protestant American as a standard—among the three countries. Even Japan, having a special status in Asia, was included, being perceived by North American YMCA staff as treating its population in an authoritarian and illiberal way. The YMCA’s support for national self-government was a major difference to the civilizing mission rhetoric of colonial administrations, often serving to justify and prolong colonial rule. The Y’s liberal focus was, among other reasons, the result of American philanthropists expecting efficient and effective missionary work.11 This expectation included an economic use of donations, which meant that sometimes concrete successes needed to be achieved and communicated before further funding could be received. Among such activities, the transfer of Protestant American sports and fitness culture took a noteworthy place and intensified during the 1910s. Educating Asian YMCA officials in the United States also gained in importance, being desirable in the view of philanthropists, since it reduced the financial costs of having North American officials work abroad. In combination with growing anticolonial nationalism since World War I, leading to intense demands regarding a leadership transfer to Asians, the economic considerations meant that an increasing number of Asians could be sent to the International YMCA College (now Springfield College) and other institutions to study. However, there was fear among North American physical directors, including Elwood Brown, that their Asian colleagues would, due to the political tensions in East Asia, be unable or unwilling to enforce American Protestant amateur sports ideals against nationalistic outbursts. Such outbursts were considered to be signs of backwardness due to their often emotion-driven or violent characterization. Self-control, in contrast, was one of the essential elements of the Y’s concepts of amateur sport and of masculinity, providing the foundation for pacifying and democratizing societies. Consequently, this chapter answers the following questions: Why did American Protestant amateur sports and fitness develop into an important part of the YMCA’s civilizing mission, oriented toward self-government? How did the modernization aims of North American and Asian YMCA leaders differ from those of other Asian actors who were familiar with Western sports? Why and how did the latter’s resistance occur? China, one of the countries with the highest number of non-Christians worldwide, constituted a prime target for North American missionary organizations, including the YMCA. Muscular Christianity not only served as a mediator for Christian ideals, but also gave room for highly important and more “secular” Social Gospel–inspired attempts to scientifically improve public health and fitness. Particularly for Chinese YMCA physical directors, doing so was also related to ideas of increasing the population’s military 102 Huebner
capability to survive in a social Darwinist world order (which was not contradictory to Christian ideals, if limited to fighting for a “just” cause). In 1913, China-based US YMCA physical director William W. Lockwood communicated his astonishment at how important the topic of “public health” had become in the United States though not in China. In his article in the YMCA journal Physical Training, he bemoaned the fact that an estimated one thousand citizens in Shanghai, and another two million within China, died from tuberculosis each year. These detrimental health issues were attributed to six reasons: urbanization, overcrowded accommodations, lack of knowledge regarding the importance of sunshine and fresh air, an unbalanced diet that made people more susceptible to tuberculosis, bad sanitary conditions, and a centuries-old value system that accredited importance only to studying, but not to physical exercise. As a result, the Shanghai YMCA’s physical department regularly organized events on the topic of healthcare, which were also covered in Chinese-language newspapers, meaning additional outreach potential.12 As will be illustrated, North American YMCA physical directors and their Chinese colleagues were strongly convinced that Lockwood’s sixth point, China’s traditional value system, was one of the major causes of the country’s healthcare ills. They identified the rejection of physical exercise among Chinese scholars and especially among officials as the underlying cause for their current problematic public health situation. Simultaneously, they related this adverse mentality toward physical exercise to China’s decline during the nineteenth century. Such an interpretation supported (stereotypical) images of China as the “sick man of East Asia.”13 In terms of the American Protestant civilizing mission, Lockwood identified a serious problem and concluded that without Y assistance, the Chinese would be unable to resolve the country’s health issues. This conclusion, and the article in general, among others addressed North American donors and philanthropists. In their case, the expectation was that a combination of facts with some exaggerations, stereotypes, and success stories would have a positive financial impact. Moreover, based on an American “standard of civilization,” Lockwood and his colleagues used scientific methods14 to diagnose the outcomes of Chinese social and cultural deficits. The demand for scientific methods (as an element of Western civilization) was thus a central part of the amateur sport- and fitness-related civilizing mission and a reason for the negative evaluation of the local, unscientific practices. One example is an article authored by Charles A. Siler, a physical director in the service of the national committee of the Chinese YMCA. The article was published in 1919 in YMCA journal The Chinese Students’ Christian Journal and analyzed anthropometric data Public Health and Masculinity 103
collected in North Chinese cities. Evaluating this data via comparisons to US data served to illustrate the consequences of the Chinese public health deficits and to amplify the need for countermeasures: “The need of systematic physical education is apparent to the most casual observer. The investigations made at Tsinghua [Qinghua] College and at the Tientsin [Tianjin] Y.M.C.A. show Chinese students to be smaller in statue, in girths, and in lung capacity than American students of the same age. It stands to reason that when American men are breaking under the strain of modern conditions, Chinese men cannot hope to stand the strain with bodies less strong.”15 The next logical step for solving at least some Chinese public health problems was (in addition to the promotion of medical and pharmaceutical knowledge) the transfer of Western amateur sport and fitness practices to China and their systematic spread among the population. The Chinese population thus was seen as having the biological potential to achieve, with YMCA support, a significantly higher degree of health, fitness, and physical capability if the roots of the problem were tackled. An article written by YMCA physical director Alfred H. Swan shows this.16 Between 1912 and 1919, Swan held several positions in China, among them head trainer of the Chinese team for the FECG and instructor of Chinese YMCA physical directors in training in Shanghai, before he temporarily returned to the United States to earn a medical degree. In an article published in Physical Training in March 1921, he was optimistic that a Chinese team would succeed at the Olympic Games if it underwent strict training. In the very long run, he was definitely right, but it would take until 1932 to send a first team, comprising only one athlete, who won no medals, to the Los Angeles Olympics.17 According to Swan, the physical strength and body size of the 140,000 or so Chinese laborers who had been recruited to work for the Allied forces in France during World War I demonstrated the Chinese biological potential to the “whole world.” In contrast to African Pygmies, whom he judged to lack the biological potential to succeed at the Olympics, the Chinese possessed great potential, if universal training in amateur sports were to be implemented. A final step in terms of the civilizing mission was to train Chinese YMCA physical directors, who would contribute to spreading Western amateur sports. The reason for having locals take over leadership positions in YMCA physical education was twofold: First, it would allow the withdrawal of North American physical directors and therefore reduce the budget of the North American YMCA’s foreign department. Moreover, local leadership also served to decrease anticolonial criticism and (in some cases) reduced language barriers. 104 Huebner
Hao Gengsheng (Hoh Gunsun), who became Taiwan’s (or the Republic of China’s) most important sports official for several decades after the Chinese Civil War (1945–1949), was one of the most prominent YMCA recruits. Hao had been trained by the YMCA in Shanghai and later graduated from the International YMCA College in Springfield. An extended and revised version of Hao’s bachelor’s thesis (1923) was published as a book in 1926.18 Although there is no guarantee that his writings reflected his personal opinion (since for career purposes he might have written what his supervisors wanted to hear), in his book he supported the Protestant social engineering aims of the North American YMCA. In his historical overview on physical education in China before the arrival of Protestant missionaries, he supported the thesis that the hostile attitude of high- ranking Chinese scholar-officials toward physical education and fitness training was a major reason for the military decline of China. Hao heavily attacked the imperial examination system, which until its abolishment in 1905 had opened the door to prestigious government offices but was primarily based on repetitive memorization of Chinese classical texts while observing various formalities: “No system was more perfect or effective in retarding the intellectual and literal development of a nation.”19 Over time, the exclusive focus on bookwork and rote learning resulted in the Chinese elite’s rejection of physical education as a practice unworthy of their attention.20 Hao also claimed that the teachings of Confucius and Laozi did not encourage a physically active life. Military examinations, on the other hand, focused only on physical prowess, such as physical strength, weapon skills, and so forth, without taking intellectual education into consideration. Since high-ranking scholar-officials increasingly lacked interest in military examinations, military matters were eventually left to able-bodied but undereducated people.21 It is hardly surprising that for Hao the founding of missionary schools during the nineteenth century, and in particular the YMCA’s arrival, marked a turning point. Western schools and universities devoted much effort to increasing the physical activity of pupils and students so as to improve their health and fitness.22 Doing so was not unexpected, since the attempt to create a new Protestant and pro-American elite would pay off more if graduates remained in good physical shape. Regularly falling sick or dying young was as unproductive as if graduates abandoned the American Protestant value system. Similar to Swan, Hao believed that it would be possible to identify and develop “outstanding stars” among the large mass of “untried but potential athletes” if they received the opportunity to engage in competitions. He believed that especially the last years had shown that “the old Chinese idea, Public Health and Masculinity 105
‘To study is beneficial: to play is useless,’ has been entirely changed in the mind of the people.”23 Hao hereby referred primarily to a new, Western- or American-trained small elite, since affecting a substantial part of the population through mass sports had proven more difficult than expected. Based on an estimate by the North American YMCA, in 1921 only about 25 percent of about 400 million Chinese knew about Western sports, and less than 5 percent, all living in Western-influenced cities, had accepted them.24 John H. Gray, the YMCA’s national physical director of China, came to the conclusion that this very limited spread of sport was the result of an insufficient communication infrastructure, a conservative temperament among the population, illiteracy, a lack of a national system of exercise, an insufficient modern school system, a lack of political homogeneity (referring to the lack of a central authority between 1916 and 1928), and other reasons.25 Gray therefore considered the hosting of regional sporting events, such as the FECG, to be useless for China.26 It should be mentioned that in Japan and the Philippines, the games had served as a public relations event that not only introduced Western sport to Asians but also had allowed the YMCA to connect with leading Asian politicians, civil servants, and physical educators. At least until the late 1920s, the lack of a centralized public school system in China that could have been used to promote sports, as had been done in other countries, greatly limited the impact of the YMCA’s advisory work on a national level.27 Despite the transfer of leadership from North American physical directors to local Chinese experts that took place during the mid-1920s, one could hardly talk about a successful institutionalization of sport and fitness in more than a number of big cities. Most members of this new elite of Chinese physical educators had, like Hao, been trained in Springfield or had been sent to other US institutions to study.28 In terms of the educational backgrounds of leading figures involved in the institutionalization of physical education up to and even during the period of early Communism, the impact of the North American education offensive was impossible to ignore. However, even prior to the Communist victory during the Chinese Civil War, the Great Depression and dwindling donations gradually contributed to a slow decline of the North American YMCA’s moral empire in China. In the Philippines, the fear of diseases and infectious Philippine b odies during and after the Philippine-American War (1899–1902) provided the foundation for a medicine and public health–based US civilizing mission. This justification of US colonialism, its proclaimed aim being that the colonial administration improved the living conditions of the local population, indirectly profited from the war. For example, the Spanish public health system completely broke down, with unsurprisingly disastrous consequences.29 106 Huebner
Even during the 1920s, the connection between public health and selfdetermination remained acute. The Republican administrations since 1921 aimed to slow down the transfer of political responsibility to Filipinos— which had begun during the mid-1910s under President Woodrow Wilson— as much as possible, considering them to be too corrupt and incompetent. The debate about The Isles of Fear (1925), a provocative rejection of Philippine capacity for self-government, can serve as an example. The book’s author, journalist Katherine Mayo, a strong believer in the superiority of American Protestant civilization, argued that the indifference of the Philippine oligarchy toward the dependent population would, in the case of independence, end in a healthcare catastrophe.30 Altogether, improving public health not only was related to the colonial administration’s economic and humanitarian considerations but was also a tool to make a positive impression on the Philippine population and on voters in the United States. Knowledge transfers, vaccination campaigns, and sponsoring the healthcare infrastructure therefore were also useful to show the colonial administration as a champion of public health. Since the early 1910s, the North American YMCA had substantial freedom in institutionalizing physical education, sport, and fitness training, which contributed to public health and complemented the medical care system. Brown was the first YMCA physical director who was sent to the Philippines. Due to his training and work experience in the United States, he was also the most experienced sports administrator in the islands. After his arrival in spring 1910, the US colony turned into a “laboratory of modernity” for the YMCA’s sports-related social engineering.31 Since the colonial administration was interested in the YMCA’s expertise, while the Y was eager to get access to the financial and human resources that the administration could offer, Brown had a lot of freedom of action in implementing his plans. Achieving successes in the sports-related civilizing mission in cooperation with the colonial administration was certainly deemed helpful in financial terms.32 In the predominantly Catholic Philippines, the YMCA, after all, never managed to attract a sufficient amount of donations to cover its ambitious plans. Because of this limited funding, the organization suffered a lack of manpower that was necessary for its activities. Therefore, cooperation with the colonial administration, training physical education teachers, and using the public school system to promote muscular Christianity at least temporarily compensated for the limited acceptance within the Philippines’ civil society (and such limitations become even more obvious if compared to the YMCA’s important role in US civil society, exemplified by the huge sports infrastructure that it there could finance on its own). Public Health and Masculinity 107
During the 1920s, training Philippine sports experts in the United States gained in importance, following the North American YMCA’s successes in popularizing amateur sport during the previous decade. The Wilson administration’s 1916 legislation that sought to transfer more authority to Filipinos resonated well with the North American YMCA’s intention to reduce expenses. Its expenses had grown tremendously as a result of sending large numbers of staff to Europe and other places during and after World War I. Here again, a leadership transfer also served to deal with anticolonial nationalism among Asian members. According to the president of the International YMCA College, Laurence L. Doggett, the task was to create “indigenous, self-governing associations.”33 Like in China and other countries, the North American YMCA made a significant contribution to training the first generation of professional physical educators, who took over senior positions from Americans. Since its founding in the late nineteenth century, the International YMCA College satisfied the growing demand for professional YMCA secretaries (responsible for administering YMCAs) and physical directors.34 One program therefore offered a bachelor’s degree in physical education (BPE), which included writing a thesis. Analyzing the bachelor’s theses of a group of four Filipinos shows that in three cases, they developed scientific methods aimed at improving public health. These three methods were linked to the earlier activities of Brown and the colonial administration in the Philippines, but also mirror the interest in physical education and fitness that the United States’ involvement in World War I had caused. One of the four Filipinos was Regino R. Ylanan (BPE 1920). Before his education in Springfield, he had already graduated with a medical degree from the University of the Philippines in Manila, an institution newly set up by the colonial administration. In his bachelor’s thesis, he investigated how different degrees of physical activity affected the body growth of young rats. In 1927, Ylanan became the colonial administration’s first local national physical director, representing a leadership transfer from Americans to Filipinos. Until his retirement in 1961, he was the most important officer in the realm of physical education, leading delegations to major sporting events, such as the Olympics, and was a central person in organizing international events, such as the Tenth FECG (Manila 1934) and the Second Asian Games (Manila 1954).35 The second Filipino was Candido C. Bartolome (BPE 1929, MPE 1929). Bartolome had also completed his studies at the University of the Philippines, and for his Springfield bachelor’s thesis he collected and evaluated anthropometric data from students in Manila. In January 1930, Bartolome became the acting physical director of the University of the Philippines and in 1937 officially took over the position as an 108 Huebner
associate professor.36 A third Filipino was Geronimo Suva (BPE 1921). He had received training in pedagogy at the University of the Philippines and in his thesis developed a sports and fitness test that would later be used at local schools. In 1922, Suva received a master of education from Harvard University. Upon his return to the Philippines, he first taught at several high schools before becoming the physical director of the University of the Philippines. Unfortunately for him, in 1929, following several controversies, Suva was made to leave office. For some time, he worked as a teacher at the university’s high school, but he eventually became responsible for the Philippine military’s sports and recreation programs.37 Of the four Filipinos, Serafin Aquino was the exception. In his thesis, he focused on Philippine folk dances and children’s games. After several years as a high school teacher, physical director of the National University of the Philippines, and athletic director of the Philippine Amateur Athletic Federation, Aquino started working for the Bureau of Education (later called the Department of Education). Responsible for physical education and sports, he had a strong influence on the public school system. Under his leadership, some of the folk dances were integrated into school curricula.38 Questions concerning public health were not left out, but his intention in his thesis was a reevaluation of pre-American body culture, which had been partially discredited as a consequence of the spread of Western sport. Therefore, his research included a criticism of discourses regarding a superiority of American Protestant practices and the inherent view of Philippine backwardness. Following the establishment of the Philippine Commonwealth in 1935, a result of the US decision from the previous year to grant the islands independence after a transitional period of ten years, his support for traditional folk dances further intensified.39 Providing such support was another illustration of the endeavors of high-ranking Filipino educators to create a postcolonial identity that was not based on assimilation into US civilization but utilized cultural elements that connected to a pre-American or even pre-Spanish past, creating continuities to earlier generations and publicly resisting claims that such elements were inferior to American ones. In Japan, the YMCA’s contribution to the institutionalization of physical education and fitness was much more limited, and this last case study will provide some insights. In particular, it sheds light on an incident of nationalist resistance of an influential Japanese sports official against the YMCA’s amateur sports ideals. Okabe Heita’s main problem was the YMCA’s aim to support not only bodily development but also democratic citizenship training and self-control. Physical education practices, such as European military and nonmilitary gymnastics, swimming, and certain games (for children and young Public Health and Masculinity 109
women), had become institutionalized in the public school system that was created during the Meiji reforms.40 The government’s pedagogical aim was primarily to create conformity among pupils and hierarchical relations between the students and the teachers, while also preparing the boys for compulsory military service. Amateur sports and public health, therefore, did not turn into topics that, like in the Philippines and (less successfully) in China, could be used to spread American Protestant ideals via public institutions among millions of people. After World War I, Western sports gained some relevance in the Japanese public school system but were overshadowed by Swedish gymnastics.41 More efficient were the YMCA’s attempts to influence students— members of the future Japanese elite—by encouraging amateur sports as a physical education practice during their spare time. Amateur sports had already been encouraged during the late nineteenth century by Western university instructors, but also by Japanese professors who had studied abroad and shown interest in them.42 Moreover, since 1921, Japanese teams regularly—and without the earlier quarrels about the appropriateness— participated in the FECG. By then, Kanō Jigorō had given up his initial resistance to team sports (which were very prominent at the FECG). In terms of diplomatic relations, the Washington Naval Conference of 1921– 1922 encouraged multilateral cooperation, which facilitated governmental agreement to Japanese participation in the FECG. During the 1920s, the increasingly popular FECG turned into an important institution for popularizing the YMCA’s amateur sports ideals in Japan. During the Fifth FECG (Shanghai 1921), about 350 male athletes participated and, according to official sources, about 155,000 spectators followed them. At the sixth installment (Osaka 1923), more than 400 male and now also female athletes competed, while about 250,000 spectators were drawn to the stadiums. Two years later (Manila 1925), again about 400 athletes joined. At these games, self-control and respect for duly constituted authority even under great stress or anger—which for YMCA physical directors was a central element for democratizing and pacifying societies—became the bone of contention. According to Okabe Heita, head coach of the Japanese track and field team, thirteen members of the team (including him) were unwilling to continue competing after Philippine referees had made six wrong decisions against the Japanese, one of which resulted in the disqualification of the team captain. Okabe was a graduate of the Tokyo Higher Normal School (Tōkyō Kōtō Shihan Gakkō), whose president was Kanō Jigorō. Afterward, Kanō had sent Okabe to the United States to study, where he met Amos Alonzo Stagg, professor and athletic director at the University of Chicago. Stagg, 110 Huebner
who had been trained at the International YMCA College and Yale University, was a well-known supporter of muscular Christianity and an American football coach. During his studies in the United States, a first conflict emerged between Okabe and Kanō, about which he informed Stagg. Okabe proved to be unwilling to study boxing and wrestling, considering them to be professional sports, which he rejected in favor of amateur sports. Another conflict emerged after his return to Japan, when he in 1921 left the kōdōkan (Kanō’s judo headquarters), since Kanō had agreed to a competition between two judoka and professional wrestlers. Okabe saw this competition as a threat to the bushidō spirit of judo.43 His interpretation of bushidō de facto corresponded to the YMCA’s amateur sports ideals and the related concept of masculinity. A similar, strongly Christian interpretation of bushidō had already been advocated by Abe Isoo, a socialist Christian and professor at Waseda University, who was also the founder of its baseball team. Abe’s and others’ references to bushidō served primarily to facilitate the integration of Protestant ideals into Japanese culture and to circumvent anticolonial resistance.44 Okabe’s interpretation of bushidō thus strongly differed from Kanō’s. Kanō had developed his interpretation in connection to the invention of judo, thus before his confrontation with American Protestant amateur sports ideals, which was the reason for the aforementioned incompatibility between the two religious-cultural physical education concepts.45 Following Okabe’s turning away from Kanō, he also got involved in the power struggles between Japanese sports federations that did not contribute to the morale of the Japanese team in 1925.46 After the boycott incident at the Seventh FECG, Okabe wrote Stagg that he at first tried to convince the boycotting athletes to return to the competition but solidarized with them after he recognized their determination. He then asked the Japanese senior delegates to protest against the referee decisions. However, they did not file a protest, according to him, since the games were dominated by the YMCA and the Japanese senior delegates were cooperating with the Y. Okabe’s main argument was that the referee decisions were no accidents but were motivated by nationalism and were aimed at making the Philippine team defeat the Japanese one: “But we were not satisfactioned [sic] in that game bec[au]se all officials are mad to win the game.” He thus saw a boycott as the only possible answer to the Philippine referees’ decisions: “But I believed that an amateur must obey the rules and the morals but allso [sic] has a right to outdraw [sic] from the unmoraled [sic] world.”47 E. Stanton Turner, YMCA senior secretary of the Philippines, offered a different explanation for Okabe’s behavior. Okabe lost his self-control and started to challenge referee decisions in an attempt to save his and his team’s Public Health and Masculinity 111
face. When it became obvious that the Japanese track and field team was going to lose, he supported the boycott to prevent a public defeat.48 Okabe’s decision in favor of the boycott was, independent of the reasons, a demonstration that he did not accept amateur sports norms and values, if these were incompatible with what he saw as Japan’s national interest. In his view, Philippine nationalism needed to be fought with Japanese resistance. Accepting the decisions with strict self-control, since the referees’ authority was duly constituted before the competition started— even if during the match they were wrong due to a nationalistic bias, insufficient knowledge of the rules, or other reasons—was not an option for him. However, this was not the behavior that the YMCA expected, perceiving self-control and respect for duly constituted authority to be essential for pacifying societies. Okabe’s first participation in an international sporting event showed that he was willing to give up self-control in favor of a nationalistic decision of not being defeated by Philippine athletes. Therefore, the conflict was related to Okabe’s nationalism, not to the question of whether the approaching defeat was the result of the competence of the Philippine team or the referee decisions. While Okabe’s boycott may not sound especially spectacular to a modern audience, in 1925 it was a drastic measure that amounted to a frontal assault on the YMCA’s social engineering plans, its corresponding concept of masculinity, and the benevolent but paternalistic behavior of Americans, who played a leading role in organizing the games. Altogether, Okabe initially seems to have been convinced of amateur sports’ norms and values. His first participation in an international event nevertheless resulted in a change of mind. Some of the reasons certainly were intensifying anticolonial and antipaternalistic nationalism in East Asia, Japanese looking down on colonized Filipinos, and in terms of the games, the personification of nations by teams, connecting them to the image of the nation. So, Okabe did not completely reject amateur sports norms and values, which is hinted at in his explanation to Stagg that he was aware of them, but due to the referee decisions, he saw no other option than a boycott. He thus resisted a central part of the YMCA’s civilizing mission out of nationalistic reasons—either to prevent a defeat by Philippine athletes or to prevent appearing weak vis-à-vis the referees. His behavior shows that he valued a victorious presentation of his nation higher than self-control, even if this ended in a boycott and related drastic breach of rules. This very first boycott at the FECG attracted massive criticism by the Japanese senior delegates and resulted in the athletes’ exclusion from the team, which emphasized the delegates’ cooperation with the YMCA.49 Japanese newspapers reacted strongly, but their evaluations depended on their political 112 Huebner
orientations, illustrating that no discursive consensus concerning amateur sports and the boycotters’ decision existed.50 In conclusion, in the context of the expansion of the American Protestant moral empire, the YMCA physical directors’ expert knowledge gave them sometimes massive influence over the debates in China, the Philippines, and Japan about physical education, public health, fitness, and new concepts of masculinity. Limited funding, part of which was provided by North American philanthropists, meant that YMCA physical directors tried to offer their expert knowledge to serve as government advisers and to use public institutions for their Protestant social engineering plans. At least those governments and colonial administrations that lacked scientific expertise in sport, public health, and fitness, such as in China and the Philippines, were interested in collaboration. Japanese elites belonging to or being closely affiliated with the government, in contrast, had a much lower interest. Among their reasons was the smaller physical education knowledge asymmetry, the importance of local practices, such as judo, and the self-perception as a great power no longer in need of Western paternalism. Sending Asian recruits to the United States to study was yet another means to speed up the civilizing mission through the training of local experts as well as to reduce personnel costs of having North American physical directors serve abroad. Moreover, such study programs served to avoid anticolonial or nationalist criticism of Western dominance over Asians. In China, YMCA research led to the view that the population suffered from a variety of deficits that had a negative impact particularly on the constitution of educated male scholars. Their exclusive focus on bookwork was seen as an important reason for China’s military decline. Systematic training programs and education campaigns targeted at the whole population, illustrating the egalitarian ideal of the YMCA, were supposed to reduce or eliminate further deficits. When it came to attempts to implement such plans, physical directors such as John Gray and Hao Gengsheng nevertheless also discussed a variety of political, institutional, and infrastructural problems, judging them to be substantial hindrances. Christian or proChristian elites involved with the new Guomindang (Chinese Nationalist Party) government and cooperating with the YMCA since the late 1920s temporarily facilitated the Y’s advisory work. Moreover, several Chinese YMCA physical directors, such as Hao, received the highest governmental offices in the newly institutionalized realm of physical education. US colonialism in the Philippines created a different situation than in China, since the colonial power structure provided a number of opportunities. Public Health and Masculinity 113
Cooperation with the colonial administration allowed access to public institutions, such as the public school system. In this regard, improving public health and fitness also legitimized US colonial rule by denying the Spanish colonizers and later the Philippine oligarchy’s competence in this regard. Again, YMCA-trained local recruits took over central governmental positions in the realm of physical education. Much more difficult for the YMCA was the situation in Japan. With a public school system that was much less accessible, the FECG turned into the main tool for promoting amateur sports ideals. The 1925 Okabe Heita incident nevertheless provides an example of the YMCA’s civilizing mission, supposed to make Asians more capable of American Protestant–style self-government, being rejected by Asians as an inappropriate paternalism reminiscent of other, less benevolent colonial civilizing missions. The question of continued self-control and acceptance of duly constituted authority in the case of massive stress, such as an approaching defeat, which YMCA physical directors saw as a central element for pacifying and democratizing societies, stepped into the foreground. Anticolonial and antipaternalistic nationalism nevertheless denied the universality and superiority of American Protestant amateur sports ideals. Okabe’s and his athletes’ intention was not necessarily related to democratization, but to present their nation as victorious. Growing research on the YMCA’s moral empire shows the huge influence that its physical directors had on spreading amateur sport in the nonWestern world. Colonial administrations, foreign educators, local elites, and others had engaged in the promotion of sport, but very often such attempts were limited in scale and ambition, targeted at only a small group of elites rather than the whole population. The YMCA, in contrast, was responsible in many non-Western regions for institutionalizing international competitions, working toward physical education’s integration into school systems, and engaging in education campaigns. Such attempts of using humanitarian work in the realm of physical education, fitness, and public health to convince non-Protestants of the moral superiority of Protestantism and the related concept of masculinity made debates with nonWestern elites inevitable. The adoption of physical education into governmental responsibilities, its integration into local cultural systems, or even the use of the much more secular sports concept of the International Olympic Committee that often followed these efforts illustrate such debates and their results.51 If one employs the argument that the activities of Protestant missionary organizations and democratization in the non-Western world correlate, 52 the YMCA’s work provides much evidence not only through the 114 Huebner
activities of its staff, but also through indirect results, such as debates with local elites that pushed the latter toward appropriating, even if modifying, YMCA concepts. While this often took away the muscular Christian background, directly and indirectly the Y has made significant contributions to democratizing physical education, fitness, and public health. This egalitarian approach, targeted at institutionalizing health and fitness as public goods accessible to the whole population, thus needs to be seen as part of a larger democratization process. NOTES 1. Meeting of the War Historical Bureau of the Young Men’s Christian Association, Monday, January 5, 1920, at 124 East 28th Street, New York City, 18–19, Armed Services: World War I, box 23, Elwood Brown Interview, Athletics in the Far East, Early Work in France, 1920, Kautz Family YMCA Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries. 2. On Brown, see Stefan Hübner, “Muscular Christianity and the ‘Western Civilizing Mission’: Elwood S. Brown, the YMCA and the Idea of the Far Eastern Championship Games,” Diplomatic History 39, no. 3 (2015): 532–557. 3. On muscular Christianity in the United States, see this volume’s introduction. 4. On the YMCA and the FECG, see Stefan Huebner, Pan-Asian Sports and the Emergence of Modern Asia, 1913–1974 (Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 2016), chaps. 1–2; Kō Takashima, “Firipin Kānibaru kara Kyokutō Orinpikku e: Supōtsu, minshu shugi, bijinesu” [From the Philippine carnival to the Far Eastern Olympic Games: Sports, democracy, business]. Kyōto Daigaku bungakubu kenkyū kiyō 56 (2017): 113–193. 5. See Dolf-Alexander Neuhaus’s chapter in this volume. 6. Hübner, “Muscular Christianity and the ‘Western Civilizing Mission,’ ” 547–548. 7. Modern sport is characterized by equality, bureaucratization, specialization, rationalization, quantification, and an obsession with records: Allen Guttmann and Lee Thompson, Japanese Sports: A History (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2001), 3–4. I do not include their seventh characteristic: secularism. 8. Jürgen Osterhammel, Europe, the “West” and the Civilizing Mission: The 2005 Annual Lecture at the German Historical Institute London (London: German Historical Institute London, 2006), 8. On colonial “civilizing missions,” see also Michael Adas, “Contested Hegemony: The Great War and the Afro-Asian Assault on the Civilizing Mission Ideology,” Journal of World History 15, no. 1 (2004): 31–63; Kenneth Pomeranz, “Empire and ‘Civilizing’ Missions, Past and Present,” Daedalus 134, no. 2 (2005): 34–45. 9. Ian Tyrrell, Reforming the World: The Creation of America’s Moral Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010). 10. See Huebner, Pan-Asian Sports, chaps. 1–2; Stefan Hübner, “ ‘Uplifting the Weak and Degenerated Races of East Asia’: American and Indigenous Views of Sport and Body in Early Twentieth-Century East Asia,” in Race and Racism in Modern East Asia, vol. 2, Interactions, Nationalism, Gender and Lineage, ed. Walter Demel and Rotem Kowner (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 196–217. On the Philippines, see Gerald R. Gems, Sport and the American Occupation of the Philippines: Bats, Balls, and Bayonets (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016); Celia Bocobo-Olivar, History of Physical Education in the Philippines Public Health and Masculinity 115
(Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1972), chaps. 5–8; Regino R. Ylanan and Carmen W. Ylanan, The History and Development of Physical Education and Sports in the Philippines, 2nd ed. (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1974), chaps. 7–8. On China, see Jonathan Kolatch, Sports, Politics and Ideology in China (New York: David Publishers, 1972), pt. 1; Andrew D. Morris, Marrow of the Nation: A History of Sport and Physical Culture in Republican China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); Guoqi Xu, Olympic Dreams: China and Sports, 1895–2008 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), chaps. 1–3. On Japan, see Kō Takashima, Teikoku Nihon to supōtsu [The empire of Japan and sport] (Tokyo: Hanawa Shobō, 2012), chap. 1.1; Ikuo Abe, “Muscular Christianity in Japan: The Growth of a Hybrid,” in Muscular Christianity in Colonial and PostColonial Worlds, ed. John J. MacAloon (London: Routledge, 2008), 14–38; Guttmann and Thompson, Japanese Sports, chap. 3; Thomas Blackwood, “Bushidō Baseball? Three ‘Fathers’ and the Invention of a Tradition,” Social Science Japan Journal 11, no. 2 (2008): 223–240; Kōji Hattori, Nihon no toshi YMCA ni okeru supōtsu no fukyū to tenkai: Taishōki kara shōwaki (senzen) o chūshin toshita YMCA no “taiiku jigyō” [The diffusion and expansion of the Japanese City YMCAs’ sports activities: The YMCA’s “physical education work” during the Taishō and prewar Shōwa period] (Hiroshima: Keisuisha, 2015). 11. On YMCA media reporting targeted at US donors, see Stefan Hübner, “Donors and the Global Sportive ‘Civilizing Mission’: Asian Athletics, American Philanthropy, and YMCA Media (1910s–1920s),” Itinerario 40, no. 1 (2016): 589–614. 12. William W. Lockwood, “Health Education in China,” Physical Training 10, no. 5 (1913): 138–139. 13. See, for example, Chengting (Zhengting) T. Wang, Ō Seitei kaikoroku: Looking Back and Looking Forward [Wang Zhengting’s memoirs], ed. Ryūji Hattori (Tokyo: Chūū Daigaku Shuppanbu, 2008), 4–5, 18; Charles H. McCloy, “Physical Education in China,” Bulletins on Chinese Education 2, no. 5 (1923): 1–2; “The Athletes of China,” China’s Young Men (English ed.) 6, no. 10 (1916): 524. On China as the “sick man of East Asia” and sports, see Kō Takashima, “ ‘Tōa Byōfu’ to supōtsu—koroniaru masukyuriniti no shiten kara” [The “sick man of East Asia” and sports—from the perspective of colonial masculinity], in Kindai Higashi Ajia ni okeru honyaku gainen no tenkai [The development of translated concepts in modern East Asia], ed. Yoshihiro Ishikawa and Naoki Hazama (Kyoto: Kyōto Daigaku Jinbun Kagaku Kenkyūjo 2013), 309–342. 14. “Scientific methods” does not necessarily imply that such methods are today still perceived to be productive. 15. Charles A. Siler, “Physical Education in China,” Chinese Students’ Christian Journal 6, no. 1 (1919): 29. 16. Alfred H. Swan, “Report of Committee on Foreign Work,” Physical Training 18, no. 5 (1921): 229–230. 17. Xu, Olympic Dreams, 40–45. 18. Gunsun Hoh (Gengsheng Hao), “The Past and Future of Physical Education in China” (bachelor’s thesis, International YMCA College, 1923); Gunsun Hoh, Physical Education in China [Zhongguo tiyu gailun] (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1926). 19. Hoh, The Past, 34. 20. On Chinese scholar-officials and their concepts of masculinity, see Geng Song, The Fragile Scholar: Power and Masculinity in Chinese Culture (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004); Martin W. Huang, Negotiating Masculinities in Late Imperial China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press), 2006. 21. Hoh, The Past, 34–39. 116 Huebner
22. Hoh, The Past, 90. 23. Hoh, The Past, 129, 134. 24. The Contest Committee of the Far Eastern Athletic Association, ed., Report of the Fifth Far Eastern Championship Games Held May 30th–June 4th 1921 at Hongkew Park, Shanghai, China ([Shanghai?]: n.p., [1921?]), 20. 25. Contest Committee of the Far Eastern Athletic Association, Report of the Fifth Far Eastern Championship Games, 20. 26. John H. Gray to Elwood S. Brown, October 26, 1921, International Work in China, box 39, Correspondence and Reports, Sept.–Oct. 1921, Kautz Family YMCA Archives; John H. Gray to Mr. Wu, August 22, 1952, 3–4, 6, Biographical Files, box 73, Gray, John Henry, Biographical Data (C), Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 27. Huebner, Pan-Asian Sports, chaps. 1–2. 28. Among them are Dong Shouyi, who had been trained in Springfield and became an International Olympic Committee member, later representing the People’s Republic of China; Ma Yuehan or John Ma, who had also been trained in Springfield and became a professor at Qinghua University in Beijing and was a highly important administrator even during early Communism; Zhang Huilan, who had been sent by the YWCA to the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and later became the “mother of women’s sport in China” and a professor at Jinling Women’s College in Nanjing; Shen Siliang, who had been trained at Oberlin College and Columbia University, became an important sports administrator and a professor at St. John’s University in Shanghai. 29. Warwick Anderson, Colonial Pathologies: American Tropical Medicine, Race, and Hygiene in the Philippines (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), chap. 1. 30. Katherine Mayo, The Isles of Fear: The Truth about the Philippines (New York: Faber and Gwyer, 1925). See also Dinah Roma Sianturi, “Of Pathogens and Empires: The Discourse of Public Health in Katherine Mayo’s The Isles of Fear—The Truth about the Philippines” (ARI Working Paper Series), 1–19, accessed May 8, 2015, https://dx.doi.org/10.2139 /ssrn.1743934; Paul A. Kramer, The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 389. 31. Huebner, Pan-Asian Sports, 22–24. 32. There was no noteworthy endowment for foreign work: Foreign Work Budget 1923, general summary of gained income and expenditure, 1, International Work: Administrative Records, box 63, Foreign Work Budget 1923, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 33. Laurence L. Doggett, Man and a School: Pioneering in Higher Education at Spring field College (New York: Association Press, 1943), 109, digital version, Springfield College Intranet. On personnel costs, see 1921 Foreign Work Budget of the Young Men’s Christian Association of Canada and the United States, 3, 6, International Work: Administrative Records, box 6, Foreign Committee Meetings, Minutes, 1921, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 34. See Stefan Hübner, “Muscular Christian Exchanges: Asian Sports Experts and the International YMCA Training School (1910s–1930s),” in Global Exchanges: Scholarship Programs and Transnational Circulations in the Contemporary World (19th–21st Centuries), ed. Giles Scott-Smith and Ludovic Tournès (New York: Berghahn Books, 2017), 119–142. 35. Ylanan and Ylanan, History and Development, 39–41; Regino R. Ylanan, “The Relation of Growth and Development to Physical Exercise” (bachelor’s thesis, International YMCA College, 1920). 36. Ylanan and Ylanan, History and Development, 46–47; Candido C. Bartolome, curriculum vitae, folder Bartolome, Candido C., Springfield College Archives and Special Public Health and Masculinity 117
Collections, Springfield, MA; Candido C. Bartolome, “Physical Measurements of Freshmen Filipino Students in the University of the Philippines” (bachelor’s thesis, International YMCA College, 1929). 37. Ylanan and Ylanan, History and Development, 47–48; Geronimo Suva, “Physical Measurements for Philippine Schools” (bachelor’s thesis, International YMCA College, 1921). 38. Ylanan and Ylanan, History and Development, 43–45; Serafin Aquino, “Philippine Games and Folk Dances” (bachelor’s thesis, International YMCA College, 1922). 39. On the promotion of folk dances, see Ylanan and Ylanan, History and Development, 49; Bocobo-Olivar, History of Physical Education, chap. 10. 40. Andreas Niehaus, Leben und Werk Kanō Jigorōs (1860–1938): Ein Forschungsbe richt zur Leibeserziehung und zum Sport in Japan [Life and work of Kanō Jigorō (1860–1938): A research report on physical education and sports in Japan], 2nd ed. (Würzburg: Ergon, 2010), 29–55. 41. Niehaus, Leben und Werk Kanō Jigorōs, 52–53. On the connection between horizontally organized mass sport and democratization, see Paul Christesen, Sport and Democracy in the Ancient and Modern Worlds (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 42. On the nineteenth century, see Lee and Guttmann, Japanese Sports, chap. 3. 43. Heita Okabe to Prof. Stagg, February 25, 1918, Heita Okabe to Mr. Stagg, May 27, 1918, Heita Okabe to Mr. + Mrs. Stagg, March 16, 1921, and “Jujitsu Teacher Quits Because Experts Are to Meet Americans,” all in Amos Alonzo Stagg Papers, box 2, Regenstein Library, University of Chicago. On Okabe’s later activities, see Kō Takashima, Kokka to supōtsu: Okabe Heita to Manshū no yume [State and sports: Okabe Heita and the dream of Manchuria] (Tokyo: Kadokawa, 2020). 44. Blackwood, “Bushidō Baseball?” 45. Hübner, Muscular Christianity, 547–548. 46. Franklin H. Brown to Count Latour [sic], December 18, 1930, 1–2, H-FC03 -EXORI/001, the Olympic Studies Centre, Lausanne; Abe, “Historical Significance,” 74; Yoshio Imamura, Nihon taiikushi [History of sports in Japan] (Tokyo: Fumaidō Shuppan, 1970), 539–540. 47. Heita Okabe to Mr. + Mrs. Stagg (August 17, 1925), 2–4 (quotations), and All Japanese Athletes Sail on Same Boat, all in Amos Alonzo Stagg Papers, box 2, Regenstein Library, University of Chicago. 48. Kolatch, Sports, 62–63. Gerald Gems briefly covers the event but connects it too much to Japanese-American quarrels on the international level: Gems, The Athletic Crusade, 40. 49. Dainihon Taiiku Kyōkai, ed., Dai-7kai Kyokutō Senshuken Kyōgi Taikai hōkokusho [Report on the Seventh Far Eastern Championship Games] (Tokyo: Dainihon Taiiku Kyōkai, 1925), 1–4; “Japanese Athletes Barred for Strike in Far East Olympics and Apology Made,” New York Times, May 22, 1925, 14. 50. For an overview of Japanese newspaper articles, see “The Manila Fiasco,” Japan Weekly Chronicle, May 28, 1925, 666; “The Manila Fiasco,” Japan Weekly Chronicle, June 4, 1925, 708–709. 51. Huebner, Pan-Asian Sports, chaps. 1–2. 52. Robert D. Woodberry, “The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy,” American Political Science Review 106, no. 2 (2012): 244–274.
