The Nationalist Roots of Studying Abroad: Evidence from the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program

This paper examines the unexpected effects of cultural conflicts on individuals' choices to study abroad, employing the Sino-US Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program from 1909 to 1919. By exploiting the spatial variation of anti-missionary movements across 269 prefectures from 1860 to 1911, I show that there were more Chinese students studying in the US from prefectures with more previous conflicts. Conditional on studying abroad, they were also more likely to select STEM ma- jors during the study and return to China after the study, which accumulates the upper-tail human capital that facilitates early modernization and nation-building. Their preferences for modern education appear to reflect the locally increased nationalism, especially through revolutionist organizations.