Abstract: This article delineates the historical context of the special issue “Rethinking the Study Abroad Movement in Modern China, 1850s–1950s,” summarizes the state of research, introduces each article, and outlines shared themes. Among these are the pivotal roles of financial considerations and of nonstate actors and informal networks in shaping international education in modern China. The five articles combine to produce a nuanced portrait of foreign-educated Chinese, complicating previous framings of overseas education as primarily an instrument of foreign soft power or of China’s cultural diplomacy. The special issue brings computational and quantitative methods into conversation with traditional historiography: the approaches complement one another. Zuo, Yang, and Liang employ a large-scale prosopographical database to trace patterns of social mobility and shifts in the Chinese meritocracy, Armand and Henriot each apply to a single directory methods that include natural language processing and network analysis, and all three articles gain contextual depth and interpretive nuance from incorporation of qualitative sources. Pelzer and Wu each draw on underutilized archives—personal papers and Rockefeller Foundation records—to uncover historical actors’ motivations and strategies.
Cécile Armand (Thu,) studied this question.