118 Huebner
FIVE Mediating Modern Motherhood
The Shanghai YWCA’s “Women’s Work for Women,” 1908–1949 Margaret Mih Tillman
W
ith the rise of the practical utilitarianism of the Social Gospel, the global YWCA and especially the American YWCA promoted “women’s work for women.”1 Maud Russell, an American YWCA secretary in Hangzhou, explained, “You are not going out to proselytize. You are going out as a Christian woman to work with Chinese women on the problems of women.”2 Russell was among an influx of a total of more than one hundred foreign YWCA women, from Great Britain, Sweden, Canada, and Australia, who arrived in China between the mid1910s and mid-1920s to enact moral reform.3 Russell’s biographer Karen Garner shows that this mission informed Russell’s general “sympathy for the oppressed.”4 As young women themselves, Western missionaries like Russell identified with Chinese women and sympathized with their political causes. Gender thus played an important role in defining “women’s work” as social work, often through voluntary bodies like the YWCA.5 In the United States, “municipal housekeeping,” or urban volunteerism, was an extension of women’s domestic duties.6 Grounded in Victorian notions of female virtue, “maternalist politics” thus opened the possibility of female service in the public sphere, and this line of thinking pervaded Anglo-American women’s work in the YWCA of China.7 As Motoe Sasaki has observed, the “New Women” of the United States sought to inform and guide the “New Women” of China, despite their significant cultural differences.8 The International YWCA promoted women’s work across class, national, and ethnic lines. In 1920, an international conference on women’s work described a new agenda for women’s social service across a variety of fields, from adding gendered dimensions to existing mission work to pioneering new means for social work, education, and “practical 119
home-making.”9 With the influx of manufactured objects, the domestic realm of everyday life was reimagined as an arena for the implementation of modern, hygienic practices.10 As a general trend of the Social Gospel during the progressive era, the Chinese YMCA and YWCA de- emphasized evangelism in favor of social services with the intent of changing daily habits and lived experiences.11 In China, Shanghai was early on expected to become a “model Association.”12 Led by Grace Coppock (1882–1921) and Mary Ting (Ding Shujing 丁淑静, 1890–1936) beginning in 1908, the Shanghai YWCA first focused on the needs of female students in Shanghai (the majority of whom attended non-Christian schools). For elite female students, the Shanghai YWCA was a conduit to study abroad, especially through the introduction of cultural assimilation practices necessary to thrive there. The Shanghai YWCA conducted “Tsinghua examinations for foreign study abroad, housing the women students, preparing them for foreign life, seeing them off for America and arranging that they be met at San Francisco.”13 Within China, the YWCA’s “vocations week” encouraged female students to consider public service work, including “practical social service programs” such as day schools and summer schools for children.14 As the model association for pioneer work, the YWCA began to “experiment among industrial women” and gradually began to serve urban women working outside the home.15 In 1924, YMCA leader Lucius Porter (1880–1958) wrote that industrialization “already threatens the physical wellbeing of thousands of Chinese.”16 For example, factory labor exposed Chinese women to increased health risks.17 A 1930 editorial concisely stated in a headline, “Young Women’s Christian Associations Necessary for Town like Shanghai.”18 Also in 1930, another reporter observed that the YWCA was needed during “the period of opportunity to women in wage earning occupations, which frequently necessitated leaving home.”19 As Alison Drucker concludes, the YWCA’s “women’s work” often signified service to women in the transition to urban factory labor.20 At the turn of the twentieth century, the meaning of nügong shifted in China from “womanly work” (in elite crafts such as spinning and embroidery) to “woman’s work,” as labor production moved from the agrarian home to urban industry.21 Given the gendered significance of female labor, industrialization aroused global a nxiety. Although Christian missionaries had applauded the entrance of C hinese women into public spaces (especially in South China, where elite women were often secluded), Americans also imported some of their own conservative concerns to the Chinese landscape. Especially given their romantic notions of agrarian self-sufficiency, Americans argued that industrial cities, whether Chicago or Shanghai, posed moral 120 Tillman
threats for newcomers to the big city.22 Their prime concern for women, specifically, was prostitution, especially amid concurrent anxieties about women’s abandonment of their traditional domestic duties. The YWCA intervened in the arena of gendered labor as a newly contested site of multiple meanings, especially those with regard to social reproduction and the transfer of knowledge to children. Finally, women’s work was intended “for women,” which encompassed a diverse urban population. Jews and poor White Russian refugees flooded into the free port especially in the 1930s.23 The Chinese population itself was also diverse, especially as Shanghai attracted internal migration from different ethnic groups (some of whom, as Emily Honig shows, developed a greater sense of ethnic categorization as a result of their marginalization in Shanghai).24 Class and ethnic diversity challenged the Shanghai YWCAs.25 At the same time, the YWCAs facilitated transnational and cross-class interactions, especially by training Chinese industrial secretaries, who investigated conditions for urban factory women and coordinated welfare and reform efforts to improve their situation. The global YWCA generally began by sending an Anglo-American social worker to initiate the field in developing countries. However, by the mid- to late 1920s, Chinese industrial secretaries were shepherding the YWCA during a period of transition, amid rising Chinese nationalism, labor disputes, and the imposition of the Nationalist Guomindang regime. In the interwar era, female volunteerism and women’s work increasingly signified mediation across spaces—domestic and public, national and transnational. Drawing on post-Victorian notions of womanly tenderness, Euro-American politicians encouraged women to serve their communities in ways that would ameliorate racial or class tensions in the years following World War I, thus bringing harmony and order to a world increasingly threatened by political conflict and turmoil.26 Noting the crisis in international liberalism in the aftermath of the Treaty of Versailles, Motoe Sasaki observes that the Chinese YWCA muted its slogans of women’s work to promote, instead, world friendship, and Western YWCA women began to recognize that Chinese women could travel new roads, uncharted by the United States.27 Scholars have critically explored the ways that missionaries’ modernization projects radically redefined native ways of understanding the world, often through violence mediated by imperialism.28 Especially after the Tianjin riot of 1870, aroused by rumors of Catholic nuns cannibalizing kidnapped infants during the Eucharist, childcare and family life were points of cross-cultural contention. In response, Americans generally presented themselves as anti-imperialist, and the Anglo-American–dominated Modern Motherhood 121
YWCA came to embrace the pro-Christian contingent of the Guomin dang Party in support of Chinese nationalism. Furthermore, as Sasaki notes, the YWCA became, relative to US nursing and medical institutions in China, more open to following the leadership of trained Chinese women as they navigated local gender politics (especially given the perceived displacement of local patriarchy and sensitivities surrounding native masculinity in the context of Shanghai’s “transnational colonial” regime). 29 Western YWCA women sought to provide native women with the training and means to offer medical relief, social reform, and popular education. Many Western YWCA women acknowledged the need to ameliorate the negative consequences of industrial modernity; in other words, they recognized the c omplexities of using Western science and medicine as solutions for some of the problems incurred through the introduction of Western industry and technology. This chapter surveys the Shanghai YWCA’s efforts to introduce industrial reform for women and children in tandem; by providing training courses for young women and daycare for children, the Y would allow women to work outside the home while also inculcating modern habits in young children. “WOMEN’S WORK” AS SOCIAL WORK:
FROM MATERNALIST SERVICE TO INDUSTRIAL WELFARE
Through seemingly frivolous gatherings, such as teas, at the “foreign YWCA,” Western YWCA women built significant social capital, which the Y later leveraged for political aims and progressive reform.30 Chinese women, especially female students, were always welcome to attend because “part of the program is to provide opportunities for the meeting together of Chinese and foreign women residents.”31 The Chinese and foreign Shanghai YWCAs addressed the needs of a linguistically and ethnically diverse population of women who spoke mutually unintelligible Chinese dialects and Western languages, but with substantial connections to Anglo-Americans in the International Settlement. During World War I, for example, the YWCA raised funds for the Allied troops in Europe.32 When the YWCA joined forces with the Joint Committee of Women’s Clubs, the elite women of the city helped introduce progressive industrial reform to the International Settlement.33 As others in this volume note, World War I was a major turning point for the international YMCA and its progressive social reform agenda. In the aftermath of the Great War, the League of Nations created the International Labor Organization (ILO), which prompted interest in industrial reform, especially as a venue for mitigating labor unrest and 122 Tillman
forestalling the spread of Communism. 34 As a marginal member of the ILO, the Republic of China (ROC) embraced international recognition but lacked the fiscal resources to represent itself fully on the international stage.35 The ILO issued a set of recommendations for developing nations like China in 1919.36 Although the Peking government (also called the Beiyang regime) readily signed the provisions, it lacked the power to enforce international regulations, and some Western businessmen in the International Settlement argued that they could not adopt uncompetitive practices within a larger unregulated environment including Chinesecontrolled areas very nearby. As late as 1928, Albert Thomas (1878–1932), the director of the ILO, gave lectures at the Chinese YMCA as part of his effort to encourage labor regulations across China.37 Thomas expressed frustration at misrepresentations of his message in the local press, but labor restrictions, especially the abolishment of child labor, continued to be a celebrated cause among cosmopolitan elites in Shanghai, such as ROC minister of industry and founder of the Chinese National Child Welfare Association, Kong Xiangxi (1881–1967). The YWCA continued to play a role in these efforts, especially through the contributions of its industrial secretaries. The YWCA instituted the post of “industrial secretary” to attend specifically to the issues of urbanization and labor unrest. In the United States, industrial secretaries were often middle-class, educated white women who made contacts with textile mill unions in the mid-1920s. 38 In 1919, the Federation of Women’s Boards of Foreign Missions sent an industrial specialist to Japan and China. A year later, in 1920, a commission on social service convened a conference on women and there proposed the investigation of child labor and women’s labor in China. 39 These efforts were further promoted by the transnational circulation of professional women who built the social welfare program of the YWCA. For example, English industrial inspector Agatha Harrison (1885–1954) went to China as its first national YWCA industrial secretary in 1921,40 following which, in 1922, YWCA secretary Mary Dingman (1875–1961) traveled to Japan, China, Australia, and New Zealand to investigate the working conditions of these countries. Dame Adelaide Anderson (1863– 1936), who first traveled to China as part of the effort to ban child labor in the International Settlement in 1925, returned in 1931 as an ILO representative.41 In her capacity as industrial secretary of the Chinese YWCA, Eleanor Hinder (1893–1963) correlated surveys collected by industrial workers as a result of new ROC labor regulations in 1931.42 In short, the industrial secretaries of the YWCA worked in close step with international organizations on issues of social welfare and also helped Modern Motherhood 123
maintain public interest in issues of female and child labor despite some legal setbacks. Through the auspices of the industrial section of the YWCA, the Chinese YWCA sent Zung Wei-tsung (Cheng Wanzhen 程婉珍) to the International Congress of Working Women in Geneva and provided Shin Tak-hing (Dan Dexiang 單德馨, 1893–1980) with a three-year scholarship to study labor issues at the London School of Economics. Written in favor of child labor legislation, Shin’s studies predisposed her to examine critically international capital.43 As professional social workers, YWCA women became instrumental in leading the YWCA to address the needs of factory women. All over the world, dank factories increased the vulnerability of young women to industrial diseases, especially tuberculosis. More often than not, the YWCA responded more readily and swiftly to public health crises than did state governments that were struggling to develop economically to compete with the West. For instance, Patricia Tsurumi has vividly described the horrific factory conditions of Japan’s nineteenthcentury textile mills.44 Factory managers dismissed young women afflicted with tuberculosis, who were sent home and left to die, thus also effectively spreading the contagion.45 Elisheva Perelman persuasively argues that, during this period, the modernizing Meiji state relegated the care of tuberculosis victims to Christian evangelicals.46 With the expansion of Japanese colonialism, Japan shifted its crudest industrial manufacturing to Korea and Manchuria, as well as treaty ports in China. Owing to the unequal treaties granted as the result of the Opium Wars, international companies enjoyed special privileges to industrialize Chinese treaty ports like Tianjin and Shanghai. Rural famine further pushed Chinese migration into the cities.47 There, the children of the working class faced an incredibly high infant mortality rate, even among working families.48 As in the United States, infant mortality motivated ouncil induschild-saving efforts.49 In 1930, former National Christian C trial secretary and Yenching University professor Gideon Chen (Chen Qitian 陳啟天, 1893–1984) characterized the religious and class background of the YWCA among its “limitations” but also asserted, “There is no other women’s organization willing to work among laborers, besides the YWCA.”50 As is so often the case around the world, the Y undertook social reform by default. The YWCA helped attract international attention to the problem of child labor in Shanghai. Although already involved in labor issues by 1920, the Y solicited foreign speakers, who were also evangelizing in China, to discuss global industrial problems. For example, while also advocating for 124 Tillman
the abolition of child labor in the United States in 1922, the great Social Gospeler Sherwood Eddy (1871–1963) visited Shanghai, where he addressed the Ys with a speech on the “Christian Church and the Industrial Problem.”51 With such support, elite Christian women pressured the International Settlement to commission an investigation on child labor.52 Factory inspectors found that industrial fumes infected not only workers, but also the infants whom they often carried.53 This finding helped support the intensions of factory managers, who wished to enforce factory discipline by removing screaming and nursing infants from factory floors. These promanagement regulations were masked by the concurrent humanitarian desire to abolish child labor. Christians reported feeling appalled by the sight of an “army of young girls” marching into factories (thus adding another dimension of militarism to a visual metaphor, perhaps with a loose connotation to the looming threat of Communism). 54 For the Y women who were interested in this problem, child labor was gendered as female, in part because spinning was traditionally the work of unmarried girls. While they considered embroidery and weaving healthy work, reformers explained that industrial conditions rendered textile manufacturing dangerous for the young and immature, who experienced much higher rates of industrial accidents. In other words, their efforts for child labor reform, while universal, especially targeted the exploitation of girls, who were deemed not yet fit for urban adult labor. The YWCA promoted the investigation of child labor as well as the legal abolition of it. One aspect of this work was through cooperation with Japanese ratepayers in the International Settlement and work with the Japanese YMCA in Shanghai. Several notable Japanese ratepayers (defined as tax-paying residents of the International Settlement of Shanghai, who thereby acquired the right to vote) promoted the Child Labor Bylaw. This included Pauline Tayo Sakamoto, a member of the Joint Committee of Shanghai Women’s Organizations, Suzuki Bunji (鈴木文治, 1885–1946), president of the General Federation of Labor, and Okada Gentaro, a member of the Child Labor Commission and manager of the textile mill Naigai Wata Kaisha (上海内外綿會社), who all spoke publicly at the Japanese YMCA to promote the Child Labor Bylaw in 1925. 55 Japanese corporations also created a new method of apprenticeship to employ male teenage workers. Notwithstanding the international nature of multinational corporations, Chinese boycotted Japanese goods in protest of Japan’s aggressive policies in China and Manchuria during and after World War I, 56 and these reforms may have been an effort to ameliorate SinoJapanese transitions. Modern Motherhood 125
The Child Labor Bylaw failed amid growing tensions between Chinese nationalism and Japanese capital. In February 1925, Chinese workers confronted the Naigai Wata Kaisha company about a layoff, eventually inciting a protest.57 The Chinese Communist Party, aided by urban gangs and at that time aligned with the Nationalist Party, orchestrated well- organized strikes.58 In the hot, humid summer, with strikers crowding the streets, too few ratepayers attended the meeting to pass the bylaw (unhelpfully tied to an unpopular press law).59 British-led police officers, meanwhile, shot into the crowd, further angering Chinese supporters of the protests. The May Thirtieth Movement intensified anti-imperialist and anti-Japanese agitation in China. In response, the National YWCA of China issued statements supporting the strikers and opposing the unequal treaties that had resulted from the Opium Wars.60 Following this transition, Y women increasingly embraced Chinese nationalism. The empowerment of Chinese women and the indigenization of the YWCA were also a practical response to the political winds. Chiang Kaishek loosely consolidated control over China in 1927. When ROC troops entered Shanghai, unchallenged by nominal Communist allies, they slaughtered known Communists in the streets. Chiang’s nationalistic, anti-imperialist rhetoric also frightened some Christian missionaries. In the wake of Americans’ subsequent flight, Chinese women filled the vacuum of leadership at the YWCA.61 For example, one Western news reporter noted that “two young Chinese YMCA Secretaries” returned to their “sacked” offices in Nanjing “within weeks of the withdrawal of all foreigners,” in order to address the pressing housing needs of the “many girls [flooding into the city] seeking government employ.”62 Later that year, Chiang married Song Meiling, a Wellesley graduate and member of the Shanghai YWCA who had also served as the secretary for the Child Labor Commission, and he thereafter converted to Christianity; Christians consequently rose in government favor.63 Especially in a city controlled, after 1927, by Chiang’s Guomindang regime, the Shanghai YWCA represented, in Peter Zarrow’s words, an “autonomous organization” that “held a privileged position, [and] provided popular forums for women workers outside of Guomindang control.”64 The local and national YWCAs also enjoyed a certain degree of autonomy from the larger international YWCA. As an ongoing public health concern, social hygiene provides an example of how the YWCA might appear relatively more progressive than other organizations. Mirela David has argued that the colonial administration provided treatment for foreign men (who were predominantly white except for the Indian police force) rather than native 126 Tillman
women; in 1920, the recommendations of the Special Vice Committee to the Shanghai Municipal Council, she writes, “were limited to representing colonial economic interests, underscoring economic loss due to the proliferation of venereal disease.”65 While David faults the International Settlement for failing to extend health services to Chinese women (notwithstanding some public discussion of the need to treat Chinese women, who were blamed for high rates of venereal disease), voluntary Christian bodies addressed some of the needs of impoverished prostitutes. For example, Sue Ellen Gronewold demonstrates that “conservative” (relative to the YWCA) Christians directed the Door of Hope, an institution to aid former Chinese prostitutes in the city.66 In comparison to the semicolonial administration and other Christian volunteer bodies, the YWCA thus offered much more progressive reforms, such as disseminating information about contraceptives among other scientific information.67 The Y women shifted from cooperation with business interests (as in the Child Labor Commission) to directly training working-class women, because education was an important aspect of “women’s work for women.” By the 1930s, the “international YWCA” (as the “foreign YWCA,” led principally by Anglo-Americans, was later called) addressed the needs of poor Western women, especially White Russians who had fled the revolution.68 The YWCA provided courses in the English language, the lingua franca in the International Settlement, as well as practical training for jobs as clerks or nannies. Job training included a dimension of moral reform. Without the moral guidance of the YWCA or employment that the Y deemed proper, impoverished foreign girls often turned to opium, gambling, taxi dancing, and prostitution. (Coinciding with the influx of refugees in the 1930s, the League of Nations campaigned against “the White slave trade” and documented the 1,645 foreign prostitutes working in Shanghai but left the business of actual aid to local charities like the YWCA; Eileen Scully points out that this strategy was supported by “respectable” Western women who feared undermining the prestige of the imperialists and effectively drove Western prostitutes from the city.)69 The Y countered such influences by creating its own moral environment for young women. When the YWCA moved to a new location in 1935, part of the rationale was to open a hostel, along with a lounge as a social center next to the employment bureau.70 By at least 1938, the YWCA had created a hostel specifically for “young foreign business girls.” 71 By sponsoring social activities, the YWCA intended to create alternatives to dance halls and opium dens. Once in control of the young women’s Modern Motherhood 127
domestic and leisure spaces at the hostel, the YWCA could more readily condition their moral habits and daily practices. The contrast of these projects with child labor abolition indicates the distinct moral value associated with specific types of labor, whereby respectable work was a moral necessity for young women but a threat to young children; training differentiated skilled labor or service work from so-called blunt physical labor, or the exploitation of tiny fingers, in factories. After 1919, increasingly radical Chinese pushed for the YWCA to concentrate its efforts on thoroughgoing industrial reform. In 1930, for example, Gideon Chen advocated replacing an attitude of “charity,” characterized by trifling “pity,” purely rhetorical advocacy, and the offering of “some entertainments as to make a dull laboring life have some pleasure,” with either genuine “reform” or guidance of laborers, or even “revolution,” which would require YWCA secretaries to sacrifice the fine living condition of middle class people and to live with the laboring class, making them recognize that you are their fellow workers and not angels sent by a foreign organization to help them. We cannot actually raise the living conditions of the laboring class unless we work with them, stay with them and live among them, becoming laborers ourselves. The YWCA should find painstaking secretaries of fine character who would participate as field commanders in pushing this labor movement.72
In other words, industrial secretaries needed to live with the workers and integrate their lives with those of the working class. They also needed to dive deeply into critical issues for a sustained period of time. Chen critically noted, “If it [the YWCA] should promote labor legislation this year, restriction of child labor next year, and workers’ education the third year, just to make them appear on the annual report as the manifold activities it has been promoting and yet no thorough work has been done for the labor class, it would merely be an ornamental program and a service that is unnecessary.”73 Chen suggested focusing on labor education. Just as the YWCA had institutionalized industrial reform through professional secretaries, it also created bureaus to address women’s employment needs. The YWCA had two employment bureaus, one for Chinese women and another for Western women.74 In the early twentieth century, many Western women immigrated to Shanghai, the city that was hailed as a “Mecca for girls.” 75 Western women may have assumed that they would readily find jobs as secretaries in the International Settlement, but they were soon supplanted by multilingual, educated Chinese 128 Tillman
women, presumably willing to work for even lower salaries.76 Between 200 and 250 women sought employment through the YWCA each month.77 In order to help their vocational aspirations, the YWCA provided a number of secretarial and nursing courses; they then also helped place the young women via business connections as stenographers, secretaries, and what they called “child nurses.” 78 Chinese families also looked to the YWCA for trained nannies, who could presumably enrich their children’s cultural knowledge much like an au pair.79 Especially after the outbreak of military hostilities with Japan in 1937, when many women desperately needed employment (presumably because their husbands may have fled, died, or joined the war effort), the YWCA advertised in the papers on their behalf.80 The YWCA provided a platform for professional women with local connections to transfer scientific training to those in China. For example, the wife of the business secretary to the YMCA, Mrs. W. E. Hines, a graduate of the University of California, had experience as a medical social worker in California. The wife of a Jewish German émigré, Dr. Bern hard Rosenberg (1891–?) had graduated from the Pestalozzi-Froebel House of Berlin, an institution established in 1899 for training kindergarten teachers, and she gave a series of lectures on child psychology.81 Demonstrations were also given by kindergarten teachers and those with home economics degrees, and special emphasis was placed on hygiene. Many aspects of this course seem to dovetail neatly with the YWCA mothers’ clubs for Chinese housewives.82 The YWCA also published pamphlets like The Happy Garden of Childhood and The Home Baby Record Book.83 English-language classes were open to both Chinese and Western women, including poor White Russians and other European women, to become nannies.84 Through books, classes, and training programs, the YWCA introduced modern scientific information about good hygiene and children’s health and nutrition. Throughout World War II, the YWCA continued its course for child nurses (called baomu in Chinese) that trained women on how to work either in preschools or in private homes. In 1943, the prominent Chinese newspaper Shen bao (Shanghai News) declared nannying a “new” occupation, despite the existence of professional training in that field since at least the last decades of the Qing dynasty.85 Shen bao may have emphasized the newness of the field in order to draw more attention to the qualifications of YWCA graduates then seeking employment. Furthermore, in addition to serving in private homes, child nurses could also work, for example, in the YWCA preschool, to which we will now turn. Modern Motherhood 129
Figure 5.1. Girls at the YWCA. Courtesy: Hoover Institution Archives, Martha Job Papers, box 3.
FACILITATING WOMEN’S WORK: YWCA PRESCHOOLS AND MODERN MOTHERHOOD An integral part of expanding the female labor market was providing women with some form of childcare, and the issue of child labor was often tied to problems of factory discipline, as noted earlier. Helen May, Baljit Kaur, and Larry Prochner argue convincingly that early childhood education has been marginalized in scholarship due to its relation to children and women’s work, when in reality, nurseries were an important means for industrialization and for transforming colonized subjectivities. They show that daycare originated for poor working-class women in England and was then exported to India as part of its civilizing mission; Americans also exported the kindergarten, originally intended to Americanize immigrants, to mission fields.86 Likewise in China, missionaries helped to establish kindergarten training schools and daycare; with strong institutional connections, Christian daycare institutions sometimes visited the YWCA for outdoor recreation or other special programs.87 Even in semicolonized treaty ports, Chinese resisted efforts, on the part of missionaries, to raise their children according to Western norms.88 Nevertheless, the leadership of Chinese Christian women helped to assuage parental resistance, and the 130 Tillman
YWCA’s emphasis on “scientific hygiene” also appealed to urban parents who were already convinced of the benefits of modernity. The emphasis on hygiene and modernity in a foreign-influenced or semicolonial education could thus align (at least in the eyes of colonial administrators) self-fashioned native elites with modern enlightenment.89 The story of the YWCA’s preschools, as evolving institutions, indicates the complicated class dynamics in serving both middle-class elites and the working poor. By the end of the war, most major YWCAs ran two nurseries, one with stronger Christian overtones for professional women, and another as a charity preschool for factory women.90 The implication seems to have been that the YWCA did not forcibly evangelize the children of the working poor. However, as “sister schools,” the two institutions sometimes combined out of economic necessity, so the distinctions between the schools may not be entirely clear-cut.91 Despite the influence of transnational models and similarities with other YWCAs across China, the preschools developed organically and in response to local needs. As early as 1930, YWCA women organized the Shanghai YWCA Working Women’s Club, at the office, to meet their own childcare needs.92 Elizabeth Littell-Lamb observes that marriage often curtailed the careers of female YWCA officials;93 daycare may have helped some YWCA women to continue working, even if they otherwise had difficulty advancing to national-level positions. During the war, on the occasion celebrating the thirty-second founding anniversary of the Shanghai YWCA on October 27, 1940, members passed a resolution to establish a nursery to help married and workingwomen with small children.94 The YWCA consequently established the Working Women’s Nursery (also called the Professional Women’s Nursery, Zhiye Funü Tuoersuo).95 It may have been the case that wartime conditions had especially burdened “ordinary working women,” who worked in factories and watched their children die at alarming rates, in part due to wartime privation.96 Preschools would allow women to work in the public sphere, rather than stay home with the children. The preschool aimed to “increase the productive ability of women.”97 One reporter expressed the frustration that highly educated women faced when they fulfilled their traditional Confucian obligations as “good wives and wise mothers” (a widespread slogan popularized by Japanese home economists and also accepted by the YWCA).98 Mothers had to wait until children were of kindergarten age to return to work, and kindergartens often started at times, or were located in places, that were inconvenient for career women. Whereas Y women had originally posited a continuum between domestic management and urban housekeeping, the reporter presented a negotiation between the time that women spent at home and the time they spent in the office; she thus Modern Motherhood 131
expressed a rhetorical shift away from maternalist politics and toward the practical needs of professional women. Across China, preschools were needed to help mobilize women during the war. But unlike her counterparts in Nationalist-controlled areas, the Chinese reporter made no mention of wartime hardships during the Japanese occupation. Under the regulation of the occupation government, she advocated the Y’s support of the local economy through its provision of services that the government could not feasibly provide. She identified her readers as “highly educated women” who had attended college, and from whom she solicited funds to outlay the YWCA’s costs of establishing an industrial charity school. Not only did preschools help professional women to work outside the home, but the platform of the YWCA also helped to spread some of their wealth to the poor. The Professional Women’s Nursery expanded the YWCA’s informal daycare program. Workingwomen, including those who worked at the Y, dropped their children off in the YWCA’s flower garden at eight thirty in the morning.99 Mothers could read each day’s menu written on a little blackboard with the reassurance on the nutritional diet of their children.100 Shen bao characterized these mothers as “poor but upright” (qinghan),101 perhaps obliquely referencing working-class Christians. The faculty and staff were assuredly Christian.102 Before receiving meals, the children clasped their hands in prayer to thank God for bestowing them with peace and happiness. One writer described this scene as particularly touching and illustrative of “their innocent and unaffected little lives.”103 Photographs also captured the hand-clasped prayers of the attractive young staff, in an airy room with open French doors, looking onto a tree-lined park.104 The YWCA Professional Women’s Nursery incorporated children’s religious materials as teaching tools and introduced children to the basic tenets of Christianity.105 Some parents reported no interest in Christian conversion, but their high satisfaction with the preschool gave them a positive impression of the “admirable” Christian “spirit of service.”106 The nursery was thus a vehicle for evangelism among the nonconverted, but the comments of parents indicate that they perceived the YWCA’s spirit of service as a distinct good apart from its specifically Christian ideology. The Professional Women’s Nursery also functioned, to some degree, as a charity. Mothers paid according to their economic means.107 Factory workers often received some form of fee reduction;108 ten children, a high percentage of the overall group, enjoyed tuition waivers.109 Nurses, nannies, and servants received compensation on the basis of their professional training, and the competitive salaries of the nurses indicated the valuation of their skill level.110 The YWCA responded to parental needs by increasing their services. The staff expanded to include a kindergarten program for children over four 132 Tillman
who wished to stay with the YWCA rather than graduate to a kindergarten.111 In response to parents who resided far from the school, the YWCA began accepting overnight boarders by the autumn of 1941, in the Professional Women’s Nursery.112 The preschool also charged tuition based on the services rendered. Thus, the YWCA responded to local, ground-level needs, even while promoting international trends in modern, scientific childcare. The Shanghai YWCA Industrial Day Nursery—rather unhelpfully also called the Shanghai Preschool, Shanghai Tuoersuo (since there was another institution with that name dating from the 1930s)—was established strictly as a charity organization; it was also, notably, the less overtly evangelical of the two. Free for poor children,113 Shanghai Preschool was therefore seen as a better option than orphanages for poor families who needed a temporary solution to financial crises.114 With an original capacity for between thirty and fifty children,115 it was first located at the Tongren Hospital (7 Bailinan Road), until the preschool was eventually unable to cover rental costs.116 At the same time, some middle-class families asked to send their children to Shanghai Preschool, and as a result, administrators offered a few such children the possibility of joining at a much higher tuition rate.117 Economic constraints, as well as parental willingness, may have motivated the two preschools to combine, during the war, in a three-story private residence at 66 West Road. The new location allowed the preschool to expand to one hundred children.118 With three flower gardens, clean air, and spacious rooms, this large private residence was considered ideal. Social and medical advancement were intertwined in the preschool’s goals. For example, one reporter described the need for a school to care for children of the factory workers, who were often left without anyone to care for them at home. Without the benefit of the preschool, those children were “secluded in a room all day, without connection with the outside world,” and that seclusion “thereby adversely affected the development of their intelligence”; as a result, one particular four-year-old had the language proficiency of a two-year-old. In contrast to educators concerned about the academic pressures burdening elite children,119 the journalist emphasized the dangers of intellectual underdevelopment through neglect of poor children. In such cases, according to the journalist, medical doctors could find nothing physically to impair the speech of the child; the problem was neglect. Once such children attended preschool, their “progress was rapid.” The reporter noted that the child’s complexion also improved with regular and balanced meals.120 Thus, the YWCA promoted a vision of the “whole child,” in which children’s social, physical, and mental abilities developed in tandem. Another major component of preschool education was improving physical health. Before entering the preschool, children were required to Modern Motherhood 133
undergo an extensive medical examination to ensure that they were not carrying communicable diseases.121 Each morning, a doctor inspected the day kids before they were allowed entrance into the preschool, and sometimes pupils had to be quarantined or refused. Parents, too, worried when they heard of reports that a child had died at an unnamed preschool; one generally sympathetic news report found fault with the northern-facing, drafty quarantine room at the YWCA nursery (after it moved to another location after the war).122 The YWCA enjoyed the free medical services of female doctors who had been trained at mission colleges. For example, Lily Chung, a medical doctor who had worked with missionary Laura Haygood (1845– 1900) and then received her medical degree from St. John’s University in Shanghai, rendered her services for free as the director of the YWCA Industrial Preschool.123 Nursery care was thus just one of many facets of women’s work for women. The Shanghai Preschool communicated to visitors its vision of a happy childhood and modern childrearing informed by scientific standards of hygiene. On the walls hung pictures of children reading, playing, and receiving medical examinations, which gave the preschool a scientific as well as a sentimental feel.124 Children received vaccines whenever available. Photographs depicted conditions remarkably similar to newspaper descriptions— a male doctor using a stethoscope to inspect the lungs of a child; nurses, dressed neatly in white uniforms and caps, helping children to bathe; staff weighing and measuring children; toddlers brushing their own teeth; and children playing on modern playground equipment.125 In 1944, the preschool had only three nannies and seven assistants, but seventeen nurses;126 the prevalence of nurses indicates the preschool’s emphasis on hygiene and good health. The preschool administered not only health examinations, but also intelligence tests on children, all of whom were under six years of age.127 According to journalists, as a sign of the success of the institution, children eagerly toddled into the Shanghai Preschool, without clinging excessively to their mothers.128 Such favorable public reports were the result of good publicity on the part of the YWCA. Elizabeth Littell-Lamb points out that Cheng Wanzhen, one of the first female reporters for Shen bao (the influential Shanghai Times), also worked concurrently in the YWCA Publication Department, and thus likely facilitated the paper’s extensive coverage of the YWCA.129 Hu Binxia (胡彬夏, 1888–1931), a graduate of Wellesley and a member of the Chinese YWCA National Committee, had been a major editor of the Funü zazhi (Ladies Home Journal). Its reporters often solicited donations for the YWCA preschool and promised official acknowledgment from the YWCA. Journalists even asked readers if they would be able to offer reduced 134 Tillman
rent.130 Journalists also made emotional appeals to readers to rescue crippled orphans once they graduated from the care of the YWCA preschool.131 Even before the war ended, the Shanghai press projected YWCA preschools as a model for a nationwide movement to allow women to work outside the home.132 As a part of wartime reconstruction, preschool institutions introduced scientific childrearing methods to improve the health of the nation.133 The YWCA advocated female employment outside the home while also championing domestic ideals regarding proper hygienic practices. The YWCA leveraged preschools to work closely with parents. For example, in 1942, the YWCA preschools had celebrated Parents’ Day with free food, with the children singing to the tune of a piano and performing a play about little mice.134 Ultimately, preschools not only allowed women greater latitude in the public sphere but also helped modernize domestic spaces according to new scientific ideas. After the war, inflation, food scarcity, and an ongoing civil war created difficult conditions, but the Ys enjoyed special privileges under the guidance of American-led postwar reconstruction, especially through funding from the United Nations. Executive secretary of the China Aid Council, Mildred Price (1899–), specifically praised the YWCA preschool for its outstanding work.135 With international funding, the YWCA preschool provided breakfast, lunch, and dinner with snacks. Reporters lavishly described the hot and creamy milk, eggs, and beef fried rice that the young children ate for breakfast.136 Given these descriptions, it is probable that many parents—especially non-Christian ones like the reporter from Shen bao—chose the YWCA preschool and other Western-affiliated institutions in order for their children to gain access to special food provisions. Food availability was therefore an important advertising point during the wartime period and immediately thereafter. Fearing that even its diet was insufficient for the healthy growth of young children, Director Chen Shanming (陳善明) described the difficulty of using the most readily available, cheapest, and most vitamin-rich foods.137 UN experts researched the most efficient and cost-effective means to feed children.138 The YWCA advised mothers on diet, stressing nutritional value over taste.139 Concurrently, the UN advisers also sought to help child experts leverage models, like the YWCA preschools, into a national program in child welfare services. In 1946, the Professional Women’s Nursery (then called the Shanghai YWCA Working Mothers’ Nursery) once again split with the Shanghai Preschool, but both were run by Wang You Chu, a graduate of West China Union College.140 Relative to the Shanghai Preschool, the Professional Women’s Nursery drew families from relatively higher socioeconomic status. According to a 1947 United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Modern Motherhood 135
Administration (UNRRA) report, the Professional Women’s Nursery served the children of not only factory workers, but also merchants, educators, social workers (probably members of the YWCA), bankers, doctors, and journalists, who reported favorably on the preschools. In contrast, the Shanghai Preschool (then called in UNRRA documents the Shanghai YWCA Industrial Day Nursery at 783 Yu Lin Road) was relatively cheaper and served poorer families. A 1948 report in the Shanghai Municipal Archives confirmed the information that the Shanghai YWCA Preschool, first established in 1940, remained at 638 Weihaiwei Road and served 126 children, 54 of whom boarded overnight. Mistakenly, this file also claimed that the YWCA had opened a second preschool in October of 1946, with only 25 children, of whom 13 were girls, for industrial laborers.141 This actually reflects a return to the original division between the schools rather than the establishment of new schools in 1946. Women’s work for women necessitated a component of caring for the children, and the class differences were not always as clear-cut as Communists would later assume. Especially given postwar deprivation and food shortages, YWCA preschools seemed like a godsend of US humanitarian aid. It was unlikely, in that context, for commentators to criticize the YWCA preschools, even as Chinese grew increasingly discontented with the abuses of American soldiers and the interference of the United States in domestic politics. The YWCA established professional positions and institutions, such as industrial secretaries and preschools, that helped introduce new scientific ideas and democratic values among Chinese elites, the Caucasian poor, and even Chinese factory workers. Nevertheless, the YWCA thrived across multiple regimes—such as the transition from empire to nation-state, the wartime period, and then US postwar reconstruction—precisely because its goals for a global civil society were so amenable to both nationalism (in a period of the Nationalist Party’s unification and consolidation of power) and internationalism (in a period of multiple, competing nodes of power, from the United States in 1937–1941 to Japan after Pearl Harbor). By ameliorating industrial conditions and therefore conflicts, it was relatively easy for the YWCA to receive the approval of power holders. In the context of the Nationalists’ crackdown on Communist agitation after 1927, the YWCA represented the forefront of worker activism in Shanghai. In this environment of political suppression, many in the YWCA became increasingly radicalized through its direct engagement with workers. According to Peter Zarrow, “The YWCA’s education program quickly evolved into classes that gave women a sense of their position as women and as workers. Ideas about social change and even Marxism were introduced, 136 Tillman
along with writing, arithmetic, history, and other less threatening fare.”142 Roger Boshier and Yan Huang argue that Shanghai YWCA women were certainly radicalized,143 such that Hangzhou YWCA secretary Maud Russell’s conversion to Communism was an illustrative example.144 Their commitment to social reform earned women the respect of many Chinese. Despite breaking ties with missionaries in the years following 1949, Communists nevertheless remembered the work of progressive women in the YWCA; for example, in a meeting of international women’s charities after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, the YWCA was recognized for its services, especially with preschool children, in Shanghai.145 The former head of the Chinese YWCA, Cora Deng, and others like her continued to serve the nation during the PRC period.146 Such stories of political accommodation are championed because they reverse the standard conversion story. But they also obscure more complicated histories of the YWCA’s role in assimilating local natives to Western cultural standards;147 as Sally Hastings shows, the YWCA in Japan introduced Korean and Chinese migrants to Western, rather than Japanese, customs.148 In its role as a mediator of modernity, the Japanese YWCA thus drew upon the allure and standard of Anglo-American models to popularize its services. Garrett Washington notes that the YWCA facilitated the exchange between Japanese and Chinese YWCA secretaries and contributed to their cross-cultural communication.149 As early as 1924, the YWCA sent Chinese women to international conferences in Japan, including summer institutes in 1927 and 1930.150 Hastings also argues that the YMCA was more complicit in Japanese colonialism than the organization would have liked to admit.151 During the war, the YWCA applied for subsidies from Japanese occupiers, who may have favored the wartime YWCA because of these long-standing connections with Japan.152 Women’s work for women opened up new, institutional connections between public and domestic spaces, and thereby helps us to reimagine knowledge transfer as “both intellectual venture and a lived experience.”153 The YWCA reinforced new forms of self-discipline in conformity to modern, scientific practices, hygienic habits, and democratic self-discipline in the form of training women and teaching children to be self-sufficient. The professionalization of social work and the training of Chinese people were parallel projects. Just as the YWCA’s two preschools were sometimes shuffled together, so, too, were the YWCA’s larger commitments to transnational networks and local social action. The YWCA sometimes distinguished, and sometimes conjoined, the spaces between the local and the international, the domestic and the public, charity and self-help, and the sacred and the secular. Modern Motherhood 137
NOTES 1. Quoted in Karen Garner, Precious Fire: Maud Russell and the Chinese Revolution (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003), 5. See also Janice Dilg, “Uncovering ‘The Real Work’ of the Portland YWCA, 1900–1923,” Journal of Women’s History 15, no. 3 (2003): 175–182. Dorothea Browder argues that American women continued to support workers’ rights even after the decline of the Social Gospel movement and the rise of the Red Scare in the 1920s; see “A ‘Christian Solution of the Labor Situation’: How Workingwomen Reshaped the YWCA’s Religious Mission and Politics,” Journal of Women’s History 19, no. 2 (2007): 85–110. 2. Garner, Precious Fire, 16. 3. Cheng Hu, “Venereal Disease Prevention, Moral Welfare and Civilized Image: The Shanghai Moral Welfare Committee and the Anti-Prostitution Campaign in the Shanghai International Settlement, 1918–24,” Frontiers of History in China 6, no. 2 (2011): 249; see also Tsai Kuei and Lily K. Haas, “Part I: The Young Women’s Christian Association of China, 1890–1930,” 11–12, 60, Shanghai Municipal Archives U121‑0-35‑9; portions of this report were also later discovered, edited, and published in a three-part series by Li Yu-ning for Chinese Studies in History in 1977–1978 and may be more readily accessible there. Note: the pagination is different in the published series, and this chapter follows the archival document. 4. Garner, Precious Fire, 45. 5. “Women’s Work,” Millard’s Review of the Far East, April 5, 1919, 216–217. 6. Elizabeth Hayes Turner, Women, Culture, and Community: Religion and Reform in Galveston, 1880–1920 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 204. 7. Helen Schneider, Keeping the Nation’s House: Domestic Management and the Making of Modern China (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press), 2008. 8. Motoe Sasaki, Redemption and Revolution: American and Chinese New Women in the Early Twentieth Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017), Kindle. 9. “Conference on Women’s Work: A New Era for Women,” Chinese Recorder (February 1, 1920): 118–123. 10. Eugenia Lean, Vernacular Industrialism in China: Local Innovation and Translated Technologies in the Making of a Cosmetic Empire, 1900–1940 (New York: Columbia University, 2020), 91–97. 11. Raymond Mohl, “Cultural Pluralism in Immigrant Education: The YWCA’s International Institutes, 1910–1940,” in Men and Women Adrift: The YMCA and YWCA in the City, ed. Nina Mjagkij and Margaret Spratt (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 111–137; Alison Drucker, “The Role of the YWCA in the Development of the Chinese Women’s Movement, 1890–1927,” Social Service Review 53, no. 3 (1979): 424. 12. Tsai and Haas, “Part I,” 2. 13. Tsai and Haas, “Part I,” 57. 14. Tsai and Haas, “Part I,” 27. 15. Tsai and Haas, “Part I,” 10. 16. Lucius Porter, China’s Challenge to Christianity (New York: Missionary Education Movement, 1924), 54. 17. Mary M. Wilbur, “Women’s Work,” Millard’s Review of the Far East, May 31, 1919, 536. 18. “Young Women’s Christian Associations Necessary for Town Like Shanghai,” China Press, February 11, 1930. 138 Tillman
19. “The Place of the YWCA in the Community,” North-China Herald and Supreme Court and Consular Gazette, April 8, 1930. 20. Drucker, “Role of the YWCA,” 423. 21. Karl, “Violence of the Everyday,” 61. 22. Hu, “Venereal Disease Prevention,” 260. 23. Marcia Ristaino, Port of Last Resort: The Diaspora Communities of Shanghai (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 1–17; Eileen Scully, Bargaining with the State from Afar: American Citizenship in Treaty Port China, 1844–1942 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001). 24. Emily Honig, Creating Chinese Ethnicity: Subei People in Shanghai, 1850–1980 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992). 25. Drucker, “Role of the YWCA.” 26. For example, “Sir Frederick Whyte Addresses Shanghai Club Women on League,” China Press, January 31, 1929. 27. Sasaki, Redemption and Revolution, loc. 2642–2643, Kindle. 28. Ruth Rogaski, Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004). 29. Isabella Jackson, Shaping Modern Shanghai: Colonialism in China’s Global City (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 30. For example, Ah Hunai, “Tea Time Chats,” China Press, January 28, 1934; see also Elizabeth Littell-Lamb, “Engendering a Class Revolution: The Chinese YWCA Industrial Reform Work in Shanghai, 1927–1939,” Women’s History Review 21, no. 2 (2012): 189–209. 31. Tsai and Haas, “Part I,” 59. 32. “Women’s Work,” Millard’s Review of the Far East, August 3, 1918. 33. Robin Porter, Industrial Reformers in Republican China (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1994); Elizabeth Littell-Lamb, “Caught in the Crossfire: Women’s Internationalism and the YWCA Child Labor Campaign in Shanghai, 1921–1925,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 32, no. 3 (2011): 134–166. 34. Dominique Marshall, “The Construction of Children as an Object of International Relations: The Declaration of Children’s Rights and the Child Welfare C ommittee of the League of Nations,” International Journal of Children’s Rights 7 (1999): 103–147. 35. Carolien Stolte, “Bringing Asia to the World: Indian Trade Unionism and the Long Road towards the Asiatic Labour Congress, 1919–37,” Journal of Global History 7, no. 2 (2012): 257–278. 36. “Labor Conditions and Labor Regulation in China,” International Labor Review 10, no. 6 (July 1923): 1010. 37. “M. Thomas’s Busy Visit,” North-China Daily News, November 30, 1928. 38. Sharon McConnell-Sidorick, Silk Stockings and Socialism: Philadelphia’s Radical Hosiery Workers from the Jazz Age to the New Deal (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017). 39. Porter, China’s Challenge to Christianity, 58–59. 40. Anna Rice, A History of the World’s Young Women’s Christian Association (New York: Woman’s Press, 1947), 190. 41. “Factory Expert to Arrive Today,” China Press, September 1, 1931. 42. Memo to the commissioner of police (June 3, 1931), Reports Made 1916–1929: Chinese Factory and Labour Union Laws, Shanghai Municipal Police Files, 1894–1945, Modern Motherhood 139
US National Archives, digitized in Archives Unbound, http://go.galegroup.com/gdsc /i.do?&id=GALE%7CSC5100480367&v=2.1&u=twnsc183&it=r&p=GDSC&sw=w& viewtype=Manuscript. 43. “Factory Conditions in China,” North China Daily Herald, April 4, 1923, Shanghai Municipal Archives U1‑16‑2094. 44. E. Patricia Tsurumi, Factory Girls: Women in the Thread Mills of Meiji Japan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 25–26. 45. Elisheva Perelman, “The Exponent of Breath: The Role of Foreign Evangelical Organizations in Combating Japan’s Tuberculosis Epidemic of the Early 20th Century” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2011), 41–43. 46. Elisheva Perelman, “The Exponent of Breath: How Foreign Evangelical Organizations Utilized a Public Health Lacuna for Their Own Benefit,” International Journal of Science in Society 4, no. 2 (2013): 17. 47. Ono Kazuko and Joshua Fogel, eds., Chinese Women in a Century of Revolution, 1850–1950 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989). 48. Christian Henriot, “Regeneration and Mobility: The Special Dynamics of Industries in Wartime Shanghai,” Journal of Historical Geography 38 (2012): 180. 49. Annette Dorey, Better Baby Contests: The Scientific Quest for Perfect Childhood Health in the Early Twentieth Century (Jefferson, NC: Mcfarland, 1999). 50. Gideon Chen, Shanghai Municipal Archives U21‑0-35‑8, 126. 51. “Dinner to Mr. Eddy,” North-China Herald and Supreme Court and Consular Gazette, December 2, 1922. 52. Littell-Lamb, “Caught in the Crossfire,” 134–166. 53. Report by G. Ernest, Factory Inspector, December 6, 1923, Shanghai Municipal Archives U1‑16‑2094, 50. 54. Rev. Frank Rawlinson, Helen Thoburn, and Rev. D. MacGillivray, eds., The Chinese Church as Revealed in the National Christian Conference Held in Shanghai, Tuesday, May 2 to Thursday, May 11, 1922 (Shanghai: Oriental Press, 1922[?]), 466. 55. “Child Labour: Enthusiastic Japanese Supporters of the Proposed By-law,” North China Daily News, April 10, 1925. 56. Brett Sheehan, Industrial Eden: A Chinese Capitalist Vision (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015). 57. Hung-Ting Ku, “Urban Mass Movement: The May Thirtieth Movement in Shanghai,” Modern Asian Studies 13, no. 2 (1979): 201. 58. Elizabeth Perry, Shanghai on Strike: The Politics of Chinese Labor (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), 86. 59. Porter, Industrial Reformers in Republican China, 111. 60. Tsai and Haas, “Part I,” 25, 61. 61. Tsai and Haas, “Part I,” 70–71. 62. “The Place of the YWCA in the Community,” North-China Herald and Supreme Court and Consular Gazette, April 8, 1930. 63. Bae Kyounghan, “Chiang Kai-shek and Christianity: Religious Life Reflected from His Diary,” Journal of Modern Chinese History 3, no. 1 (2009): 1–10. 64. Peter Zarrow, China in War and Revolution, 1895–1919 (New York: Routledge, 2005), 261. 65. Mirela Violeta David, “Free Love, Marriage, and Eugenics: Global and Local Debates on Sex, Birth Control, Venereal Disease and Population in 1920s–1930s China” (PhD diss., New York University, 2014), 307. 140 Tillman
66. Sue Ellen Gronewold, “The Door of Hope Mission in Shanghai and Taipei, 1900–1976” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1996), 4. 67. Roger Boshier and Yan Huang, “The Untold Story of ‘Foreign Devil’ Adult Educators in Shanghai Silk Factories (1920 to 1949),” Adult Education Quarterly 57, no. 4 (August 2007): 329–345, https://doi.org/10.1177/0741713607302363. 68. “History of YWCA Is Described,” China Press, November 8, 1936. 69. Eileen P. Scully, “Prostitution as Privilege: The ‘American Girl’ of Treaty-Port Shanghai, 1860–1937,” International History Review 20, no. 4 (1998): 855–883; Ristaino, Port of Last Resort, 90–95. For longer-term efforts to abolish prostitution, including an ineffective 1920 ordinance, see Gail Hershatter, “Regulating Sex in Shanghai: The Reform of Prostitution in 1920 and 1951,” in Shanghai Sojourners, ed., Frederic Wakeman Jr. and Wen-hsin Yeh (Berkeley, CA: Institute for East Asian Studies, 1992), 144–185. 70. “YWCA Moves to New Home,” China Press, December 31, 1935. 71. “Men and Events,” China Weekly Review, May 28, 1938, 388. 72. Gideon Chen, “The YWCA and the Chinese Labor Movement,” Shanghai Municipal Archives U121‑0-35‑80, 126–127. 73. Chen, “YWCA and the Chinese Labor Movement,” 127. 74. “YWCA Helps Girls to Find Jobs,” North-China Herald and Supreme Court and Consular Gazette, October 8, 1941. 75. Edith Colter, “Work for Women in Shanghai,” North-China Herald and Supreme Court and Consular Gazette, July 19, 1933. 76. “Side Lines on Unemployment,” North-China Herald and Supreme Court and Consular Gazette, July 19, 1933. 77. Nevada Semenza, “More Jobs for the Jobless—Shanghai’s Unemployment Situation Turns Sunny-Side Up,” China Press, August 5, 1931. 78. “Many Seek Aid of YWCA,” China Press, March 23, 1934. 79. “YWCA Helps Girls to Find Jobs.” 80. Lydia Johnson, “Women Unemployed,” North-China Herald and Supreme Court and Consular Gazette, September 15, 1937. 81. “Children’s Nurses May Study Now: YWCA and JCSWO Sponsor Training Class for Them,” China Press, October 12, 1935; “The New Pestalozzi-Froebel House in Berlin,” Practical Teacher 20, no. 2 (1899): 62. 82. Helen Schneider, Keeping the Nation’s House: Domestic Management and the Making of Modern China (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2011), 76. 83. Tsai and Haas, “Part I,” 54. 84. “19 Registrations Made for Training School,” China Press, October 13, 1935; “Children’s Nurses Graduate,” China Press, May 9, 1937; “Children’s Nurses Graduate,” China Press, November 16, 1935; “YWCA Trains Nurses,” China Press, April 1, 1937. 85. “Baomu: Nüzi de xin zhiye” 女子的新職業 [Nannies: Girls’ new occupation], Shen bao 申報, April 27, 1943. 86. Helen May, Baljit Kaur, and Larry Prochner, eds., Empire, Education, and Indigenous Childhoods: Nineteenth-Century Missionary Infant Schools in Three British Colonies, Studies in Childhood, 1700 to the Present (London: Taylor and Francis, 2016), Kindle. See also Roberta Wollons, “The Black Forest in a Bamboo Garden: Missionary Kindergartens in Japan, 1868–1912,” History of Education Quarterly 33, no. 1 (1993): 1–35, https://doi .org/10.2307/368518. 87. American Presbyterian Mission, “Report” (Cheefoo, 1934), 11, Harriet Rietveld Collection, box 2, Hoover Institution Archives. Modern Motherhood 141
88. Tang Shu 唐淑 et al., Zhongguo xueqian jiaoyushi 中國學前教育史 (Beijing: Renmin jiaoyu, 2000), 84. See also Diguo Zhuyi qin Hua jiaoyushi ziliao 帝國主義侵華教 育史資料: 教會教育, ed. Li Chucai 李楚材 et al. (Beijing: Jiaoyu kexue, 1984). 89. May, Kaur, and Prochner, Empire, Education, and Indigenous Childhoods. 90. “Tuoersuo” 托兒所 [Preschools], Guoji laodong tongxun 國際勞動通訊 8, nos. 4–5 (1941): 68. See also “YWCA Children’s Nursery Substitutes for Mothers,” China Press, December 20, 1945, 2. 91. “Tuoersuo yundong” 托兒所運動 [Preschool movement], Shen bao 申報, November 23, 1943. 92. Mu Mei 木每 [pseud.], “Jieshao yi chu hehu lixiang de tuoersuo” 介紹一處合乎 理想的托兒所: 上海基督教女青年會托兒所 [Introducing an ideal preschool: The Shanghai YWCA preschool], Kangli yuekan 伉儷月刊 1, no. 9 (1947): 65–74. 93. Elizabeth Littell-Lamb, “Going Public: The YWCA, ‘New’ Women, and Social Feminism in Republican China” (PhD diss., Carnegie Mellon University, 2002). 94. “Tuoersuo” 托兒所 [Preschools], Guoji ladong tongxun 國際勞動通訊 7, no. 11 (1940): 52. 95. “Tuoersuo yundong,” November 23, 1943. 96. Henriot, “Regeneration and Mobility.” 97. “Nuqingnianhui zhuban: Liang tuoersuo jiwenji” 女靑年會主辦: 兩托兒所訪問記 [The YWCA’s leadership: Record of a visit to two preschools], Shen bao 申報, May 19, 1942. 98. Mu Zhen 慕貞, “Tuoersuo de xuyao” 托兒所的需要 [The necessity of preschools], Shen bao 申報, December 7, 1940. For some innovation in a Pan-Asian feminine ideal of “good wives and wise mothers,” see Mamiko Suzuki, “Shimoda’s Program for Japanese and Chinese Women’s Education,” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 15, no. 2 (2013): 3. 99. “Nüqingnianhui tuoersuo: Ertong shenghuo” 女青年會托兒所: 兒童生活 [YWCA’s kiddies home], Yiwen huabao 藝文畫報 1, no. 12 (1947): 13. 100. “Tuoersuo yundong,” November 23, 1943. 101. “Nüqingnianhui tuoersuo fan” 女青年會托兒所訉 [YWCA preschool], Shen bao 申報, February 26, 1942. 102. “Tuoersuo yundong,” November 23, 1943. 103. Mei, “Jieshao.” 104. “Nüqingnianhui tuoersuo,” 13–14. 105. Louise She, “A Statistical Summary of the 18 Projects,” October 8, 1947, United China Relief Records, New York Public Library, box 3, folder 9. 106. “Wo lia de sange haizi douzai tuoersuo li” 我倆的三個孩子都在托兒所裹 [Our three children are in preschool] Dagongbao Shanghai ban 大公報上海版, July 30, 1947, 9. 107. “Tuoersuo” (1941), 68. 108. “Tuoersuo yundong,” November 23, 1943. 109. “Nüqingnianhui tuoersuo fan.” 110. “Tuoersuo yundong” 托兒所運動 [Preschool movement], Shen bao 申報, September 22, 1943. 111. “Nüqingnianhui tuoersuo fan.” 112. “Tuoersuo yundong,” November 23, 1943; “Nüqingnianhui tuoersuo fan.” 113. For example, Mei, “Jieshao.” 114. Mei, “Jieshao.” 115. “Tuoersuo” (1941), 68. 116. “Nuqingnianhui zhuban.” 117. “Nuqingnianhui zhuban.” 142 Tillman
118. “Nüqingnianhui tuoersuo jianying” 女青年會託兒所剪影 [Impressions of the YWCA preschool], Shen bao 申報, April 13, 1944. 119. Limin Bai, Shaping the Ideal Child: Children and Their Primers in Late Imperial China (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2005), 181–183, 190–203. 120. “Tuoersuo yundong,” September 22, 1943. 121. “Wo lia de sange haizi douzai tuoersuo li,” 9. 122. Mei, “Jieshao,” 65–74. 123. Shanghai Municipal Archives Q112‑1-31‑63; “Appendix I: Staff of Institutions,” in She, “A Statistical Summary.” 124. Shanghai Municipal Archives Q112‑1-31‑63. 125. “Nüqingnianhui tuoersuo: Ertong shenghuo,” 13. 126. “Nüqingnianhui tuoersuo jianying,” Shen bao 申報, November 6, 1944. 127. “Nüqingnianhui tuoersuo jianying,” November 6, 1944. 128. “Tuoersuo yundong,” September 22, 1943. 129. Littell-Lamb, “Going Public,” 235. See also Christina Kelley Gilmartin, Engendering the Chinese Revolution: Radical Women, Communist Politics, and Mass Movements in the 1920s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 43. 130. “Nüqingnianhui zhuban liang tuoersuo fangwen ji” 女靑年會主辦兩托兒所 訪問記 [Interview of two YWCA preschools], Shen bao 申報, May 19, 1942. 131. “Nüqingnianhui zhuban liang tuoersuo fangwen ji.” 132. “Tuoersuo yundong,” November 23, 1943. 133. “Shanghai Nüqingnianhui de Tuoersuo” 上海女青年會的托兒所 [Shanghai YWCA Preschool], Funü婦女2, no. 8 (1947): 6. 134. “Fumujie kenqinghui qingkuang” 父母節懇親會情况 [Parents’ Day PTA meeting], Shen bao 申報, May 11, 1942. 135. “The Shanghai YWCA’s Nursery School Is an Outstanding Piece of Work in the Child Welfare Field,” North-China Daily News, November 22, 1946. 136. “Nüqingnianhui tuoersuo: Ertong shenghuo,” 13. 137. Mei, “Jieshao,” 65–74. 138. For example, “Nutrition Operational Bulletin No 1,” UNRRA China Office Collection, Hoover Institution Archives, box 21. 139. Xiaoping 小平, “Canguan Nüqingnianhui tuoersuo” 參觀女青年會托兒所 [Visiting the YWCA preschool], Funü 婦女 3, no. 9 (1948): 18–19. 140. She, “A Statistical Summary.” 141. Shanghai Municipal Archives Q112‑1-31‑63. 142. Zarrow, China in War and Revolution, 262. 143. Boshier and Huang, “The Untold Story of ‘Foreign Devil’ Adult Educators.” 144. Garner, Precious Fire. 145. “Shanghai gejie huanying Yazhou funü daibiao,” 上海各界歡迎亞洲婦代 [Shanghai welcomes female representatives], Dagongbao Shanghai ban 大公報上海版, December 23, 1949, 2. 146. Tina Phillipps Johnson, Elizabeth Littell-Lamb, and Kimberley Ens Manning, “Maternalist Internationalism: Women’s Leadership in China’s Cold War Struggles (1949–1995)” (Women in World History conference at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, July 10–14, 2017). 147. Yoosun Park, “The Role of the YWCA in the World War II Internment of Japanese Americans: A Cautionary Tale for Social Work,” Social Service Review 87, no. 3 (2013): 477–524. Modern Motherhood 143
148. Sally Hastings, “International Christianity, Japan, and China: The Case of Kawai Michi, 1877–1953” (Purdue Nanjing Joint Center for China Studies Conference, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, China, October 2017). 149. Garrett Washington, “Imperial Reflections: Actions and Perspectives of the Japan YWCA Relating to Japan’s Empire, 1905–1945” (unpublished manuscript, 2017). 150. Tsai and Haas, “Part I,” 60–61. 151. Sally Hastings, “Thomas Clay Winn (1851–1931): American Missionary to Dalian, 1906–1912: Empires and the Kingdom of God” (Purdue Nanjing Joint Center for China Studies Conference, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, October 19, 2016). 152. Shanghai Municipal Archives R50‑1-1364. The occupation did not begin until December 5, 1937, and did not affect Americans in the International Settlement until December 8, 1941; the occupation regime went through many iterations and titles; see Timothy Brook, Collaboration: Japanese Agents and Local Elites in Wartime China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 159–196. 153. Robert Culp and Eddy U, “Introduction: Knowledge Systems, Knowledge Producers, and China’s Distinctive Modernity,” in Knowledge Acts: Ideas, Institutions, and Identities, ed. Robert Culp, Eddy U, and Wen-hsin Yeh (Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies, 2016), 6.
