Protestant missionary societies established educational institutions in early colonial Hong Kong that helped pave the way for social mobility. St. Paul's College, founded in 1851, produced many of Hong Kong's early English-educated Chinese elites. The Diocesan Native Female Training School provided education to girls that prepared them for roles of usefulness in society. Notable graduates included Wu Ting-fang, the first Chinese member of the Legislative Council, and Lydia Leung, who accompanied her husband as a missionary. Debates around language education policy and the "Mui Tsai question" reflected changing colonial discourses and the participation of Protestant-educated Chinese in the public sphere.

1. Protestant Missionary Education,
Chinese Students &
The Making of Hong Kong
William Wong
BA (Hons) History and Political science (Birmingham)

2. Figure 1, View of The Harbour of Hong Kong, From East Point,
Source: The Church Missionary Intelligencer, Vol 1, issue 19, p. 446

3. Figure 2, View of The Victoria Harbour, Source: Taken by author

4. Figure 1, View of The Harbour of Hong Kong, From East Point, Source: The Church Missionary
Intelligencer, Vol 1, issue 19, p. 446
Figure 2, View of The Victoria Harbour, Source: Taken by author

5. Lecture structure
1. Why I want to write about Hong Kong social and colonial history? (Metaphysics)
2. What is my argument and research questions? (Ontology)
3. What is my approach? (Epistemology)
4. Historiography
5. St Paul’s College
6. Wu Ting-fang
7. Diocesan Native Female Training School (DNFTS)
8. Lydia Leung
9. Changes in the colonial discourses (Mui Tsai Campaign and Language education policy)
10. Counter-argument
11. Conclusion

6. Why I want to write about 1840s to 1930s
Protestant missionary education in Hong Kong?
§ How did Hong Kong become Asia’s Global City from a tiny fishing
village?
§ Christian education has profound influence in Hong Kong
§ Was colonial exploitation the dominant feature of Western
Imperialism?
§ How did historical actors overcome challenges and crisis in the
early stage of British colonial rule?
§ Access of Church Missionary Society (CMS) archive materials

7. How did historical actors overcome
challenges and crisis in the early stage of
British colonial rule?
1. Clash between the ruler and the ruled
• “The foreigners are hatred for their “moral improprieties and
insolent behaviour” Of the Chinese “the lowest dregs of native
society flock to the British settlement in the hope of gain or
plunder” and they were “treated as a degraded race of people.”
(Smith, 1847, p. 511)
2. Diversity of dialects/ languages
• “Another difficulty, which impresses on Hong Kong a peculiar
ineligibility as a Missionary Station, is the great diversity of dialects
(Hakka, Punti and Nan-hoi ) which prevails among its limited
population of 19, 000 Chinese, and which is necessarily produced by
the heterogeneous elements of which it is composed. There are
three principal dialects in the island, the speaker of one of which
would be unintelligible to the speaker of another.” (ibid.)
Figure 3, Bishop Geroge Smith Source: George Endacott and
Dorothy She, The diocese of Victoria, Hong Kong : A hundred years
of church history, 1849-1949, Hong Kong: Messrs. Kelly & Walsh,
1949.

8. What is my argument?
§ I argue that Protestant education played an important role in the
making of modern Hong Kong society, establishing educational
institutions for Chinese boys and girls, which in turn paved the way
for increased social mobility for graduates, and greater protection
against female slavery and early marriage.

9. What are my research questions and approach?
§ Main research question:
§ What was the link amongst Protestant Missionary Education, a rising Christian
Chinese elite and the making of modern Hong Kong society?
§ Minor research questions:
1. How did protestant missionary societies, in particular CMS, establish educational
institutions in Hong Kong?
2. Why did Chinese families choose Protestant mission schools? For both boys and
girls, how did missionary education present advantages for their prospects?
3. What were the contributions of protestant educated Chinese elites to Hong Kong
colonial society?

10. Historiography
§ The scholarship of Hong Kong History:
§ Hong Kong school (Lethbridge, 1971; Smith, 1985; Tsai, 1993; Chan,
1991; Hayes 2006; Sinn, 2003; Carroll, 2005)
§ Colonial school (Eitel, 1983; Endacott & She, 1949; Endacott, 1958)
§ Marxist or ‘post-1949 Beijing school’ (You, 1958)

11. Historiography
§ John Carroll. Edge of Empires : Chinese Elites and British Colonials
in Hong Kong. Cambridge, 2005: Harvard University Press.
§ A review study of the Hong Kong School and the colonial nature
thesis
§ Carroll (2005) argued that the making of a Chinese business elite
was closely linked with the colonial nature, their participation in
the public sphere determined how the government was going to
rule

12. Historiography
§ Carl Smith. Chinese Christians: Élites, Middlemen, and the Church in Hong
Kong. Oxford, 1985: Hong Kong University Press.
§ Smith (1985) observed that the short-term purpose of protestant missionaries
was to equip Chinese students with dual language ability.
§ In long-term, they aimed to train them to become missionaries in China.
§ English language mission schools became important source of rising Chinese
elites
§ Confucianism played a minor role in missionary education, because Chinese
students did not have a strong sense of Confucian literacy tradition in the
nineteenth century.

13. Historiography
§ Patricia Chiu, ‘“A Position of Usefulness”: Gendering History of
Girls’ Education in Colonial Hong Kong (1850s–1890s)’, History of
Education, vol 37⁄6, 2008, 789–805.
§ Chiu (2008) argued that female missionary education ran in
different models than the boys and even amongst themselves. It is
because it was structured by Christian beliefs, imperial gaze and
politics of race and class.
§ Lydia Leung’s story reflected women missionaries’ expectation?

