Choice of language in the education of Protestant missionary schools in nineteenth century China

This paper focuses on the language choice of education employed by the nineteenth century Protestant missionary schools in China. In contrast to their initial language teaching endeavours in Chinese settlements outside the Qing government’s control, such as Macao, Protestant missionaries opted to impart Chinese, rather than English in the institutions they established in between 1840s–1860s. However, after the First Opium War, English gradually took over and became the language of instruction and the target language in those schools. Several factors contributed to this shift, especially the change of social and commercial needs in China before and after the war. The language choices missionaries made, although differed according to context, always served a higher purpose, i.e. evangelisation.