144 Tillman
SIX Returning “Genuine Faith” to Modernity The Academic YMCA in Interwar Czechoslovakia Ondřej Matějka
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owadays, the Czech Republic undoubtedly belongs among the most secularized countries in the world.1 Leading contemporary sociologists of religion characterize it frequently as a “non-believing country,”2 constituting the “most extreme manifestation” of the exceptional European case of modern secularization.3 The interwar period is justifiably recalled as the moment when this social tendency first surfaced with great intensity: in the early 1920s around 13 percent of the inhabitants of the Czech lands officially left the dominant Catholic Church, and more than half of those decided to remain without confession.4 It was at that moment when in Czech public space, religion became most commonly associated with clericalism and social and political backwardness and was represented as the very antithesis of social and cultural modernity. In 1927, in the midst of this religiophobic era, Emanuel Rádl and Josef Lukl Hromádka, two members of the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak YMCA, decided to launch a new monthly called Christian Review (Křesťanská revue). They expressed their motivation as the necessity to systematically address and analyze the “problem of genuine faith in the modern era.”5 They passionately denounced “religious superficiality” and turned their sharp pens even against “practical Christianity”—the remnant of religion somehow tolerated by powerful Czech anticlericals. Furthermore, Hromádka used the pages of the Christian Review to explicitly claim his allegiance to the neoorthodox Protestant theology associated with Karl Barth.6 It is important to underline that the Christian Review was closely connected to a specific subgroup that Hromádka and Rádl had formed inside the Czechoslovak YMCA one year earlier: it was called the Academic YMCA and provided a meeting space specifically for university students, emphasizing once again the necessity of religious definiteness. 147
Considering the social and political context, those enterprises seemed to be doomed to remain marginal anecdotes at best. However, in the following years the Academic YMCA experienced impressive success on several levels. On the national level it attracted an influential segment of young Czech intellectuals and progressively became the nerve center of the entire YMCA in Czechoslovakia. Students who were socialized in this group served as local leaders of the YMCA and oriented the national association according to the Academic YMCA ethos. On the international level, this group independently entered the World Student Christian Federation, and its representatives helped to constitute the transnational network of Barthian Protestant theologians who were to dominate the global ecumenical arena in the following decades.7 The objective of this chapter is to analyze the conditions of the unattended impact of this specific religious offer associated with the Academic YMCA in a deeply secularized Czech milieu. On the basis of mostly untapped sources on the Czechoslovak YMCA,8 I first introduce, in “Ending with the Bible,” the context of the YMCA’s entry into Czechoslovakia, which was underpinned by a precise demand to import a specific kind of de-confessionalized religious modernity. In the second part, “Character and Service,” I focus on the local reappropriations of “practical Christianity” preached by the North American YMCA secretaries in the early 1920s. In the third and fourth parts, “Something Solid in the Darkness?” and “Barthian Internationale,” I outline the main factors on the national and trans national levels that led to the surprisingly successful turn toward Protestant neoorthodoxy of an important part of intellectual elites connected to the Czechoslovak YMCA in the interwar period. ENDING WITH THE BIBLE “Your method of beginning with general social help and ending with the Bible is the right method for our mentality.”9 It was with such words that Olga Masaryková concluded her long letter addressed to John R. Mott in autumn 1919. She wrote to Mott on behalf of her father, the newly elected first president of Czechoslovakia. Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk insisted, via his daughter, whom he used as his personal emissary in delicate international matters, on the necessity of the involvement of the North American YMCA in the social and religious education of young Czechoslovak citizens.10 Masaryk had several reasons for bearing such an attitude. First of all, this association was close to Masaryk’s own religious persuasion, emphasizing the ethical dimension of Christianity and minimizing the confessional definiteness of faith.11 He formed such views on the basis of 148 Matějka
his own reflections, but it is also important to underline the influence of his American wife, Charlotte née Garrigue. She grew up in a Unitarian family in New York and professed a nondogmatic version of “practical Christianity” that was very close to the religious conceptions of the Collegiate YMCA, which became the leading youth movement on North American campuses at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.12 It was precisely in that moment when Tomáš G. Masaryk, thanks to his family connections to the United States, began to discover more closely the YMCA version of Anglo-Saxon political, cultural, and religious modernity.13 During his prewar stays overseas (and then again during World War I), Masaryk came into close contact with North American intellectual elites who were socialized in the Collegiate YMCA. He was particularly interested in their religious views because he considered the religious question of utmost importance in modernizing societies.14 David Setran persuasively showed that it was exactly in those prewar decades that the North American association’s prior evangelistic focus eroded and was replaced by the program of “practical” Christianity, divorced from a particular faith tradition.15 In that moment, male students at major US universities (60 percent of whom participated in Collegiate YMCA activities) were called to convert to a Christian life rather than to belief in Christ the Savior.16 “Character and service” became the magic words of the YMCA, led by liberal Protestants who held an optimistic view of human nature and were determined to combat the ills of the world through a radicalized version of the Social Gospel. Masaryk considered such an approach an excellent fit for the Czechoslovak context after 1918, not only because it constituted one of the bases of his own spirituality but, probably more important, because the new state experienced a genuine earthquake in the religious field. President Masaryk observed this process with both anxiety (because of his persuasion of the necessity of religion for the moral health of a society) and hopeful expectations related to the possibility of a substantial reshaping of “superficial Catholicism” (the confession of the majority of the Czech population), which Masaryk despised.17 In fact, in the immediate postwar years the dominant Catholic Church (the confession of more than 90 percent of the population) came under strong attack in the Czech lands,18 for it represented the key symbol of the defeated Habsburg monarchy. Its opponents equated it with centuries-long political oppression and, more generally, with social and intellectual backwardness. It is significant that as early as November 25, 1918, less than one month after the creation of the republic, the new Czechoslovak government abolished by ministerial degree the compulsory participation Interwar Czechoslovakia 149
of pupils in religious ceremonies, and teachers’ supervision of these was made optional.19 In the following months, removing crosses and other religious symbols from schools became a mass phenomenon.20 The Catholic Church did not accept these attacks passively and, consequently, a true “culture war” began. The mighty Free Thought movement set the pace in what its leaders presented as the “war for the republic.”21 The first Czechoslovak census, scheduled for February 1921, was then chosen as the “day of reckoning” with the “principal enemy of our nation and of progress”22—the Catholic Church. Posters encouraging people to quit the Catholic Church before the census “in revenge for seas of tears, rivers of blood and outrageous suffering of us and our ancestors”23 flooded Czech towns and villages in 1920. Free thinkers, visibly marked by a pansy flower, created and staffed local “exit bureaus,” where they offered blank exit forms and provided assistance with their completion. The most experienced Free Thought orators toured the Bohemian lands to explain at mass rallies the high stakes connected to the census.24 And they were indeed successful: the enormous loss of 1,388,000 members of the dominant Catholic Church (out of 10 million Czechs), as confirmed by the census, had “no equivalent in the civilized countries of comparable size.”25 It is important to note that the majority of those ex-Catholics did not convert to Protestantism but decided to remain without confession or joined the nationalist and religiously rather mild Czechoslovak Church.26 This transformation was even more pronounced among young people: at Charles University in Prague the proportion of students without confession reached more than 20 percent in the early 1920s—which inspired a genuine concern in the circles close to Masaryk.27 Understandably, then, Olga Masaryková repeatedly emphasized in her letters to Mott that “this moment of urgent need of prompt action must not be missed.”28 CHARACTER AND SERVICE After a moment of hesitation, John R. Mott and the North American leader ship of the YMCA responded positively to Masaryk’s call and in the following months and years launched an impressive (and costly) project for the extension of the YMCA in Czechoslovakia.29 The most important part of the North American YMCA investment consisted of financing the extended stays of dozens of US secretaries in the new republic. They were entrusted with the mission to find and educate local elites who would then be able to carry on the YMCA program independently. These young North Americans who managed the Czechoslovak YMCA exclusively until 1921 (and then in the larger part until 1928) willingly respected Masaryk’s instructions of 150 Matějka
focusing first on social work before any mention of the religious dimension of the YMCA program. They were well prepared for such a mission: as they grew up in this ethical, liberal, and very muscular Christianity of the Collegiate YMCA, they did not have any problems accommodating themselves to Czech conditions. An interesting symptom of the rapidly reached mutual understanding between North American secretaries and local Czech YMCA supporters can be seen in the explanation of the reason why they decided not to translate the YMCA abbreviation into the Czech language. The US secretaries informed the surprised headquarters in Geneva of the fact that “in Czech society the word ‘Christian’ is closely associated with Catholicism and clericalism” and the literal translation of the meaning of the YMCA into Czech “would arouse false conceptions and would only harm the work.”30 In Czech public space, the YMCA has thus remained (until today) designated simply by the abbreviation pronounced and transcribed in Czech as “Ymka.” Consequently, in the first years of its activity, the Czechoslovak YMCA basically offered a mixture of secularized Social Gospel with fitness overtones and focused, almost exclusively, on the body and mind dimensions of the YMCA threefold program. The sports program met with a particularly enthusiastic response among both the local population and the leading political elites of the republic, for whom the development of bodily fitness was closely related to the construction of the modern Czech nation, thanks to the very popular gymnastics (and nationalist) association Sokol which began in the nineteenth century.31 The YMCA leaders quickly understood that it was not the best strategy to rival the mighty Sokol movement and willingly specialized in the import of typical YMCA collective games such as volleyball and basketball. The Czech American J. A. Pipal, who directed the YMCA sport program in Czechoslovakia in the early 1920s (first in the army but later also in YMCA civil work), repeatedly emphasized the educative “democratic function” of collective sports in the new state on its way toward stabilization in postwar Central Europe.32 In addition to instilling external discipline through drills and gymnastic training offered by the Sokol movement, young citizens of the newborn republic needed, according to Pipal, “recreational games, play life and competitive sport with its self-discipline.”33 Václav Klofáč, the first Czechoslovak minister of national defense and later an influential senator, expressed the hope widely shared by Czech political elites that “the noble spirit” of games and sports practiced in the YMCA “might enable our nation to acquire those qualities of gentlemanly conduct which are characteristic of Anglo-Saxon nations.” Klofáč believed that identification with the Anglo-Saxon West through collective games would Interwar Czechoslovakia 151
result in “getting rid of the social and mental handicaps that are manifested especially in Czech political life”—such as cowardice and subterfuge.34 In the YMCA-produced discourse, the body was thus fundamentally considered an access point to young Czechoslovaks’ minds, which were to be “democratized” and “civilized” according to Anglo-Saxon standards. Consequently, the YMCA launched a series of elaborate educative initiatives aimed at achieving this goal. First of all, the YMCA became “the cheapest and the most accessible” institution for learning English and thus opening the new state to the Anglo-Saxon West.35 Language courses were complemented with the activities of English and American “clubs,” which constructed stable bridges toward English-speaking countries as well as entrance points for not only tourists but also businessmen coming from these regions. The YMCA leaders had, nevertheless, a wider political ambition in their educative initiatives: they set as one of their principal objectives inculcating in the minds of Czechoslovak young men the spirit of “international mindedness.”36 These initiatives were to encourage the formation of a mind-set of openness toward members of other nations and, more important, of a tolerant and friendly attitude toward ethnic minorities strongly represented inside the territory of the Czechoslovak state. In that way, the Czechoslovak YMCA would substantially contribute to the geopolitical ambitions of its North American leaders and of sponsors counting on the solidly Westernized and internally stable Czechoslovakia as a reliable “wall against the spread of bolshevism” in Central Europe.37 The spiritual dimension of the YMCA program was clearly kept far behind the body and mind dimensions of the Y triangle in those busy first years of the association’s settling in Czechoslovakia. However, it did not disappear completely from the YMCA offerings. Rather, it remained hidden under the label of “character work.” Activities related to this aspect were, nevertheless, to be de-confessionalized as far as possible. Howard B. Durkee, the principal organizer of the “spiritual formation” of Czechoslovak YMCA secretaries, thus, on the one hand, explicitly stated in his lectures from the early 1920s that “unless spiritual forces can be brought to bear mightily upon the whole field of human relations, our present civilization is doomed.”38 Durkee promptly added that, on the other hand, “expressed in more concrete terms it is a question as to whether or not Christianity is going to be willing and able to give less attention for a time to theological and formal questions in order to have the time and the energy to project itself more largely into the affairs of everyday life.” In YMCA practice, this principle meant de-emphasizing traditional religious language and forms (prayer and worship) and replacing them with “character talks,” which were to “move hearers into action,” leading to “definite constructive 152 Matějka
service for others.” In those “character talks” YMCA secretaries were advised to use examples from the Gospel but always interpret them “in a civil way.”39 This antidogmatic religiosity outside church structures found enthusiastic followers among an important part of Czech young elites in the early 1920s. Václav Maria Havel (at least in relation to his religious views) can be considered a rather typical representative of this group.40 He was born in 1897 to a mildly Catholic well-off family and, because of his interest in the Free Thought movement, held radically anticlerical views and decided to leave the Catholic Church. After the creation of the Czechoslovak Republic he became very active in the student milieu. He was a fervent admirer of Masaryk and under his direct influence he decided to create the Obrodné Hnutí Československého Studenstva (Renaissance Movement of Czechoslovak Students; OHČS) in spring 1920. This movement proclaimed as its objective raising the interest in “moral and spiritual questions” among young intellectuals—future elites of the republic.41 OHČS leaders declared their allegiance to “lively elements from Christianity . . . constituting the basis of Masaryk’s humanism.”42 In the previously outlined postwar Czechoslovak context, they faced the tricky and delicate task of avoiding the accusations trap of “clericalism,” which was associated with any dogmatically sound expression of Christianity. Accordingly, they presented Jesus exclusively as “the representative of genuine humanism who, with his words and life, fully expressed ethical principles which appeared independently in different parts of the world.”43 At the same moment, Havel and his colleagues emphasized that they did not doubt the view that “churches were discredited” in order to remain on safe anticlerical ground and not to provoke the churchphobic intellectual and political mainstream. As the OHČS tried to make this mixture of ethical Christianity and anticlericalism even more attractive, Havel frequently referred to the “American example” in the religious field. He claimed that “in America ‘Christian’ and ‘Christianity’ do not refer to any particular confession but mean, in accordance with Jesus’s teachings on true love, almost the same as humanitarian and dedicated to service to others.”44 Such an interpretation was compatible with “the spirit of modernity” and accessible and acceptable for young Czech intellectuals. The OHČS thus experienced relative success over a period of several years, a circumstance likely connected to the reliable material support coming from the YMCA as well. Under the influence of the YMCA, the OHČS movement entered into contact with the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF), which actively participated in the postwar reconstruction of Europe by providing help to various national student movements.45 In the end, however, the Interwar Czechoslovakia 153
WSCF leadership decided to turn down the Czechoslovak application for full membership, as the antidogmatism of OHČS had reached too far. As Ruth Rouse, the WSCF secretary in Europe in the early 1920s, remembered, the Czechoslovak movement adopted as its programmatic basis “something so vaguely pantheistic” that it could not be accepted by the association.46 However, the following years showed that this “vague pantheism,” resulting in a rather amorphous version of Christianity, did not always satisfy a growing number of Czech students entering university in the mid-1920s. SOMETHING SOLID IN THE DARKNESS? Josef B. Souček, who studied philosophy at Charles University (before switching to Protestant theology), was one of them. He later remembered that the “generally irreligious spirit” and “spiritual emptiness” of the postwar years proved to be extremely frustrating when he and his close associates “looked for a stable point, for an unambiguous support in our dealings with intellectual and spiritual difficulties and doubts.”47 His older colleague and friend Jaroslav Šimsa expressed his everlasting gratitude to Josef Lukl Hromádka, who “ended our post-war groping” and allowed these young, doubting, uncertain, yet curious students to “touch something solid in the darkness.”48 Hromádka, who was to play such an important role for young Christian intellectuals in interwar Czechoslovakia, came to Prague in April 1920 to start teaching systematic theology at the Prague Protestant theology faculty, becoming the thirty-one-year-old Benjamin of the professorial body. He soon began to attract the attention of students because of his anticonformism, which was a result of the twists and turns of his life trajectory. After having grown up intellectually and spiritually in the liberal theology environment of German-speaking Central Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century, he enthusiastically discovered the revivalist and missionary ethos of Anglo-Saxon Calvinism during his study stays in Scotland on the eve of the Great War. But it was his personal experience as a military chaplain in Galicia during the last months of that cataclysmic event that inspired his profound theological reorientation. He returned from the front, where he experienced the rapid disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Army with the firm conviction that “we, modern theologians, are on a false track. . . . Christianity has become to us either a cliché or an impotent babbling about God the father and man the son. . . . We want to harvest fruit from God’s tree without strain nor pain. Yet we get only sour wild grapes.”49 When he began to teach in Prague he connected young students around him to “the great spiritual battle”50 for a new theology relevant for 154 Matějka
the postwar context. He invited them “without narrow-mindedness or professorial superiority”51 to take part in “his quest for the inner truth of the faith.”52 The effect was immediate and deep: as František M. Dobiáš, who first met Hromádka in 1925, testified, even though other professors “were nice and pleasant people who inspired respect and admiration,”53 Hromádka was without a serious rival among young theologians. In contrast to the “mild and respectful liberals”54 (with an appeasing attitude to anticlerical and antichurch dominant discourse), Hromádka, who was working through his own protracted theological reorientation, succeeded in persuading his students that theology and philosophy could be felt as “a life or death struggle”55 in which it was worth engaging. The YMCA constituted a springboard for exporting Hromádka’s influence outside the Protestant milieu; in fact, he was closely associated with YMCA activities since 1921 as a member of the Czechoslovak YMCA Central Committee—due to his mastery of English and his previous personal relations with the Anglo-Saxon world. During the early 1920s he formed an intellectual alliance and stable friendship with another charismatic figure inside the Czech YMCA movement: the professor of philo sophy at Charles University, Emanuel Rádl, who attracted university students, once again, with his consistently nonconformist opinions.56 For instance, in the context of the newly born Czechoslovak nation-state (understandably permeated by a nationalist ethos), he continually denounced nationalism as one of the most dangerous global threats. Moreover, he defended the rights of (not always fairly treated) ethnic and linguistic minorities in Czechoslovakia and provoked great anger among leading Czech nationalists.57 Furthermore, Rádl also extensively reflected and published on religious matters and, by a different road, came to the same conclusion as Hromádka. “Diluted,” “compromising,” and “superficial” Christianity (acceptable to the majority of the Czech population) seemed to him unable to help the world in crisis, and for that reason he joined in Hromádka’s call for the return to more solid foundations of faith.58 When the OHČS started to internally disintegrate in the mid-1920s, Rádl and Hromádka were ready to offer an articulate alternative to the purely ethical pantheist spirituality and founded the Academic YMCA. What effect did the movement produce among young seekers of religious goods? Božena Komárková’s case offers an example among many others: this brilliant and extremely critical student of philosophy, history, and geo graphy, who, at the beginning of the 1920s, completely identified with the positivism and agnosticism in which she “grew up,” testified to her “shock” when she observed her colleagues of the same age, whom she considered “equally intelligent,” humbly praying at the Academic YMCA conference, Interwar Czechoslovakia 155
which she first attended in 1928.59 She testified to the “unforgettable power” of the message of young Professor Hromádka, who stood up on that occasion to proclaim that “in this time of disintegration of all values nothing can give a man enough strength but the faith in a personal God who entrusts all and everyone with a specific and irreplaceable mission.” Komárková described Hromádka’s speech as “a revelation” for her.60 Other testimonies recount similar conversion-like experiences with Hromádka, who did not attract primarily by his rhetorical skills or physical appearance but by his behavior and discourse, which were perceived as “authentic,” “unalloyed,” and “ingenuous.”61 The aspect of nonconformism is omnipresent in those testimonies—certain young intellectuals were particularly interested in something clearly outside the irreligious mainstream of that era. In the following years the movement grew out into the intellectual center of the YMCA in Czechoslovakia, thus completely reversing the tendency from the early 1920s, putting the spiritual dimension of the YMCA activities as the first priority and even instrumentalizing the association for the export of neoorthodox religious ideas. Three main activities stand out in the rich existence of the Academic YMCA as promoting success by gaining public visibility and enlarging its social influence. First, the association reached for an intellectual audience through its numerous publications: the Christian Review started at 2,500 copies in 1927 before stabilizing at 4,500 during the 1930s. The YMCA also financed book publications under the series Library of the Christian Review, introducing to the Czech public principally (but not exclusively) new works by its core authors (Rádl, Hromádka). Second, Academic YMCA summer student conferences launched in 1927 progressively evolved into “a fabled tradition.”62 Combining sport activities with intense discussions, they constituted a privileged opportunity for up to three hundred Czechoslovak and foreign students63 to spend several summer weeks with the leading intellectual figures of the “First Republic.”64 The usual YMCA team (Hromádka, Rádl, Žilka, J. B. Kozák, and J. B. Čapek) was complemented by renowned public figures such as economist Josef Macek, along with Masaryk’s close collaborator and future heir, Edvard Beneš.65 During the autumn, winter, and spring holidays, the Academic YMCA offered shorter “retreats” with similar programs.66 Finally, the Academic YMCA organized regular weekly seminars around pressing intellectual, social, religious, and political issues. The participants particularly enjoyed “the atmosphere of a free exchange of different opinions characterized by tolerance towards every view but at the same time by a concentrated effort of speakers to rationally justify the rightness and veracity of his or her position without appealing to any supreme authorities.”67 156 Matějka
All those activities were coeducational, which undoubtedly constituted another fundamental aspect in the steadily rising popularity of the Academic YMCA. As several male participants underlined in their memoirs, this association offered the “rare opportunity” to meet “attractive and intelligent girls” with whom it was possible to engage “in a passionate volleyball match” before continuing with an “equally passionate discussion on Masaryk or Marx.”68 As a result, the Academic YMCA progressively became the intellectual center of the Czechoslovak YMCA despite the fact that ideologically and theologically it represented a complete deviation from the “muscular” and “practical” Christianity ethos imported first by the US secretaries in the early 1920s, who responded to the demand of circles around Masaryk by preferring the nondogmatic version of Christianity associated with the Social Gospel. This successful reversal toward neoorthodox theological grounding orchestrated by Hromádka and Rádl was certainly related to the charisma of both main leaders, to the religious thirst of the generation of students coming to the university in the mid-1920s, to the vibrant activism of the young Academic YMCA participants, and to the attractive mix of different kinds of coeducational programs. However, it is impossible to fully understand this success without taking into account the transnational dimension of the Protestant neoorthodox upswing process. BARTHIAN INTERNATIONALE In this regard, it is first important to underline that at the end of the 1920s, the leaders of the Academic YMCA were able to develop their initiatives on local and national levels with minimal or no intervention from the representatives of the North American YMCA who were personally identified with “muscular” and “practical” Christianity. In fact, from the late 1920s, in consequence of its financial difficulties, the US YMCA drastically cut its overseas budget. It stopped financing long-term stays of secretaries who had still managed the work of the Czechoslovak branch of the YMCA in the mid-1920s. After 1933, only YMCA secretary Brackett Lewis remained in Prague, and he directed the local association until his return to the United States in 1938.69 But the US withdrawal did not manifest itself only in the human resources dimension. The measure that caused quite a stir among the Czechoslovak YMCA leaders was the sudden financial disengagement of the American sponsors from the task of balancing the national association budget. It is important to note that the Czechoslovak YMCA had already grown r elatively independent in everyday economic matters by the mid-1920s. However, with Interwar Czechoslovakia 157
the crisis looming it fell into financial difficulties when it was left to pay, on its own, installments on the huge debts accumulated in the construction period of the association in the beginning of the 1920s. Back then, the US leadership encouraged (or according to some testimonies even forced)70 the Czechoslovaks to invest in the establishment of local branches at places of interethnic tensions (in the name of education toward “international- mindedness”), where, because of the deteriorating political climate in the early 1930s, the activities of the YMCA became the target of attacks from local nationalists so that it was not possible to sustain them.71 The resulting anger of Czechoslovak managers of the YMCA who had to chase local sponsors to repay debts on investments that “they would have never done”72 created even more distance between the Czechoslovak association and the US ex-sponsors who once used to play the role of ideological authorities (supporting “practical” ethical Christianity) as well. Furthermore, this drifting away from the North American YMCA was accompanied by a rapprochement with the more European-centered (even though originally very close to the YMCA) World Student Christian Federation. Willem Visser ’t Hooft was the key actor in this process. In the late 1920s, this ambitious young Dutch Protestant who started his ecumenical career as the right-hand man of John R. Mott in the World Alliance of YMCAs became the leading figure in the WSCF. At approximately the same moment, he fell in love with the neoorthodoxy of Karl Barth, which resulted in the adoption of an always-more-critical stance toward the progressivist and anthropocentric version of muscular Christianity and toward the Social Gospel. Visser ’t Hooft himself described his discovery of Karl Barth as one of the fundamental thresholds in both his personal and intellectual life: Barth gave him “ground under the feet,” as he put it in his Memoirs.73 He further emphasized that Barthian theology delivered him from “the anxious seeking for religious treasures.” Visser ’t Hooft interpreted it as a truly generational experience: “Many of us who have . . . tried to keep their ideals of human achievement and progress alive in a world where those ideals are constantly submerged by the floods of this unbearably realistic life, have been saved from both their ideals and their disillusions by accepting the truth that God’s Kingdom comes at His appointed time and that God relates their efforts to it in His own way, which we do not and need not know.” 74 The disillusioned statement on the low theological value of “ideals of human achievement and progress” clearly refers to the YMCA version of Christianity. In fact, in 1928 Visser ’t Hooft defended his doctoral dissertation, which systematically analyzed and criticized the theological under pinnings of the Social Gospel, which had constituted the basis of the North 158 Matějka
American Collegiate YMCA worldview since the end of the nineteenth century.75 In his detailed analysis based on an impressive mastering of contemporary theological literature, Visser ’t Hooft claimed that this version of Christianity constituted only “a shortcut to the Kingdom of God” and even represented a dangerous conception when it argued that God was found “as individuals find themselves in the great cooperative enterprise for human progress.” In such a vision, God remained only “a projection of human ideals and nothing else,” which clearly troubled Visser ’t Hooft, for it directly led, according to him, to a theological but also ethical and political blind alley: “Man may try to rationalize his relations with God by making Him the Guarantee of the realization of human social ideals, but reality mocks his attempts.” Visser ’t Hooft considered this development a “dangerous spiritual situation” for which he explicitly made responsible “American Christianity” permeated by the Social Gospel message, which was reappropriated and then exported worldwide by the Collegiate YMCA. Conscious of the growing global power of the United States, Visser ’t Hooft concluded his thesis with the hope that “America would find a deeper and more genuinely Christian message” by joining in the Europe-centered “neoorthodox revival” to which he decided to actively contribute by his activities at the international ecumenical fora.76 Hromádka and his Czech colleagues, whom Visser ’t Hooft met through the YMCA in the early 1920s, represented precious allies in this global enterprise. To a certain extent, Hromádka’s discourse was even more radical than the rhetoric of the ecumenical diplomat Visser ’t Hooft. In the late 1920s, Hromádka openly criticized “North American paganism” and prophesized that “either American Protestantism will remember Christian bases of the faith or it will drown in pure humanism and will become only an insignificant wheel in cultural and politico-economical American imperialism.”77 In the following decades, the Dutch-Czech tandem constituted together the core of a European theological school intellectually dominated by their common friend and respected master, Karl Barth.78 In order to spread the message of dialectical theology throughout the world, Visser ’t Hooft utilized various media outlets ranging from the WSCF Student World review to the numerous ecumenical conferences and workshops he indefatigably organized during the interwar period. All these fora became wide open for Czech representatives of the Academic YMCA, whom Visser ’t Hooft particularly instrumentalized in his outreach attempts to third world countries. This can be observed from his correspondence with Hromádka from the late 1920s, when Visser ’t Hooft invited him to the WSCF c ongress in India and explicitly expressed his geopolitical strategy of reaching the Interwar Czechoslovakia 159
South (a global periphery) through the Central-East periphery of the European continent:79 You could do a very great service in India. As far as I can see, that meeting will stand in great need of men who are sufficiently modern to understand the motives behind much of the thinking of confused present-day youth in the East and in the West but who are at the same time sufficiently rooted in the Christian tradition to show them the only way out. If such a voice comes from one of the so-called new countries of Europe, it comes with double authority.80
The relationship between Hromádka and Visser ’t Hooft was, of course, advantageous for both sides on different levels. While Visser ’t Hooft used the Czechoslovak YMCA as a bridge toward the East and the South in his global projects, Hromádka and his Czech colleagues, thanks to their Western networks, gained an international reputation that substantially enhanced their domestic prestige. Consequently, the Academic YMCA also attracted new students interested in international exchanges not directly related to theological issues.81 Furthermore, in the following years, the transnational neoorthodox enterprise, which was initially theological, grew continuously more visible and influential on both the international and national levels due to the fact that from 1933 it acquired an explicit political dimension. In fact, Hitler’s accession to power dramatically divided German Protestants: the majority chose the way of enthusiastic allegiance to the dictatorship, the nationalist and anti-Semitic version of “German Christians.”82 Karl Barth (with the support of his European friends and colleagues), to the contrary, condemned the “brown heresy” and became the theological leader of the anti-Nazi Confessing Church Movement.83 Hence his neoorthodox theology, quite suddenly, turned into a deeply politicized matter. In the Czech case, we can observe several fundamental consequences of this evolution. First of all, the motive of Christians’ public responsibility (very much appealing to students engaged in the Academic YMCA) became ever more explicit with the rapidly changing international situation after 1933. We can follow the growing politicization first on the pages of the Christian Review. Beginning in the early 1930s, this monthly served as the principal informant to the Czech public on the dramatic developments in the church sphere during the period of Nazi Germany post-1933. Hromádka and his young Protestant colleagues (mainly J. Šimsa and J. B. Souček) interpreted the pro-Hitler attitude of the majority of the German Protestants as an “exemplary illustration of the chaos and helplessness emerging out of bad 160 Matějka
theology.” Hromádka linked the German Christians’ “deviance” to his theological leitmotif: in his perspective, the Nazi ideology penetrated the German Protestant milieu with such striking efficiency because of “its romantic content so closely akin to the theological idealism reigning for more than 100 years at German theological faculties.”84 The Christian Review incessantly attacked the German “pagan infidels and those Protestants who decided to serve the stupidest and the most brutal reaction which we have seen in contemporary history” and which constituted a “threat to the very foundations of European civilization.”85 With a sense of shock, the Christian Review published several accounts on visits of Academic YMCA members to the post–Nuremberg Laws Germany, a nation now “invaded by the plague of anti-Semitism.”86 The civil war in Spain triggered the decision of Hromádka and his close Academic YMCA collaborators (namely, Šimsa) to engage in even more concrete political action.87 In autumn 1936, they joined the recently founded Committee for the Help of Democratic Spain, and Hromádka became its executive secretary.88 In the programmatic proclamation published in December 1936, we can clearly recognize Hromádka’s passionate rhetoric, which functioned as a magnet for young intellectuals: “In history, there sometimes appear moments when the struggle for all the most precious goods of humanity, of education, of freedom is concentrated in one place of the civilized world. In a dramatic condensation, all contemporary ideas and fronts face each other in this place at this moment, ready to launch the battle which is going to decide in what way and according to which ideas tomorrow’s society will be governed. . . . In Spain, the progress and freedom of us all are at stake.”89 The activity of the committee, which soon gathered around sixty associations and developed a network of more than fifty local branches, was not limited to dramatic declarations. It published a monthly informing the Czech public of the latest developments on the Iberian Peninsula,90 launched several fund-raising campaigns, and sent all kinds of material help to Spanish republicans. Furthermore, the committee also financed a refuge for 120 war orphans in France and even a Czechoslovak military hospital (significantly named “Comenius” after an eminent seventeenth-century Czech Protestant philosopher, pedagogue, and theologian) with three permanent physicians and five nurses.91 For the young student participants, this kind of engagement sealed their bond with the Academic YMCA: according to their testimonies, they felt that they stood on “the right side of the barricade” and that they could actively take part in the “global struggle” between the good and the evil.92 It is important to underline that this anti-Nazi aspect was systematically linked with the theological dimension—Hromádka Interwar Czechoslovakia 161
emphasized repeatedly that the neoorthodox position offered a firm and functional orientation point in the messy political situation on the international and national levels.93 Understandably, then, the most engaged members of the Academic YMCA found themselves in great danger when Nazi Germany invaded the Czech lands in March 1939. Hromádka, the most visible representative of the movement, was saved from the hands of the Gestapo thanks to his YMCA and WSCF networks. Visser ’t Hooft personally, being well aware of the extremely risky position of Hromádka, provided the invitation for his Czech friend and his family to come for a lecture tour in Switzerland in April 1939. Subsequently, Visser ’t Hooft’s US friends secured a prestigious position for Hromádka at Princeton Theological Seminary, where he taught until his return to Prague in 1947. In his letters to Hromádka, Visser ’t Hooft frequently reminded his Czech colleague that his work in North America was “not merely a method of supporting the family” but represented an affair “of first importance from the ecumenical angle” because it offered “a real chance to bring to American students some of the results of the theological renewal in Europe during the last decade.”94 In an impressive reversal, this East-Central European theologian came to the United States as an apostle and teacher of the Barthian theology, which defined itself in opposition to the YMCA-mediated combination of the Social Gospel and muscular Christianity. It was, however, precisely the North American YMCA that two decades earlier had allowed, by its investment of important financial and human resources, the beginning of the constitution of this fascinating transnational Protestant neoorthodox network. This chapter has followed the prehistory and development of the Czech component of this network. It began with Masaryk’s invitation in the context of Czech post–World War I religious upheaval and the positive North American response motivated by (besides the YMCA missionary ethos) the geopolitical strategy of containing the Bolshevik menace. An antidogmatic spiritual agenda related to “practical Christianity” preached by the Collegiate YMCA in the United States and considered “religiously modern” in Central Europe first allowed the successful establishment of the association in Czechoslovakia. Nevertheless, this type of discourse soon began to lose its appeal among an influential segment of young Czech intellectuals tired of omnipresent anticlericalism. On the contrary, they grew curious about religious definiteness. Following this, the Academic YMCA, led by theologically neoorthodox Hromádka and Rádl, stepped in and, profiting from the already established YMCA 162 Matějka
infrastructure in Czechoslovakia, asserted itself as one of the most dynamic actors within a discourse of religious modernity in the Czech lands. Local, national, and transnational dimensions of this process constituted important elements in the interwar rise of Barthian neoorthodoxy throughout the Protestant world. Even though the Academic YMCA was heavily decimated during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia,95 its ethos survived into the postwar period. More important, actors who socialized inside this association led by their mentor Hromádka came to constitute the core of the strong Czech group in global ecumenical structures—principally the World Council of Churches, presided over by Visser ’t Hooft between 1948 and 1966. Until the late 1960s, they were thus able to play the role of one of the most active East-West bridges traversing the Iron Curtain.96 NOTES I am thankful for the support of the PROGRES Q18 research funding scheme (“Social Sciences: From Multidisciplinarity to Interdisciplinarity,” Charles University, Prague) and the Swiss National Foundation (project “Shared Modernities or Competing Modernities? Europe between West and East, 1920s–1970s,” based at the University of Geneva). 1. It is obvious in international comparative projects like the International Social Survey Programme. For the results of the Czech Republic, see Metadata Index, “Dataset: Náboženství (ISSP 2008)—Česká republika,” accessed August 20, 2018, http://nesstar .soc.cas.cz/webview/index/en/nesstar/-SDA.c.nesstar/-esky.d.1/ISSP.d.3/N-bo-enstv -ISSP-2008-esk-republika/fStudy/ISSP00017. 2. Dana Hamplová and Zdeněk R. Nešpor, “Invisible Religion in a ‘Non-believing’ Country: The Case of the Czech Republic,” Social Compass 56, no. 4 (2009): 581–597. 3. Zdeněk R. Nešpor, “Sekularizace politiky a veřejné správy a jejich nebezpečí,” in Vznik státu jako proces sekularizace, ed. Jiří Hanuš (Brno: CDK, 2006), 112. Nešpor refers to the hypothesis of Grace Davie, Europe: The Exceptional Case: Parameters of Faith in the Modern World (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2007). 4. Detailed results can be found at the website of the Czech Statistical Bureau (Český Statistický Úřad), accessed August 20, 2018, https://www.czso.cz/documents /10180/20548145/4032120119.pdf/c9ea4059‑9b9e-467c-8991‑1233334b535e?version=1.0. 5. Křesťanská revue, no. 1 (1927): 1–2. 6. Josef Lukl Hromádka, “Němečtí evangelíci, K.Barth a L.Ragaz,” Křesťanská revue, no. 9 (1935): 12–19. 7. The rise of the Barthian neoorthodoxy that “became the fashionable theology” in the first half of the twentieth century is presented, for instance, in Hugh McLeod, introduction to The Cambridge History of Christianity: World Christianities c.1914–c.2000, ed. Hugh McLeod (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 11. 8. The Archives of the World Alliance of the YMCAs in Geneva, Switzerland; the Kautz Family YMCA Archives at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; and various institutional archives (of the Czech YMCA but also Military Historical Archives) in the Czech Republic. Interwar Czechoslovakia 163
9. Olga Masaryková to John R. Mott, October 21, 1919, collection Czechoslovakia, box 1 (extension, history, local reports, local work), World Alliance of the YMCA archives, Geneva. 10. The early phase of the YMCA settling in Czechoslovakia was recently analyzed by Erica C. Smith, “The YMCA and the Science of International Civil Statecraft in Post–World War I Czechoslovakia,” in The YMCA at War: Collaboration and Conflict during the World Wars, ed. Jeffrey C. Copeland and Yan Xu (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018), 101–122. 11. Karel Čapek, Hovory s T.G.M. (Prague: Fragment, 2009). 12. David P. Setran, The College “Y”: Student Religion in the Era of Secularization, 1858–1934 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). 13. Jiří Kovtun, Masaryk and America: Testimony of a Relationship (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1988). 14. He presented those views in detail in his habilitation on suicide (defended at the University of Vienna in 1879): in fact, he explicitly linked the growing numbers of suicides in the second half of the nineteenth century to the disappearance of piety from modern societies. Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, Sebevražda hromadným jevem společenským moderní osvěty (Prague: Čin, 1926). 15. Setran, College “Y,” 8–9. 16. Setran, College “Y,” 190. 17. Zdeněk R. Nešpor, “Hlavní vývojové trendy současné české zbožnosti,” SocioWEB, no. 1‑6 (2004); Marie-Elizabeth Ducreux, “Entre catholicisme et protestantisme: L’identité tchèque,” Le Débat 59, no. 2 (1990): 118. 18. The situation in the eastern part of the new republic (Slovakia) was entirely different—the position of traditional churches remained stable until the second half of the twentieth century. 19. The debates on religious education started as early as November 15, 1918. Common Czecho-Slovak Digital Parliamentary Library, Czechoslovak National Assembly 1918–1920, Minutes, 2nd session, November 15, 1918, http://www.psp.cz/eknih/1918ns /ps/stenprot/002schuz/s002002.htm. 20. Miloš Trapl, Political Catholicism and the Czechoslovak People’s Party in Czecho slovakia, 1918–1938 (Boulder, CO: Social Sciences Monographs, 1995), 50. 21. Trapl, Political Catholicism, 50. 22. A statement with this text was printed on the first page of the weekly of the Free Thought movement (Volná Myšlenka) from October 1920 until January 1921. 23. Volná Myšlenka 11, no. 41 (1920): 1. Like every modern European culture war, even this Czech struggle of remarkable intensity was fought mainly through the cultural media: the spoken and printed word, the image, and the symbol. Christopher Clark and Wolfram Kaiser, “Introduction: The European Culture Wars,” in Culture Wars: SecularCatholic Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. Christopher Clark and Wolfram Kaiser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 5. 24. Volná Myšlenka 12, no. 6 (1921): 1. 25. Antonín Boháč, “L’influence de l’irréligiosité sur la natalité en Bohême (Tchéco slovaquie),” Metron revue internationale de statistique 11, no. 3 (1934): 67. The uniqueness of this evolution is confirmed by contemporary Czech sociologists of religion such as Zdeněk R. Nešpor, Ne/náboženské naděje intelektuálů: vývoj české sociologie náboženství v mezinárodním a interdisciplinárním kontextu (Prague: Scriptorium, 2008), 152. 26. The most important part of this group remained without confession (716,000); detailed results can be found at the website of the Czech Statistical Bureau (Český 164 Matějka
tatistický Úřad), https://www.czso.cz/documents/10180/20548145/4032120119.pdf S /c9ea4059‑9b9e-467c-8991‑1233334b535e?version=1.0. 27. Jan Havránek, “Příprava Husových oslav a antiklerikalismus českých studentů v předvečer první světové války,” in Bůh a bohové. Církve, náboženství a spiritualita v českém 19. století. Sborník příspěvků z 22. ročníku sympozia k problematice 19. století, Plzeň, 7–9. března 2002, ed. Zdeněk Hojda and Roman Prahl (Prague: KLP, 2003), 243. 28. Olga Masaryková to John R. Mott, October 21, 1919, collection Czechoslovakia, box 1 (extension, history, local reports, local work), World Alliance of the YMCA archives. 29. The main decision to take was related to transforming work for the army (in continuation of the service for Czechoslovak legions in entente armies) into activity in the civil sphere. Gethman to Davis, April 21, 1920, box Historie Foto YMCA 1920–1950, Archives of the Czech YMCA, Prague. It is also important to remark that the YMCA first entered the Bohemian lands in the late 1870s, but back then it did not succeed in reaching out to the population outside the Czech Protestant minority. 30. Survey of the YMCA in Czechoslovakia, World Alliance of the YMCA archives, 16. Other secretaries such as Brackett Lewis further justified this approach by relating testimonies of Czech youngsters, who claimed, for instance, “If I had known at the time that the Y is a religious organization . . . I should have never come near it. I don’t know that any one did any religious work on me, but that is the result of the idealism which runs through everything done in this building.” Lewis to Harmon, November 16, 1931, box 7, collection Czechoslovakia, Kautz Family YMCA Archives, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 31. The history of this association, which was created in 1862 in response to the German Turnverein movement and became one of the key agents in spreading Czech national consciousness in the late nineteenth century, is presented by Claire Elaine Nolte, The Sokol in the Czech Lands to 1914: Training for the Nation (New York: Palgrave, 2002). 32. Josef Amos Pipal, O americké výchově těla (Prague: Sfinx 1920). Intimations to the ideological project of Wilsonian liberalism are evidently omnipresent. 33. “A Study of the Recreation and Athletic Situation in Czechoslovakia,” Czechoslovakia 1921, box 1, Czechoslovakia, World Alliance of the YMCA archives. 34. Klofáč quoted in “Survey of the YMCA in Czechoslovakia,” World Alliance of the YMCA archives. For a detailed study of sports offerings of the YMCA in interwar Czechoslovakia, see Tomáš Tlustý, Budování národních organizací YMCA v Československu a Polsku. Rozvoj tělesné kultury v letech 1918–1939 (Prague: Karolinum, 2017). 35. Lawrence E. D. Aplin, “History of the Young Men’s Christian Association in Czechoslovakia” (PhD diss., Charles University, Prague, 1949), 154; “Survey of the YMCA in Czechoslovakia,” World Alliance of the YMCA archives, 11. 36. I developed this aspect in more detail in my article Ondrej Matejka, “Erziehung zur ‘Weltbürgerlichkeit.’ Der Einfluss des YMCA auf die tschechoslowakische Jugend der Zwischenkriegszeit,” in Jugend in der Tschechoslowakei: Konzepte und Lebenswelten (1918– 1989), ed. Christian Brenner et al. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2016), 153–179. 37. Summary-Requirements of YMCA Work in Czecho-slovak Republic, April 4, 1919 (Irving D. Kimball), box 2, Czechoslovakia, World Alliance of the YMCA archives. The YMCA enterprise in Central Europe can be perceived as a part of the “first Cold War” efforts thematized in contemporary historiography, for instance, by Donald E. Davis and Eugene P. Trani, The First Cold War: The Legacy of Woodrow Wilson in U.S.-Soviet Relations Interwar Czechoslovakia 165
(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002); or M. Jabara Carley, Silent Conflict: A Hidden History of Early Soviet-Western Relations (Plymouth: Rowman and Littlefield, 2014). 38. H. B. Durkee, “Studies on the Preparation of Character Talks,” box 1, collection Czechoslovakia, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 39. Durkee, “Studies on the Preparation.” 40. He was the father of the writer and politician Václav Havel, who was elected the first post-Communist president of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1989. 41. Obrodné hnutí československého studenstva (Prague: OHČS, 1923–1924). 42. Václav M. Havel, Mé vzpomínky (Prague: Lidové noviny, 1993), 128–133. 43. Havel, Mé vzpomínky. 44. Havel, Mé vzpomínky. 45. One of the main actors offered a very well-informed and reflective testimony in Ruth Rouse, Rebuilding Europe: The Student Chapter in Post-War Reconstruction (London: Student Christian Movement, 1925). The World Student Christian Federation, which was created at a meeting of student leaders from ten North American and European countries in 1895 at Valdena, Sweden, was, from its beginning, closely associated with the YMCA, mainly through John R. Mott. 46. Ruth Rouse, The World’s Christian Student Federation (London: SCM Press, 1948), 241. 47. Josef B. Souček, “Vůdcovství profesora Hromádky,” Křesťanská revue 12, nos. 7–8 (1939): 191. A very similar account can be found in Rudolf Říčan, “Život a dílo J.L. Hromádky,” Křesťanská revue 26, no. 7 (1959): 202. 48. Jaroslav Šimsa, “Rádl a Hromádka,” Křesťanská revue 12, nos. 7–8 (1939): 196; Milena Šimsová, Svět Jaroslava Šimsy (Benešov: EMAN, 2013), 88. 49. Josef L. Hromádka, “Zpět k prorokům,” Evanjelický církevník 49, no. 11 (1918): 154–158. 50. Říčan, “Život a dílo,” 202. 51. Milan Opočenský, “Josef L. Hromádka,” in Christian Existence in Dialogue: Doing Theology in All Seasons: In Memory and Appreciation of Josef L. Hromádka (Geneva: Oikoumene, 1990), 30. 52. Milan Opočenský, “Profile of a Theological Teacher,” in Looking History in the Face, ed. Josef L. Hromádka (Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1982), 6. 53. František Mrázek Dobiáš, “Obyčejný život,” Křesťanská revue 34, no. 2 (1967): 30. 54. Josef Veselý (b. 1914), interview with the author, July 14, 2008. 55. Dobiáš, “Obyčejný život,” 30. 56. Jan Havránek, “Akademická mládež mezi křesťanstvím a atheismem a Rádlova profesura na univerzitě,” in Emanuel Rádl—vědec a filosof, ed. Tomáš Hermann and Anton Markoš (Prague: Oikoymenh, 2004), 523–531. 57. Emanuel Rádl, Válka Čechů s Němci (Prague: Čin, 1928). 58. Emanuel Rádl, Naše náboženské ideály před válkou a po válce: Aug. Smetana, Fr. Palacký, T. G. Masaryk: přednáška na VI. sjezdu YMCA v Čsl. v Brně (Prague: YMCA, 1927). 59. Božena Komárková, Přátelství mnohých (Heršpice: EMAN, 1997), 43, 111. 60. Komárková, Přátelství mnohých, 97. 61. Testimony of Bohumír Popelář, “Milosrdenství jsem došel,” in Jako blesk z oblohy. Sborník k výročí J.L. Hromádky (1889–1969), ed. Milan Opočenský (Geneva: World Alliance of Reformed Churches, 1999), 20–23; Jan Vejnar, “Vzpomínejte na vůdce své,” in Opočenský, Jako blesk z oblohy, 17–19. 166 Matějka
62. Jiřina Šiklová, “Československá YMCA: příspěvek k ideologickým bojům o mládež a studenstvo v období první republiky” (PhD thesis, Charles University, Prague, 1966), 153. 63. The participants considered these contacts essential: Dušan Franců, Vzpomínky (Brno: Jan Franců, 1995), 91; Komárková, Přátelství mnohých, 55. 64. The question of general membership of the Czechoslovak YMCA is problematic because of the extensive destruction of relevant archival materials at the end of the 1930s (in the context of the Nazi invasion of the Czech lands). Therefore, we can only partially reconstruct the number of members of the YMCA in Czechoslovakia, which probably reached its maximum of around twenty thousand men at the end of the 1920s (Šiklová, “Československá YMCA,” 174–176). 65. Šiklová, “Československá YMCA,” 153–154. 66. Franců, Vzpomínky, 91. 67. Jiří Hájek, Paměti (Prague: UMV, 1997), 19; Franců, Vzpomínky, 91. 68. Franců, Vzpomínky, 93–99; Veselý interview. 69. And the only remaining American became one of the strongest critics of the Christian Review and its theological orientation: Lewis to Sommerville, June 1934, Brackett Lewis 1934–1938, Czechoslovakia, Correspondence files, World Alliance of the YMCA archives, Geneva. 70. Tidball to Davis, January 25, 1930, Charles Tidball 1923–1930, Correspondence files, World Alliance of the YMCA archives, Geneva. 71. It was mainly the case of local associations in Znojmo (Znaim) and Liberec (Reichenberg). It is interesting to compare with developments in other European countries— such as Romania, presented in this volume by Doina Anca Cretu. 72. Tidball to Davis, January 25, 1930. 73. Willem Adolph Visser ’t Hooft, Memoirs (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1987), 37. 74. Visser ’t Hooft, Memoirs. 75. Willem Adolph Visser ’t Hooft, The Background of Social Gospel in America (Haarlem: Willink and Zoon, 1928). 76. Visser ’t Hooft, Background of Social Gospel, 176–187. 77. Josef L. Hromádka, “Dnešní svět a křesťanství,” Křesťanská revue 2 (1928–1929): 201. 78. W. A. Visser ’t Hooft, “Karl Barth and the Ecumenical Movement,” Ecumenical Review 32 no. 2 (1980): 129–151. 79. For the connection of this aspect to Cold War history, see Michel Christian, Sandrine Kott, and Ondrej Matejka, “International Organizations in the Cold War: The Circulation of Experts beyond the East-West Divide,” Acta Universitatis Carolinae. Studia Territorialia 7, no. 1 (2017): 35–60. 80. Visser ’t Hooft to Hromádka, June 16, 1928, Hromádka, Correspondence files, World Alliance of the YMCA archives, Geneva. 81. An excellent example of this phenomenon is the trajectory of the future Czechoslovak minister of foreign affairs Jiří Hájek, who remembered his years in the Academic YMCA in the interwar period as formative for his interest in international issues: Hájek, Paměti. 82. Doris L. Bergen, Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996). 83. Arne Rasmusson, “ ‘Deprive Them of Their Pathos’: Karl Barth and the Nazi Revolution Revisited,” Modern Theology 23, no. 3 (2007): 369–391. Interwar Czechoslovakia 167
84. Josef L. Hromádka, “Náš program se nemění,” Křesťanská revue 10, no. 1 (1936): 2. 85. Josef L. Hromádka, “Po presidentské volbě,” Křesťanská revue 9, no. 4 (1936): 105; Josef L. Hromádka, “Thälmannův proces a evropská civilizace,” Křesťanská revue 10, no. 2 (1935): 35. 86. Josef L. Hromádka, “Misie mezi pohany,” Křesťanská revue 11, no. 4 (1938): 100–101. 87. Interview with Jan Šimsa, in Vítězové? Poražení?: životopisná interview. I. díl. Disent v období tzv. normalizace, ed. Miroslav Vaněk and Pavel Urbášek (Prague: Prostor, 2005), 940. 88. Vojenský historický archiv Praha (Military Historical Archives—MHA, Prague), collection Českoslovenští interbrigadisté (Members of Czechoslovak international brigades), box 23, inventory unit 857/2, Committee for the Help of Democratic Spain. Documents in this folder confirm that other prominent Communists (and social democrats) such as Zdeněk Nejedlý, Václav Kopecký, and Otto Šling took part in the activities of the committee as well. 89. Zpráva a nález komitétu vyšetřujícího překročení mezinárodního práva ve věci intervence ve Španělsku (Prague: Výbor pro pomoc demokratickému Španělsku, 1936), 3. 90. The monthly, called Španělsko [Spain], was edited by a young Protestant and member of the Academic YMCA, Josef Fišera. More on Fišera in Eduard Stehlík, “Josef Fišera,” Historie a vojenství 54, no. 1 (2005): 147. 91. In November 1937, the committee was transformed into the Association of Friends of Democratic Spain, acquiring an ever-more explicit leftist outlook, to the point of becoming the first platform of an explicit popular front–like collaboration of the left wings of the Czech (and also several German-speaking) social democrats, national socialists, and Communists. Personal relations and the political capital of confidence accumulated through this collaboration around the Spanish issue proved to be very useful in the Czech anti-Nazi resistance and formed “the basis of the future National front.” Jan Kuklík, “Boj na obranu demokratického Španělska a formování Lidové fronty v Československu,” Acta Universitatis Carolinae—Philosophica et historica, Studia historica nos. 9–10 (1973): 115. 92. Veselý interview; Josef Fišera and Eugénie Fišerová, Vzpomínky, svědectví a naděje (Prague: V ráji, 2002); Komárková, Přátelství mnohých. 93. Josef Lukl Hromádka, “Theologie a dnešní krize,” Křesťanská revue 12 (1939): 77–81. 94. Visser ’t Hooft’s letters to Hromádka 1940–1945, File 42.0039/2—Hromadka, 42.0039—WCC General Secretariat—General Correspondence, World Council of Churches Archives, Geneva. 95. Milena Šimsová, V šat bílý odění: zápasy a oběti Akademické Ymky 1938–1945: Vzpomínky, svědectví a záznamy vyprávění (Benešov: EMAN, 2005). 96. This aspect is further developed in Christian, Kott, and Matejka, “International Organizations in the Cold War,” 35–60.
168 Matějka
SEVEN For the “Youth of a Great Nation” The American YMCA and Nation Building in Greater Romania in the Interwar Period Doina Anca Cretu
I
n 1924, William Morgan, American YMCA student secretary in Greater Romania, felt dejected about the potential of the Y to enable change in this country. “One felt at times that one has in this part of the world more than one’s share of problems—suspicions as to one’s motives, indifference, inherent racial antagonisms, extreme national pride, a continuously demoralized student life,” he reported. Morgan’s disappointment with the local rejection of the North American YMCA1 had its silver lining, as these hurdles defined the impetus of the Y to shape Romania’s social core, a “greater need . . . for the building of a new spiritual, social, and political order in this part of the world.”2 Morgan’s statement revealed the role the YMCA aimed to play in the post–World War I and post-1918 unification in Romania. Then the Y claimed the role of an active agent of nation building, focused on shaping the spiritual core of the youth and thus on influencing the local sociopolitical transformation. For the YMCA, nation building represented a metonym of modernity grounded in social reconstruction based on youth education and “citizenship” training, with the purpose of contouring male elite leadership in the Romanian society. Thus, Romania’s nation building was contingent on social consolidation, first manifested through the spiritual, intellectual, and physical education of the nation’s male youth (including young boys and high school and university students). Furthermore, it meant youth-oriented “interracial” cooperation as a manifestation of progress in the name of a Christian brotherhood. During the interwar period, the newly formed countries of Central and Eastern Europe were reimagining their own internal political, social, and economic structure, as well as their diplomatic position at the 169
international level. The end of World War I and the creation of what became Greater Romania through the 1918 unification marked the beginning of a series of important social, political, economic, and cultural transformations. As a result of tense negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference, the formal addition of three new territories, Transylvania, Bukovina, and Bessarabia, to the Old Kingdom almost doubled the territory and population of the country. This significantly changed its ethnic composition, with an increase in the size and number of minority groups stemming from its neighboring countries. Moreover, the post-unification period led to a series of social challenges generated by war-caused havoc, feeble institutions, and a majoritarian agrarian population (approximately 80 percent). 3 In this context, nation building in Romania was a converging, two-way path of reconstruction: first, it was a process to establish and strengthen the Romanian nation by means of language and culture standardization, demographic preponderance, economic growth, and political hegemonization.4 Second, it involved a process of postwar relief and rehabilitation, as well as an indigenous practice of modernization through new institutions, infrastructure building, and social engineering of rural communities. 5 The YMCA commenced its activities in Romania during World War I. Its representatives arrived in Jassy, the wartime capital of Romania, as early as 1917 in order to start its “war work” program and to distribute supplies for the Rockefeller Foundation.6 It established humanitarian work for military personnel through a network of so-called army huts and offered a broad variety of recreational and health services (i.e., tea service, reading material, sports, entertainment, and dental services.)7 Through a cultural approach to emergency relief in Allied territories, the YMCA joined a series of American organizations (e.g., the American Red Cross, Rockefeller Foundation, Joint Distribution Committee) in their wartime humanitarian campaigns on the eastern front. In this process, the YMCA workers claimed that in Romania and other belligerent European countries, these faith-based activities were essential to the humanitarian efforts during the war.8 The armistice signed by Romania and the Central Powers on May 7, 1918, marked a concession of the Romanian military to the invasion of German forces. It also entailed a demobilization of the Romanian army. As a result, the YMCA, alongside the American Red Cross, withdrew their wartime assistance by June 1918. Nonetheless, one year after the war’s end, in November 1919, the team of YMCA secretaries accompanying the American Military Mission in Moldova, the eastern part of Romania, became active again and organized another set of social and recreational 170 Cretu
programs for soldiers in convalescence. Shortly after the YMCA had opened a new hut for soldiers, the Romanian War Department issued an order to the effect that buildings, equipment, and all facilities be granted for the opening of a Y-model center in every army corps and province; this marked the countrywide exposure to this association’s humanitarian practices. Subsequently, for the most part of the 1920s, the YMCA focused on “civilian work,” on “the formation of character to the end that the model of character incarnated in the life and teaching of our Savior should become a reality in this world.”9 This chapter shows that the secretaries of the YMCA attempted to transfer these ideas of the Social Gospel to the sociopolitical environment of Greater Romania. More specifically, this chapter argues that the YMCA attempted to actively leverage nation-building processes in Romania in the 1920s. This was a country considered to be on the fringes of civilization, going through its own societal transformations in the post-unification period. Thus, from the vantage point of the Y men, this was an ideal arena where they could intervene, shape, and ultimately civilize a feeble, backward, and arguably malleable society. The YMCA secretaries attempted to diffuse methods of shaping male elite leadership in the C entral and Eastern European region during this time, as already developed in the American Midwest. Thus, the Y’s activities focused largely on the education of male youth with a view of crafting good future citizens of their state. Further, the YMCA secretaries developed minority-focused activities defined by an “interracial” and internationalist agenda. Through this, they aimed to enable youth involvement in the tensions between the majority Romanian nation and the ethnic and religious minorities of this newly expanded nation-state. This chapter first explores the secretaries’ ambitious visions regarding the outreach of the Y as it created and applied a program focused on the education of boys under nineteen years old, a practical manifestation of the organization’s focus on leadership training and the shaping of future elites in this new Romanian state. Further, it delineates the YMCA’s attention on male youth education and on the students’ social role in the rapport between the majority Romanian nation and ethnic and religious minorities. Moreover, it highlights the Y’s attempts to create a space of rapprochement between Romanians and Hungarians, in the name of a Christian brotherhood. Lastly, this chapter also reveals the limits of the YMCA’s methods and schemes, as the lingering Jewish question and the growing expression of anti-Semitism among Romania’s youth tarnished the Y’s image in the country and curtailed its outreach. Nation Building in Greater Romania 171
BOYS’ WORK In an essay suggestively titled “Dumitrescu Finds Himself,” the YMCA in Romania presented the story of a boy defined only through a common last name and through membership in the association’s Red Triangle Club.10 The essay was most probably a fictitious story, aimed to describe the symbolic nature of the YMCA’s saving of Romanian boys, who from a young age were suffering “morally,” often addicted to alcohol and prostitution. The story, penned by C. G. Bittner, the acting senior secretary of the YMCA in Romania, described Dumitrescu as possessing a strong physique but being surrounded by immoral people; thus, he sought to achieve this boy’s saving grace at the Y headquarters. Bittner drew dramatic yet hopeful conclusions from this symbolic case: “Dumitrescu’s problem is solved. He is anchored firmly in the principle of clean living and is so thoroughly assured of the rightness of his conviction. . . . Spiritual regeneration must find root in these people or moral degradation will [give] a heavy harvest.”11 Indeed, Dumitrescu’s story echoed multiple anecdotes that emphasized the immoral avenues Romanian boys could take without the staunch presence of the Y. A success story such as this one emboldened various reports to note that “people are . . . coming to see that through this department we are really affecting the lives of boys,”12 and through this, the future of the nationstate. The exposé on Dumitrescu highlights that the association saw its task in the diffusion of the Social Gospel in a space of immorality in Romanian society, similar to other “civilizing missions” in Asia or Africa. The anti-vice agenda of the YMCA also revealed that this spiritual dimension was ultimately embedded in a secular approach focused on the education of boys and the making of new elites and leaders, pillars of nation building. In 1921 Queen Marie of Romania extended official invitations to the YMCA to organize activities with medium- and long-term implications for Romanian youth. As part of her broader attempt to gain sympathy for Romania on an international level and to contribute to the alleviation of the country’s wartime suffering, the queen sent an emotional letter to the head of the World Alliance in Geneva, Donald Davis. Through this message she hoped to convince the YMCA to extend its stay from a short-term humanitarian war relief work disposition to a more long-term program, as Romanians “badly need the advice of those who are so ready to lead . . . towards light.”13 Similar to other American organizations, the YMCA responded to Marie’s appeals and transferred its army-oriented relief work to a civilianfocused agenda. During this period, Donald Davis became convinced that “the YMCA will make its most significant contribution to European life 172 Cretu
through the Boys’ Work.”14 Through this program, the YMCA focused on social betterment through shaping the “character” of boys under the age of nineteen. This essentially represented a vision of Romanian nation building through strengthening masculinity and shaping the country’s future elites and leadership. As a result, in the early 1920s, the YMCA launched the program for boys, led by James Brown, the son of Presbyterian missionaries who had previously worked in Asia. Brown led and assisted interwar programs focused on boys’ spiritual, intellectual, and physical development in Romania, particularly in urban centers. During that time, he learned Romanian and established tight connections with local officials involved in the various activities connected with the program.15 The leadership of the YMCA also praised Brown’s work and declared the program in Romania one “of the outstanding pieces of boys’ work in Europe.”16 In effect, the YMCA believed this to be the richest and most productive practice in its work in Romania, and one specifically developed for the future of its nation. In this sense, one can assume that the 1921 YMCA résumé of activities in Romania expressed the credo that tied this country’s nation building to practices of mediation of modernity that focused on boys’ education: “We believe in a greater Romania, but we also firmly believe that its future greatness will depend, in large measure, on the men of tomorrow—and those are the Boys Today.”17 The core motivation of this program was grounded in the principles of Social Gospel diffusion, focused on developing communities via a “Christian citizenship” ideal, with “certain local adaptations,” and sustained by “adequate leadership.”18 Character development was perceived and based on the life and teachings of Christ, as the YMCA sought to secure a “full, symmetrical development of boys in body, minds, spirit and service relationships.”19 This rounded development of the spirit, mind, and body was therefore based on the relationship between the Christian esprit of the organization and praxis through education. Like the rest of the initiatives abroad, this program was rooted in the practices that the YMCA developed in the American Midwest, which had similarities to the character building of the boy through organized agencies such as the Boy Scouts.20 As Paul Hillmer and Ryan Bean highlight in their chapter in this volume, the YMCA and the Boy Scouts worked closely in the United States, with the Y aiming to reduce the Scouts’ militaristic character. Similarly, Boys’ Work as developed within the YMCA and implemented in Romania departed from the militaristic spirit and emphasized instead the educational facet of these practices. As a result, the mediation of American forms of modernity in Romania was entrenched in the vision and practice of a multilayered work for the development of the spirit, intellect, Nation Building in Greater Romania 173
and physical strength of the boys. In this sense, the program was based on the malleability of the Romanian boy, applied in a Romanian setting, but through transfer of American methods to local principles of education. On a practical level, the attempted process of diffusion was framed by the need to resonate with the Romanian populations. This represented an implementation of William Morgan’s conviction that the YMCA should undertake an advisory role first and foremost, as “anything which is to take root at all in Romania must take on a Romanian color as rapidly as possible.”21 At the same time, Morgan insisted that beyond a mere administrative national grounding of the Y’s work, “anything which is to be vital and survive must for a long time be inspired and directed by the foreigner.”22 Similarly, in a preliminary report of the needs and actions the YMCA planned to enable, Lester Schloerb, the first Boys’ Work director in Romania, noted that “the programme needs to be adjusted to the environment of the country, but its dominant principles be applied in such a way that a vital need is filled.”23 The vision was, however, to “patiently cultivate” native leadership rather than to “force its growth.”24 This meant that Americans would play an advisory role, to “secure and train native secretaries and c ommittees who will carry on their work,”25 thus ensuring that the scheme would not be perceived as a foreign imposition. This revealed the dichotomous attitude through which the YMCA envisioned its role in the nation-building process of Romania: nationally built, based on principles of self-help, yet US informed. In the early days of this civilian work, in 1921, one of the many James Brown reports noted that the Romanian and American boys were quintessentially different. Brown insisted that the Romanian boy was “brought up to feel class distinction,” grounded in “racial prejudices, the barriers of which are difficult to break.” Still, Brown was convinced that the Romanian boy would reveal an openness to the YMCA’s vision, as “he loves action, and he will grasp for any straw which might [help him] build a better body and better mind.”26 These behavioral premises subsequently informed the ambitious diffusion of the fourfold program regarding boys’ broad education in the purportedly “backward” and fundamentally “immoral” Romanian society.27 This concept of backwardness or immorality was in fact not unique to the YMCA, as many American humanitarian or philanthropic organizations had an arguably paternalistic agenda to remedy the alleged moral and material poverty of their recipients.28 But even more than that, the Y men were particularly concerned with the broader “psychology of the Romanian” as a platform of intervention, as opposed to the often merely material forms of foreign assistance other organizations engaged in. Various reports 174 Cretu
highlighted the Romanian’s inherent moral backwardness and related it to the need for their intervention and provision of character-building programs for the most malleable social actors, the young people. For these reasons, Boys’ Work in Romania was envisioned in 1921 as an “enormous opportunity” and even a “responsibility”29 of American Protestants. Thus, a YMCA pamphlet highlighted the boys’ self-improvement and self-help as key for the natural progression of the nation: “Ten years from now they will be the men of Romania, conducting our business, making our laws. What kind of men will they be? All that Romania is in the future they will make her. If they are weak physically, Romania cannot endure, for physical health and vigor are fundamental for a strong nation. Exercise, fresh air, nourishing food, plenty of sleep, cleanliness (bodily and sexually). The hope of Romania lies in health. The hope of Romania lies in other things such as knowledge, character, friendship.”30 As previously mentioned, the Boys’ Work designed to contribute to Greater Romania’s nation building was translated into concrete practices that focused largely on education. The credo of this agenda was that “in every phase of . . . national life—political, industrial, education, social—” a leadership that was intelligent, trained, and Christian was needed.31 The plan of teaching young boys how to behave as good citizens within Romanian society revealed a scientific perspective on social work and a vision of modernity tied into the national consciousness of Romanian youth.32 Talking about Romanian boys, Donald Davis, for instance, exclaimed that they “are searching for light and they crave leadership.”33 The character of the work included the development of the spirit, tied into the building of intellect, body, and capacity to serve others. For this reason, the YMCA secretaries followed the principle that “when these attributes are trained and developed the boy becomes a more useful citizen in whatever profession or lifework he may enter.”34 In this framework, the YMCA representatives stipulated that the Boys’ Work along with the shaping of a new leadership essentially represented “the hope of Romania.”35 Like in other mission fields, the program was based on a specific mix of intellectual and moral education, physical education, and recreation. The scheme specifically targeted schoolboys (in lycées, high schools, grade schools) and employed boys (apprentices and clerks, “boys in street”), as well as underprivileged boys (orphans, delinquents, boys in irregular and illegitimate street trades).36 In this context, James Brown developed the Red Triangle Club of high school boys that would meet once a week at the association’s headquarters in Bucharest, the main urban center of the postunification country. The main purpose of the meetings, at least in the early stages, was Bible study, followed by discussions of religious and moral Nation Building in Greater Romania 175
questions. These meetings were subsequently complemented by Saturday night gatherings dedicated to discussing cinema or political talks regarding national and international affairs, as well as behavioral elements. This translated into lectures and debates on social and moral conditions in Romania, including topics such as “The greatest needs in Bucharest,” “Why Romania needs engineers,” “Hygiene,” and “The importance of sport in Romania.” Occasionally, international issues such as the importance of the League of Nations and the growing strength of bolshevism, among others, were also addressed.37 The YMCA’s physical education department worked closely with the Boys’ Work section and ultimately focused its curricula on games, specific sports, boxing, physical culture, and apparatus work in the gym. Popular US sports such as basketball and baseball were part of the curriculum, but all in all, physical activities were not deemed the central focus of the Romania YMCA’s overall agenda. This was owing to the secretaries’ stated ambition for the Y to have a much deeper impact on social reconstruction and to eliminate the idea that this was a mere athletic club or sports organization.38 Leadership building for boys further incorporated industrial work in various factories whose directors opened the door specifically for those educated in the YMCA headquarters, forms of disciplined labor force and avoiding of anarchy. Boys’ involvement in factories and other industrial environments had already existed in Romania, albeit in a very limited form due to the overwhelmingly rural structure of the country. During a visit in Romania, Henri Johannot, a secretary of the World Alliance, observed a few factories that saw young boys (up to the age of twelve) working during the day and trying to learn to write and read in an evening school. Stavri Cunescu, a local member of the board of the YMCA in Romania and a director in the Labor Department of the Romanian government, presented this approach to shaping the lives of youths, particularly boys, not “in order to get money, but . . . striving after higher things in life in accordance with the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ.”39 In other words, Cunescu spoke the YMCA language, and Johannot considered the efforts to include factory work in a broader educational system as “splendid.” This showed a “progressive” allure of Romanian reconstruction in urban spaces, reminiscent of developments in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the rapidly expanding cities of the United States.40 The YMCA secretaries therefore believed that Romanian urban areas would develop concomitantly with the training of the future men of the country, similar to the projection of the modernization processes enabled in American cities and their factories. 176 Cretu
Lastly, boys would spend time in summer camps that would offer opportunities for excursions, outdoor games, swimming and aquatic sports, nature study and campfire evenings with discussions on history, and health education. The camp in Timişul de Sus, a village in a mountainous region in Transylvania, became the nucleus of summertime activities. The YMCA secretaries believed that the location would provide a place for boys to spend a vacation where they could lead a “healthy, happy outdoor life, free from conventionalities, but at the same time with a program and leadership that make for all round development of character.”41 Boys learned sports, attended classes on national and international affairs, watched films, and were exposed to methods to maintain health through the instructions of a hygienist. All this was to contribute to character building through educational methods that would place the boys in a natural community-based setting. These educational practices and agendas of the program were reportedly received with enthusiasm in the circles of Romanian leadership. The YMCA received public support from Romanian officials at a time when youths were at the core of modernization through public health and hygiene, as well as education. The royal family also adopted this supportive stance. Among the guests of the Timişul de Sus camp in 1926 were Prince Nicholas and Princess Ileana, both involved in various American-imported endeavors of reconstruction assisted mostly by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Junior Red Cross. Moreover, the general secretary of the Ministry of Education, director in the Ministry of Labor, Health, and Social Welfare, professors, engineers, doctors, and parents, as well as the American minister to Romania, all met to observe the YMCA camp.42 During the development of these programs for a Romanian version of the Boys’ Work program, the YMCA reports praised the sympathetic cooperation of His Royal Highness Prince Carol (the future King Carol II), who had taken a “keen interest in the development of the youth.” Carol then reportedly exclaimed that the YMCA brought the spirit of freedom found in the United States, as well as offering work for young men in order to give them “an ideal life which will render them more virile, more patriotic, and more noble.”43 Thus, it appeared that the YMCA’s vision and activities resonated with Carol’s own vision of a future masculine nation-state.44 On the basis of such positive assessments, the YMCA secretaries had the conviction “that the efforts which we have been requested to put forth will not have been in vain and that Romanian youth will increasingly become the youth of a great nation possessing a high ideal.”45 The YMCA’s framing of this “ideal” in relation to the diffusion of Boys’ Work in Romania represented a direct intertwining of its agenda of mediation of modernity abroad and a form of bottom-up nation building in Nation Building in Greater Romania 177
Romania. Spiritual, intellectual, and physical education among Romania’s youth was seen as being directly correlated with the future of the nationstate shaped by a male-driven leadership. Through this, the Y men took ownership of their activities as shaping factors pivotal to the country’s sociopolitical transformation. Related to this, the YMCA also attempted to mediate modernity among university students, as its activities also concentrated on the softening of social tensions between the Romanian majority and the ethnic and religious minorities of the newly reshaped nation-state. THE MAJORITY-MINORITY PRACTICES OF COOPERATION As soon as the civilian work commenced, the American secretaries strongly emphasized that the YMCA should play an important role in helping to foster, promote, and encourage a friendlier understanding between the youth of the Romanian majority and the ethnic and religious minorities. The early stages of what the YMCA defined as an “interracial dimension” became a growing interest in relation to boys and university students; on this basis, the YMCA assumed the role of a harbinger between the ethnic “majority” and the nation-state’s “minorities.” The relationship with the Hungarians in particular was the object of attention for the YMCA and its program to enrich majority-minority youth relations.46 The increased focus on the relationship between majorities and minorities was partly due to the decisions made at the plenary in Geneva in 1920. Then, representatives of member countries agreed upon a continuation and strengthening of social work established during wartime. In this context, it was generally recommended that the World Alliance, “both directly through all its own activities, and indirectly through various national committees, earnestly seek to get men everywhere to bring the principles and spirit of Christ to bear upon international and interracial relations.”47 The Boys’ Work program had already involved a YMCA-sustained agenda of rapprochement between the Romanian majority and the Hungarian minority. In a boys’ camp, James Brown gave a noteworthy lecture related to his visit to a similar camp in Kansas, “where among the 200 boys were white, black, red, and yellow folks,”48 yet another instance of transposing the American experience to the Romanian context. Furthermore, three studies related to the idea of Christian brotherhood and Romanian nation building were part of the curriculum, suggestively titled “Spirit of World Brotherhood.” These studies discussed topics such as “How can a boy help do away with trouble between different classes of people,” “How can a boy be loyal to Romania and to the ideal of World Brotherhood at the same time,” and “How can boys help establish World Brotherhood.”49 Reports 178 Cretu
subsequently noted that at the conclusion of these seminars one of the groups went on record as favoring a more brotherly attitude toward the Hungarians, against whom there was a bitter feeling on the part of many people in the country. The relationship between Hungarians and Romanians became a focal point of youth-driven nation building, as the YMCA based in Romania was forced to address the crisis of the Hungarian branch of the association. In spite of their hope for the establishment of a YMCA center in Cluj, the largest city in Transylvania, the YMCA secretaries observed fractures between the two groups. Frank Stevens, the general secretary, noted in a report that “both the Hungarian and German elements consider the Romanians as an inferior people, and consequently bringing them together into one association will be a slow process.”50 Nonetheless, the majorityminority dynamics represented one of the main arenas through which the Y men claimed to have a greater leverage in influencing the process of nation building. According to the YMCA’s modus operandi, students from both groups were initially exposed to an American speaker’s lecture, small meetings, and conferences that became part of a curriculum of activities. Once a leadership was established, students were sent to World Student Christian Federation conferences across Europe, followed by retreats back in Romania.51 The immediate social concern among the YMCA secretaries in the region, however, represented the making of a European relief system that would incorporate the participation of university students. While focused on the relief of Russian refugees, the YMCA attempted to mobilize Central and Eastern European students to address the relief crises caused by the movement of population after World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution, respectively. By attempting to start a “self-help enterprise” as developed in other countries, the YMCA aimed to engage Romanian students in the European Student Relief Program to aid Russian refugees, particularly those who were students. For the YMCA, the participation in the European Student Relief conferences became a direct practice of re-creating “a spirit of fraternity among the delegates representing so many different nations, races, and religions.”52 Romanians and their neighbors, as well as their minorities, were to be part of this spiritual reconciliation around the relief of the poverty of the needy students.53 Not only did the YMCA engage in a humanitarian action that was essentially a spillover from the postwar phase, but it also aimed to enable cooperation between students of different ethnic groups. In this sense, the secretaries encouraged discussions between Romanian and Hungarian students to address the problems that were points of tension between the Nation Building in Greater Romania 179
two countries. This method drew the attention of renowned Romanian sociologist Dimitrie Gusti. He had been an important proponent of volunteerism and of a proactive Romanian student body in the relief and modernization of the rural regions of Romania.54 As head of the sociology department in the University of Bucharest, Gusti sought to find a scientific explanation for the causes and potential effects of contentions between Romanians and the country’s minorities. This progressive method appealed to the YMCA, whose secretaries based in Romania deemed Gusti “the most forward-looking professor in the country.”55 An admirer of American methods of bridging theoretical knowledge along with practical decisions in rural areas of the United States, Gusti also praised the YMCA’s relief efforts and the attempted bridging of nationalities. He claimed “that the only hope is to create a new atmosphere such as you have already succeeded in doing with small groups. . . . It is only by the example of those as you are developing that we can hope to deal with the situation as a whole.”56 In his 1924 report during the annual conference in Râmnicu Vâlcea, a town in eastern Romania, William Morgan wrote that Romanians were open to collaboration with their Hungarian counterparts, an instance of tension waning between the two groups. Romanians and Hungarians were encouraged to explore the mutual rights and responsibilities in relation to God in their united front to relieve those in need. Morgan noted that the Y men truly believed that “when students begin to try seriously to apply Christian principles in this manner to life problems, one begins to see hope of a new day in some vastly needy social and political conditions.”57 Following the Râmnicu Vâlcea conference, reports noted that the care for student relief brought to the fore racial and international questions that were crucial in this part of the world during the post-unification period. The YMCA secretaries insisted that this marked a swift change in attitude within the student relief frame. They assessed that if at first the Romanians had hesitated before they invited the Hungarians, “once the two groups were together, their mutual feats and their problems seemed largely to vanish.”58 The 1925 Fifth World Student Christian Conference likewise represented a crucial moment for the Student Association Leaders of Southwestern Europe at Băile Herculane, in southwestern Romania. The organization of the conference in Romania came after similar events took place in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland. Sherwood Eddy, one of America’s prominent missionaries, whose belief in interracial and international solidarity of humankind informed the YMCA’s practices abroad, visited the student conference in Romania.59 Following reports described Eddy’s observations of the relationship between Hungarian and Romanian students as an “unusual spirit of camaraderie, along with the desire on both 180 Cretu
sides to face realities,”60 seen nowhere else in Europe. Eddy’s positive outlook arguably mirrored the front the YMCA secretaries put on in relation to their work to bring Romanians and Hungarians to a common platform. They believed that the student conferences registered an underlying progress on international relationships, untangled from the contention surrounding the post-1918 state of international affairs. In discussing the Băile Herculane moment, Stevens described it as scattered tensions but stated that “the fact of getting started in an extremely frank, friendly spirit is a real step forward.”61 Effectively, the engagement of Romanian students in the wider European relief practices and related conferences was considered an overall success from the perspective of bringing different nationalities together in a space of tolerance, focused on helping those in need. From the YMCA perspective, the Social Gospel was finally applied to a humanitarian endeavor, with sociopolitical repercussions for Romanian nation building. The outreach that the YMCA claimed in taming the conflictual state between the majority nation and Romania’s minorities was, however, challenged by what eventually became a “Jewish dilemma” for the Americans. THE JEWISH DILEMMA In one of the conferences organized in 1925, the students of Southeastern Europe felt “that a pertinent problem for all of the Christian students of the region [was] their attitude towards the Jew.”62 Indeed, the Jewish question had been a long-standing problem in Romania, but anti-Semitism became an integral part of the nation-building project that intensified after World War I.63 If the YMCA secretaries observed the waning of a “Hungarian question” among Romania’s students, the “Jewish question” had become a primary problem to face in the context of minority-oriented agendas. Notes and reports produced by secretaries in Romania in the 1920s and the early 1930s reveal little on the direct motivation to include Jews in their programs and administration. However, the intrinsic cooperation between Romania’s Jewry and the YMCA representatives was arguably determined by a number of connected factors: first, the inclusion of Jewry in the process of nation building and the minority question was defined as part of the YMCA’s formal credo of interracial and interreligious collaboration. Second, attention to the Jewish question was related to the broader concern regarding Romanian students and the subversion of their putatively “demoralizing” existence; this mirrored the broader scope of the YMCA’s understanding of the Romanian-Hungarian relationship. Third, Romanian Jews financially and Nation Building in Greater Romania 181
logistically sustained the YMCA and the establishment of a national branch. Through this, they became a presence in the administrative bodies, as well as patrons of the organization’s activities. Therefore, by seeking local support to develop a national association, the YMCA secretaries became receptive to the inclusion of Jewry, thus drawing heavy criticism among Romania’s nationalists. The YMCA’s American secretaries consistently noted the anti-Semitic feeling and its delegitimizing effect on the association’s work in Romania. As a result, the popular rejection of the YMCA’s support for Romanian Jewry curtailed the attempts to leverage a transformation of the Romanian society according to the Y’s proclaimed spiritual and progressive vision. Concerns regarding a rejection of the connection with Jews emerged early in the YMCA programs. As the work in Romania began in 1918 via army support, the basis of consideration had already included the Jewish population as participatory in YMCA-driven emergency relief. The concern of American diplomats and humanitarians for the Jewish population of Romania dated back to 1877, when the first American-based humanitarian intervention was launched in the Old Kingdom.64 This assistance continued via the American Joint Distribution Committee with the work on the relief and rehabilitation of Romanian Jews as part of its Eastern European extension of aid during and after World War I.65 As the Boys’ Work program took shape, classrooms included Jewish boys, and the YMCA secretaries quickly reported that accusations started pouring in regarding affiliations with the Jewry. “It comes up at the most unexpected times,” one report noted, “and occasionally it becomes embarrassing. We have many Jews in all our classes, and they are among the brightest boys we have.”66 The inclusion of Jewish staff and Jewish boys in its programs embroiled the association in a wave of suspicions among the public, with early reports that the YMCA was pro-Jewish spreading rapidly. Jews were considered second-class citizens in Romania, and any care for them publicly snowballed into a local rejection of the Y. The secretaries grew increasingly fearful that the problem might become detrimental to the work of the YMCA and its public reception. For this reason, the Jewish question became a challenge that the Y needed to understand and solve within the context of Romanian nation building.67 Despite reports published in 1924 according to which the Boys’ Work program encouraged a mingling between Romanian and Jewish boys, tensions were in fact growing. In 1925, the YMCA reported that the wife of populist politician Alexandru Averescu withdrew their two sons from the YMCA because of the “Protestant Bible classes and anti-nationalistic propaganda, or attitude toward the Jews.”68 The ethnic “tolerance” exercises between 182 Cretu
Romanians and Hungarians were often reported as successful among the YMCA leaders. However, other surveys noted that many Romanians perceived the Y’s initial embracing of the Jewish element in their classrooms, camps, conferences, and offices as a mistake. In 1925, Frank Stevens admitted that the YMCA workers found it difficult to get Romanians and their minorities to work together, as it was “almost impossible to take Jews into the Association, even though they do not bear the ear marks of their race.”69 Furthermore, the YMCA secretaries were constantly challenged regarding their attempts to meddle in Romania’s Jewish problem. One report noted that Romanian students rejected this foreign interventionism and bluntly asked, “Why don’t the Americans go home and solve their own Negro problem, as well as many others?” In that context, the secretary proposed a focus on Romanian centers only and a departure from meddling in Jewish and minority discussions, as it was practically impossible “to organize associations with the minority groups represented.”70 The dramatic growth in the university student body, the conditions of overcrowding due to scarce resources, the insufficient growth in faculty and facilities, and the persistence of ethnic minorities in the universities informed the lingering debate in interwar Romania over the place of Jews in the country’s universities.71 Within this broad context, in 1922, a massive demonstration of nationalist students highlighted the sentiment against “foreign agitation” and the trepidation regarding the Jewish question in Romanian universities. Mass protests erupted on all Romanian campuses, and students demanded the exclusion of Jewish students from universities or at least limits to Jewish enrollment in accordance with their proportion in the general population.72 In the same year, a National Christian Union was formed and formally opposed Jewish emancipation and any foreign intervention. On this basis, the National Christian Union was effectively “very suspicious of the YMCA.” 73 The YMCA secretaries were wary of the National Christian Union’s seeming crusade against Jews and its anti-YMCA stance. While they believed that the union’s support for excursions of groups of Turk and Bulgarian students across Romania could be encouraging signs, they became increasingly concerned with this vocal anti-Jewish wave among university students. From their perspective, the growing anti-Jewish movements among youths could have had a delegitimizing effect on the association’s work in the country. Similar sentiments were expressed in Romania’s intellectual circles. For instance, sociologist Dimitrie Gusti confessed in a confidential report to the YMCA that Romanian students “would run all the Jews out of the country,” and “would first solve ‘all the great national problems’ before willing to turn upon the needs in their own student life.”74 Nation Building in Greater Romania 183
Romanian politician Corneliu Zelea Codreanu built upon the student frictions and established the Orthodox fascist movement Legion of Archangel Michael in 1927. Codreanu’s vision of the future of Romanian nation building brought to the fore similar visions of masculinity. He disdained basic political programs and insisted upon the need for a “new man,” a man of action to take over the direction of the country’s affairs.75 In effect, Codreanu highlighted a form of male leadership that the Y men had promoted in their own right. However, the legion spoke a language of Romanian nationalism, transmitted to a broad audience, including the peasantry disillusioned and seemingly forgotten by political elites.76 The legionnaires’ political discourse further highlighted that Jews represented the “ultimate evil,” a foreign corruption poisoning Romania. The Jewish minority thus represented a manifestation of the apocalyptic Bolshevik-Judaic conspiracy, which described Communism as “the work of Lucifer” and “a new attempt to destroy the kingdom of god.” 77 By contrast, the Y was urban centered, focused on the middle class, seemingly often unable to understand the Romanian realities and social dynamics particularly in regard to the Jewish question and public anti-Semitism. These tensions were evident in perhaps the most critical moment, on the heels of the pogrom in the Transylvanian city Oradea Mare in 1928. Then Captain Wilfred Keller, a former Y member and part owner of the Hungarian newspaper Minoritar Nagyvarad (Oradea Minority), was caught in yet another series of anti-Jewish brawls and suffered injuries. In the wake of this incident, between three and four thousand students met in Oradea for a three-day conference with the sanction of the government. An undersecretary of the Romanian government stated that Keller was attacked because he was anti-Romanian and of Jewish-Hungarian origins. Keller’s biographical origins were in fact unclear, but he was married to the daughter of an ex-policeman of Jewish-Hungarian origins. However, reports noted that he was attacked because he told students that he represented the YMCA, as it was no secret that the students of Romania believed that the Y was very pro-Jewish.78 Keller’s case received much attention back in the United States, so much so, the State Department intervened and he eventually received $2,500 in indemnity payments from the Romanian government.79 This conflict added even more suspicion to the Romanian-born controversy that the YMCA was in fact engaged in a secret interventionist agenda. As a result, the Y was further accused of “freemasonry” and ties with Communist groups because of its cooperation with Jews and aid of Russian students.80 In this conflict-laden atmosphere, the YMCA secretaries attempted to address explicit grievances and, thus, tried to adapt to the local context. 184 Cretu
The YMCA leadership and secretaries in Romania abandoned the arguably idealized vision of majority-minority cooperation and inclusion in relation to Romanian nation building. Americans attached to the YMCA subsequently tried to hide any connection with the Jewry. One method was a series of lectures on the life and activities of American academics presented in various Romanian universities that had a high rate of students contesting the YMCA and its pro-Jewish stance.81 On an official and public level, there were even attempts by Y secretaries to dissociate from the rumors that the YMCA membership included Jews. The Americans were even prepared to change their trademarks to meld with the local contestations and gain sought-after trust from the large majority of the population. When the Metropolitan, the head of the Orthodox state church, insisted that the YMCA change its triangle symbol, “since there is such a keen hatred for the Jews, and because they make use of a form of the triangle as insignia,” Frank Stevens was ready to comply, in an extreme gesture of the revocation of the YMCA’s core symbolism.82 In a response to the reception of the YMCA as an external interventionist force, American secretaries ultimately agreed that “as foreigners we should keep out of the Jewish and Minority discussions.”83 In 1930, the American YMCA ordered a survey of the Bucharest-based national association in Romania. The survey, led by Romanian governmental representative Silviu Pascu, emphatically declared a failure of the YMCA to make a significant impact on the country’s Romanian youth. According to this survey, Romania did not “provide a soil in which the growth of an institution like the YMCA is likely to be rapid even under the most favorable conditions.” At the crossroads between new and old, the young country was seen as having “a most difficult task in attempting to reconstruct her national life out of the diverse elements of old and new Romania.” Instability in public life, recurrent political changes, uncertainty regarding the future of the country, and related economic and social problems were cited as conditioning the development of the YMCA programs and the relationship with its constituency. The survey thus concluded “that the bulk of America’s contribution to Romania came too soon, before the ground was prepared to receive it and to use it to the best advantage,” in an environment “alien” to the YMCA’s work.84 The YMCA’s aspirations to transfer its own values and visions to Greater Romania’s nation building, and thus mediate modernity in the fractured new state, arguably grew increasingly at odds with the local conditions. The effects of indigenous nation building paradoxically subverted the YMCA’s vision of a consolidated nation-state. Nation Building in Greater Romania 185
Despite these setbacks, however, the American YMCA’s stint in Romania during the interwar period also exposed the ways it projected its role in the world as an agent of sociopolitical transformation. Through its work focused on a multilayered education of boys, as well as on minority questions, the YMCA intertwined its agenda framed by the Social Gospel with the relief, rehabilitation, and modernization of postwar and post- unification Greater Romania. The YMCA’s work in Romania echoed various elements found in different parts of Europe, as well as on other continents. This is particularly evident in Ondřej Matějka’s chapter on Czechoslovakia, which highlights the ties between a similar sociopolitical process of reconstruction and the “local” reaction to the YMCA’s work and agenda. Moreover, Dolf- Alexander Neuhaus’s chapter exposes the YMCA’s growing interest in reestablishing interracial relations in the Korean-Japanese case. These works frame the outreach of the YMCA and its penetration in various social and political layers. The case of Romania, however, opens up a new problématique. What limited the YMCA’s impact in the various regions of its actions? The Jewish question as interpreted by the YMCA secretaries subverted the association’s plan to engage Romanian students in its activities. In this sense, the missionary impulse that had found a space of action in Asia or Africa had contradictory results of concomitant openness and hostility when projected onto the sociopolitical reconstruction process of Romania, a “backward” but still European and overwhelmingly Christian nation-state. NOTES With thanks to Lukas Schemper and Branden Little for reading early drafts of this chapter. 1. In this chapter the focus will be on the North American YMCA, hereafter the YMCA or the Y. 2. William Morgan, “Pioneering among Romanian Students,” First Thirty-Five Months’ Report, box 1, Romania: Correspondence and Reports, Kautz Family YMCA Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries. 3. See, for instance, Bogdan Murgescu, Romania si Europea: Acumularea Decalajelor Economice (1500–2010) (Bucharest: Editura Polirom, 2010); David Mitrany, Marx against the Peasant: A Study in Social Dogmatism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1951), 92–99. 4. For an in-depth discussion of nation building/nationalization in the context of Romania during the twentieth century, see Rogers Brubaker, Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006); Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995). 186 Cretu
5. Here I borrow the framing of the concept of modernization in the interwar period from Corinna R. Unger, “Histories of Development and Modernization: Findings, Reflections, Future Research,” H-Soz-Kult, December 9, 2010. For analyses of institutions and programs of modernization, see Raluca Musat, “Sociologists and the Transformation of Peasantry in Romania, 1925–1940” (PhD diss., University College London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, 2011); Maria Bucur, Eugenics and Modernization in Interwar Romania (Pittsburgh, PA: Pittsburgh University Press, 2002). 6. The YMCA was part of a group of seven national associations that all expressed interest in soldiers’ spiritual and physical welfare: the YMCA, YWCA, Jewish Welfare Board, National Catholic War Council, American Library Association, Salvation Army, and Playground and Recreation Association’s War Camp Community Service. 7. William Morgan to John Mott, May 8, 1918, box 1, Romania: Correspondence and Reports, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 8. Clifford Putney, Muscular Christianity: Manhood and Sports in Protestant America, 1880–1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 190–192. 9. “The Report of the Survey in Roumania,” 1930, Romania Collection, World Alliance of YMCAs, Geneva, Switzerland. 10. The Red Triangle Club represented a practical manifestation of the central symbol of the YMCA, the red triangle; the three sides represented soundness in spirit, mind, and body. 11. C. G. Bittner, “Dumitrescu Finds Himself,” box 910, Romania Collection, World Alliance of YMCAs. Emphasis in original. 12. Report of Senior Secretary, May 1922, box 910, Romania Collection, World Alliance of YMCAs. 13. The letter from Queen Marie is directly quoted in “Report of Progress on YMCA Work in Romania, 1920,” box 910, Romania Collection, World Alliance of YMCAs. 14. Donald Davis to E. Hanke, May 12, 1921, box 909, Romania Collection, World Alliance of YMCAs. 15. Prof. Nicolae Petrescu to William Nelson Cromwell, February 3, 1932, box 912, Romania Collection, World Alliance of YMCAs. 16. Report of Boys’ Work, 1923, box 912, Romania Collection, World Alliance of YMCAs. 17. “A Resume of the Activities of the Boys’ Department of the Young Men’s Christian Association in Bucharest,” box 910, Romania Collection, World Alliance of YMCAs. 18. James Brown, “Policy and Program—Boys’ Work Department, Bucharest Young Men’s Christian Association, Report for 1925,” box 909, Romania Collection, World Alliance of YMCAs. 19. Brown, “Policy and Program—Boys’ Work Department.” 20. For an exploration of Boy Scouts in the United States, see David Macleod, Building Character in the American Boy: The Boy Scouts, YMCA, and Their Forerunners, 1870– 1920 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004). 21. William Morgan to C. G. Bittner, October 1921, box 910, Romania Collection, World Alliance of YMCAs. 22. William Morgan to C. G. Bittner, October 1921. 23. Lester J. Schloerb, “Boys’ Work,” April 1921, box 909, Romania Collection, World Alliance of YMCAs. Nation Building in Greater Romania 187
24. Donald Davis to E. Hanke, May 12, 1921. 25. Albert Chesley to Donald Davis, 1923, box 910, Romania Collection, World Alliance of YMCAs. 26. James Brown to A. R. Siebens, April 1922, box 910, Romania Collection, World Alliance of YMCAs. 27. The idea of “immorality” is equated to “backwardness” in the YMCA language; “Report on Henri Johannot’s Activity during the Month of February 1926,” box 912, Romania Collection, World Alliance of YMCAs. 28. On broad discussions of paternalism in humanitarianism, see Didier Fassin, Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011); Michael Barnett, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011). On philanthropy, see Ludovic Tournès, “La Fondation Rockefeller et la naissance de l’universalisme philanthropique américain,” Critique Internationale, no. 35 (2002): 173–197. 29. Schloerb, “Boys’ Work.” 30. “The Hope of Roumania,” box 909, Romania Collection, World Alliance of YMCAs. 31. “Policy and Program—Boys’ Work Department, Bucharest Young Men’s Christian Association,” box 909, Romania Collection, World Alliance of YMCAs. 32. “Programul Asociatiei Crestine a Tinerilor” [The program of the Young Men’s Christian Association], box 910, Romania Collection, World Alliance of YMCAs. 33. Donald Davis to E. Hanke, May 12, 1921. 34. “A Resume of the Activities of the Boys’ Department.” 35. “The Hope of Roumania.” 36. Brown, “Policy and Program.” 37. Lester J. Schloerb to John Fechter, February 1921, box 909, Romania Collection, World Alliance of YMCAs. 38. “Report of Senior Secretary,” June 1922, box 910, Romania Collection, World Alliance of YMCAs. 39. “Report on Henri Johannot’s Activity.” 40. See Thomas Winter, Making Men, Making Class: The YMCA and Workingmen, 1877–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). 41. “Timişul de Sus: Tabara de Vara a Asociatiei Crestine a Tinerilor,” 1926, box 910, Romania Collection, World Alliance of YMCAs. 42. “Timişul de Sus.” 43. A. R. Siebens, speech at the Distribution of Prizes for Athletic Championship, June 14, 1922, box 910, Romania Collection, World Alliance of YMCAs. 44. Carol’s belief in the relationship between modernization and young men came to fruition in the 1930s when he supported the organization of student groups to study rural life as a scientific tool in social engineering. See Raluca Musat, “ ‘To Cure, Uplift and Ennoble the Village’: Militant Sociology in the Romanian Countryside, 1934–1938,” East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures 27 (December 2012): 353–375. 45. Siebens speech. 46. “Europe Moves Mass-ward, Interview with James Brown, National YMCA Secretary of Roumania,” 1931, box 1, Romania: Correspondence and Reports, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 47. Clarence Prouty Shedd, History of World’s Alliance of Young Men’s Christian Association (London: S.P.C.K., 1955), 485. 188 Cretu
48. Frank Stevens to William Morgan, September 30, 1925, box 911, Romania Collection, World Alliance of YMCAs. 49. The content of these lectures and studies could not be found in the archives of the YMCA. 50. Frank Stevens, “Report for Roumania for 1926,” box 911, Romania Collection, World Alliance of YMCAs. 51. Matthew Lee Miller, The American YMCA and Russian Culture: The Preservation and Expansion of Orthodox Christianity, 1900–1940 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014), 228; John R. Mott, The World’s Student Christian Federation: Origins, Achievements, Forecast (London: World’s Student Christian Federation, 1920). 52. William Morgan to A. R. Siebens, April 1922, box 910, Romania Collection, World Alliance of YMCAs. 53. William Morgan to Frank Stevens, December 1922, box 910, Romania Collection, World Alliance of YMCAs. 54. Ovidiu Badina, Dimitrie Gusti: Contributii la cunoasterea operei si activitatii sale (Bucharest: Editura Stiintifica, 1965); Raluca Musat, “Prototypes for Modern Living: Planning, Sociology and the Model Village in Inter-war Romania,” Social History 40, no. 2 (2015): 157–184. 55. William Morgan, “General Administrative Report,” January 1, 1925–May 31, 1925, box 910, Romania Collection, World Alliance of YMCAs. 56. Morgan, “General Administrative Report.” 57. Morgan, “Pioneering among Romanian Students.” 58. Morgan, “Pioneering among Romanian Students.” 59. Rick L. Nutt, The Whole Gospel for the Whole World: Sherwood Eddy and the American Protestant Mission (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1997); Michael Thompson, “Sherwood Eddy, the Missionary Enterprise, and the Rise of Christian Internationalism in 1920s America,” Modern Intellectual History 12, no. 1 (2015): 65–93. 60. William Morgan, March 27, 1926, box 911, Romania Collection, World Alliance of YMCAs. 61. Frank Stevens to William Morgan, May 1925, box 911, Romania Collection, World Alliance of YMCAs. 62. Stevens to Morgan, May 1925. 63. There are many debates about what fueled the anti-Semitic wave of violence in the interwar period. Here I tend to agree with the argument focused on the reaction to topdown nation- and state-building policies. See Livezeanu, Cultural Politics; Roland Clark, Holy Legionary Youth: Fascist Activism in Interwar Romania (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015). 64. Abigail Green, “Intervening in the Jewish Question, 1840–1878,” in A Humanitarian Intervention: A History, ed. Brendan Simms and D. J. B. Trim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 139–158. 65. Jaclyn Granick, “Waging Relief: The Politics and Logistics of American Jewish War Relief in Europe and Near East (1914–1918),” First World War Studies 5, no. 1 (2014): 55–68. 66. Ernest V. Shockley, “Report of the Educational Department of the YMCA in Roumania,” February 1921, box 909, Romania Collection, World Alliance of YMCAs. 67. Shockley, “Report of the Educational Department.” 68. Frank Stevens, “Annual Report for 1927,” box 911, Romania Collection, World Alliance of YMCAs. Nation Building in Greater Romania 189
69. Frank Stevens, “Annual Report for 1925,” box 1, Romania: Correspondence and Reports, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 70. Frank Stevens, “Annual Report for 1926,” box 911, Romania Collection, World Alliance of YMCAs. 71. Livezeanu, “Cultural Politics,” 240. 72. Livezeanu, “Cultural Politics,” 267. 73. Annual Report of William Morgan, January 1, 1925, to December 31, 1925, box 1, Romania: Correspondence and Reports, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 74. Morgan, “Pioneering among Romanian Students.” 75. Text in English in Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, For My Legionaries (London: Black House Publishing, 2015), 444. 76. Eugen Weber, “The Men of the Archangel,” Journal of Contemporary History 1, no. 1 (1966): 101–126. 77. The relation with God shows the merging of Orthodox religious traditions with the intellectual belief in the spiritual uniqueness and history of Romania. See James Frusetta and Anca Glont, “Interwar Fascism and the Post-1989 Radical Right: Ideology, Opportunism and Historical Legacy in Bulgaria and Romania,” Communist and Post- Communist Studies 42, no. 4 (2009): 551–557. 78. Stevens, “Annual Report for 1927.” 79. “Gets Rumanian Indemnity,” New York Times, February 19, 1928, 30. 80. Various documents in folder 3895, National Council for Studying the Securitate Archives, Bucharest, Romania. 81. Stevens, “Annual Report for 1927.” 82. Frank Stevens to Donald Davis, “Report for March 1923,” box 910, Romania Collection, World Alliance of YMCAs. 83. Frank Stevens, “Report for Roumania,” 1926, box 911, Romania Collection, World Alliance of YMCAs. 84. “Report of the Survey in Romania,” 1930.
190 Cretu
EIGHT The Idiom of Modernity and the Construction of the Native Speaker YMCA Language Instruction at Home and Abroad Lance Cummings
I
n his teacher handbook, English for Coming Americans, Peter Roberts,1 special secretary for immigrant affairs of the YMCA, tells the story of an English instructor who ran away in fright when one of his immigrant students shut the classroom door.2 Another instructor brought a gun with him to class, fearing the “violent tendencies” of “wops” and “backward Italians.” Roberts was trying to illustrate how instructors must show an appreciation of each group’s culture in order to effectively teach them English, supporting the YMCA’s original mission to “meet the young stranger as he enters the city, take him by the hand,” and bring him under Christian influence.3 This openness to newcomers was complicated by civilizing practices that would soon burgeon into what we now know as the Americanization movement in the early twentieth century. Informed by religious discourses developed in nineteenth-century Protestant movements like muscular Christianity, this important work by the YMCA forged a link between modern visions of masculinity, the nation, and the English language—a link that would continue to inform YMCA work and language instruction across the globe. Undoubtedly, the language instruction practices used by the YMCA were highly effective in helping immigrants integrate into US society, thus their popularity of use. Many of these foundational pedagogies are still being adapted in language instruction contexts today. Any way you look at it, the YMCA had one of the most progressive understandings of immigration during this time. Understanding the ideological work beneath these practices becomes even more important. Though the YMCA has centers across the world, this chapter takes a networked approach to research done in the Kautz Family YMCA Archives 193
at the University of Minnesota. The YMCA enjoyed its greatest early success in the nineteenth-century United States, where the institution absorbed many Protestant religious ideas. After the Civil War, the YMCA organization flourished under the guidance of both business and political leaders and stretched not only across the United States, but also across the globe.4 Though the Kautz Family YMCA Archives comprise mostly institutional documents gathered by US branches of the YMCA, we can see the expanse of this influence throughout the finding aids. This chapter takes a “transnational” approach, understanding that discourses and ideologies travel across global networks and are deployed in new ways. 5 Therefore, it is not enough just to look at how these ideologies function in US immigration work; we must also examine how these links between language, masculinity, and the nation may have played out across the global YMCA network. This chapter first traces the origins of the “native speaker” and how this construct was deployed in the immigration work of the YMCA. Second, this chapter explores the circulation of these discourses through the examination of YMCA publications like The Intercollegian and Association Men. The “native speaker” idea emerges within these publications, showing how this construct traveled globally to be contested and rearticulated by other cultural perspectives. From its inception, educational work has been a highly organized and central part of the YMCA’s mission to administer to men’s whole person, seeing that “all under its influence are getting intellectual piety,” not just spiritual or physical piety.6 Beginning with its first recorded English class for immigrants in 1856,7 education and language instruction became a way to exert powerful modernizing discourses among “non-native” speakers of English at home and abroad. These practices sought not only to teach English, but also to shape body, mind, and soul according to modern ideologies emerging from both scientific and religious theories on how language and the mind develop. Thomas Bonfiglio calls this the “native speaker ideal,” formulated by “the identification of language with race” to create a national or “native” language that is both genetic and cultural.8 Language, race, and nationality became co-constitutive and difficult to unlink in the minds of teachers, missionaries, and other YMCA stakeholders. In critical applied linguistics, these ideological constructs contribute to what many call “linguistic imperialism” or the discrimination of a dominant language toward others. For example, Robert Phillipson asserts that English-language instruction is “an international activity with political, economic, military, and cultural implications and ramifications.”9 Given the extensive breadth of its organization at the turn of the twentieth century, the YMCA played a crucial role in developing notions of this native speaker idea in the United 194 Cummings
States and abroad, showing how linguicism is not restricted to ideas about language but extends to gender, race, and nationality. The systemization of language pedagogy that became known as the Roberts Method is a prime example of what Alastair Pennycook calls the performativity of language and identity, which are “a product of our ongoing performances of acts that are largely pre-scribed.”10 First developed by Peter Roberts, these pedagogies and informal theories on language acquisition produced embodied notions of the native speaker, ultimately constructing the immigrant learner as a child devoid of linguistic and cultural history who could be Americanized through a sequence of development. In other words, language instruction is not a neutral activity, but carries ways of thinking that often encourage monolingual ideas about language. For example, understanding “other languages” as detrimental to the learning of English encourages monolingual approaches to language policy and language instruction. This “idiom of modernity” in America adheres to language instruction and other YMCA work, even after the religious nature of the YMCA has diminished. Though developed in particularly American contexts, these implicit language policies are not contained by national boundaries but travel throughout the network of the YMCA. Understanding how these invisible language policies are mediated in both discursive and embodied ways will shed light on the discourses and images of the native speaker ideal that travel throughout organizational networks, carrying with them important implications for the influence and reception of YMCA work. It is important to note that this chapter does not take a linguistics approach to language instruction. Rather, I come to YMCA work from the field of rhetoric and composition or critical applied linguistics, both of which see pedagogy as neither culturally nor politically neutral. The question here is not whether such pedagogies are effective or should be used, but how we can use said pedagogies reflectively. Knowing what kinds of ideo logies may be sedimented into our effective practices is an important part of this reflective process. When we provide language instruction to anyone, we are doing more than teaching language. MODERN BELIEFS ABOUT LANGUAGE IN YMCA EDUCATION Scholars have often defined modernity as a societal shift that decreases religious influences, increases the influence of science, and introduces more structured forms of leisure.11 Despite being a religious organization,12 the YMCA sought to regiment and structure the free time of young men, using the scientific understandings of their day. For example, composition, or the teaching of writing, alongside the reading of important literature, was seen as a way to fill Language Instruction 195
young men’s time and discipline their minds through the control of language. This approach was largely based on “faculty” theories of the mind that were developed throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. One of the earliest examples can be found in a London YMCA lecture (distributed to American branches) by Rev. Thomas Binney, who encouraged young men and workers to read literature and practice writing to lend “strength, nimbleness, [and] dexterity” to their minds and give them power over their own tongues.13 From early on, the YMCA saw the English language as critical for creating men who are physically, mentally, and spiritually fit to take part in modern society, combining religious morality with the science of the day. This conception of English became increasingly tied to nation and ethnicity and fueled contemporary scientific theories about race. One cannot overlook the comparative ethnology, an early form of eugenics, used by Peter Roberts to inform his approach to immigration work. Besides other teaching materials, he also put together an encyclopedia of race, Immigrant Races in North America, meant to help instructors understand not just the cultural influences on their students, but also racial ones. Instructors used these categories to adapt their pedagogy to these genetic and ethnic influences. For example, Roberts instructs teachers not to mix ethnicities, because some “suffer from a heritage of inefficiency and sloth in the political and cultural life of their nation, which will require more than one generation to slough.”14 In fact, Peter Roberts took part in the Dillingham Commission (first formed in 1907), the United States’ biggest commission on immigration, even though the YMCA made no official comment on “legislation governing conditions or policies.”15 Collating immigrants by race was an attempt to apply contemporary scientific theory to the “modernizing” of immigrants into decent American citizens. Though it is not clear at first glance, these scientific approaches included theories about how humans acquire language, as well as how language connects to race and ethnology. Many at the turn of the century saw English as the most modern and civilized language in the world, influenced by linguistic theories associated with “universal grammar,” an idea that began in eighteenth-century Scotland and was taken up in nineteenth-century America along with many other belletristic and Scottish Enlightenment ideo logies. Instead of understanding language origins biblically, as a gift endowed by God in the Garden of Eden or Tower of Babel, universal grammar saw language as the natural result of a reasoning mind trying to make sense of the world.16 God’s gift to humanity was the reasoning faculty, which naturally led to language: “With this view, therefore, let us suppose a reasonable being, devoid of every prepossession whatever, placed upon this globe. His attention would, in the first place, be directed to the various objects which he 196 Cummings
saw existing around him: these he would naturally endeavor to distinguish from one another, and give them names, by means of which the idea of them might be recalled when the objects themselves were absent.”17 In this context, language learning functioned best with a “blank slate,” much like in childhood, without interference from other languages. Many English thinkers began to value languages according to how close they were to the ground of reality, or objectiveness of the world, rather than how poetically or beautifully the languages adorned the world, making English one of the best languages for science and business, at least in modern terms. Language and writing instruction placed non-native speakers into a developmental sequence, comparing them with the idea of a perfect native speaker. The goal has often been to get learners as close to this native ideal, usually at the expense of their own “native language.” This “tacit language policy” still influences language and writing curricula in the United States and is often called “unidirectional monolingualism.”18 In Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, the most-used composition textbook in nineteenth-century America, Hugh Blair became one of the first major thinkers to assert that English was the most useful language for modern endeavors because of its simplicity.19 Instead of seeing the lack of complex structures, like declensions and conjugations, as a detriment to English, and favoring ancient languages like Greek as did his predecessors, Hugh Blair saw the simplicity of English as a distinct advantage, rendering “the acquisition of our Language less Laborious, the arrangement of our words more plain and obvious, the rules of our syntax fewer and more simple.”20 In many ways, Hugh Blair echoes David Hume’s sentiments that “however other nations may rival [England] in poetry, and excel us in some other agreeable arts, the improvements in reason and philosophy can only be owing to a land of toleration and liberty,” imbricating hierarchized notions of democratic and civic virtue within ideas about the English language.21 This understanding of English became an important part of the YMCA’s work with immigrants and their emerging Americanization program, as well as their global mission to raise all men as responsible participants in the modern world. English was seen as the superior vehicle for civilizing immigrants and preparing them for their role as modern US citizens, while previous languages were seen mostly as a detriment. For example, Hugh Blair was convinced that any “defect in style” or imperfect language came from a lack of understanding, because language is so closely connected to objective reality and our thoughts.22 However, this ideal English can be undermined by “inferior” versions of English found among friends, family, and colleagues. In an 1893 essay, Brainerd Kellogg, an author of a popular YMCA composition Language Instruction 197
textbook, defines the classroom as a place of cultivation and discipline, where pupils are “bent twigs” that must be straightened, and “ugly habits” must be dug out like weeds.23 As a result, additional languages are often seen as hindrances to this progress. For example, Kellogg describes language acquisition like a “pop-gun”—a toy gun that fires a cork on a string. To acquire another language perfectly, the first “cork” must be unloaded.24 Viewing additional languages as weeds or diseases, something to be destroyed or cured, was common throughout the early educational work of the YMCA.25 The method of instruction developed for the YMCA by Peter Roberts was built around this single principle: in order to be fully participating Americans, immigrants would be required to exchange their old garments of language and culture for new ones sewn together by their new “mother” nation. This “idiom of modernity,” or native speaker ideal, would function as a template for much of the YMCA’s work abroad, but adapted to each individual context. THE ROBERTS METHOD, AMERICANIZATION, AND THE MODERN ENGLISH SPEAKER Peter Roberts was an English immigrant and Yale graduate who began his work as a pastor and advocate for Slav miners. As the YMCA’s special secretary of immigrant affairs, Roberts created one of the first systemizations of language learning in the United States, called the Roberts Method. In his teacher’s guide, English for Coming Americans, Roberts makes clear that placing immigrants within the developmental sequence created by universal grammar is the “irrefutable” first step to teaching a new language.26 Recreating the atmosphere of childhood was key to successfully preparing immigrants to be modern US citizens: “The ears are the receptive organs of language. They enabled you to learn your mother tongue. The language of the home passed into the soul through these doors and awoke it to love, duty, and honor. They registered the sounds accurately and presided over the attempt of the organs of speech to reproduce them. The ears discharge this function so accurately that the peculiarities of speech in every home are reflected in the accent of each child.”27 Immigrants were developing not just new language skills, but a whole new familial relationship with the nation. For language acquisition to be effective, the English teacher must take an adoptive role and guide the student into useful and proper language use: “Yes, it is the voice of parental love, acting upon nature’s wonderful mechanism—the ear that elicits the response of affection in the soul of its offspring.”28 Universal grammar and earlier theories on language acquisition tie this parental relationship 198 Cummings
closely to race, nation, and ethnicity; the student must go back to the origin point of language in order to become a new citizen. The immigrant must be born anew. This focus on orality emerges from universal grammar approaches to language origins that informed object learning in the nineteenth century. For example, Roberts draws heavily on François Gouin’s French reform text, The Art of Teaching and Studying Language, to place language acquisition in an objective setting that allowed immigrants to associate English words with the world around them. Gouin orients adult acquisition around observations he made through “the investigation into the psychological laws underlying the universal act of learning the mother-tongue by the little child.”29 According to Gouin, three important principles facilitated a child’s easy acquisition of language: (1) instruments of logic in the mind (universal grammar), (2) succession or contiguity in time, and (3) relation of means to an end. Children learn language easier because of the context of their language learning. Children’s minds are exposed to language within the timeline of their daily actions while achieving specific purposes that get things done for them. For example, children learn cooking language while actually in the kitchen with their mother. Gouin’s innovative idea was that adult learners can learn in much the same way. Taking Gouin’s ideas a step further, the Roberts Method tailored language learning to the specific contexts of immigrant lives but also constructed embodied notions of the modern speaker of English. The Roberts Method continued the traditions of “object learning” among immigrants while incorporating Gouin’s “instruments of logic” through a focus on narrative in three areas of immigrant life: domestic, industrial, and commercial. These areas were loosely correlated with three primary areas of Americanization and citizenship, domesticity, labor, and consumerism.30 Each category was broken down into “scenes” and organized on a teaching aid for better comprehension. The chronological order of these activities made “of the whole operation a logical chain of acts which can be easily remembered by any man of average intelligence.”31 For example, the first lesson goes through the process of getting up in the morning. The instructor would perform and speak the line and the students would then repeat the line while performing a similar pantomime. As can be seen in figure 8.1, the domestic series projected a particular form of American manliness and its complementary image of femininity.32 The image of a clean-cut male, well dressed, preparing for a productive day at work emerged from the YMCA’s efforts to discipline the male body. This particular immigrant has been stripped of any noticeable cultural or linguistic difference, while also reinforcing masculine and feminine roles in modern society. Language Instruction 199
Figure 8.1. Domestic lesson picturing a man seated at a table being served coffee by a woman. Frame from Roberts Method movie, English for Coming Americans (ca. 1909). Source: Kautz Family YMCA Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries.
As it was employed by an organization run and organized by businessmen and often funded by industrialists, the Roberts Method was easily adapted to new contexts that attempted to mold the immigrant worker through language instruction.33 Many such “service projects” were funded by companies, focusing the lessons almost entirely on rules and behavior in the workplace.34 For example, the industrial series allowed employers to teach factory safety while also improving workers’ linguistic competency. One lesson might teach sentences about work rules: I see A SIGN ON THE CLOCK HOUSE. It reads I MUST KNOW THE SAFETY RULES. I think of the LITTLE RULE BOOK. It was given at the Employment Office. I MUST READ THE RULE BOOK. I WANT TO KNOW ALL OF THE SAFETY RULES. I do not want to get hurt. 200 Cummings
I will be careful not to hurt the other men. I leave the CLOCK HOUSE for my work.35 Roberts is re-creating the social world in each lesson: “Let the classroom be a microcosm, and the pupils will be better able to play their part in the macrocosm wherein they move and act.”36 The lessons literally put the immigrant within specific subject positions deemed appropriate and helpful by Roberts and other YMCA stakeholders. Roberts’s instruction of immigrants helped them survive in their new country, but the pedagogies encouraged immigrant men to develop into “productive” members of American society through a disciplining of both the mind (or tongue) and the body, while teaching them English, leaving few opportunities to participate in this discourse through their own identities or cultural agency. Since language is simply a system of communication and interchange for Roberts, all this could be done at the expense of the immigrants’ own language and culture. Acquiring a language was a matter not just of communication, but also of becoming a part of a national character—tying language firmly to notions of nation and race. As stated in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, language is “the index of the state of [each Nation’s] mind,” and now became the index for each citizen’s state of mind.37 The English instructor was welcoming immigrants into a new “state of mind” by teaching them English. This construction of the non-native learner would not be contained within the immigrant work of the YMCA but would become a major premise for emerging Americanization programs. The Roberts Method as presented in English for Coming Americans focuses mostly on oral instruction, with only a brief section on reading and writing. Roberts saw literacy as a much later stage in the development of young immigrant men—some of whom might not even make it that far. Literacy was less important than oral communication, even though reading was a necessary skill for participating in American democracy.38 These two other graded courses mostly entail short texts that students would read for comprehension and grammar review. Having brought the “incoming Americans” through the childhood acquisition phase of language instruction, the goal now was to develop them into American citizens able to take part in a participant democracy. There is a clear sequence in the readings that takes immigrants from a stateless “child” to an “American citizen.” The first beginner reader starts with fables, each followed by a moral with grammar exercises. If an American citizen is required to have a basic sense of morality, then fables serve a twofold purpose: (1) to provide a comprehensible English input and (2) to train immigrants in morality. For example, “One Good Turn Deserves Language Instruction 201
Another” recounts Aesop’s fable “The Dove and the Ant,” where a dove helps a drowning ant by tossing a twig and is helped by the ant, who diverts a hunter’s aim from the dove. Roberts instructs the teacher to ask questions entirely focused on comprehension, having each student memorize the moral: “A friend in need is a friend indeed.”39 This is then followed by grammar exercises. For example, students are asked to review the definition of a noun and identify nouns in the fable or to practice using the relevant verbs in the past tense. The second beginner reader follows a similar trend, comprised mostly of a tale about a city dweller who finds faith and meaning in the simplicity of country life. In this story, the location and characters are fairly generic, with no identifiable race or nation. Through his observations of country life, the city dweller discovers what it truly means to live in a Christian, democratic society: “I think it is most beautiful to be treated kindly and civilly in a strange community, by men who know nothing about us. It is truly Christian.”40 Each section ends with a poem or saying for immigrants to memorize, for example, “God moves in a mysterious way / His wonders to perform; / He plants his footsteps in the sea, / And rides upon the storm.”41 At first, such a story may seem like an odd choice for Roberts to use in a reader mostly found in urban contexts. In his book The Problem of Americanization, Roberts associates the beginnings of American democracy with the “simple life” of the poor farmer “face to face with the elemental forces of nature,” creating an environment where the “laws of nature” made evident the “rights of men.”42 This is associated with masculinity, where boys grew into men out in nature: “With a gun and a good knife, they sought adventure, and were able to defend themselves in a way dreamed of by few boys to-day, cooped, as they are, in factories and mills.”43 Industrial civilization has made not only democracy hard to discern and attain, but proper masculinity as well. Each early reader returns immigrant learners to an environment where democracy and masculinity were the purest by taking them first back to childhood, then back to the simple country life. As learners progress to the more advanced readers, they encounter ideal characters like Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Jackson who epitomized America’s masculinity and morality.44 In this way, these readers layer Christian ideas of work and family as a foundation for what would eventually become the subjectivity of a full American citizen. READING AMERICANIZATION GLOBALLY Though there remains minimal archival evidence on the extent of the Roberts Method being used abroad,45 the language ideologies and discourses that 202 Cummings
emerged from this work can be traced through publications like Association Men that spanned the breadth of the YMCA network. This kind of archival work provides opportunities for exploring how language ideologies like the “native speaker ideal” are articulated across contexts, as long as the research is not restricted to a single category or finding aid. Instead of looking only at the Immigration Work section of the Kautz Family Archives, understanding the breadth of these language ideologies involves examining the YMCA’s missions work and how these discourses traveled throughout the globe to be contested and rearticulated. English instruction and the development of the modern English speaker played a critical role in YMCA missiology (theory of missions). As early as the nineteenth century, missionaries and YMCA workers saw English instruction as critical to the evangelization and modernization of other countries. For example, YMCA physical directors often taught English as they taught sports, and large sporting events were usually held in English.46 To participate in the advantages of physical activity and the sporting life, learning English was necessary. Just as one cannot understand America and democracy without knowing English, one cannot understand Christianity or even sporting culture. Early missions to India that combined sports and religion often served as a model for other missions projects. In an 1887 issue of The Intercollegian, a journal for Christian university students loosely affiliated with the YMCA, the author cites the work of Alexander Duff, who “conceived the idea of preparing the mind of the Hindoo for Christianity by teaching him the English language.”47 According to these missionaries, other languages were at a disadvantage, because they lacked the most accurate words “by which Christian truth can be intelligently conveyed.”48 Such languages had not developed properly to the point where Christianity could be expressed with perspicuity and accuracy. In other words, English best conveyed the truth of the Gospel. Teaching English in India also allowed “reinforcement of the missionaries” through monolingual evangelists like Joseph Cook and Dwight L. Moody without the need for interpreters. The author then compliments a student delegation of rugby players from Scotland who “thrilled” Americans with “their simple, manly presentation of the gospel.”49 What was done in India and America could be done in Japan through English: “If this call from Japan is responded to by the right men in sufficient numbers, it will not be long until student delegation, from America, can make a similar tour among colleges of Japan to tell the same old story in the same old Saxon.”50 Native speakers of English, representing modern, English versions of Christianity, could then provide a direct model for growing churches overseas. Language Instruction 203
Because of the vast organizational network of the YMCA, missionary and immigrant work began to inform each other—each being constitutive of the other. Though this work was kept separate organizationally, ideas about language and language acquisition traveled through the YMCA network because of its extensive publication and communications work. For example, in the March 1908 issue of Association Men, immigrant work is described in missionary terms: “To take a young man who comes to these shores from a highly civilized English-speaking Christian community and prevent him from retrograding or slipping from his anchorage, is a very laudable work; but to lead somebody up to that level who has not yet reached the foot-hills of the ascent he must necessarily make to reach it, is beyond question a much greater work.”51 The difficulty of converting immigrants to American democracy is compared to the difficulty of civilizing and Christianizing the Scots before the Scottish Enlightenment. Committed YMCA members are seen as “the brotherhood of man,” primarily based on English-speaking countries: “The elevating ennobling influence of the Christian ideals can be cultivated just as well throughout the non-English-speaking countries as they have been throughout the English-speaking countries.”52 Universal grammar understandings of English were core components for making sense of the YMCA’s work with non-native speakers, at home and abroad. As it developed alongside immigration work in the early twentieth century, the YMCA structured missions around ideas of democracy and civilization that had already been developing in immigration work. For missionary leaders, true democracy would not be possible without the “need of unceasing insistence upon Christian ideals of mutual respect among nations, even after they shall have become democratic in political social and industrial organization.”53 Echoing early approaches to comparative ethnology, nations were not seen as equals; rather “the family of nations is composed of groups, some of which have had larger opportunities for development than others.”54 “Backward countries” need higher nations to influence them toward higher orders, while “highly organized industrial” democracies need these backward countries for resources. But “only a compelling Christian spirit would keep the stronger nation from violence.”55 But this hierarchical view of civilization began to shift, as the overseas missions work of the YMCA encountered forms of civilization that differed from the images they had constructed through universal grammar and comparative ethnology. Though YMCA workers dealt with this dissonance in various ways, missions work began to evolve away from strictly English education and began to move toward literacy training in indigenous languages as well as scientific training. For many, Christianity had given birth to a superior 204 Cummings
civilization that was just as useful to others, even if there was nothing inherently superior about race. For example, in a 1911 article, “Six Reasons for Foreign Missions,” the author maintains that there is “no scientific ground for regarding one race as inherently superior to others,” while also asserting that Christian civilization can benefit all equally: “We have the revelation of God which is the potential of a civilization that benefits man, an education that fits him for higher usefulness, a scientific knowledge that enlarges his powers, a medical skill that alleviates his earthly life but prepares him for eternal companionship with God.”56 While race was considered in more equal terms, civilization was still understood through a modern Englishspeaking ideal. Missionaries were also beginning to contest some presumptions of immigrant work in the YMCA. In a 1912 article, “Contempt, Condescension, Comradeship,” William Hutchens notes the patronizing approaches to missions often seen in the YMCA: “We Anglo-Saxons patronize, condescend to foreigners, whether visitors from non-Christian lands or aliens borne to us upon ‘the immigrant tide.’ We hug ourselves even as we give them the hand of welcome, think of ourselves as benefactors, of them as beneficiaries. Meanwhile, from St. Paul’s point of view, or Wall Street’s point of view, we are their debtors.”57 Missionaries, along with others who traveled abroad, began to critique versions of YMCA work that valorized American democracy as the only civilization. Comparisons informed by work among immigrants in US contexts had to take into account emerging comparisons being formulated within East Asian contexts, where nonnative English speakers had more agency by virtue of numbers and institutional power. For example, YMCA missionaries consistently struggled with their ability to “convert” Chinese “literati,” most likely because these powerful leaders in Chinese society had little reason to adopt Western belief systems.58 Missionaries had to reconsider their monolingual and monocultural approach to missions, often using Western science as a cultural bridge. Though YMCA workers had to admit to China’s impressive civilization in its own right, that civilization was at first typically seen as stunted or inferior. In an earlier issue of The Intercollegian (1907), John W. Foster, a former secretary of state, notes elements of Chinese civilization that parallel Christian civilization. For example, he sees the “system of competitive examinations” as highly democratic and the teachings of Confucius and Mencius as “the legitimate offspring of the ancient order in China, independent of any aid rendered by modern civilization.”59 Foster still sees China within a progressive narrative that parallels American democracy, because they are “attempting to bring about in government and society in a very few years what it required centuries for the Anglo-Saxon and other European Language Instruction 205
races to achieve.”60 Chinese nationals who became a part of the YMCA organization began to disarticulate notions of civilization and democracy from Christianity and Western tradition. In “What the Association Is Doing in China,” C. T. Wang argues that the Chinese do not need to restart their civilization, but merely revise what they already have: “Professor Burton has said that ‘China is revising her civilization.’ Some people think she has never had a civilization. China had a civilization and she had a very high one, but she had a civilization that differs greatly from the Western civilization. She needs to revise and work over her civilization so that the Eastern and the Western will be working together. Nothing seems to me is of greater benefit to China than this revision of the civilization.”61 Though this vision of civilization is still teleological, Chinese thinkers began to assert the notion that there can be more than one kind of civilization, and ultimately more than one kind of civilized language. Such arguments clearly influenced the YMCA’s ideas about language and culture as these encounters continued. As a result, the YMCA’s approach to immigrant instruction shifted after World War I. Anti-immigration sentiments and Americanization efforts were renewed throughout America. Elements proposed by the Dilling ham Commission, like literacy tests and immigration quotas, were finally passed into effect in 1921 with the Emergency Quota Act, and later with the 1924 Immigration Act. Concurrently, the YMCA’s attitude shifted toward a more egalitarian view of immigrants, which is best represented by a series of articles written by Fred H. Rindge Jr., who temporarily ran the Industrial Department during this time. The rising tide of immigration and subsequent legislation motivated Rindge to travel the YMCA’s extensive global network and visit “twenty-three countries, one hundred foreign cities, and thirty-six ports of embarkation to study this whole question.”62 These experiences clearly changed Rindge’s perspective on Americanization. For example, he starts off another essay, “The Foreigner: A Problem or an Opportunity,” with a quote from an anonymous foreign leader who complains that Christian people think they are above foreigners and put them “off into a colony by ourselves and call us a problem instead of mixing up with us and helping us become decent American citizens!”63 These experiences cause Rindge to complicate the Americanization efforts, which would be much improved if programs removed the label of Americanization, which “smacks of selfish compulsion and is hated by every other nation.”64 “Americanization” would benefit much more from an inquiry into other cultures: “If we are to have any more forced Americanization let it be the Americanization of the American, for we who were born in the United States come very near to being the most provincial people on earth. The 206 Cummings
Americanization of the American should include his education as to the countries and customs of our newcomers, his appreciation of their good as well as their bad qualities, his acknowledgment of their potential contributions to our national life, and interest in their welfare.”65 “Americanization,” or the creation of America, cannot happen until “we discard our unwarranted prejudices and face the real facts.”66 Rindge hoped that native-born Americans could move away from paternalistic approaches: “What the foreigner wants is not paternalism, but brotherhood,” illustrating a move away from treating the immigrant learner as a child.67 At any point in time, the YMCA is a network comprised of many different discourses, ideologies, and perspectives.68 Documents written or produced outside of YMCA leadership were generally considered unarchivable, unless officially published in another more authoritative text, like Association Men. Further research in local archives will deepen our understanding of YMCA work in this area. The evidence presented in YMCA global publications does not show a completely changed organization, but a snapshot of how contact at the periphery began to change how those in the United States thought about language, identity, and nation. This entire shift inevitably falls outside the scope of this chapter but warrants further research. That said, experiences abroad clearly altered the YMCA’s notions of the modern English speaker to include diversity, arguably moving the YMCA toward the multicultural and secular institution that more closely represents the institution of today. The transnational nature of YMCA work not only functioned as a tool of oppression and global hegemony, but created spaces of agency where new attitudes and visions of the world could be generated. According to many historians, assimilationist and “ethnic restrictionist” approaches to Americanization predominated after World War I.69 In other words, Americanization efforts mostly revolved around approaches that required immigrants to leave behind their former linguistic and cultural heritages. Though the YMCA did indeed initiate immigrant work in more assimilationist terms, contact with diversity shifted attitudes toward what has been called an “amalgamationist” approach, where the “mixing and remixing of these groups in the United States would produce an entirely new and more robust nation.” 70 Though the notion of the modern English speaker still plays a role in English instruction today, this shift in YMCA work illustrates how such ideas can be remixed and transformed as they travel through the YMCA’s global institutional network. Rindge attempted to change the YMCA vision of immigration work by changing the language. For example, instead Language Instruction 207
of using the common phrase “the immigrant problem,” he identifies the immigrant with opportunity. Likewise, he attempts to do away with the term “immigrant” by replacing it with “international person.” He even turns the term “Americanization” in on itself. Simply by changing the language, Rindge was contesting earlier notions of the modern English speaker. Examining how these discourses are able to travel through vast organizational networks like the YMCA can help us reflect on how similar kinds of ideologies and discourse travel through today’s global networks. NOTES 1. Peter Roberts, English for Coming Americans (New York: Association Press, 1912). 2. Roberts, English for Coming Americans, 55. 3. Charles Howard Hopkins, History of the YMCA in North America (New York: Association Press, 1951), 18. 4. YMCA in America 1851–2001: A History of Accomplishment over 150 Years (Chicago: National Council of the Young Men’s Christian Associations of the United States, 2000). 5. Rebecca Ann Dingo, Networking Arguments: Rhetoric, Transnational Feminism, and Public Policy Writing (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012). 6. William Torrey Harris, “The Proper Place of the Y.M.C.A. in the Educational Field,” Education 11, no. 6 (1891): 205. 7. YMCA in America 1851–2001, 5. 8. Thomas Paul Bonfiglio, Mother Tongues and Nations: The Invention of the Native Speaker (Berlin, NY: De Gruyter Mouton, 2010), 12. 9. Robert Phillipson, Linguistic Imperialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 8. 10. Alastair Pennycook, Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows (New York: Routledge, 2006). 11. Mark Elvin, “A Working Definition of ‘Modernity’?” Past and Present 113 (1986): 209; Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 4. 12. In fact, Arjun Appadurai argues that these organizations were precursors to “post national social formations,” blurring the boundaries between “evangelical, developmental, and peace-keeping functions in many parts of the world” (167). 13. Roberts, English for Coming Americans, 100. 14. Roberts, English for Coming Americans. 15. William Paul Dillingham, Statements and Recommendations Submitted by Societies and Organizations Interested in the Subject of Immigration, 61st Cong., 3rd Sess., Senate, Doc. 764, vol. 41 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1911), 80. Roberts makes several critiques of the government’s work with immigrants, for example, the organization and overcrowding of detention rooms and the need for better distribution of information about citizenship and American laws. See Dillingham, Statements and Recommendations, 84–85. 16. Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. 2, s.v. “Universal Grammar” (Edinburgh: A. Bell and C. Macfarquhar, n.d.), 728–729, Google Books. 17. “Universal Grammar,” 728. 208 Cummings
18. Bruce Horner and John Trimbur, “English Only and U.S. College Composition,” College Composition and Communication 53, no. 4 (2002): 594–630. 19. Many extant catalogs show this book in YMCA libraries. For example, the 1859 library catalog for Troy, New York, included Hugh Blair’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (as well as his sermons), along with other rhetoric texts like Aristotle’s On Rhetoric. See Catalogue of the Library of the Troy Young Men’s Association (Troy, NY: Troy Daily Whig Print, 1853), Google Books. 20. Hugh Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, ed. Linda Ferreira-Buckley and S. Michael Halloran (1783; Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2005), 96. 21. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (London: Fontana, 1783), 308. 22. Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, 6. 23. Brainerd Kellogg, “On Teaching English,” School Review 1, no. 2 (1893): 98–99. 24. Kellogg, “On Teaching English,” 101. 25. Though this chapter focuses on language instruction among immigrants and abroad, it is important to note that these ideas can be found across the YMCA, including in work with Native Americans and African Americans. The YMCA’s flagship publication, Association Men, is a good place to see this at work. For example, the theme of the entire January 1916 issue was disability and how the YMCA was helping Native Americans and African Americans overcome their linguistic and cultural handicaps. John R. Mott, “For the Help of the Handicapped Man and Boy,” Association Men, January 1916, 179–180, Kautz Family YMCA Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries. 26. Roberts, English for Coming Americans, 4. 27. Roberts, English for Coming Americans, 10–11. 28. Roberts, English for Coming Americans, 11. 29. François Gouin, The Art of Teaching and Studying Languages, trans. Victor Bétisr and Howard Swan (London: G. Philip and Son, 1892), vi. 30. Roberts, “On Teaching English,” 20–25. 31. Roberts, “On Teaching English,” 26. 32. In fact, Roberts developed another set of lessons that included domestic scenes for women, containing predictable topics like cooking, childcare, and sewing. 33. Nina Mjagkij and Margaret Spratt, Men and Women Adrift: The YMCA and the YWCA in the City (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 11. 34. Paul McBride, “Peter Roberts and the YMCA Americanization Program, 1907–World War I,” Pennsylvania History 44, no. 2 (1977): 150. 35. McBride, “Peter Roberts,” 150. 36. Roberts, English for Coming Americans, 27. 37. “Universal Grammar,” 864. 38. Roberts, English for Coming Americans, 7. 39. Peter Roberts, English for Coming Americans, Beginner’s Reader, vols. 1–3 (New York: Association Press, 1915), 1. 40. Roberts, Beginner’s Reader, 19. 41. Roberts, Beginner’s Reader, 1. 42. Peter Roberts, The Problem of Americanization (New York: MacMillan, 1920), 3. 43. Roberts, Problem of Americanization, 4. 44. Peter Roberts, English for Coming Americans, 2d Reader, Readings and Language Lessons in History, Industries and Civics (New York: Association Press, 1912). 45. There is some mention of the Roberts Method being used in China. See Charles C. Shedd, “Annual Letter,” 1919, Annual Reports and Annual Report Letters of Foreign Language Instruction 209
Secretaries in China 1919, vol. 3, Reports of Foreign Secretaries 1919, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 46. Stefan Huebner, Pan-Asian Sports and the Emergence of Modern Asia, 1913–1974 (Singapore: NUS Press, 2016), 27. 47. “The Study of English in Japan,” Intercollegian (1887): 10, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 48. “Study of English in Japan, 10.” 49. “Study of English in Japan, 10.” 50. “Study of English in Japan, 10.” 51. Robert Watchorn, “The Brotherhood of Man,” Association Men, March 1908, 259, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 52. Watchorn, “Brotherhood of Man,” 259. 53. Francis J. McConnell, “Christian Principles and Industrial Reconstruction,” 1919, 16, box 8, Industrial Work Records, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 54. McConnell, “Christian Principles,” 16–17. 55. McConnell, “Christian Principles,” 17. 56. Arthur J. Brown, “Six Reasons for Foreign Missions,” Association Men, December 1911, 101, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 57. William J. Hutchens, “Contempt, Condescension, Comradeship,” Association Men, September 1912, 610, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 58. In fact, the most successful missionary in the early twentieth century, C. H. Robertson, focused primarily on sharing scientific discoveries, rather than religious ones, drawing vast crowds in China, presumably because science was a useful knowledge. 59. John W. Foster, “Present Conditions in China,” Intercollegian, February 1907, 99, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 60. Foster, “Present Conditions in China,” 101. 61. C. T. Wang, “What the Association Is Doing in America,” Association Men, April 1911, 296. 62. Fred H. Rindge Jr., “The International Person, the Emigrant,” Current History, March 1923, 1. 63. Fred H. Rindge Jr., “The Foreigner: A Problem or an Opportunity?” Church School, 1923, 440. 64. Rindge, “The International,” 5. 65. Rindge, “The International,” 5. 66. Rindge, “The International,” 6. 67. Rindge, “The Foreigner,” 440. 68. Though it may seem like a short time between Roberts and Rindge, one must keep in mind that YMCA perspectives represented by Roberts were being developed from its very inception in the nineteenth century. Additionally, the exponential increase of immigration, the impact of World War I, and rapid urbanization between 1912 and 1923 make this a period of rapid change. For more context, see Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001). 69. Jeffrey Mirel, Patriotic Pluralism: Americanization Education and European Immigrants (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 46, 49. 70. Mirel, Patriotic Pluralism, 33.
210 Cummings
NINE Building a “Modern” “American” “Indian” The Legacy of Y-Indian Guides, 1926–1995 Paul Hillmer and Ryan Bean
I
n 1926, the American Young Men’s Christian Association created its most popular and successful youth development program: Y-Indian Guides. Fathers and sons gathered in a circle twice a month and spent time developing their relationships with one another through role-playing (e.g., the adoption of a faux “Indian” persona), handicrafts, and field trips. In rejecting a traditional authoritarian model of sons obeying and subjecting themselves to the authority of their fathers, Indian Guides introduced a modern mode of interaction between father and son in which they became “Pals Forever.” Fathers surrendered some of their assumed authority in order to grow closer to their sons and shared stories with them that made their sons see them in a less serious light. Boys were given more freedom to express themselves, even, in at least some cases, to criticize their fathers. Participants found in their imaginative play a kind of remedy or palliative to the ills of modern, industrialized, corporate America. In an era when “the melting pot” was the ideal, guidance was sought not in the traditions of the country’s forebears but in what was seen increasingly, through the eyes of white regret, nostalgia, and romanticism, as quintessentially American cultures: those of Native Americans. As will be shown, the employing of invented Indian motifs was quite common in similar youth-oriented organizations across the United States, and indeed the use of imagined Native American characters and customs was not only reserved to North America. German author Karl May wrote numerous fanciful tales of the German gunslinger “Old Shatterhand,” who traipsed about the American West looking for adventure and earning the respect and admiration of Native Americans.1 In other words, the unique characteristic of Y-Indian Guides was not the (mis)appropriation of American Indian 211
identities, which was and remains rampant, but the introduction of a fatherson dynamic absent in other programs. This chapter examines Y-Indian Guides through the lens of modernity. Yet to what kind of “modernity” are we referring? Since Indian Guides was created, reached its apex, and was ultimately undone in the shadow of three different periods of intercontinental war, the first (World War I) and last (Vietnam) of which were also accompanied by severe domestic strife in the United States, we are choosing to apply one of three different but related definitions of modernity articulated by Christopher Coker in his article “War and Modernity” to each of the three periods. Indian Guides was created not long after the end of the Great War. Its founders, a white man from South Bend, Indiana, and a Canadian Ojibwa Indian, were both veterans of the conflict. Coker’s first definition of modernity is one that creates “a people without a history.” Though he is describing the aftermath of the French Revolution, these principles are very much applicable to the post–World War I era as well. Delayed by a “long, destructive gestation period” of war, “peace came and immense new resources in finance, management, the sciences and technology could be put to productive use.” In the United States, this was most obviously manifested in a booming stock market—which went bust in October 1929—and the production of a wide variety of consumer goods that gained an even wider appeal through the new mass medium of the era, radio. Modernity required a sensibility “fully consistent with the full implications of the industrial revolution,” yet what followed was a generation of disillusionment.2 This feeling was perhaps most famously expressed by American poet Ezra Pound, who described how men had walked eye-deep in hell believing in old men’s lies, then unbelieving came home, home to a lie, home to many deceits, home to old lies and new infamy; usury age-old and age-thick and liars in public places. Daring as never before, wastage as never before . . . There died a myriad, And of the best, among them, For an old bitch gone in the teeth, For a botched civilization . . . 212 Hillmer and Bean
For two gross of broken statues, For a few thousand battered books.3 Quoting Alfred de Musset, Coker describes an age bemoaning “the fact that progress had been taken out of human hands and had become the function of industrialization.”4 It was out of a sense of dislocation and disconnection from nature, family, community, and simplicity that Indian Guides sought to restore a prewar age—whether real or imagined—in which fathers and sons worked closely with and were intimately connected to one another in a more pastoral and less technological environment. In an era when new modern identities were being forged, Indian Guides tempered these forces of change, seeking to safeguard the developmental innocence of youth. During the period following World War II, which we correlate to Coker’s idea of “heroizing the present,” Y-Indian Guides experienced explosive growth. Responding (if belatedly) to the threat of Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and militarist Japan, the United States cast itself as a heroic country that needed to arm and mechanize itself in order to save Western civilization. Man in this definition returns from war not to discover himself, but rather to invent himself. Having reinvented himself as an instrument of war by subordinating himself to machines of his own creation, he was now to “transform himself.” This transformation was possible in large part because of the booming postwar economy that provided education and prosperity to American citizens at an unprecedented rate, though in a way that continued to deny women and people of color equal opportunity. During this era, the YMCA deployed the Indian Guides as a restorative experience for fathers ill-equipped to make the transition from wartime to peacetime, from the farm to the city, or from single young man to married father. Fathers worked collaboratively both to form a new paternal identity and to better understand and nurture their sons. In addition to the sentimentalized image of Native Americans it had nurtured in its early days, Indian Guides increasingly took on patriotic overtones and became a vehicle to shape American culture through its youth. The final era, characterized by the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War, was begun, defined, and waged under Cold War imperatives that its leaders increasingly understood to be inaccurate and unattainable. Promising its citizens victory, then peace with honor, the US government could deliver neither in Vietnam. At the same time, African Americans, women, and other historically marginalized groups began to fight more powerfully and effectively to attain rights they had long been denied. The rise of the American Indian Movement is one such example. Indian Guides Legacy of Y-Indian Guides 213
participants not only increasingly sought greater connection with real, living Native Americans, but also began to question the appropriateness and respectfulness of what they were doing. This connects to Coker’s third definition of modernity, that of “expropriating the object.” Only in accepting “the connectedness of all things” and in understanding that “the truth resides in the object” did one transcend one’s own life and grasp the reality of life itself.5 This era saw greater efforts by some Indian Guides “tribes” to connect with real-life contemporary Native Americans. But even more so, it made clear to YMCA leaders that the program was offensive to many Native Americans and that true “expropriation” by its members was, in a certain sense, truly unattainable. This last era exposed the reality that modernity had not equally benefited all members of society. In response, neglected segments of the population demanded a course correction. Finally, we see the seeds of Indian Guides’ demise in its programmatic identity. Though originally fashioned with the help of a Canadian Ojibwa Indian, Indian Guides was ultimately used by white middle-class fathers and sons for their own purposes, until a long-disempowered people found their own voice. THE GREAT WAR AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF INDIAN GUIDES The American sacrifice of blood and treasure during the Great War highlighted the frightening rise in the violence and consequences of modern warfare. The government’s attempts to silence dissent at home led to “a three-year period of unparalleled censorship, mass imprisonment, and antiimmigrant terror.”6 At the war’s end, the reality of an increasingly globalized world was rejected by new Republican president Warren G. Harding, who abandoned many Progressive Era reforms and repudiated Woodrow Wilson’s internationalist dreams. Americans, now residents of a much smaller and more interconnected planet, followed their leaders into a period of nativism, protectionism, individualism, and consumerism. The United States rejected entry into the League of Nations and erected greater barriers to immigration. In this inwardly focused period of American history, the government sought to reckon with and rationalize the consequences of the war and the new world order emerging from its ashes. A significant part of this effort involved retooling the tightly government-controlled war economy into a civilian-centric peacetime consumer mode. During what has come to be referred to as the Dollar Decade, America found itself in the crucible of modernity. The rise of mechanization reduced the demand for unskilled industrial labor, while an increased demand for skilled blue-collar and white-collar jobs fueled the growth of America’s middle class. 214 Hillmer and Bean
The roaring twenties, however, were not limited to growth and abundance; Roderick Nash called those who lived through that time “the Nervous Generation.”7 Though it was originally depicted as a time of carefree frivolity and rebellion (think pole sitting, dance marathons, speakeasies, and flapper girls), a deeper dive into the period reveals race violence, the Sacco and Vanzetti trial, murder and violence connected to bootleggers profiting off widespread resistance to prohibition, an escalating conflict between rural and urban folk, the rise and dramatic fall of Fundamentalism, and a host of other problems. The introduction of radios and other consumer goods began to transform American life and bring new labor-saving conveniences into the home. At the same time, families were more and more likely to live in a city or town rather than a farming community. Fathers, who once worked side by side with their families, were increasingly leaving the home to earn their wage in a factory or office. In nearly every aspect of life in the home and the workplace, the past was being set aside as new modes of modernity became the norm. It was in this time and especially in America’s growing cities that the Young Men’s Christian Association became an increasingly important part of modern urban life. Originally formed during, and profoundly shaped by, the industrial revolution, the early YMCA sought to preserve individual character against the perceived moral onslaught of late nineteenth-century urban, mechanized life, working in tandem with local churches, of which all Y men were expected to be members. The outbreak of the Great War refocused the Y on its ultimately herculean efforts to minister to Allied soldiers and POWs during the Great War, but once the armistice was signed, the Y’s attention returned to domestic affairs, preparing boys and young men for life in a new, rapidly changing world. Through its night school programs, the YMCA educated generations of unskilled workers for new jobs in the modern economy. And as its membership grew and expanded into new communities, it increasingly saw that the ills of modernity afflicted boys as much as if not more than young men. Ultimately, the Y found that building character in boys would be easier than mending it in adult men and believed that its Boys’ Work programs could save young boys from delinquency, poverty, and lack of opportunity. The YMCA ministered to boys primarily through youth clubs and special events, younger versions of men’s Bible study and Sunday school. Many held annual father-son banquets, including a guest speaker exhorting all to be good Christians. But the end of the Great War precipitated a transformational shift in American society that, from the YMCA’s perspective, seriously tested the father-son relationship. Some questioned if stolid banquets Legacy of Y-Indian Guides 215
and moralistic programs were enough. Perhaps a return to a (perceived) simpler time would counterbalance this change. Already in the 1880s, authors John Burroughs and John Muir had become household names through their writings on nature; Theodore Roosevelt was in North Dakota developing the love of the outdoors that would inform his presidential legacy. At the same time YMCAs in Vermont; Brooklyn, New York; Richmond, Virginia; and Detroit, Michigan, used camping as a way to connect urban boys to the wilderness, link nature with discussions of God’s creative and redemptive work, and ward off juvenile delinquency. Y staff, who often came from farming communities themselves, often enjoyed the experience, which inspired them to reconnect with their own boyhoods. And of course, the wild landscape undoubtedly encouraged questions and fanciful stories about America’s first occupants. It was into this rapidly changing social environment that the Indian Guides was born. The program’s two founders, Harold Keltner, born in South Bend, Indiana, to a father who himself was often too busy to spend time with his son, and Joe Friday, a Canadian Ojibwa whom Keltner met on his honeymoon, held similar views on the effect modernity had on the fatherson dynamic. Keltner believed that the father “intended to get around to the job of knowing his family better,” but “instead he saw them less and left the job of training his son to the church, school, YMCA, and later [Boy S]couts and of course the good mother of the family.” Friday was recorded commenting on urban living while walking through downtown St. Louis: “ ‘Yes, white men have learned to grow tall buildings, but they can’t even raise their own sons.’ ”8 Friday, no stranger to America’s cities, spent the better part of 1924 and 1925 in St. Louis working alongside Keltner and the Y. “[O]ne evening,” recalled Keltner, “Joe was speaking in a church to a group of fathers and sons about growing up” in the wilds of Lake Temagami. “At the close of the meeting the men rushed up to the platform and packed around so closely . . . that the little boys could not reach [Joe]. . . . Then it hit me. Men were just as intrigued with the Indian . . . as little boys. In fact, men were nothing but little boys anyway. Ask the women and they will tell you the same thing.”9 Keltner believed that what fathers saw in Friday was what they dreamed of being themselves. He spoke to a memory of a simpler time in their life where they had a romanticized relationship with their own fathers that more closely resembled the one Friday described. If fathers were with their sons on a regular basis, Keltner thought, they would actually become the heroes their sons imagined them to be. Keltner and Friday drew from several preexisting programs when formulating Indian Guides, all of which freely employed real or imagined 216 Hillmer and Bean
Figure 9.1. Temagami First Nation (Ontario, Canada) leader and Indian Guides cofounder Joe Friday. Source: Kautz Family YMCA Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries.
Native American stories, customs, and other trappings for a variety of purposes. Ernest Thompson Seton’s Woodcraft League, established in 1902 and originally called “The League of Woodcraft Indians,” provided the roles of Chief, Tally-Keeper, and Wampum Bearer. The YMCA’s own Friendly Indians, part of the Y’s Christian Citizenship Program of the 1920s, provided much of the program aesthetic and activities through its adopting of “Indian” names, wearing of “Indian” headbands, and going on hikes and picnics to learn more about nature. Seton, also a cofounder of the Boy Scouts, made free use of imagined Indian symbols and names for the organization’s campfire rituals. But unlike the Y, the Boy Scouts featured programs more focused on military-style discipline. Seton’s “Indian,” then, was designed to temper militaristic drives with a desire to honor and live in harmony with nature. According to David Macleod, “Seton came to value Indian life as an end to itself, until by 1915 he proposed a Red Lodge for men to learn the ‘spirit of Indian religion.’ ”10 By contrast, Keltner and the Indian Guides program saw “Indians” as a means to a very specific end: the creation of a warm, intimate bond between father and son. As highlighted, the unique characteristic of Y-Indian Guides was not the (mis)appropriation of American Indian identities, which was and remains rampant, but rather the introduction of a father-son dynamic absent in other programs. In Indian Guides the approach to father-son development was not to embrace modernity. Instead, Keltner and Friday directed their participants back to an imagined precolonial American culture—but one subdued and Christianized by whites. Keltner, long fascinated by the American Indian, saw in their representations a counterpoint to the complexity and mechanization of modernity. While drawing up the program, he asked Friday “hundreds of questions” in order to understand “the simple homely truths of the Indian’s methods of training their youth.” How, for example, did American Indian fathers teach their sons about honesty? “Our fathers said very little about this,” replied Friday. “They were honest. We boys knew that without being taught.”11 This made Keltner recall a conversation with a father in St. Louis who had allowed his son to lie about his age to get a reduced fare on the streetcar, then later complained that his son was a liar. For better and for worse, he thought, a son learned through his father’s example. The Indian Guides model for the father-son relationship was partially constructed on Joe Friday’s observations on the relationships of Canadian Ojibwa fathers and sons. The rest was rooted in Keltner’s, Friday’s, and the YMCA’s Christian identity. “If the Indian was anything,” wrote Keltner, “he was religious in his own way. If the Indian Guides are to be anything, they must be this, not ostentatiously, but deeply believing in the power of prayer and the faith of [the YMCA’s] Christian founding in 1844.” Looking 218 Hillmer and Bean
back, Keltner and Friday remarked that “our movement was an answer to unceasing prayer, faith, and of course hard work, too,” with Friday adding, “ ‘It had to be an answer to prayer or an ordinary Y secretary and a “savage” Indian could not have made it go.’ ” Even so, this form of Christianity was not one in which the traditional goal of the faith—saving souls—was the chief objective. Instead, it served as the prism through which the “simple homely truths of Indians” could be interpreted for modern, white, middleclass, increasingly suburban fathers and sons. Joe Friday returned to Canada in the fall of 1926. What awaited him was not an isolated, culturally monolithic life, but one in which he and his fellow Ojibwas had long negotiated with the Canadian government and white sportsmen to protect their way of life and forge new ways of making a living. According to Patricia Jasen, “Travel books, guidebooks, and other promotional materials provided lists of reliable guides . . . such as the Friday family at [Lake] Temagami.”12 In the winter of 1927–1928, Joe and his brother Will organized a twenty-city Canadian and American tour featuring two Native American hockey teams. He was, therefore, not a “primitive” Indian who eschewed the march of modernity, but a businessman who knew how to play the role white tourists expected of him and use it to make decent money. Keltner freely admitted in 1955 that when Friday “returned to his native land, I put together the elements of the Woodcraft League best suited to our purpose, the Friendly Indian ritual, and added the original Indian Guide aims, which we had made from Indian standards.” (One might assume that by “Indian standards,” Keltner meant on principles developed with Friday.) Those aims were: (1) to be clean, (2) to complain never, (3) the other fellow first, (4) to be silent while elders speak, (5) to love the sacred circle of my family, (6) to love honor and truth, (7) to be reverent, and (8) to see the beauty of the Great Spirit’s work. One cannot know whether in the midst of creating the Indian Guides program Keltner and Friday had envisioned it being adopted and promoted in cities and towns across the United States and beyond. Keltner described serious concerns he had about the program being “too idealistic” for fathers to take seriously. Recalling his first meeting with the original group of fathers in October 1926, Keltner wrote, “There was one fear in their minds that was very evident.” They couldn’t imagine that their boys actually wanted to spend time with them. “In fact it is my belief that some who signed the agreement thought it would get no further than the first or second meeting.”13 Instead, the Osage tribe lasted until the boys graduated from high school. Originally entranced by the Indian theme, the boys opted to drop it as they aged but elected to stay with their fathers. Legacy of Y-Indian Guides 219
On the evening of November 17, 1926, according to the tribe’s minutes, “A group of Friendly Indians as yet unidentified met at Brave [Arthur A.] Hapke’s wigwam in the hunting grounds of the Osage . . . The skies were dark and full of moisture but the braves were all there.” The tribe was made up of “Big Chief ” Keltner (who later adopted the name “Chief Lone Wolf,” probably because he had no sons), as well as a judge of the federal courts, a dentist, two lawyers, and William Hefelfinger, “a bricklayer and contractor who,” wrote Keltner, “proved to be the most talented of the group in his use of Indian language, forms of speech, handicraft and understanding of the same.” Hefelfinger would become a driving force behind the program’s expansion and eventual adoption at the national level. There were “several surprises,” noted Keltner years later, at the first meetings of the Osage “tribe.” One such surprise was the success of the storytelling period. One father after another told stories about going hunting. One confessed he had neglected to remove the ramrod from his gun before taking a shot. “I will never forget the look of wonder in the eyes of the boys,” wrote Keltner, “not only at the stories of the other men, but from experiences of their own dads, many of which had never been related to them before. . . . The score stood 10–0 against ‘It can’t be done.’ ” One of the secrets to Indian Guides’ success, then, was in creating a space that easily and naturally developed camaraderie between fathers, and allowed sons to observe and benefit from it. These lighthearted adult interactions humanized fathers in the eyes of their sons. And in an era when communities were rapidly urbanizing, the program offered a unique opportunity for community building. Indian Guides’ benefits, however, were largely reserved for the prime beneficiaries of this period of prosperity, middle- and upper-middle-class families who owned homes large enough to host such events, had mothers who stayed home and provided refreshments at the meeting’s conclusion, and had fathers with sufficient disposable time and income to facilitate meetings and plan events central to the program. WORLD WAR II AND THE HEROES OF A NEW ERA When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the United States was once again thrust into a period of swift and confusing change. As with the Great War, there were stunning physical dislocations within both the military and civilian populations, and which occurred over a period twice as long. Once again the government, still in the throes of the Great Depression, carefully managed the wartime economy and created opportunities for women and African Americans to participate in the workforce in large numbers. Unlike its predecessor (with the significant exception of 220 Hillmer and Bean
people of Japanese—and a much smaller number of German and Italian— ancestry), World War II was fought without repressing civil rights at home, especially those of free speech; its conclusion led not to isolation but to internationalism. During the war, the Y’s National Boys’ Work Committee saw the importance of educating children with a “fair, sane, open-minded and intelligent view” of world events.14 This perspective led to a continued emphasis on the traditional YMCA school-based, professional-youth-worker-led Christian citizenship programs of the Grade School Y (Gra-Y), Junior Hi-Y, and Hi-Y as the primary method of reaching boys during the war. These three sequential programs were designed to guide boys into mature manhood as active citizens with a Christian worldview. The Indian Guides program had slowly grown during the late thirties. In 1941, the YMCA Yearbook and Official Roster reported Indian Guides numbers for the first time. Seventy-seven YMCAs reported a total of 286 clubs.15 Enrollment numbers remained relatively flat during the war, but the postwar years witnessed an expansion and investment in the program in line with the broader American postwar boom. The US government set itself to work establishing the United Nations to foster peace and collaboration among nations and enacting the Marshall Plan to save Western Europe from economic, political, and humanitarian devastation. But all was not well. The Cold War set in soon after, by 1947, creating a sense of unresolved uneasiness both at home and abroad, and a frustration that the war’s conclusion brought no real peace dividend. The United States’ total involvement in World War II, with more than 8.7 million men and women enlisting in the army, had a transformative effect on society. Upon returning to civilian life, many men needed to construct a new fatherly identity. General Douglas MacArthur, awarded the title of “outstanding American Father” by the National Fathers’ Day Committee in 1942, foreshadowed this new identity in his accepting remarks, writing, “A soldier destroys in order to build; the father only builds, never destroys. The one has the potentialities of death; the other embodies creation and life. And while the hordes of death are mighty, the battalions of life are mightier still. It is my hope that my son, when I am gone, will remember me not from the battle but in the home repeating with him our simple daily prayer, ‘Our Father, Who art in heaven.’”16 Similar to World War I, the postwar years brought prosperity that now inspired suburban expansion, allowing new families to escape the growing problems of the inner city. Economic growth and the GI Bill (which when signed into law in 1944 provided funding for veterans to help pay for college, graduate school, and job-training programs) further enhanced citizens’ Legacy of Y-Indian Guides 221
aspirations and ability to join the middle class, cementing the depiction of the ideal nuclear family as white, suburban, and middle-class. This in turn set the stage in the postwar period for the Indian Guides program to take on a more protective, suburban identity as it grew by leaps and bounds, expanding from 943 to 9,644 tribes between 1950 and 1958.17 At the same time, in small ways, the program began responding to modern media depictions of Native Americans and advocated for broader recognition of and respect for American Indians. Similarly, by way of acknowledging Jim Crow and the widespread racism that continued to bar the door of opportunity for many people of color, the YMCA began to cast Indian Guides not just as an ally of the family but also as a program capable of strengthening the nation’s social fabric. Though the Indian Guides program spread quickly throughout parts of Missouri, Kansas, and Illinois, it was not initially taken seriously by the national YMCA.18 Indian Guides was a serious departure from the Y’s traditional youth development programs intended to turn boys into productive, devout citizens. Put another way, Y-Indian Guides was a convention-defying program. Embracing and utilizing it required a truly modern outlook. Y traditionalists viewed the program as a whimsical, insubstantial annoyance. But they could not explain away the passionate support fathers gave the program or its impressive rate of growth. At the same time, Y-Indian Guides members demonstrated a strong disinclination to move their boys from their fictive tribes into other more traditional YMCA youth development programs like Gra-Y, Junior Hi-Y, and Hi-Y, preferring to maintain the bonds established in their tribe. As Indian Guides continued to grow—in fact, explode in the postwar period—the YMCA regularly struggled to understand it, define its overall benefit, and turn it into a movement that would funnel thousands of young boys up into the Y’s youth development scheme: from Indian Guides to Gra-Y to Junior Hi-Y to Hi-Y. Upon completion of this cycle, the Y believed, millions of Americans would be influenced for the better by the Christian young men the Y produced. Yet despite its repeated efforts, young “Indians” rarely wanted to become “Y men.” Affluent fathers rarely became enthusiastic Y volunteers or board members. Nonetheless, the potential of the dream coming to fruition kept Y officials tied to Indian Guides for decades, but also led to repeated confusion, concern, and consternation. Indian Guides tribes craved autonomy, whereas the national YMCA desired uniformity, responsibility, and tangible benefit to the association in the form of c ompensatory revenue and lay leadership. In 1944, Y-Indian Guides was recognized as one of the YMCA’s “Four Fronts” youth work programs.19 Keltner and the St. Louis Y’s grassroots 222 Hillmer and Bean
efforts had validated the premise that fathers wanted to spend time with their sons and vice versa. The national YMCA, however, found the Indian Guides’ goal of comradeship insufficient to qualify it as a full-fledged Y program. If it were to succeed nationally, they believed, it had to conform to the developmental outcomes of other Y programs. The task of helping Indian Guides “measure up” fell to the YMCA’s Boys’ Work Committee, which, in conjunction with the Indian Guides and the YMCA National Council, issued the first-ever program manual, emphasizing not only the father-son relationship but the development of Christian citizenship as understood by the YMCA. As the United States entered World War II, the national Y emphasized “explicit as well as implicit” character and citizenship training. Hoping to avoid the breakdowns in civil and political society that had occurred during the Great War, the Y exerted its Christian influence in part by deploying Indian Guides to combat intolerance. As a result, the Aims of the Indian Guides were reworked to reemphasize the Christian values of its founders, positioning the program as an aspirational solution not only to family dynamics but also to society writ large. This is exemplified by the addition of the Golden Rule, “To love my neighbor as myself,” to the Indian Guides program aims. The postwar period became a boom time for Indian Guides. A 1948 meeting of the National Council Committees Related to Boys’ Work reported 231 tribes in twenty states.20 But were these new tribes of sufficient quality, and did they funnel boys from Indian Guides into other Y youth development programs for older boys? Would fathers ignore input from Y staff and simply take their tribe in any direction they wished? Throughout the 1950s and 1960s the national Y continued to contemplate these and other questions. By 1965 there were nearly 250,000 Indian Guide participants. Despite its desire to turn them all into full-fledged members, the YMCA failed to facilitate this transition. In 1959, the YMCA commissioned the University of Chicago’s Committee on Human Relations to discern Indian Guides’ educational objectives and the benefits it afforded fathers and sons. The study told the Y what it already knew. Most boys were not interested in other YMCA programs. Seventy-one percent had participated in no other YMCA program before they joined Indian Guides and 81 percent had not done so since. The program was “very much over-represented in the professional and executive groups and underrepresented in the skilled and unskilled workers category.” This pattern was reflected in the YMCA’s membership as well. The report, however, declared Indian Guides a success. Fifty-eight percent of participants cited “dissatisfaction with time spent with their families and with their sons” as the reason for joining. Indian Legacy of Y-Indian Guides 223
Guides forced fathers to interact with their boys. Half reported that they now spent more time with their sons outside the program, and that those interactions “spilled over” into the rest of the family, improving their overall quality of life. For the Y, this report, and others like it, indicated a glaring need to remind tribes that the program was the first step in the Four Fronts program and that progression through the other programs was natural. For boys who were “too old” for Indian Guides but wished to remain a group, the YMCA advised that the program be modified with sporadic meetings. “Cast off some of the ‘kid stuff’ ” such as headbands, increase the level of activity, and “maintain the father and son relationship through activities such as weekend fishing trips, learning about guns, [and] going to sports events as a group.”21 The Y wanted to help fathers bridge the transition from the “Pals Forever” mentality of Indian Guides toward a more mature relationship as their youngsters grew up. Members of the National Longhouse, the Indian Guides’ national coordinating body, also regularly expressed concerns about the program but focused more on ensuring that the father-son dynamic was nurtured. They worried about the “host of little things” that could impede comradeship between father and son. One solution proposed by the Illinois Longhouse exemplifies the fundamental shift in fatherhood norms from patriarch to pal advocated by many Indian Guides leaders. They suggested, in order to “bring out into the open” things that divided fathers and sons, that they write down three things they wished the other would change. This activity was later described in the Christian Herald as evidence for the redemptive power of the program. The Herald story featured a boy who tells his alcoholic dad that he doesn’t like it when he drinks: “ ‘Son, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since our last meeting. I’ve decided that when a fellow can’t feel proud of his pop, there’s something wrong with pop. You told me what it is, son. I’ve decided to cut it out. I’ll never touch the stuff again.’ The boy’s face lit up as he exclaimed, ‘Gee, that’s great! Let’s shake.’ They did—‘Pals forever.’ ”22 This vignette concludes with a note on how the program could bring the larger community together. “Men also get to know each other better. A banker, lawyer and doctor will often rub shoulders with a janitor.” This tale represents the ideal scenario that Indian Guides backers sought to facilitate. Fathers and sons would improve themselves and cultivate their Christian temperament. Dad would become a better role model, father and son would bless mother and daughter, and white- and blue-collar neighbors would understand and respect one another as they met in the Indian Guides circle. This egalitarian dream was continuously expressed as the promise of 224 Hillmer and Bean
the program. Undoubtedly, there were communities where this mingling took place, but as future Y-commissioned studies revealed, both the YMCA and Y-Indian Guides remained predominantly white middle- and uppermiddle-class institutions. THE VIETNAM WAR AND THE CIVIL RIGHTS ERA One of the most transformative periods in American history was the Vietnam War era, not only because of the war itself, which divided a nation as nothing had since the Civil War, but also because of the civil rights movement. Though it was initiated by African Americans, numerous other groups, including Native Americans, predominantly Latino migrant workers, women, and those of different gender/sexual identities, began to raise their voices in protest. These collective challenges tested long-held assumptions about the value and integrity of social institutions like the government, religion, and the family. The war showed countless people that their government had not been honest with them or with itself about the reasons for intervening in Vietnam or the likelihood of such an enterprise’s success. The initially hopeful tone of the 1960s set by figures like John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King evaporated with their assassinations. While the YMCA continued its efforts to promote social cohesion and wholesome youth development, it was often ill equipped to address the ills of the day in a way that resonated with the younger generation. Meanwhile, Indian Guides remained a largely white middle- and upper-middleclass institution, though it enjoyed some level of popularity within African American communities, especially in the South and major industrial cities in the North. The Indian Guides newsletter, Long House News, featured as early as 1944 a photograph of tribes in Flint, Michigan, including two African American fathers and sons. Both Keltner and Friday were on hand for their induction. By the 1960s, National Pow-Wows became integrated, in keeping with the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision ordering the desegregation of schools, the 1964 Civil Rights Act ordering, among other things, the desegregation of all public places, and the policies of the YMCA. Indian Guides leaders were confident their movement could be a powerful agent of social improvement. In a 1968 meeting to discuss the “urgent and explosive urban crisis in both suburbia and the inner city,” which had been assigned “very high priority” by its National Council of Officers, they professed that Indian Guides could well be “one of the most productive avenues of positive advance” for the YMCA and society as a whole. It not only had strengthened families but had become a force for “constructive interracial advance.”23 Yet African American participation in Legacy of Y-Indian Guides 225
Indian Guides remained marginal, and no great breakthrough was ever accomplished. Though its vision of facilitating “interracial advance” never came to fruition, Indian Guides did serve as a vehicle through which members developed interest in contemporary Native Americans. In 1958 the National Long House collected funds to contribute to Korczak Ziolkowski’s Crazy Horse memorial. By the mid-1960s they were lobbying Congress to create a national holiday to honor Native Americans. Moreover, mayors, governors, and congressmen indulged visits from Indian Guides tribes, in many cases declaring an Indian Guides week in their community or state. On August 18, 1962, a young “Indian” even managed to deliver personally an invitation to that year’s National Long House to President John F. Kennedy.24 In addition to their direct communication with politicians, local Indian Guides tribes sent money, food, clothing, and gifts to reservations suffering from cold weather or natural disaster. They began to learn about the poor conditions and slim opportunities on many reservations. These efforts must, however, be defined as paternalistic in nature. In April 1970, The Long House News began supporting American Indian efforts to gain full legal rights for themselves. Yet they admitted, perhaps for the first time, that Indian Guides members did not always embody the lofty ideals of its founders. Acknowledging that “one of the greatest tragedies in American history has been the way the white man has treated his red brothers,” the article reviewed the innumerable ways in which American Indians had been abused, exploited, dispossessed, and killed. Indian Guides, the article continued, had borrowed ideas from various Native American communities and in doing so had become “more sensitized” to their needs. Even so, “like most Americans, Y-Indian Guides have not always been fully aware of the real feelings and concerns of the Indian. The power of the movies and TV in communicating an unreal image of the Indian has influenced every home.”25 This point was unintentionally driven home in the very next Long House News, which reported that the Hekawi “tribe” of Evanston, Illinois, had made Forrest Tucker, star of the sitcom F Troop, an honorary chief. Rather than following the Indian Guides model of naming themselves after a tribe that once occupied their region, the Hekawis named themselves after the fictitious Indians on Tucker’s show. The name itself was based on a derogatory joke—lost in the wilderness, they exclaimed, “Where the heck are we?”26 In addition to film and television, another force toward the caricaturization of Native Americans on a broader scale was the proliferation of merchandizing by the late 1940s through companies designed to supply groups like Indian Guides with costumes and handicraft kits. Things previously 226 Hillmer and Bean
made by father and son, perhaps with the guidance of an article in Long House News, a book published by the Association Press, or, in rare cases, entities like the Handicrafts Division of MacDonald College in the province of Quebec, were by this time being mass-produced and sold to numerous youth programs with Indian themes. In 1944, Long House News shared that MacDonald College had released a pamphlet entitled Indian Slippers That You Can Make. One could choose to make moccasins in the style of the Nez Perce, Penobscot, or Cree people. Anyone buying the pamphlet would have to make their own tools, create a pattern, and punch, sew, and adorn their work.27 By contrast, the winter 1968 Long House News heralds the arrival of “Indian Trails Products, Inc., a firm from Costa Mesa, California, seeking to provide craft project materials for Y-Indian Guides tribes. An attractive brochure presenting the list of kit items and prices may be secured directly from the firm. . . . Kits to make Indian shields, feather arm ornaments, arrowhead necklaces, wampum and medicine bags, breechcloths, and vests are available.”28 The firm had contracted with the National Board of YMCAs, gaining permission to use the YMCA trademark on its products. Other businesses like the Grey Owl Indian Craft Manufacturing Company of Jamaica, New York, and the Lackawanna Leather Company of Hackettstown, New Jersey, competed for the Indian Guides’ and other groups’ business. This meant that “tribes” everywhere could maximize their mimicry with less individual effort, supported by a new, affordable, nationwide manufacturing, merchandising, and distribution system. Unfortunately, this served to decrease motivation to learn about and emulate, however clumsily, the real Native Americans who were once the sole occupants of the land Indian Guides “tribes” now called home. Centralized, mass-produced “Indian” merchandise led to greater caricaturization, homogeneity, and unreality. In the end, it was the Indian Guides’ contradictory images of respect and buffoonery that foreshadowed its ultimate demise. The YMCA had largely failed to exert control over the program and, as the American Indian Movement gained momentum and Native American voices grew in power and influence in the early 1970s, the program increasingly became a liability. A story recounted by the former executive of the Hollywood YMCA showcases this problem. In the late 1980s, two producers from New York City flew to Los Angeles to pitch a new movie idea to Disney executive Michael Eisner. The pitch was interrupted, however, when Eisner abruptly excused himself. The producers asked Eisner’s secretary to explain his sudden departure. She explained that he had a Y-Indian Guide meeting with his sons. Upon their return to New York City, the producers learned about Indian Guides and why it was so important to Eisner. Abandoning their Legacy of Y-Indian Guides 227
original idea, they returned with a script proposal for a comedy-based movie on the Indian Guides. Eisner liked the idea, and subsequently, Man of the House was released in 1995, starring Chevy Chase, whose Indian Guide name was “Squatting Dog.” The story follows a nine-year-old boy trying to drive away the new man in his mother’s (Farrah Fawcett) life by signing up for Indian Guides, “thinking the ‘rinky-dink’ program will be sheer torture and drive the man away.”29 Instead, the two form a close bond through the program. The YMCA was very supportive of the project, believing the program would fare well in a family movie. Contrary to the YMCA’s expectations, the film was met with harsh criticism. Entertainment Weekly magazine called the comedy “borderline amusing for the one or two scenes in which it seems to recognize that the Indian Guides are a suburban embarrassment.” It described the “film’s low point” as a “skin-crawling montage in which everyone does a rain dance to the pumped-up beat of ‘Gonna Make You Sweat.’ I’d be hard-pressed to say whom this sequence insults more: Native Americans, who’ve been trying to outrun these tribal-kitsch clichés for years, or fathers and sons, who— according to ‘Man of the House’—have no hope of bonding apart from their shared eagerness to act like degraded idiots.”30 This depiction completed the changing perception of fathers from that of wise but indulgent patriarch to that of hapless, juvenile pal. Eight years later, the national Y officially terminated support for Indian Guides, in response to the growing consternation of many Native Americans and others toward programs like Indian Guides. Potential for litigation for using tribal names was another factor. The Y questioned the program’s appropriateness and utility for youth development, as well as the potential harm it posed to the YMCA’s relationships with communities and its organizational identity. For nearly seventy-five years, the YMCA kept a program about which it always had misgivings, because it was popular and had the potential to win influential members like Michael Eisner. In renouncing Indian Guides, the YMCA was once again confronted with how little control it had over it, and how passionately its adherents would resist. Though far from its peak participation, today many families continue to don feathers, beat drums, and become pals forever through a breakaway group called the National Longhouse and through a small number of local YMCAs that continue to support the program. Over the course of its long tenure, Y-Indian Guides was shaped by and attempted to shape the forces of modernity. First, as a means by which a lost history and way of life could be rescued, honored, and redeemed; then 228 Hillmer and Bean
as a pedestal upon which the American father could be lionized, healed, and restored to an ideal relationship with his son. The program tried to temper the perceived negative forces of social change and create new modern identities designed to succeed in a new era. Yet throughout its life, Y-Indian Guides (mis)appropriated native cultures, a practice that ultimately proved its undoing once the true owners of that culture asserted their voices. The appropriation of native cultures was neither new nor unique to Indian Guides. According to Philip Deloria, Americans engaged in this behavior in their quest for both legitimacy as a new nation and an escape from the monotony of modern life.31 Rayna Green tells us that “playing Indian” has not only been the domain of white men, but “draws women, even blacks, into the peculiar boundaries of its performance, offering them a unique opportunity of escaping the conventional and often highly restrictive boundaries of their fixed cultural identities based in gender or race.”32 Reflecting on mid-twentieth-century white remorse over the extermination of Native Americans—and the mythological, sympathetic Indian characters in art, cinema, and television that emerged in its wake—author Michael Chabon noted that despite all the good intentions motivating these ideas, they evoked “not an imaginary world of Indians, but a world of imaginary Indians.”33 It was into this latter world that Indian Guides fathers and sons were initiated. While many Indian Guides members showed a genuine interest in the true history of the indigenous people, they also had or sought little historically accurate information, especially from the very people they wished to honor and emulate. Through the use of “primitive” symbols and rhetoric, Y-Indian Guides participants attempted to bring themselves back to a “purer” self, revering family and nature, caring for the less fortunate, and respecting all people. Yet this very appropriation betrayed the privilege and power of the individuals engaging in these activities. Fathers and sons in Y-Indian Guides, who were largely from white middle- and upper-middleclass families, not only professed reverence toward an American Indian culture, but also exercised power over it and defined it subjectively. William Hefelfinger, for example, expressed admiration for American Indians in a way that also promoted American exceptionalism: “I believe by any standard you choose to take,” he wrote in 1945, “the Indian was the highest type of primitive people in the world.”34 Indian Guides, a program designed to develop youth, found its success at the expense of American Indian youth. As research into appropriation shows, the children of appropriated communities are harmed by contrived characters, stereotypes, and misuse of material culture by a dominant group. Legacy of Y-Indian Guides 229
For example, in 2005 the American Psychological Association passed a resolution calling for “the immediate retirement of all American Indian mascots, symbols, images and personalities by schools, colleges, universities, athletic teams and organizations. APA’s position is based on a growing body of social science literature that shows the harmful effects of racial stereo typing and inaccurate racial portrayals, including the particularly harmful effects of American Indian sports mascots on the social identity development and self-esteem of American Indian young people.” According to the resolution, Research has shown that the continued use of American Indian mascots, symbols, images and personalities has a negative effect on not only American Indian students but all students by: • Undermining the educational experiences of members of all c ommunities— especially those who have had little or no contact with indigenous peoples . . . • Establishes an unwelcome and often . . . hostile learning environment for American Indian students that affirms negative images/stereotypes that are promoted in mainstream society. . . . This in turn restricts the number of ways American Indians can see themselves. • Undermines the ability of American Indian Nations to portray accurate and respectful images of their culture, spirituality and traditions . . . • Presents stereotypical images of American Indians. Such mascots are a contemporary example of prejudice by the dominant culture against racial and ethnic minority groups. • Is a form of discrimination against American Indian Nations that can lead to negative relations between groups.35
Even though the Indian Guides image of Native Americans was naive, conflated, and inaccurate, it also encouraged in many a curiosity about and receptivity and a sense of compassion toward real Native Americans. But Harold Keltner’s editorial in the very first print version of Long House News suggested that from the start the “Indian” in Indian Guides was more a means to an end than a real person: “The Indian Guides remind me of a little river of clear friendship flowing silently through a dense forest of life’s problems, but ever increasing in its depth and usefulness as it contacts new streams of human interest. It is this friendship that counts most with us and our boys. Anything that adds to that relationship is welcome. . . . We seek one attainment—the permanent confidence and comradeship, one with the other, of our boys and their fathers” (emphasis added). 230 Hillmer and Bean
This enduring and ever-warmer relationship between father and son was the real object of the program, and the key to its success was the real “Indian” in Indian Guides: not any particular nation or individual, but the American Indian father as described by Joe Friday, the role model for all non-native fathers to emulate. Arthur E. Martin’s 1939 essay, entitled “What the Indian Guides Mean to Me,” made these sentiments clear: “Indian father intrusted [sic] the training of his boy to no one except himself. He taught him to hunt and fish, to endure pain, to be brave, to learn and to practice the code of his tribe. . . . Fathers, be boys again with your boys, play their games, sing their songs, . . . enjoy together the great outdoors and commune with the great spirit . . . like the Big Brave—the kind and loving Indian Father.”36 A 1950 Long House News article echoed the same idea, though far less sentimentally: “Their arrows are broken; their springs are dried up; their tepees are in dust. Their council fires have long since gone out on the shore, and their war cry has faded to the untrodden West. As a race, they have withered from the land. But we remember them for the relationship between big and little braves.”37 NOTES 1. “Karl der Deutsche,” Der Spiegel 16, September 12, 1962, 73; Richard H. Cracroft, “The American West of Karl May,” American Quarterly 19, no. 2, pt. 1 (Summer 1967): 250–252. 2. Christopher Coker, “War and Modernity,” Society 33, no. 5 (1996): 64, https:// doi.org/10.1007/BF02693117. 3. Ezra Pound, from “Hugh Selwyn Mauberly [Part One],” 1920, http://www .poetryfoundation.org/poem/174181, accessed July 24, 2015. 4. Coker, “War and Modernity,” 64. 5. Coker, “War and Modernity,” 64. 6. Adam Hoschschild, “When Dissent Became Treason,” New York Review of Books 64, no. 14 (2017): 82. 7. Roderick Nash, The Nervous Generation: American Thought 1917–1930 (New York: Rand McNally, 1970). 8. This quotation is taken from an attempted Joe Friday biography written by Harold Keltner (hereafter cited as Keltner manuscript). Typewritten on the backs of old onionskin YMCA stationery, the manuscript was in the possession of Keltner’s last surviving child, Mrs. Gene Keltner Cannon, and was scanned by Hillmer during a visit with her in the summer of 2015. 9. Keltner manuscript. 10. David Macleod, Building Character in the American Boy: The Boy Scouts, YMCA, and Their Forerunners, 1870–1920 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), 131. 11. Keltner manuscript. 12. Patricia Jasen, “Native People and the Tourist Industry in Nineteenth-Century Ontario,” Journal of Canadian Studies 28, no. 4 (1993–1994): 21. Legacy of Y-Indian Guides 231
13. “Indian Guides,” n.d., Historical Summaries, 1900–1953, YMCA Boys and Youth Work records (Y.USA.40), box 57, Kautz Family YMCA Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries. 14. Minutes, National Boys’ Work Committee, March 27, 1941, National Boys’ Work Committee 1939–1941, box 8, YMCA Boys and Youth Work Records (Y.USA.40), Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 15. Year Book and Official Rosters of the National Councils of the Young Men’s Christian Associations of Canada and the United States of America, 1941, 77, YMCA yearbooks, directories, and proceedings, Kautz Family YMCA Archives, accessed March 8, 2018, http://archives.lib.umn.edu/repositories/7/archival_objects/210653. 16. “General Douglas MacArthur Knows What Fatherhood Means,” Long House News 6, no. 7 (1942): 1. 17. Year Book and Official Rosters of the National Councils of the Young Men’s Christian Associations of Canada and the United States of America, 1959, 43, YMCA yearbooks, directories, and proceedings, Kautz Family YMCA Archives, accessed April 26, 2018, http://archives.lib.umn.edu/repositories/7/archival_objects/210670. 18. “A Report on Y-Indian Guide Developments,” May 26, 1967, Indian Guides Papers 1960–1969, box 58, YMCA Boys and Youth work records (Y.USA.40), Kautz Family YMCA Archives. As a letter from the National Y-Indian Guide Longhouse stated, “For nearly one quarter of a century, [Indian Guides] was laughed at and scoffed at by professional staff and local association laymen.” 19. “The National Y-Indian Guide Longhouse,” 1964, Indian Guides Papers 1960– 1969, box 58, YMCA Boys and Youth Work Records (Y.USA.40), Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 20. Minutes, Mid-west Consultation of Members of the National Council Committees Related to Boy’s Work, February 13, 1948, Boys Work, Midwest Consultation on Youth Program, 1948–1963A, Boys Work IG Y-82‑113, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 21. Minutes, Mid-west Consultation on YMCA Youth Program Young Men’s Christian Association, February 8, 1957, Youth—Midwest Consultation on Youth Program 1948–1963A, box 57, YMCA Boys and Youth Work Records (Y.USA.40), Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 22. Long House News 9, no. 3 (January–February 1949): 2. 23. “Y-Indian Guides Initiate Action Planning for Interracial Advance,” Long House News 31, no. 2 (1968): 1. 24. “Y Indian Guides Week in Fresno,” Long House News 25, no. 1 (1961): 2; “National American Indian Day,” Long House News 25, no. 1 (1961): 2; “Fresno Y-Indian Guides Deal Directly with President Kennedy,” Long House News 26, no. 2 (1962): 1. 25. “The American Indian Calls for Full Status and Fair Treatment,” Long House News 32 (1970), no. 4: 1. 26. “Forrest Tucker Honored,” Long House News 33, no. 1 (May 1970): 3. 27. “Make Your Moccasins,” Long House News 9, no. 1 (October 1944): 4. 28. “Indian Trails Products,” Long House News 31, no. 1 (1968): 3. While other examples of these companies come from undated advertisements, the authors were able to locate similar ads, at least for the Grey Owl Indian Craft Leather Company, in issues of the Boy Scouts magazine Boys’ Life going back to at least 1948. 29. “Disney Movie May Be in the Works,” Hartford Courant, August 24, 1993, http://articles.courant.com/1993‑08‑24/news/0000005594_1_indian-guides-program -fathers-and-sons-parent-child. 232 Hillmer and Bean
30. Owen Gleiberman, “Man of the House,” Entertainment Weekly, March 17, 1995, http://ew.com/article/1995/03/17/man-house-3/. 31. Philip Deloria, Playing Indian (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 7–15. 32. Rayna Green, “The Tribe Called Wannabe: Playing Indian in America and Europe,” Folklore 99, no. 1 (1988): 30–55. 33. Michael Chabon, Third Annual Esther Freier Lecture (University of Minnesota, May 29, 2003). 34. “Negaunee Speaks,” Long House News 10, no. 2 (November 1945): 2. 35. A. Hirschfelder et al., American Indian Stereotypes in the World of Children: A Reader and Bibliography, 2nd ed. (London: Scarecrow Press, 1999), xiii. See “APA Resolution Recommending the Immediate Retirement of American Indian Mascots, Symbols, Images, and Personalities by Schools, Colleges, Universities, Athletic Teams, and Organizations,” accessed July 2, 2019, https://www.apa.org/about/policy/mascots.pdf. The statement includes a full page of scholarly citations. A personal account of these impacts was given by the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, Kevin Gover. Growing up as a child of one white and one Native American parent, Gover said that the history of Native Americans he learned in school and the images and ideas provided him by white society made him think that when he succeeded, it was because of his white ancestry, and when he failed, it was because he was half Indian. “(Re)Making History: The Real Story Is Bigger and Better” (address to donors of the St. Paul and Minnesota Foundations, Minnesota Humanities Center, October 30, 2018). 36. Arthur Martin, “What the Indian Guides Mean to Me,” Long House News 4, no. 4 (1939): 2. 37. “The Indians,” Long House News 14, no. 2 (1950): 4.
Legacy of Y-Indian Guides 233
TEN Education for Leadership
The YMCA in Late Imperial Ethiopia, 1940s–1970s Katrin Bromber I have not been here so long but I have become acquainted with and observed a host of nationals and I feel there is potentially magnificent leadership in this country. It will take time, work and patience to train them but it can be done. —Merlin Bishop
W
hen Merlin Bishop wrote this observation in February 1952, he had just commenced his tenure as general secretary of the Ethiopian YMCA. He had arrived in Addis Ababa at a time when the empire was still grappling with the consequences of the Italian fascist occupation (1935–1941). The almost total extermination of Ethiopia’s intelligentsia in the fascist era created a great problem: the complete lack of young, well-educated men to act as leaders. In addition, a considerable number of young people who were perceived as criminal elements or, at least, as a social problem migrated to the urban centers, especially the capital, Addis Ababa. Thus, the Ethiopian government applied to international organizations such as the Boy Scouts and the YMCA, which were known to deal effectively with “problematic” youths through education and discipline. At the personal request of Emperor Haile Selassie I, Ethiopia approached the World Alliance of YMCAs in 1946 to prove the feasibility of establishing a YMCA in Ethiopia. Since its North American members perceived the World Alliance as being too occupied with postwar reconstruction in Europe,1 the International Committee of the Young Men’s Christian Associations of the United States and Canada (hereafter referred to as the International Committee) took the lead and thus shaped the way leadership training was pursued in the Ethiopian Empire. In doing so, the association had to navigate a postwar–cum–Cold War political context of growing American interest in the region, as well as an increasing Soviet Union presence through the well-financed Soviet Cultural Center in Addis Ababa.2 The YMCA leadership training had to meet the expectations of the 237
imperial government to provide leaders for the reconstruction and modernization of the country and to abide by the regulations of its own institution to train local personnel for spreading the spirit of the YMCA and the American way of life. This task meant mediating between quite different conceptions of modernity. This chapter considers concrete practices of training local leaders on various levels at the Ethiopian YMCA during the late imperial period (1940s–1970s). It asks about the degree to which the association shaped its leadership programs in line with wider developmentalist ideas of socioeconomic and moral progress as a contribution to manage contingency by capacity building. In order to become agents of progress, potential Ethiopian YMCA leaders had to become individuals endowed through training with particular visions, dispositions, and capacities. Making extensive use of the documents located in the Kautz Family YMCA Archives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, this chapter examines leadership training in four sections. The first looks at the establishment phase in the late 1940s. This period was largely characterized by the discussions and rather limited activities of circulating YMCA personnel between Ethiopia and Egypt. The second part focuses on leadership training at the Addis Ababa YMCA and its gradual spread to other urban centers of the empire. In its third section, the chapter deals with the shift during the 1960s and early 1970s that leadership training brought about through concrete activities, such as working with street children and the attempt to develop the main YMCA branch in Addis Ababa into an East African leadership training center. The fourth part looks at leadership training abroad, that is, in the United States and Canada. The final remarks discuss the main findings for Ethiopia vis-à-vis wider developments of the Y as a globally operating North American institution. In closing, they will briefly reflect on the role of the YMCA in the education of leaders after the removal of the last emperor, Haile Selassie, in 1974 and the establishment of a socialist government. “UNLESS WE GAVE HIM HELP ON LEADERSHIP THE PROJECT WILL FLOP”—THE ESTABLISHMENT PHASE
Having received the green light from the World Alliance in Geneva to examine the possibility of establishing an Ethiopian YMCA, James K. Quay, the representative of the International Committee and senior American secretary in Egypt, and Naguib Kelada, 3 senior secretary of the Egyptian National Council of the YMCAs of Egypt, arrived in Addis Ababa in early February 1947. Meeting with Emperor Haile Selassie I 238 Bromber
and top-ranking government officials, Quay discussed the question of leadership education. Explaining that the national YMCAs would ultimately have to rely on their own local personnel, the representatives emphasized that in case of a positive reply to an invitation from the emperor, the World Alliance “would send one or more experienced secretaries to inaugurate the work and train Ethiopian young men to take over the responsibility as secretaries in Ethiopia.”4 Quay and Kelada also indicated the possibility of using the YMCA Secretarial Training School in Egypt for this purpose. Meanwhile, they continued, an experienced and qualified man should serve as the acting secretary for the newly formed YMCA in Ethiopia. Apart from communicating with the relevant people in the imperial government, the acting secretary would recruit new members and conduct the program. Since qualified leadership was rare in Egypt itself, there was no option to send someone from there. However, the solution to this problem was already waiting for them in Addis Ababa, where they met “a young Egyptian, Michel Wassef, who from the first moment struck [us] as particularly fitted to take over the task thus marked out for him. . . . His education, his work in Ethiopia, his personal character and his enthusiasm were all factors in our rapidly growing appreciation of him.”5 An Egyptian expatriate in his late twenties, Michel Wassef worked as superintendent of the National Physical Education Program for the Ethiopian Ministry of Education. He was a graduate of the Higher Institute of Physical Education in Egypt and active in the Egyptian Scouts Movement. Naguib Kelada described him as a “normal Coptic youth— more conventional than dynamic; but he has idealism and is strikingly unselfish and serviceable in his attitude.”6 As the first YMCA secretary in Ethiopia, Michel Wassef worked from 1947 to 1951 under the direction of an Ethiopian YMCA Board of Managers, which consisted of highranking Ethiopians and members of the so-called foreign communities.7 He maintained constant communication with Cairo for counsel and advice and received leadership training at the Egyptian YMCA training center in 1948. One of his key tasks was to identify Ethiopian individuals with leadership qualities who could support or even assist him in firmly establishing the Y in the Ethiopian capital. However, when W. H. Denison, senior secretary in Cairo, visited Addis Ababa in 1950, he reported that despite their enthusiasm, the lay leadership was severely lacking in knowledge about the YMCA work beyond the local level. Although he did not explicitly mention potential candidates to fill this gap, Dennison stressed that one board member was from New York and that this person knew the American movement as well as the kind of leadership that Late Imperial Ethiopia 239
would be expected.8 Furthermore, some laymen had contact with the association’s work in India.9 The “Indian contact” referred to in the report might have resulted in the first lecture on the topic of leadership. Mr. K. V. Krishnan, head of the Dramatic Society, spoke on the “the art of leadership” in February 1950.10 Despite Michel Wassef ’s groundbreaking work, Naguib Kelada stressed at the World Alliance’s meeting in Mainau in July 1949 that “unless we gave [sic] him help on leadership, the project will flop.”11 The Egyptian YMCA was supportive in networking and, with regard to Michel Wassef, in the leadership training. However, the project failed, for various reasons, to provide the financial support for Ethiopia, especially for building the proper facilities.12 Because of financial and manpower shortages in Egypt itself, the Ethiopian project was on the point of collapsing. Even if Egypt was in part able to finance a proper YMCA headquarters in Addis Ababa, the building, as Rudolph Wiens, senior secretary of Egypt in Cairo, pointed out, could “be a ‘white elephant’ unless there is a YMCA with responsible lay leadership, trained staff, community support and actual program commitment for facilities.”13 Thus, Wiens suggested to the International Committee that since there was only one YMCA left in Jerusalem, this meant that the freed-up resources could be diverted to Ethiopia to assist Michel Wassef in “building responsible leadership.”14 Furthermore, Egypt had approached the World Alliance to ask the International Committee to send a secretary from North America to Ethiopia to help develop the work.15 For the American YMCA secretaries in Egypt, it was clear that continuing support in leadership training after the expiration of the commitment in March 1951 was “quite uncertain.”16 By directly asking the International Committee for support, Egypt could eventually recede as an active party without losing face. In 1949, the Ethiopian YMCA president, Colonel Tamrat Yǝgäzu,17 issued an official request for an experienced program secretary to the International Committee in New York. He stressed “the country’s dire need for a new generation of cultured and community-minded youths” but expected more help in training “volunteer leaders from the ranks of who will ultimately come [sic] future Ethiopian leaders of the Association.”18 Despite Michel Wassef ’s hard work and Quay’s personal engagement, after his return to the United States, the success of the Ethiopian YMCA greatly depended on the existence of a trained (local) leadership. Thus, it was more than a coincidence that in the year 1951, when the Ethiopian YMCA obtained its full corporate rights, an experienced secretary from North America arrived in Addis Ababa who made local leadership training a matter of his heart. 240 Bromber
MERLIN BISHOP AND THE ESTABLISHMENT
OF LOCAL LEADERSHIP TRAINING
Since Michel Wassef was already specialized in physical education, the North American secretary needed to be someone experienced in boys’ work and program development. The choice fell on Merlin Bishop. He started his service abroad as a missionary of the Methodist Church in China and subsequently became a staff member of the International Committee in 1945. Holding an MA degree in vocational education from Columbia University, he worked as the principal of an industrial school in China and, later, was a faculty member of the Fukien Christian University. Thus, the International Committee recommended him because of his experience in administration, group work, and the development of a program for vocational and industrial training.19 In August 1951, Merlin Bishop arrived in Addis Ababa together with his wife and daughter. Bishop’s first impression of Michel Wassef was not very enthusiastic. He acknowledged the “good job of introducing the YMCA in Addis considering his lack of training and basic understanding of the philosophy, structure and purpose of the YMCA” and added, “Local lay leadership is almost nonexistent with the exception of some foreign teachers and Government employees.”20 To improve this situation as well as to gain a foothold in Ethiopia, the International Committee informed Bishop about a training grant in the United States for an influential Ethiopian to gain “proper experience in this country of world influence [the United States]”21 and upon his return to Addis to start functioning as a door opener for the Association. Although Michel Wassef was not the first choice, he went to the United States for further training in 1952.22 Merlin Bishop seems to have been relieved about his departure, since he had found it very difficult to plan for the local movement together with Wassef, but he was very careful not to pull rank on him. According to Bishop, “Michel had no confidence in Ethiopian Leadership and had no plans for developing national leaders [although there] is potentially magnificent leadership in this country. It will take time, work and patience to train them but it can be done.”23 After six months in office, Bishop reported about 267 staff meetings to develop “team spirit” and an “understanding of the history, structure of the YMCA and the technique of working with young people.”24 The most effective way to develop leadership, according to Bishop, was working in “organized groups.” While he considered the intensive training of the staff to become working teams as “encouraging,” he was not satisfied with the “progress” of the lay leadership.25 Attributing the low performance of the Ethiopian YMCA in terms of its membership, program, and finance to very poor local leadership, Bishop Late Imperial Ethiopia 241
began training four local secretaries on the job. All were in their twenties and came from educated and elite backgrounds with affiliations to the military or government. For example, Aleme Selass W. Emanuel’s father had been a government official until the Italian occupiers killed him, and Emanuel himself was already working at the Ethiopian YMCA under Michel Wassef. Prior to joining the YMCA, Aleme Emanuel worked at the Government Office of Press and Information and had been active in the Red Cross’s fund-raising campaigns. The next selected trainee was Ewmetu Belay, who had joined the YMCA in 1949. Ewmetu was made responsible for various boys’ programs including the Junior Hi-Y, and other boys’ groups in schools and on the streets. He also worked as a librarian and was the only staff member who had a secondary school education, in addition to being well versed in Amharic, Arabic, French, and English. Germa Belew, whose father was a retired judge who had been killed during the Italian occupation, became the secretary of religious work and program development. Ato Selassie, whose father worked as treasurer in the Ministry of Finance of Shoa Province, joined the YMCA in 1950 and took responsibility for the athletic program.26 The employment of local secretaries over the year 1952 marked the beginning of an intensive leadership training program at the Addis Ababa YMCA. They received more or less daily training, or “guidance.” It started with a sixty- to ninety-minute meeting with devotions, evaluation of the previous day, and further planning. Here, Merlin Bishop tried to explain the YMCA’s organization and technique, but study time was always too short because of the crowded program and the fact that each of his secretaries was on duty “at least 50 hours per week.”27 Merlin Bishop’s intensive secretarial training also had its flip side. On his second visit to Ethiopia in 1955, Dalton McClelland from the National Council of YMCAs in the United States reported back to the International Committee, “The members of the staff are . . . depending perhaps too much upon him [Bishop]. . . . They still have to learn . . . the meaning of responsibility.”28 As the undisputed father figure of the institution, Merlin Bishop obviously was the perfect man to allow the indigenous leaders to continue the allegedly “Ethiopian way” of not taking responsibility. In his correspondence with various YMCA officials in North America and Europe, Bishop recurrently complained about the lack of responsibility in general, which he partly attributed to the fact that the Ethiopian government did not encourage and allow local leadership to develop.29 Despite the intensive training, it was clear to all parties involved that the low educational standard in Ethiopia and the “deficiency” made reliance on college-trained professional local leadership a matter for the years to come. 242 Bromber
Apart from their in-service training, the selected four top candidates were also identified “for further practical training abroad in the U.S., India or elsewhere.”30 Whereas further study in the United States became a longterm preference, partly successful, Merlin Bishop rejected India as a training destination although admitting that training in India would be more suitable to Ethiopian needs than training in the United States. In his eyes, it was simply a matter of prestige. “One going to India for study does not have the prestige that one would have returning from the United States or England. There is a strong feeling among Ethiopians that they are as much advanced as India.”31 Despite the fact that Ethiopia intensified its relations to India in the military and in the educational sector—especially after Haile Selassie’s visit to South Asia in 195632—India never became a YMCA training destination.33 Apart from the training of Ethiopian secretaries, the mushrooming of clubs, especially Hi-Y clubs in schools, and a general trend to decentralize, the work demanded leadership education on a lower level. From spring 1953, the Addis Ababa YMCA began to run a training program for the club leaders.34 Leadership training became even more important when the association started to spread from the capital to the provinces. In June 1954, Merlin Bishop reported to the World Alliance of YMCAs that Emperor Haile Selassie I himself had urged him for more than a year to open a YMCA in the Eritrean capital, Asmara.35 In 1950, after long and controversial discussions about the future of the former Italian colony, the UN General Assembly had endorsed Eritrea’s federation with Ethiopia under the Ethiopian crown. However, the main Ethiopian goal was its complete integration. Arguably, the imperial government considered establishing a YMCA branch in Asmara to be the perfect way to further pursue this aim. Furthermore, Asmara was also home to Kagnew Station— a US military radio station that had operated in the area since 1943—which basically meant that the YMCA could also serve or make use of the American armed forces personnel and resources. However, Merlin Bishop reacted very hesitantly to the question of opening YMCA branches outside Addis Ababa, precisely because of insufficient (local) leadership.36 Thus, he approached the International Committee to send a second experienced North American secretary to Ethiopia to help with leadership training and the program. This secretary’s main task should be to firmly handle the physical education department and to take full responsibility during Bishop’s furloughs.37 After receiving an official request from Ethiopian YMCA president Tamrat Yǝgäzu for a secretary “with certain skills, such as athletics and boys work training,”38 in March 1955, Bishop was provided with a list of seven candidates; the list emphasized that Marvin J. Ludwig Late Imperial Ethiopia 243
would be the first choice.39 After his selection, not only Marvin and Ruth Ludwig prepared for their departure. Aleme Emanuel was also about to leave for the United States as the first Ethiopian YMCA staff member to receive further training in the form of “work experience.”40 CONSOLIDATION AND TRANSITION In November 1955, Marvin J. Ludwig joined the Addis Ababa YMCA as executive secretary. He graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University with a BA in physical education and graduate studies in sociology and group work.41 His wife, Ruth, who had graduated from the same university, joined him and became very active in Ethiopia herself. Ludwig’s background in physical educational, his experience as youth director of the YMCA in Marion, Ohio, from 1949 to 1954, and the impression that he “is little bothered by ‘personal difficulties’ ”42 must have recommended him for the post, which he took up in October 1955. However, running gym classes was not what Marvin Ludwig had come for. “I want to work with a broad program of leadership training, including gym classes but much, much more. It is to leadership training that I shall give everything I have to give.”43 Nine months later, he assumed full responsibility from Merlin Bishop (until the latter’s return in July 1957). At this time, the seven full-time secretaries received daily training in matters such as finance, planning, community organization, and the YMCA philosophy. More than four hundred volunteer leaders were trained in fields such as practical psychology and community organization and “practical courses in physical education for coaches and leaders.”44 Whereas the 1958 participation report evaluated the training to be good, the performance of the volunteers in leading and counseling was, at least in the eyes of the management, only “fair.” Marvin Ludwig’s physical education and Boys’ Work programs flourished at the Addis Ababa YMCA, to the extent that the association is now remembered as a sports hub. He also successfully extended leadership training to these fields. Furthermore, from 1957 on, leadership training received permanent attention and resources in the annual budget. In the late 1950s, the YMCA offered leadership training in physical education (always with the lowest budget), program secretarial issues, boys’ work, and rural development. Ludwig considered the physical education program to be “one of the finest, well-rounded programs in any YMCA” precisely because it consisted of “leadership training courses in health, recreation, physical education and first aid as well as leadership techniques in methods of leadership and courses in officiating.”45 244 Bromber
During 1959, Merlin Bishop’s last year in Ethiopia, he gave leadership training major emphasis, arguably for two reasons. First, the number of trainees had increased up to “558 laymen who led groups, served on committees and boards, and helped in many other ways.”46 Second, the opening of a YMCA in Eritrea became an urgent issue. In February 1957, Bishop had visited Asmara to explore the possibility of a YMCA in that city, where he and Aleme Emanuel spent five days at a “Leadership Training Institute” to train prospective YMCA personnel. Reporting to Marvin Ludwig about the training, Bishop commented that Aleme had proved to be a very capable leader because of “his understanding of the YMCA, its background and possibilities [and] the way he was able to put things across. I feel that the years of training have had quite an effect on his leadership possibilities.”47 Despite this very positive feedback and the fact that all parties involved in the creation of an Asmara branch considered outside professional leadership a necessity, Aleme Emanuel was not made general secretary. This is even more astonishing since he was the first Ethiopian who had received a six-month visitation fellowship in the United States in 1955–1956. The most striking aspect in Aleme Emanuel’s final report is his opinion about the political purpose of the visiting program. He noted the political-cum- propagandistic nature of the program and that it was obviously “investigating the different countries’ popular feeling towards America and America’s foreign aid.” Since it emphasized the American role in the world as well as its standard of progress, Aleme was positive that there were many who realized: “This is propaganda.”48 The Cold War and its discourse about the “Communist threat,” along with a well-staffed and well-financed Soviet Cultural Institute in Addis Ababa that promoted a different kind of societal future, gave the American YMCA general secretaries great headaches, at least in the Ethiopian capital. In locations such as the provincial capital, Bahr Dar, the YMCA operated more pragmatically. In 1961, the Soviet Union had established a textile vocational training school for fifteen hundred students and asked the local Y to run the recreation center. Marvin Ludwig saw this situation as “a great challenge and a great opportunity to the YMCA. We must move ahead. This is the time and it is a strategic location to prove our ability to do the job and do it well.”49 MARVIN LUDWIG’S DREAMS: AN EAST AFRICAN LEADERSHIP TRAINING CENTER In June 1959, Merlin Bishop left Ethiopia and Marvin Ludwig took over his position as general secretary. Whereas Bishop had to concentrate his Late Imperial Ethiopia 245
leadership training activities in the Addis Ababa YMCA in order to lay a sound foundation, Ludwig could dream in much broader lines, both within the empire and beyond. The year 1960 marked the beginning of the decentralization, with the official opening of the Asmara YMCA on November 19. Its first general secretary, Menghisteab Tekle Haimanot, who had worked in the Eritrean government, received six months of intensive leadership training at the Addis Ababa YMCA before he took over responsibilities in Asmara.50 With the establishment of three additional YMCA branches in Addis Ababa, fifteen branches in other Ethiopian towns, and one branch in Asmara throughout the 1960s, leadership training became diversified and centralized at the same time. It was, on the one hand, tailored to the needs of a specific location and, on the other hand, implemented along the general lines of the Y’s leadership training. Vacation leadership courses, which were free to all YMCA members, seem to have been very much in demand. During summer vacation, staff members offered one hour per week on various subjects, and in 1961, 189 pupils attended ten different courses in physical education, group work, and group dynamics. Short-term evening courses were also offered, which equipped young men who had started to establish Y clubs in the rural areas with “leadership knowledge” in psychology and group dynamics. 51 Participation was certified and celebrated in a “Leadership Training Award Night.”52 No doubt this broad kind of training went far beyond the YMCA staff and member youths to include community leaders and assisted “in the training of teachers to teach.”53 Apart from this very important ground-up work of creating leadership “from below,” Marvin Ludwig also had a top-down version of leadership training on his agenda. As early as 1960, he began to push for the idea of developing the Addis Ababa YMCA into a broader African or at least East African leadership training center. The communication would involve various partners from the United States, including John F. Kennedy, 54 and the World Alliance in Geneva. The main arguments for this project were that the Addis Ababa Y had developed into a real success story and that Haile Selassie I University, which was conveniently located opposite the YMCA building in the Arat Kilo quarter, would be the perfect partner organization. What Ludwig had in mind was a broad cooperation with US institutions such as Springfield College and George Williams College, but also with the Department of Education of the University of Michigan or the Department of Agriculture of Oklahoma University. The aim was to provide the same training that “secretaries going abroad would receive . . . , since the Y.M.C.A. in Ethiopia has been developed along the same lines as the Y.M.C.A.’s. [sic] found in the U.S.”55 Marvin Ludwig might have been 246 Bromber
inspired to include the US universities by conversations with Herman Klein, director of Point Four in Ethiopia, and Ralph Fisher, program director of Point Four in Addis Ababa.56 By June 1951, Ethiopia and the United States had already signed the “Point Four Agreement for Technical Cooperation,” which at that point was progressing smoothly, especially at Alemaya College of Agriculture.57 However, two issues stood in the way of Ludwig’s plan. The first was that since 1962, the Uganda YMCA had already been holding an annual East African YMCA Leadership Training Institute.58 The second, more delicate issue was the perception by the International Committee that since Ethiopia was never colonized, it was largely different from other African states. Robbin Strong from the World Alliance, for example, was worried about the absence of a colonial welfare system to build on. In-service training, which would be the core of the courses, might fail because communication would be primarily in Amharic. The Protestant religion of the trainees from other parts of Africa, who would come to an Orthodox setting, was also seen as a problem.59 Overall, it was a fundamental questioning of Ethiopia’s “Africanness.” Commenting on Ludwig’s suggestion, Joel Nystrom, executive secretary of the International Committee, remarked that the establishment of a YMCA Professional Training Center in Addis Ababa in cooperation with the Haile Selassie I University would be contested “by some experts,” since Ethiopia was not “sufficiently African” compared with Kenya and “that time will tell how well Ethiopia will or will not be accepted as part of political Africa for the Africans.”60 Despite all the ongoing attempts to convince the International Committee, the World Alliance, and other East African YMCA general secretaries of the potential of an All-African Training Center in Addis Ababa, precisely because of Ethiopia’s important political role on the continent, the project remained a dream. The meeting of the Association of East African YMCA Secretaries in January 1964 highlighted the short-term leadership training conducted over five to six weeks at the Uganda YMCA. Since the participants also came from other East African countries, it was agreed that this model should be developed further for East Africa.61 After the meeting, Marvin Ludwig summarized that despite the good preconditions of the YMCAs in Ethiopia for international training, the high travel costs between Ethiopia and Kenya, Uganda, or Tanganyika suggested it would be better to concentrate the training program for secretaries on “Ethiopians in the Ethiopian movement.”62 It might be too bold to assume that refocusing on Ethiopia also kept resources, both material and human, in the country. Leadership training, however, was strengthened and diversified in a number of very creative Late Imperial Ethiopia 247
ways. These included a summer leadership project in 1966, where members of the college student leadership development group from Chicago worked as mentors with high school students from Addis Ababa. For Norris Lineweaver, who participated as one of the American college students, this was “an opportunity to develop bonds with high school students from Addis Ababa at the YMCA that would later form the core leadership group upon [his] return in September 1967.”63 Norris Lineweaver, who graduated from George Williams College in 1967, commenced his work in the same year at the Central YMCA in Addis Ababa. He provided “leadership support for building and strengthening the youth program” and was assigned to develop a new resident youth camp at the shores of Lake Langano, east of Bekele Mola. The camp was established in 1968 with funds from the Sahle Selassie Foundation and operated with money from the International Committee and local donors. Apart from developing the place into a Youth Resident Camping Site, “the facilities should be utilized to maximum use for purposes of training various leadership needs of the growing national Y.M.C.A. Movement in Ethiopia [producing] quality leadership in lay and staff circles.”64 To carry out the camp program, selected young YMCA leaders from various places all over Ethiopia and Asmara attended a Camp Councilor In-Service Training Course. Since some of them were to return to Camp Sahle Selassie as permanent staff, hopes were expressed that it could grow into a “truly national youth camp for ‘Nation Building’ in Ethiopia.”65 To operate the camp activities, especially the more rugged adventures, or “intensive outward experiences,” such as hiking around the lake, Norris Lineweaver received help from “experienced outdoor camp counsellors with unit leadership training” from Canada and the United States. One of them, Wally Secombe from the Toronto YMCA, also had experience as a street worker in Toronto. Secombe’s knowledge and the willingness of twelve camp counselors to actively support Norris Lineweaver in his outreach project with street children in Addis Ababa resulted in a ten-day comprehensive leadership-training seminar. This seminar especially targeted “young club members who will soon be taking responsibilities” and would continue under Lineweaver’s leadership after the Canadians’ departure. Lineweaver emphasized that the “core leadership in these programs come from leaders trained at this camp as well as previous leadership training programs of the Y.M.C.A. of Ethiopia.”66 As Norris Lineweaver remembered later, Operation Better Boys—Africa’s first street children program and a testing ground for local leadership—was launched literally without a budget, through creative ingenuity.67 248 Bromber
Some of the volunteers in the camp and in various YMCAs throughout Ethiopia had earlier served in the US Peace Corps or had come as Peace Corps workers to work within the YMCA. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to explain the relation between the Ethiopian YMCA and the US Peace Corps in detail, but it is important to note that Marvin Ludwig inquired as early as 1961 about the possibility of including Peace Corps workers.68 At first, it seems that US Peace Corps volunteers were simply cheaper than YMCA World Service volunteers. Beyond the issue of costeffectiveness, it is likely that Peace Corps volunteers were attractive because they were familiar with leadership training “American style.” Many African and Asian governments, however, increasingly suspected that the Peace Corps was an arm of the CIA. Although there is no proof of such cases in Ethiopia yet, it might be telling that the Peace Corps files disappeared from the Ethiopian National Archives. The year 1967 also saw the opening of a YMCA branch at Addis Ababa University during a very critical phase in the political history of the empire—the emergence of the Ethiopian Student Movement with a clearly anti-imperialist stance. The students regarded the American-led YMCA on campus as their specific target, and the Communist underground activist group the Crocodiles torpedoed the opening of the YMCA University Branch.69 Despite such opposition, the branch was established and formed the institutional backbone for the “peer leader project,” which the International Committee funded with a considerable sum of $2,000 in 1969.70 The project targeted university students (with and without prior YMCA involvement) as potential paid leaders within the Ethiopian YMCA. An outline of the training specified a one-hour attendance per week in the Peer Leader Training Seminar. Upon successful completion and approval by the YMCA general secretary, the student would have to work a maximum of fifteen hours in an assigned area under the supervision of a YMCA secretary. This specific training had two goals: one was to give students a head start for a potential career within the association; the other was to give the YMCA Council and the Personnel Committee the opportunity to identify potential cadres with secretarial abilities. The need to garner and groom secretarial leadership was a pressing issue due to the YMCA’s rapid expansion throughout the country at the end of the 1960s. This initiative coincided with a time of fundamental change. Politically, increasing unrest among students, the rural population, and Eritreans (who were fighting for independence) put the legitimacy of the imperial government into question. The late sixties also saw the most fundamental transition within the top leadership of the Ethiopian YMCA, which at the time was still loyal to the emperor. Late Imperial Ethiopia 249
GOING ABROAD AND COMING BACK— TRAINING IN THE UNITED STATES In September 1967, Desta Girma became the first Ethiopian general secretary. Marvin Ludwig described Desta as “key leadership . . . in flesh,” 71 while Ludwig continued as fraternal secretary until 1969 to guarantee a smooth transition. Born in 1936 in the town of Dessie, Desta attended the prestigious Teferi Mekonnen School in Addis Ababa, later studying at the Commercial College before he started work for the Ministry of Education. He became an enthusiastic member of the Y, having worked as a layman in the physical education program and from 1957 on as a staff member. Between 1960 and 1967, he spent longer periods at YMCA training institutions in the United States in preparation to enter the YMCA’s top leadership. His training abroad started in September 1960 with an International Visitation Fellowship at the YMCA Middleton, Ohio. Apart from training key leaders from Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America, these fellowships facilitated international understanding by “gaining a deeper knowledge of American life.” 72 This probably does not mean the same thing as what the first trainee abroad, Aleme Emanuel, wrote in his report about his stay in the mid-1950s, but despite changes in the Cold War discourse, the prestige of an American education remained. During his stay, Desta Girma inquired about studying for a degree at Springfield College or George Williams College. Despite his experience in physical education—Desta was secretary of the Ethiopian Basketball Federation and captain of the very successful YMCA basketball team—the general secretary of the Middleton Y advised him to go to George Williams College with its focus on community and boys’ work and reported his opinion to the International Committee.73 When he received a scholarship to study at George Williams College in Cleveland, Ohio, Marvin Ludwig asked the International Committee to work out a study program “in light of what Desta can do and what our needs are here [in Ethiopia]. The college must give him a test to determine his ability.” 74 The archival documents do not reveal if he was tested or how the results were used to tailor a special program for him. However, he studied at George Williams College between July 1963 and June 1966. Subsequently, Admasu Zirke, Adult Program secretary at the Addis Ababa YMCA, and Jarso Desta, physical education director of the Ethiopia YMCA, also went to George Williams College for a two-year period. Since Asmara became the second-most important YMCA within the empire, its general secretary, Menghisteab Tekle Haimanot, followed suit in attending a six-month training course in YMCA administration and 250 Bromber
management, counseling and guidance, and program development in 1966. In contrast to Desta Girma, he received training at several YMCAs in Canada and the United States.75 Not until in the first half of the 1970s did the Asmara YMCA become the focus of long-term training abroad too; Program and Physical Education Secretary Mengesha Beyene attended courses in the United States from two months to two years. Furthermore, a secretary received training before promotion or employment at another YMCA. When Yihedo Zelleke, for example, left his work as a program secretary at the Bahr Dar YMCA to work as executive secretary at the Asmara YMCA, he received training in “overall administration, fund raising, membership enrollment, administration of non-professional employees [and] record keeping” in Minneapolis.76 Only one applicant for further training abroad came from a “smaller” YMCA—Gebre Egziabher Gebremariam, a teacher by training, who later became the executive secretary at Jimma YMCA. The training of YMCA leaders abroad reveals two important aspects. First, all trainees went to North America, and, second, no one seems to have been sent to Springfield College, although it was well-known for its physical education program. This was highlighted in the cases of Jarso Desta and Mengesha Beyene. Instead, Ethiopian YMCA secretaries received training at George Williams College with its focus on community and boys’ work or at American YMCAs. Notably, applicants from Addis Ababa and Asmara had a much better chance of getting a scholarship to the United States or Canada than staff members from other provincial capitals. This chapter argued that the formation of leaders on various levels became one of the YMCA’s main tasks in Ethiopia after the end of the Italian occupation in 1941. It further argued that these leaders had to be endowed with particular visions, dispositions, and capacities through training. Although American officials considered leadership education in YMCAs of the global South, such as Egypt or India, to be a logical step, Ethiopian ideas about modern knowledge, places of education, and prestige led to an exclusive training in the global North, particularly the United States. Furthermore, all general or fraternal secretaries came from the International Committee. Thus, it may not be too farfetched to argue that the YMCA operated as one of several American programs and institutions like the Peace Corps, the Fulbright Program, and Point Four, which explicitly promoted an American model of progress. According to US officials, a careful molding or at least influencing of youth leaders in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East became a main concern of the Interagency Youth Committee of the US State Late Imperial Ethiopia 251
Department in the 1960s. This institution formulated a refined strategy to replace the rhetoric about the Communist threat by advertising American (democratic) political values.77 As the example of Aleme Emanuel’s training visit demonstrates, this strategy was already pursued by the Y, but not swallowed without criticism by the foreign participants. The chapter also demonstrated how the form of leadership training was decisively shaped not only by individuals among the North American general secretaries and volunteers, but also by Ethiopian staff members. A top-down structure of training the trainers and specific courses abroad and in Ethiopia produced various kinds of “leadership knowledge” for specific areas, such as sports, group work and street work, and agricultural projects. Depending on the (foreign) personnel on hand, this could also mean ad hoc measures with long-term consequences, as the examples of the Operation Better Boys and the Camp Langano training courses demonstrate. Furthermore, the courses not only transferred and produced specific knowledge, but also created different categories of leaders, such as the lay leader, the peer leader, and the key leader. However, the attempt to turn Addis Ababa into a leadership training center for East Africa, that is, to produce a role model of an “African” leader, as Marvin Ludwig imagined in the early 1960s, was unsuccessful because of Ethiopia’s exceptional political position on the continent as a country insufficiently “African.” By the mid-1970s, leadership training had become one of the trademarks of the YMCA in Ethiopia.78 It continued even after the removal of Emperor Haile Selassie I in 1974 and the establishment of the socialistoriented military government. The YMCA’s work among youth, especially underprivileged children, but also the training of local leadership, made the association attractive to political leaders with ideas of socialism. This kind of morality spread by the YMCA on a global level was obviously well in line with the baseline of a perceived socialist morality of promoting the underprivileged classes. The general secretary, Desta Girma, had already managed to leave Ethiopia by getting an International Committee post in New York in 1974. He was replaced by Tsegaw Ayele, formerly Sports Program director and since May 1973 associate general secretary to the National Council of YMCAs of Ethiopia. In a conversation with Marvin Ludwig, Tsegaw Ayele had already voiced his concern that the association might fall apart if Desta Girma were to leave.79 In 1975, the International Committee still allocated $10,000 as direct support to finance National Staff Development and Leadership Training Programs. Frank Kiehne, executive director of the International Division, expressed hopes “that through this partnership and program we can work together toward a better international understanding and eventual world peace.”80 Leadership 252 Bromber
training now revolved around the “YMCA’s role in Socialist Ethiopia” by contextualizing the training within the new political and ideological framework.81 Until 1978, the YMCA continued to work despite facing various setbacks, which included being repeatedly accused of spying for the CIA.82 The institution was increasingly attached to the Ministry of Sports and Culture, with Tsegaw Ayele being appointed deputy commissioner of sport. In 1978, the Ethiopian YMCA was nationalized. All 134 staff workers, including the key leaders, were retained by the government and assigned work in commissions and ministries.83 Again and quite similarly to the postwar situation, their YMCA leadership qualities were much needed to build a “New Ethiopia.” NOTES The project Progressive Citizen Bodies: Sports and Modernity in Ethiopia 1920–1974, on which this chapter is based, was supported with funds from the Federal Ministry for Education and Research. I am grateful to my esteemed teacher Seyoum Mulugeta, who patiently helped me translate the Amharic sources. Epigraph. Merlin Bishop to Paul Anderson, Report 1951, December 20, 1951, 2, Y.USA.9‑237, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1951–52, Kautz Family YMCA Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries. 1. James K. Quay to Dalton F. McClelland, May 6, 1946, 1, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1946–1947–1948, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 2. The USSR started its cultural diplomacy in 1945 with a “Soviet Permanent Exhibition” in Addis Ababa, which became the first Soviet Cultural Center in Africa. 3. Edward Said described him as “a genial Copt” in his book Out of Place: A Memoir (London: Granta Books, 2000), 16. 4. Minutes of the First Meeting to Plan the Establishment of a YMCA, Addis Ababa, February 8, 1947, 1, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1946–1947–1948, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 5. Minutes of the First Meeting to Plan the Establishment of a YMCA, Addis Ababa. 6. N. Kelada, Memorandum about the Extension Project into Ethiopia, February 1947, 1–2, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1946–1947–1948, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 7. Since the mid-nineteenth century, Greek, Armenian, Italian, French, and British immigrants had formed substantial communities in the empire. 8. He most probably was referring to David Talbot, who held a PhD from Columbia University and was editor of the Ethiopian Herald in Addis Ababa. 9. W. Harold Denison, “Expansion of the Y.M.C.A. Work in Ethiopia” (report), May 1950, 2, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1950/51, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 10. Program, February 1950, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1950/51, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. Late Imperial Ethiopia 253
11. Naguib Kelada, The Ethiopian Project: The Field, Its Opportunities, Handicaps and Immediate Needs, Mainau, July 4, 1949, 3, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1946–1947–1948, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 12. The financial issue was intermittently discussed between Addis Ababa and Cairo as well as with the World Alliance and the International Committee. 13. Rudolf P. Wiens, Senior Secretary of Egypt, Cairo, to Dalton F. McClelland, International Committee YMCA, September 17, 1948, 3, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1946–1947–1948, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 14. Wiens to McClelland, September 17, 1948. 15. Tracy Strong, World Alliance, to Dalton F. McClelland, August 9, 1949, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1946– 1947–1948, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 16. W. H. Denison to Paul Anderson, March 21, 1950, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1950/51, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 17. The correspondence contains different spellings of the name, which here are kept in the original form. 18. Tamrat Igezou to Dalton McLealand [sic] Clelland, November 7, 1949, 2, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1946– 1947–1948, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 19. Dalton McClelland to Tamrat Igezu and Michel Wassef, March 24, 1951, 1, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1950/51, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 20. Merlin Bishop to Dalton McClelland, October 7, 1951, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1950/51, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 21. Lennig Sweet to Merlin A. Bishop, November 2, 1951, 2, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1950/51, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 22. Dalton McClelland to Naguib Kelada, telegram, December 21, 1951, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1950/51, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 23. Bishop to Anderson, Report 1951, December 20, 1951, 2. 24. Merlin A. Bishop to Eugene Barnett, January 22, 1952, 1, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1952, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 25. Bishop to Barnett, January 22, 1952, 2. 26. Dalton McClelland to Herbert P. Lansdale, report about his visit to Ethiopia, November 13, 1952, 2–4, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1952, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 27. Merlin A. Bishop to Paul Anderson, April 4, 1952, 2, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1952, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 28. Dalton McClelland to Herbert P. Lansdale, January 18, 1955, 1, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1955, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 254 Bromber
29. Merlin Bishop to Floyd A. Wilson, YMCA Bangkok (Thailand), October 6, 1953, 3, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1953–54, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 30. McClelland to Lansdale, Ethiopia report, November 13, 1952, 5. 31. Merlin A. Bishop to Lennig Sweet, April 9, 1955, 1, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1955, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 32. Programme for the Visit of His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of Ethiopia to India, October 25th to November 17th, 1956, Ethiopian National Archives (ENA) 1.2.50.07. During this visit, the emperor was introduced to India’s National Discipline Scheme, which began operations in 1954. According to the official photographer of the visit, the scheme aimed at “infusing the ideals of discipline and good citizenship through programs which lay emphasis on physical fitness, organized sports, discipline, self-control, individual leadership and patriotism.” Displaced Children Performance under the National Discipline Scheme, November 7, 1956. Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Photographic Collection, IES H 13 Haile Selassie’s visit to India 1956. 33. The only documented knowledge transfer relates to a visit by J. P. Phillips, visiting secretary from the YMCA of India in spring 1968. Owen Manchester, Fraternal Secretary Asmara, June 1968, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 2, Correspondence 1968 (January–June), Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 34. Bishop to Wilson, October 6, 1953, 3. 35. Merlin Bishop to Paul M. Limbert, June 25, 1954, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1953–54, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 36. In his Terminal Report to His Imperial Majesty (June 30, 1956), Bishop explicitly listed a YMCA in Eritrea as one of the five major tasks ahead. Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1956, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 37. Merlin A. Bishop to Lennig Sweet, September 21, 1954, 1, Y.USA.9‑237, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1953–54, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 38. Tamrat Yegazou, YMCA President, to Lennig Sweet, National Council of YMCAs, February 14, 1955, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1955, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 39. Lennig Sweet to Merlin A. Bishop, March 7, 1955, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1955, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 40. Merlin A. Bishop to Gerrit B. Douwsma, National Council, September 13, 1955; Report 1955 to International Committee, 1, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1955, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 41. “YMCA Arat Kilo,” Y Blog, accessed December 6, 2017, http://www.ymca .8m.net. 42. Lennig Sweet to Merlin A. Bishop, May 27, 1955, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1955, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 43. Quoted in Report by Kenneth I. Brown, Executive Director, Danforth Foundation, 2, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 6, Correspondence 1961, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. Late Imperial Ethiopia 255
44. Participation report, 1958, 4, 6, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 5, Correspondence 1958, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 45. Marvin Ludwig, End of Term Report, May 1959 through July 22, 1962, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 46. Merlin A. Bishop to Emery M. Nelson, National Council of YMCAs, January 24, 1959, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1959, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 47. Merlin A. Bishop to Marvin J. Ludwig (in the United States at that time), February 27, 1959, 1, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1959, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 48. Final Report—Aleme Emmanuel, n.d., Y.USA.35, International Visitation Fellowship/Fellowship Training Program, Reports 1948–1971 box 1, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 49. Marvin Ludwig to Joel Nystrom, April 11, 1962, 2, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 6, Correspondence 1963, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 50. Marvin Ludwig to Joel Nystrom, September 17, 1960, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1960, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 51. Report by Kenneth I. Brown, Executive Director, Danforth Foundation, 4, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 6, Correspondence 1961, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 52. Leadership Training Course, September 1963, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 6, Correspondence 1963, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 53. Marvin Ludwig to Millard Collins, report about the last four months, May 21, 1964, 4, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1964 (January–June), Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 54. Glen Olds to John F. Kennedy, November 18, 1960, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1960, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 55. Marvin Ludwig to Robbin Strong, World Alliance, November 17, 1960, 1, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1960, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 56. Guest List, Notes on Ethiopia (YMCAs), July 27, 1959, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 5, Correspondence 1959, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 57. Amanda Kay Mcvety, “Pursuing Progress: Point Four in Ethiopia,” Diplomatic History 32, no. 3 (2008): 371–403. 58. When plans for the Addis Ababa–based East African leadership training institute did not materialize, Marvin Ludwig participated in the East African Secretary Training Program, Entebbe, Uganda, June 9–July 7, 1965. Some of My Correspondence and Reports to International Committee (1962–65), Y.USA.35, Marvin Ludwig papers, box 7, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 59. Robbin Strong to Marvin Ludwig, November 3, 1960, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1960, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 256 Bromber
60. Joel Nystrom to Marvin Ludwig, April 3, 1963, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 6, Correspondence 1963, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 61. Report, Leadership Training for YMCA Secretaries in East Africa, Y.USA.9‑237, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1964 (January–June), Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 62. Marvin Ludwig to Joel Nystrom, March 24, 1964, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 1, Correspondence 1964 (January–June), Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 63. Dr. Norris Lineweaver, personal communication, December 11, 2017. 64. Special Report, Future Development Plans, Sahle Selassie YMCA Camp, December 30, 1968, 2 (emphasis mine), Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia, Reports, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 65. Special Report, Future Development Plans, Sahle Selassie YMCA Camp, 4. 66. Report by Student World Service Worker (probably Norris Lineweaver), September 14, 1968, 3, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 2, Correspondence 1968 (July–December), Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 67. Norris Lineweaver, e-mail to the author, December 11, 2017. For further information about Operation Better Boys, see Katrin Bromber, “Make Them Better Citizens: YMCA Training in Late Imperial Ethiopia (1950s–1970s),” Annales d’Ethiopie 32 (2018): 35–39. 68. Joel Nystrom to Marvin Ludwig, June 30, 1961, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 6, Correspondence 1961, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 69. Marvin Ludwig to Millard Collins, April 4, 1968, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 2, Correspondence 1968 (January–June), Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 70. Millard Collins to Marvin Ludwig, May 7, 1968, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 2, Correspondence 1968 (January–June), Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 71. Marvin Ludwig to Joel Nystrom, September 5, 1967, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 2, Correspondence 1967 (July–December), Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 72. Introducing Ato Desta Girma, July 15, 1960, Personal File Desta Girma, Y.USA.35, International Visitation Fellowship/Fellowship Training Program, Reports 1948–1971 box 2, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 73. Ralph S. Knight to Garrett B. Douwsma, October 17, 1960, Personal File Desta Girma, Y.USA.35, International Visitation Fellowship/Fellowship Training Program, Reports 1948–1971 box 2, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 74. Marvin J. Ludwig to Garret B. Douwsma, April 30, 1963, Personal File Desta Girma, Y.USA.35, International Visitation Fellowship/Fellowship Training Program, Reports 1948–1971 box 2, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 75. Fellowship Training Program, n.d., Personal File Teclehaimanot Menghisteab, Y.USA.35, International Visitation Fellowship/Fellowship Training Program, Reports 1948–1971 box 2, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 76. Fellowship Training Program, n.d., Personal File Yihedo Zelleke, Y.USA.35, International Visitation Fellowship/Fellowship Training Program, Reports 1948–1971 box 1, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 77. “Emphasis on Youth. Reaching and Influencing Leaders,” RG-353, P5, box 2: State Dept., Records of Inter- and Intra- Departmental Committees, Interagency Youth Late Imperial Ethiopia 257
Committee, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD. I am grateful to Franziska Roy for kindly sharing this document with me. 78. Sports is another field that has been strongly associated with the Ethiopian Y to this day. 79. Confidential Reports by Marvin Ludwig on his Field Contact Visit in AA, March 14–18, 1973, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 4, Correspondence 1970–71, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 80. Frank Kiehne to Tsegaw Ayele, January 30, 1975, 1, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 4, Correspondence 1975, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 81. Tsegaw Ayele, Ethiopian YMCA, National Council Appeal to Member Movements, August 1975, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 4, Correspondence 1975, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 82. Confidential Report of Visit by Richard T. Bertucco, International Division New York, May 30–June 3, Ethiopia, August 29, 1977, 1, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 4, Correspondence 1976–1977, Kautz Family YMCA Archives. 83. Hector Caselli to Members of the Executive Committee, National General Secretaries, October 7, 1977, 3, Y.USA.9‑2-37, YMCA International Work in Ethiopia box 4, Correspondence 1976–1977, Kautz Family YMCA Archives.
258 Bromber
Contributors
Lou Antolihao is lecturer in the Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore, where he teaches courses on social theory, cultural sociology, sociology of the body, and sports studies. He is the author of Playing with the Big Boys: Basketball, American Imperialism, and Subaltern Discourse in the Philippines (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015). Ryan Bean is reference and outreach archivist for the Kautz Family YMCA Archives, a position he has held since 2009. Ryan has contributed chapters to academic volumes on themes as diverse as the YMCA in China and the role of archives in undergraduate education. Katrin Bromber is senior researcher at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin. She received her PhD in African linguistics from the University of Leipzig, Germany, and her habilitation degree in African studies from the University of Vienna, Austria. She currently works on the social history of sports in Ethiopia and has published on sports, citizenship, and Ethiopian modernity in The International Journal of the History of Sports and Northeast African Studies. Together with Birgit Krawietz and Joseph Maguire, she coedited Sport Across Asia: Politics, Cultures and Identities (2013). Her latest publications include “ ‘Make Them Better Citizens’: YMCA Training in Late Imperial Ethiopia (1950s–1970s),” Annales d’Ethiopie 32 (2019). She coedited with Jakob Krais a special issue titled “Shaping the ‘New Man’ in Africa, Asia and the Middle East: Practices, Networks and Mobilization (1940s–1960s),” Comparativ 28, 5 (2019). Doina Anca Cretu is Max Weber postdoctoral fellow at the European University Institute in Florence. She holds a PhD in international history from the Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. She was previously junior fellow at the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna; Swiss National Science 259
Foundation Doc.Mobility Fellow at University of Oxford; and visiting scholar at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her research focuses on twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europe with specific interest in humanitarianism; development; refugees; nationalism and national indifference; and the relationship between social policy, culture, and foreign relations. Lance Cummings is assistant professor of English in the professional writing program at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. In addition to researching histories of rhetoric, Dr. Cummings explores rhetoric and writing in technologically and linguistically diverse contexts in both his research and his teaching. He has published chapters on rhetoric and multimodality in the edited volumes Making Space: Writing Instruction, Infrastructure, and Multiliteracies and President Donald Trump and His Political Discourse. His work has also been published in Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization; Business and Professional Communication Quarterly; and Res Rhetorica. Harald Fischer-Tiné is full professor of modern global history at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. He holds a PhD in South Asian history from the University of Heidelberg and has published extensively on global history, South Asian colonial history, and the history of the British Empire. From 2010 to 2015 he directed a research group on the global history of the anti-alcohol movement. Currently, he is doing research on the history of the YMCA in South Asia (1890–1964). Paul Hillmer is professor of history at Concordia University, St. Paul, Minnesota. His research interests include US history during the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, the history of the Hmong in Asia and the diaspora, and the YMCA. He has written and published histories of the Cleveland, Ohio, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, Ys and authored A People’s History of the Hmong (2010). Stefan Huebner is senior research fellow at the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore. He is an international historian whose work is focused on issues rooted in modern Japan, Asia, and the West. Among the issues he is particularly interested in are the histories of modernization and development policies from late colonialism until the present. He was US SSRC Fellow at Harvard University and Fulbright scholar also at Harvard, and held fellowships at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the German Historical Institute, Washington, DC, 260 Contributors
and the German Institute for Japanese Studies Tokyo. He received his PhD from Jacobs University Bremen, Germany, in 2015. Ondřej Matějka studied history at Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris), Princeton University, and University of Geneva, where he got his PhD. Since 2006, he has taught contemporary European history and methodology of social sciences at the Institute of Area Studies at Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic. He also regularly collaborates with the department of history of the University of Geneva. His research interests include the social and cultural history of religion in the Czech lands, generational history, and the encounter of national and transnational dynamics around educational modernization projects. Dolf-Alexander Neuhaus is currently finishing his PhD at the Japanese Studies Department, Free University Berlin, which analyzes transnational interactions between Korean students and Japanese intellectuals during the Meiji and Taishō eras in Japan. From August 2011 to December 2015, he was research fellow at Free University Berlin, Japanese Studies Department. From 2015 to autumn 2017 he was research fellow at the Institute of Korean Studies, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main. In 2018 he taught at the Japanese Studies Department, Free University Berlin. Margaret Mih Tillman, graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, is currently assistant professor of Chinese history at Purdue University. Author of Raising China’s Revolutionaries: Modernizing Childhood for Cosmopolitan Nationalists and Liberated Comrades, 1920s–1950s (2018), she focuses on cultural and social history in twentieth-century China. Ian Tyrrell retired as scientia professor of history at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, and is now emeritus professor of history. He has been visiting professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris and at the University of California, Los Angeles. He served as the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professor of American History at the University of Oxford for 2010–2011 and was appointed professorial fellow of the Queen’s College, Oxford.
Contributors 261
Index
Page numbers in boldface refer to illustrations. Abe Isoo, 83, 111 Academic YMCA, 147–148, 155–157, 159, 160–163 Addis Ababa YMCA, 238, 242–244, 246, 250 African American, 19, 225 agnosticism, 155 agricultural education: in China, 42; global diffusion of, 52; in India, 43–44; “rural leadership” and, 7 agricultural reform: in British India, 42, 45, 50; cash crops and, 44; indigenous “go-betweens” and, 46; programs, 6. See also rural reconstruction alcohol, 9, 11, 19, 50, 172 amateur sports: American Protestant ideals of, 100–102, 109, 111, 114; in China, 104; in Japan, 110–114 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), 42 American Expeditionary Forces Championships, 99 American Indian Movement, 213, 227 American Indians: exploitation of, 226; respect for, 222, 229; self-esteem of, 230. See also Native Americans Americanization: of the American, 206–207; of immigrant communities in the US, 9, 130, 197, 199, 201, 206–208; movement, 193 American missionaries: in China, 11, 12, 42; in India, 11, 14, 42, 44; in Japan, 11, 67, 82–83; in Korea, 11, 42, 83, 84; in the Philippines, 11 American Red Cross, 170 Anderson, Dame Adelaide, 123 anti-apartheid, 20 anticolonial nationalism: global, 3; in India, 16; after World War I, 20, 102, 108
anti-Nazi Confessing Church Movement, 160 anti-Semitism, 26, 161, 171, 181, 184 anti-vice, 172 Asian Games, 74, 108 Asmara YMCA, 246, 251 athletics, 74, 243 Averescu, Alexandru, 182 Ayele, Tsegaw, 252 Baptist Missionary Society, 71 Barth, Karl, 25, 147, 158–160 Barthian theology, 148, 158, 162–163 Bascara, Domingo, 67 baseball: in Japan, 83, 87, 88, 111; in Romania, 176 basketball: in the Czech Republic, 151; in Ethiopia, 250; invention of, 9, 83, 101; in the Philippines, 74; in Romania, 176 Belay, Ewmetu, 242 Belew, Germa, 242 Beyene, Mengesha, 251 Bishop, Merlin A., 237, 241–245 Blair, Hugh, 197 Bolshevik Revolution, 179 bolshevism: growing strength of, 176; Judaism and, 184; spread of, 152, 162 Boxer Rebellion, 70 Boy Scouts, 173, 218, 237 Boys’ Work: character building through, 171, 175, 215; educational facet of, 173, 221; education in, 251; in Ethiopia, 241, 244, 250; nation building and, 175, 177; in Romania, 171, 173–178, 182; trans national character of, 25; in the United States, 221, 223 British Raj: devolution of, 47; inequalities under, 44
263
Brockman, Fletcher, 66, 72–73 Brown, Elwood S., 12, 19, 72, 74, 99–102, 107–108 Brown, James, 173–175, 178 Burroughs, John, 216 bushidō: idea of Japanese supremacy and, 24, 81, 92; ideals of masculinity in, 81, 86–87, 94, 111; as invented tradition, 86; Japanese Christianity and, 24, 80, 81, 88–89, 91, 100–101, 111; Japanization of Koreans through, 92, 94; reception of, in western countries, 86; refutation of western superiority and, 86, 92–93 Butterfield, Kenyon, 46, 52, 54 Cairo Central YMCA, 18 Catholic: immigrants, 8; Indian Christians, 49; majority, in the Philippines, 11, 18, 74, 101, 107; missions, 50 Catholic Church: in Czech Republic, 147, 149, 150, 153; in Latin America, 18–19; in the Philippines, 76 Chabon, Michael, 229 “character work,” 152 Chase, Chevy, 228 Chen, Gideon (Chen Qitian), 124, 128 Chen Shanming, 135 Cheng Wanzhen, 124, 134 Chiang Kai-shek, 75, 126 childcare, 125, 130–131, 133 child labor, 123–125, 128, 130 Child Labor Bylaw, 125–126 Child Labor Commission, 125–127 China Educational Commission, 46 Chinese Communist Party (CPC), 126 Chinese students, 14, 67, 70, 103–104 Chinese YMCA: affiliations of Korean YMCA with, 84, 99; branches, 63; leaders, 66; physical directors, 102–104, 113; social service and, 120 Christian brotherhood, 169, 171, 178 Christian Citizenship Program, 218, 221 Christian internationalism, 3, 9, 40, 54, 100–101 Chung, Lily, 134 Chur, A. S. F., 67 CIA, 249, 253 Citizenship: Christian, 173, 223; “constructive,” 6; development of, 74; training, 12, 26, 100, 109, 169, 223; values of, 67 civilization: American, 74, 103, 109, 205; Chinese, 205–206; Christian, 52, 204–205; “clash of,” 62; industrial, 202;
264 Index
Japanese, 81, 86, 91; modern, 73, 205; Protestant, 107; Western, 71, 87, 103, 161, 206, 213 civilizing mission: American, 103, 106, 130; Japanese, 81, 89–90; resistance against, 101; in Romania, 172; sports-related, 101, 103, 107; western rhetoric of, 7, 102; YMCA and YWCA, 16–17, 102, 104, 112–114 Civil Rights Act, 225 civil rights movement, 26, 225 Codreanu, Corneliu Zelea, 184 Coker, Christopher, 212–214 Cold War, 23, 26, 213, 221, 237, 245, 250 Cole, George H., 73 Collegiate YMCA, 149, 151, 159, 162 colonialism: effects of, 40; European, 42; Japanese, 24, 124, 137; missionaries and, 54, 63; US, 26, 106, 113; Y’s relationship with, 3 colonization: of Korea, 80, 90; of the Philippines, 70, 76 Committee for the Help of Democratic Spain, 161 communalism, 44 Communism, 106, 123, 125, 137, 184 Communist(s): activists, 249; in Africa, 20, 27; in China, 14, 24–25, 106, 126, 136–137; presumed affiliation of Y with, 184; threat, 245, 252 Confucianism, 88, 105, 205 consumer goods, 212, 215 consumerism, 199, 214 conversion: of Asian continent, 40, 42; in China, 61, 71, 74, 132; of colleges, 2; in India, 44–45, 53; in Japan, 82, 100–101; in Korea, 84 converts: Indian, 44, 47, 49; Korean, 83–85 Cook, Joseph, 203 Coppock, Grace, 120 Crazy Horse, 226 Czechoslovak YMCA, 147–148, 150–152, 155, 157, 160 Danish cooperative movement, 47 Das, Dora Maya, 49 Davis, Donald, 172, 175 daycare, 122, 130–132 decolonization, 7, 101 Deloria, Philip, 229 Deng, Cora, 137 Desta Girma, 250–252 developmentalism, 3, 52
Dillingham Commission, 196, 206 Dingman, Mary, 123 Doggett, Laurence L., 108 Dōshisha University, 85 Eastern Christianity, 85 Ebina Danjō, 85, 88, 89 economic advancement, 16 Eddy, George Sherwood, 44–48, 50–51, 125, 180 education: childhood, 130, 133; higher, 7; hygiene, 72–73, 131, 177; Indian, 40; industrial, 84; institutions of, 19, 64, 68, 70, 83; language, 26, 68–70, 194–198, 204; leadership, 238–239, 243, 251; mass, 6, 14, 24, 62, 113, 213; military, 92; missionary, 53; moral, 8, 82, 175; reform, 47; religious, 148; science and technology, 72; shift from conversion to, 61, 68, 71, 74; women’s, 16, 25, 127, 136; workers’, 128, 176; youth, 49, 68, 169, 171–174, 177, 186, 223, 237. See also agricultural education; physical education effeminacy/effeminate, 8, 86, 89–90, 92, 94 Egyptian National Council of the YMCAs of Egypt, 238 Egyptian Scouts Movement, 239 Egyptian Young Men’s Muslim Association, 18 Eisner, Michael, 227–228 Elmhirst, Leonard, 45 Emanuel, Aleme Selass W., 242, 244–245, 250, 252 engineering: expertise, 61, 72; projects, 44 Ethiopian YMCA, 237–244, 249, 251, 253 ethnic minorities: in China, 121–122; in Czech Republic, 152, 155; in Romania, 170–171, 178–179, 182–183; tensions between, 158, 180; in the US, 230 ethnology, 196, 204 Eurasians: in China, 65; female, 16; presence of, 66 European Student Relief Program, 179 evangelization: ban on, 83; of the college world, 2; of Japan, 67; in Korea, 80, 90; in Taiwan, 92; of the world, 53, 82. See also conversion famine: in China, 43, 124; in India, 42, 44; relief, 42–43, 55 Far Eastern Championship Games (FECG): Chinese team for, 104; Fifth, in Shanghai, 110; First, in Manila, 72; 74;
foundation of, 12, 100; Japanese team for, 110; Tenth, in Manila, 108; Third, in Tokyo, 101 fascist: Italy, 213, 237; Orthodox movement, 184; youth organizations, 26 Fawcett, Farrah, 228 Federation of Women’s Boards of Foreign Missions, 123 female labor, 120, 130 female volunteerism, 121. See also women’s work Fisher, Galen, 63, 67, 91 Fisher, Ralph, 247 folk dances, 109 food: provision, 135; shortages, 135–136; supplies, 21, 226 Foster, John W., 205 Four Fronts program, 222, 224 Free Thought movement, 150, 153 Friday, Joe, 216, 217, 218–219, 225, 231 funding, of YMCA: economic use of, 102; through governor-general in Korea, 81, 93; Great Depression and, 22; through International Committee, 19, 248–249; limitations of, 107, 113; through local elites, 70; through philanthropic contacts in the United States, 49; raising of, 21, 45, 51, 161; from the United Nations, 135 Gandhi, Mahatma, 16, 47, 49, 51 Gebremariam, Gebre Egziabher, 251 General Federation of Labor, 125 Gengsheng, Hao, 105, 113 Gen’yōsha (Dark Ocean Society), 87 George Williams College, 246, 248, 250–251 Gouin, François, 199 Grade School Y (Gra-Y), 221–222 Gray, John H., 106, 113 Great Depression, 22, 106, 220 Green, Rayna, 229 Guomindang (Chinese Nationalist Party), 14, 113, 121–122, 126 Gusti, Dimitrie, 180, 183 Haimanot, Menghisteab Tekle, 246, 250 Hapke, Arhur A., 220 Harding, Warren G., 214 Harrison, Agatha, 123 Havel, Václav Maria, 153 Haygood, Laura, 134 healthcare, 103, 107. See also public health Hefelfinger, William, 220, 229 Index 265
Hinder, Eleanor, 123 Hines, W. E., 129 Hi-Y, 221–222, 243 hockey, 219 Honda Yōichi, 85, 90 Hromádka, Josef Lukl, 147, 154–157, 159–163 Hu Binxia, 134 humanism, 153, 159 Hunnicutt, Benjamin, 44, 52 hygiene: campaigns, 12, 129; personal, 72; rural, 6; scientific, 129, 131, 134; social, 2, 126; urban, 2, 13 Imai Toshimichi (John Toshimichi Imai), 89 immigrant(s): Catholic, 8; education and, 26, 194–195, 197–199, 201–202; egalitarian view of, 206; integration of, 9, 193; Italian, 193; modernization of, 196–199, 204; work, 204–205, 207 Immigration Act, 206 imperialism: American, 23, 41, 70, 159; anti-, 3; benevolent, 75; dichotomies of, 63; and globalization, 75; high, 40, 54; Japanese, 81, 84–85, 89; late, 7; linguistic, 194; missionaries and, 54, 66, 84, 121; Western, 65; Y’s relationship with, 3, 16 Imperial Rescript of Education (Kyōiku Chokugo), 88 Independence Club (Tongnip Hyŏphoe), 83 Indian National Congress (INC), 44, 47 Indian YMCA, 21, 46–49, 51–52 indigenization: of Christian conversions, 40; of the Indian YMCA, 48; policy, 12, 15, 17, 49; struggles of, 66; of the YMCA in the Philippines, 76; of Y staff, 24 industrialization: in Britain, 8; in China, 120; dislocation and, 213; female labor and, 120, 130; foundation of YMCA and, 64; inequalities created by, 3; “progressive” reformers and, 8 industrial revolution, 212, 215 Inoue Tetsujirō, 88 Inter-Allied Games, 99 International Association of Agricultural Missions (IAAM), 52 International Committee of the YMCA: Africa and the, 26, 237–243, 247, 250–252; budget of, 19, 22, 248–249; employees of, 1, 51, 53, 72, 238, 241, 243, 251–252; local branches’ disagreements with, 63, 67; YWCA and the, 12
266 Index
International Congress of Working Women in Geneva, 124 internationalism: in Asia, 63; imperialism and, 54; World War II and, 221; YMCA and, 20, 25; YWCA and, 136. See also Christian internationalism; interwar period International Labor Organization (ILO), 122–123 International Olympic Committee, 12, 19, 100, 114 interwar period: Christian internationalism during, 3, 39–40, 54; in Czech Republic, 147–148, 154, 159, 163; discourse of Churches during, 53; in Eastern Europe, 169; FECG during, 100; nationalism in Asia during, 24; in Romania, 26, 73, 183, 186; social engineering during, 21; US cities during, 9; women’s work during, 121 Itō Hirobumi, 85 James Yen (Yan Yangchu), 14 Japan Congregational Church (JCC), 85, 90, 93–94 Japanese Imperial Army, 83 Japanese missionaries, 80–81, 84, 90, 92 Japanese nationalism, 88 Japanese Protestant schools, 85 Japanese YMCA, 24, 76, 80–83, 85–86, 90–91, 94, 125 Japan Presbyterian Church, 85 Jasen, Patricia, 219 Jewish: anti-, 183–184; boys, in YMCA programs, 182; citizens, in Romania, 26, 182–183; pro-, 182, 185; “question,” 171, 181, 183–184, 186; staff, in YMCA, 182; students, 183 Jim Crow, 19, 222 Jimma YMCA, 251 Johannot, Henri, 176 Johnson, Elmer, 18 Joint Committee of Shanghai Women’s Organizations, 125 Joint Committee of Women’s Clubs, 122 judo, 100–101, 113 Junior Hi-Y, 221–222, 242 Kabo reforms (Kabo kyŏngjang), 84 Kanō Jigorō, 99–101, 110–111 Kelada, Naguib, 238–240 Keltner, Harold, 216, 218–220, 225, 230 Kemalist Revolution, 23
Kennedy, John F., 225–226, 246 Kiehne, Frank, 252 King, Martin Luther, 225 Kingdom of Christ, 3 Kingdom of God, 41, 52, 159, 184 Klein, Herman, 247 Klopsch, Louis, 43 Kokuryūkai (Amur River Society), 87 Komatsu Takeji, 90 Kong Xiangxi, 123 Korean Imperial Rescript, 83 Korean YMCA, 24, 80, 83–84, 90–91, 93 Kyŏngsŏng Haktang (Seoul Academy), 85 language: barriers, 104; Czech, 151; English, 26, 40, 68, 127, 129, 193–194, 196–197, 203; indigenous, 204; instruction, 26, 68, 70, 127, 129, 152, 193–195, 200–201, 204; local, 68; nation building and, 170; native, 194, 197, 203; pedagogy, 195; in the Philippines, 70; policies, 195; proficiency, 133; religious, 152; translation of, 86; and US immigration work, 194, 197–199, 201, 207–208 Laozi, 105 Latin American Games, 19 leadership: in Egypt, 239; Ethiopian, 241–243, 245; future, 21; Indian, 15; Japanese, 91; Korean, 91; lay, 222, 239, 241; local, 63, 66, 104, 241–243, 248, 252; Philippine, 9, 108; Romanian, 169, 171, 173–178; transfer of, 102, 106, 108; women and, 9, 122, 126, 130–131; of YMCA, 13, 48–49, 66, 104, 150, 185, 207, 250 leadership training: camps, 27, 248; in Egypt, 239; in Ethiopia, 237–238, 240, 242–249; in India, 49; in Romania, 171, 173; sports and, 22, 244; in the United States, 250–252 League of Nations, 20, 86, 122, 127, 176, 214 lectures: on child psychology, 129; in China, 123; community, 61; mass, 24, 62, 75; religious, 71; science, 72–73; traveling, 45, 73 Legion of Archangel Michael, 184 Lineweaver, Norris, 248 “linguistic imperialism,” 194 literacy: campaigns, 13–14; cultural, 70–71; lack of, 106; mass, 13, 72; tests, 206; training, in indigenous languages, 204
local YMCA secretaries, 66, 242 Lockwood, William W., 103 Ludwig, Marvin, 243–247, 249–250, 252 Ludwig, Ruth, 244 Lyon, Willard, 63, 66 MacArthur, Douglas, 221 Madras College of Physical Education, 15 Madras Legislative Council, 50 Manila Carnival, 12, 72 Manila YMCA, 65, 72–74 Mao Zeodong, 14 March First Movement, 81, 93 Marshall Plan, 221 Martin, Arhur E., 231 Masaryk, Tomáš Garrigue, 148–150, 153, 156–157, 162 Masaryková, Olga, 148, 150 masculinity: American, 193–194, 199, 202; Japanese, 80–81, 86–87; Korean, 84; nation building and, 173, 184, 193–194; native, 122; Protestant Christian, 24, 100, 114; sports and, 100, 102, 111–113 May, Karl, 211 May Thirtieth Movement, 126 McClelland, Dalton, 242 Meiji administration, 16, 81–82, 86–88, 110, 124 Mencius, 205 missionary revivalism, 82 Mitsui family, 85 mobility: Christian missions and, 67, 73; moral impact of, 65; of young Asians, 67, 73 modernity: American, 27, 173, 212, 214; Asian cities and, 64; English language and, 69; “idiom of,” 198; “laboratory of,” 107; mediation of, 23, 25–26, 61–62, 72, 76, 137, 173, 177–178, 185, 238; native elites and, 131; Protestant, 2–3, 6, 11, 17–18, 70–71, 73–74; religion and, 147–149, 153, 163; social problems related to, 65, 212, 214–216, 218. See also Social Gospel modernization: American imperialism and, 41; in Czech Republic, 25; in Ethiopia, 238; global, 3, 5; hygiene and, 177; in India, 44; indigenous practice of, 170; in Japan, 44; physical education and, 8; in Romania, 176, 180, 186; United States as role model of, 12; YMCA as agent of, 64, 75, 121, 203 Index 267
Moody, Dwight L., 203 moral empire: American Y’s, 4, 11, 65, 101, 113–114; in China, 106; informal character of, 11 Morgan, William G., 9, 169, 174, 180 Mott, John Raleigh, 1, 49, 53–54, 91, 148, 150, 158 Muir, John, 216 “muscular Christianity,” 6, 8, 83, 94, 100–102, 107, 111, 151, 158, 162, 193. See also masculinity museums, 69, 71–73 Musset, Alfred de, 213 Naismith, James, 9 Nash, Roderick, 215 National Child Welfare Association, 123 National Christian Union, 183 National Council of YMCAs, 242, 252 nationalism: in Asia, 20, 24; Chinese, 121–122, 126; Christian, 75; Indian, 16, 43–44, 47; Japanese, 88, 111–112; Korean, 84, 94; Philippine, 112; rise of, 63; Romanian, 184; secular, 23. See also anticolonial nationalism National Longhouse, 224, 226, 228 nation building: in Ethiopia, 248; programs, 12; in Romania, 169, 171–175, 177–179, 181–185 Native American(s): appropriation of, 226–228, 230; civil rights movement and, 225, 227; customs and culture, 211, 218; media depictions of, 222, 226, 229 native speaker, 26, 194–195, 197–198, 203–204 Nazi Germany, 160, 162, 213 neoorthodox theology, 25, 147, 148, 156–160, 162–163 Nevius plan, 83 Nez Perce, 227 Nitobe Inazō, 85, 91 Niwa Seijirō, 84, 91 Non-Church Movement (Mukyōkai Undō), 89 noncooperationist movement, 47 Northfield meeting, 82 nügong (womanly work; woman’s work), 120 Nystrom, Joel, 247 Obrodné Hnutí Československého Studenstva (OHČS), 153–155 Ojibwa Indian, 212, 214 Okabe Heita, 24, 109–110, 114
268 Index
Okada Gentaro, 125 Okada Tetsuzō, 81, 91 Ōkuma Shigenobu, 85 Olympic Games, 104 Opium Wars, 124, 126 orphans, 135, 161, 175 Oshikawa Masayoshi, 85, 87 Oshikawa Shunrō, 87 Ottoman Empire, 18 Pan-Asianism, 93 pantheism, 154–155 Paris Peace Conference, 170 Paul, K. T., 23, 46–47, 51, 54 Pearl Harbor, 136, 220 Penobscot, 227 Peter, Dr. William W., 73 Philippine Amateur Athletic Federation, 74, 109 Philippine-American War, 67, 70, 106 Philippine Commonwealth, 109 photographic images, 71 physical education: in China, 13, 104–106, 113; in Ethiopia, 241, 243–244, 246; in Japan, 100, 110–114; knowledge about, 113; in the Philippines, 12, 107–109, 113–114; in Romania, 169, 175; scientificity of, 24; as a tool of moral education, 8, 82, 114, 175–176, 178; training in, 250–251 Pillai, Louis Dominic Swamikannu, 49 Pinchot, Gifford, 47, 53 Plunkett, Horace, 47 Point Four Program, 42 Porter, Luciu, 120 postwar reconstruction, 135–136, 153, 237 Pound, Ezra, 212 poverty: in India, 45, 49; in Romania, 174, 179; in the United States, 215 “practical Christianity,” 147–149, 157, 162 Price, Mildred, 135 Progressive Era, 7–8, 24, 53, 214, 260 Prohibition, 215 prostitutes, 127 prostitution, 9, 11, 64, 121, 127, 172 Protestantism in Korea, 90 Protestant work ethic, 9, 84, 100–101 publications, of YMCA: American, 22, 103, 204; Chinese, 103; Indian, 203; Japanese, 81, 85, 91 public health: in China, 102–104, 126; in Japan, 113; in the Philippines, 106–109,
113–114; in Romania, 177; scientific improvement of, 102, 108, 114 P’yŏngyang Revival, 84 Quay, James K., 238–239 Rádl, Emanuel, 147, 155–157, 162 racial: hierarchy, 26; prejudice, 49, 174; segregation, 11, 66, 169; similarities, 84; stereotyping, 230; tensions, 19–20, 121 Râmnicu Vâlcea conference, 180 Rauschenbusch, Walter, 3, 42, 52 Red Triangle Club, 172, 175 religiophobic, 147 Rindge Jr., Fred H., 206–208 Roaring Twenties, 215 Roberts, Peter, 193, 195–196, 198–199, 200, 201–202 Robertson, Clarence H., 61, 69, 72–74 Rockefeller Foundation, 170, 177 Roosevelt, Theodore, 47, 53, 216 Rosenberg, Dr. Bernhard, 129 rugby, 203 rural cooperatives, 46 rural reconstruction: in China, 13–14; in India, 23, 45–46, 48, 50–53 Russell, Maud, 119, 137 Russian Revolution, 21 Russo-Japanese War, 16, 83, 89 Sahle Selassie Foundation, 248 scientific expositions, 72 Scots, 203, 204 Scottish Enlightenment, 196, 204 secular: developmentalism, 52; international organizations, 54–55; missionaries, 41; nationalism, 23; reform, 51; sports concept, 114; YMCA projects, 2–3, 5–7, 14–17, 45, 172, 207 secularization/secularism: Czech Republic and, 147–148; of liberal academics, 41; science and, 102 Selassie, Haile, 27, 237–238, 242–243, 252 self-government: in the Philippines, 11, 107; YMCA contributions to, 101–102, 114 Seton, Ernest Thompson, 218 Shanghai Preschool, 133–136 Shanghai YMCA, 63, 65, 103 Shanghai YWCA, 24–25, 120–122, 126, 131, 133, 135–137 Shanghai YWCA Working Women’s Club, 131, 135 Shintō, 82, 88
Sino-Japanese War, 83, 87 Social Darwinism, 103 Social Gospel: American imperialism and, 41; ideals of, 3, 41, 43, 45, 51–52, 119, 125, 158; internationalism and, 54–55; missionaries in Asia and, 40, 42–43, 48, 120; movement, 40; in Romania, 171–173, 181, 186; secularized version of, 149, 151, 157–159; in the United States, 47, 52, 61 social engineering, 3, 20–21, 101, 105, 107, 112–113, 170 socialism/socialist, 83, 111, 238, 252–253 social work: and nation building, 12; religion and, 7, 151; scientificity of, 6, 175; women and, 119–121, 124 Sokol, 151 sōshi movement, 87 South African Union, 20 South African YMCA, 20 Soviet Cultural Center, 237 Soviet Union, 21, 237, 245 sports: American culture of, 102, 176; character building and, 83, 151; civilizing mission and, 101, 107; collective, 151; competitions, 12, 19, 22, 24, 62, 72–74; equipment, 21; mascots, 230; masculinity and, 17, 81, 100; mass, 106; medicine, 9; modern, 66, 74; teaching, 15, 24, 74, 109, 176–177, 203; team, 9, 101, 110. See also amateur sports; physical education Springfield College, 9, 19, 67, 102, 105–106, 108, 246, 250–251 street children, 238, 248 street evangelism, 73 Student Association Leaders of Southwestern Europe, 180 Student Christian Movement, 25 Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions (SVM), 1, 40, 42, 49 Swamidoss, Daniel, 23, 45, 48, 50–52 Swedish gymnastics, 110 Swift, Robert, 63, 66 Tagore, Rabindranath, 45 technologies of proximitization (proxetechs), 62, 71, 75 technology: audiovisual, 71; diffusion of, 52; evangelizing and, 71; modern, 73; presentations on, 72; showcase of, 71; in YMCA education, 61 Terauchi Masatake, 90 Third Great Awakening, 84 Index 269
third world, 26–27, 159 Thomas, Albert, 123 Tianjin riot, 121 Ting, Mary, 120 Tokyo YMCA, 67, 73, 84 Tonghak Uprising, 87 Toronto YMCA, 248 Toshimichi, Imai, 89 transnational: approach, 39–40, 194; career, 99; circulation of professional women, 123; colonial regime, 122; dimension of neoorthodoxy, 148, 157, 160, 162–163; hubs of non-Western elites, 7; nature of YMCA work, 1, 11, 24, 53, 55, 207; NGOs, 40, 49, 53; reform efforts of YWCA, 4, 25, 137; rural development, 23 Treaty of Versailles, 121 tuberculosis, 103, 124 Tucker, Forrest, 226 Turner, E. Stanton, 111 Uchida Ryōhei, 87 Uchimura Kanzō, 86, 89 Uganda YMCA, 247 unidirectional monol inguism, 197 United Nations, 135, 222 universal grammar, 196, 198–199, 204 urbanization, 8, 103, 123 US Peace Corps, 249 Vietnam War, 213, 225 Visser ’t Hooft, Willem, 158–160, 161, 163 volleyball, 9, 74, 83, 101, 151, 157 Warring States Period (Sengoku Jidai), 86 Wassef, Michel, 239–242 White Russian, 121, 127 Wilson, Woodrow, 107–108, 214, 260 Wishard, Luther D., 82 Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, 50 women’s work, in China: class differences and, 136; education and, 127; gender and, 119; increase of, during interwar era, 121; nursery care and, 134; women’s transition to urban factory labor and, 120. See also daycare “women’s work for women,” 25, 119, 127, 134, 136–137 Woodcraft League, 218–219
270 Index
World’s Conference of YMCAs, 1, 51 World Student Christian Conference, 180 World Student Christian Federation (WSCF), 1–2, 90, 148, 153–154, 158–159, 162, 179 World War I: Chinese laborers in France during, 104; Eastern Europe after, 25, 162, 169–170, 179, 181–182; humanitarian aid during, 46; role of YMCA after, 19–21, 52, 108, 122, 206–207; social tensions after, 121, 212; YMCA “army work” during, 15, 122; YMCA’s rise of popularity and, 15 World War II: developmentalism after, 23, 52; racism in South Africa after, 20; secularization after, 54–55; US society after, 213, 220–223; YWCA in China during, 129 wrestling, 111 Yangco, Teodoro R., 12 Yergan, Max, 19–20 Ygäzu, Tamrat, 240 Y-Indian Guides (Indian Guides): African American participation in, 225–226; father and son relationship in, 211–212, 218–220, 224; foundation of, 212, 216, 217, 219; growth of, 213, 221–223; (mis) appropriation of culture by, 229–231; Native Americans and, 214, 226–228; patriotic overtone in, 213; white middle class and, 225–226 YMCA War Historical Bureau, 99 Young Man’s Buddhist Association, 16 Young Man’s Hindu Association, 16 Young Man’s Indian Association, 16 Young People’s Society of Christian Endeavor, 50 Yun Ch’iho, 91 YWCA Industrial Day Nursery, 133, 136 YWCA Professional Women’s Nursery, 132 YWCA Working Women’s Club, 131 Y women, 125–127, 131 Zelleke, Yihedo, 251 Ziolkowski, Korczak, 226 Zirke, Admasu, 250 Zung Wei-tsung (Cheng Wanzhen), 124
Perspectives on the Global Past Anand A. Yang and Kieko Matteson SERIES EDITORS
Interactions: Transregional Perspectives on World History Edited by Jerry H. Bentley, Renate Bridenthal, and Anand A. Yang Contact and Exchange in the Ancient World Edited by Victor H. Mair Seascapes: Maritime Histories, Littoral Cultures, and Transoceanic Exchanges Edited by Jerry H. Bentley, Renate Bridenthal, and Kären Wigen Anthropology’s Global Histories: The Ethnographic Frontier in German New Guinea, 1870–1935 Rainer F. Buschmann Creating the New Man: From Enlightenment Ideals to Socialist Realities Yinghong Cheng Glamour in the Pacific: Cultural Internationalism and Race Politics in the Women’s Pan-Pacific Fiona Paisley The Qing Opening to the Ocean: Chinese Maritime Policies, 1684–1757 Gang Zhao Navigating the Spanish Lake: The Pacific in the Iberian World, 1521–1898 Rainer F. Buschmann, Edward R. Slack Jr., and James B. Tueller Nomads as Agents of Cultural Change: The Mongols and Their Eurasian Predecessors Edited by Reuven Amitai and Michal Biran
Sea Rovers, Silver, and Samurai: Maritime East Asia in Global History, 1550–1700 Edited by Tonio Andrade and Xing Hang Exile in Colonial Asia: Kings, Convicts, Commemoration Edited by Ronit Ricci Burnt by the Sun: The Koreans of the Russian Far East Jon K. Chang Shipped but Not Sold: Material Culture and the Social Protocols of Trade during Yemen’s Age of Coffee Nancy Um Encounters Old and New in World History: Essays Inspired by Jerry H. Bentley Edited by Alan Karras and Laura J. Mitchell At the Edge of the Nation: The Southern Kurils and the Search for Russia’s National Identity Paul B. Richardson Liminality of the Japanese Empire: Border Crossings from Okinawa to Colonial Taiwan Hiroko Matsuda Sudden Appearances: The Mongol Turn in Commerce, Belief, and Art Roxann Prazniak A Power in the World: The Hawaiian Kingdom in Oceania Lorenz Gonschor Transcending Patterns: Silk Road Cultural and Artistic Interactions through Central Asian Textile Images Mariachiara Gasparini Spreading Protestant Modernity: Global Perspectives on the Social Work of the YMCA and YWCA, 1889–1970 Edited by Harald Fischer-Tiné, Stefan Huebner, and Ian Tyrrell