14. St Paul’s College and the Founding of Boy’s
education
§ Founded in 1851 by Rev. Vincent John Stanton and Bishop George Smith
§ Smith (1985) argued that the college experienced significant ups and downs in
its first few decades of opening but nonetheless produced the majority of the
English-educated Chinese elites that emerged in the 1860s to 1870s
§ “Though none of its many pupils became a preacher of the gospel, though
very few of them became Christians except in name, yet every one of them
went forth into life with a mind free from idolatry and superstition, and some
of them are now men of mark and influence among their countrymen, in
responsible official or commercial position.” (CMCHO 1845-1879, pp. 78-81.)
Figure 4, St Paul’s College in the
nineteenth-century, Source: Anthony
Sweeting, Education in Hong Kong pre-
1841 to 1941: Fact and Opinion, Hong
Kong University Press, HKU, 1990, p.
295.

15. Wu Ting-fang 伍廷芳
§ Born in 1842 in a Singaporean Chinese merchant family, at the
age of fourteen in 1855, Wu moved to Hong Kong and attended
St Paul’s College from 1855 to 1862
§ Worked as a clerk and interpreter in the Hong Kong Police
Magistrate’s Court and colonial surveyor office
§ Joined Lincoln Inn in 1874 called to the Bar in January 1877
§ Appointed as the first Chinese-ethnic unofficial Legislative
Council member of Hong Kong and acting Police magistrate in
1880 by Governor John Pope Hennessy
Figure 5, Wu Ting-fang portrait Source:
Ernest Benn Ltd

16. St Paul’s College’s curriculum
§ Standard IV.
Reading – Intelligent reading of a pose passage not exceeding fifteen lines in the
Forth Book used in the school.
Writing – A sentence from the same book slowly dictated once by a few words at
a time.
Arithmetic – Simple and Compound Proportion, Simple Interest, and Practice, in
addition to the Arithmetic of the previous Standards.
Grammar – Parsing, orally or in writing at the option of the examiner, a simple
sentence from the Reading Book.
Geography – Map of the World (general outlines) and Europe.
Copy writing will be taken in this Standard, but it will not be counted if the
scholar has not passed in four of the other subjects. (HKGOVG, 27th February, 1875, p. 68)

17. DNFTS and Girl’s education
Figure 6, Group portrait of Miss Mary Anne Eaton
with her pupils Source: The Female Missionary
Intelligencer VII (May 2, 1864): 89
§ “The course of education has embraced instruction in Chinese and
English reading, writing, plain needlework, geography, and Bible
history, and more especially a training in the religious truths and
moral habits of the Christian faith. The object aimed at has been to
prepare the girl for taking her after a position of usefulness in
native society as the future wives and mothers of the rising
generation of Chinese inhabitants in the colony. With this view
industrial training is intended to occupy a prominent place in the
course of education pursued.” (FMI VII (May 2, 1864): 90)
§ Mary Assu, an Eurasian woman taught simple English in the
morning and then she would join with a Chinese teacher from St
Paul’s College and recite a book of Christian doctrines. In the
afternoon, plain needlework was taught to Chinese girls. (Wickeri,
2015)

18. Lydia Leung
Figure 7, Portrait of Lydia Leung with three
younger students Source: The Female
Missionary Intelligencer VII (January 1,
1864): 1
§ “Lydia, the eldest student, married an
excellent native catechist of the Church
Missionary Society early in the year, and
accompanied him to his station at Foochow,
nearly 500 miles distant from Hong Kong.”
(SPFEEAR 1865, p.5)

19. Changes in the colonial discourse:
Language education policy
§ Governor Hennessey’s dissatisfaction of Central School’s language education policy in
1878
§ Stewart argued for a balanced bilingual education for his students at Central school.
(Pennycook, 1998)
§ Wu, however, argued against Stewart, and argued for an Anglicist and English language
education in Hong Kong.
§ “In this English Colony we must not be satisfied with 60 out of 600 being able to speak
English in our principle government school, and that imperfectly. After Hong Kong has
enjoyed 30 years of colonial government a large annual grant of education, I expected to
find a new generation with something like knowledge of English.” (HKGOVG 26th
January, 1878)

20. Language education policy
§ “I should like very much to ask Mr Stewart whatever it might be possible in connection
with this school to do anything in the way of promoting medical education among the
Chinese. we all know that there is in this colony a large and excellent institution called
the Tung Wah hospital, supported and managed by the leading Chinese residents. Can
we in any way combine clinical teaching which might be received in that establishment
with a little instruction in physiology in this school?” (HKGOVG 26th January, 1878)
§ English language became part of the Chinese ‘elite’ and European community social
status. These two political signals from Hennessy governorship (1877-1883) established
communication amongst these three social groups. Wu has yet to become a public
servant in 1878, but was influential in the governor’s decision making process.
§ The rising Chinese male ‘elite’ participated in the public sphere and policy making, even
though there were not in ‘power’ or office.

21. Changes in the colonial discourse:
The Mui Tsai Question
§ What are Mui Tsai 妹仔?
§ A popular ‘practise’ in South China
§ They served in a family until age of 18 to 19, and it is the ‘owners’
responsibility to find her a ‘good’ husband
§ This was a ‘recorded’ transaction often with a signed contract and
considered by the Chinese elite as an act of charity.

22. The Mui Tsai Question
§ British women missionaries' involvement in women education and
the Anti-Mui Tsai campaign
§ The solution is conversion to Christianity for girls through medical
and education means, which could facilitate cultural change and an
end to Mui Tsai practices. Nevertheless, women missionaries’ view
of Mui Tsai was minimal and inconsistent. (Cooper, 2019)

23. The Mui Tsai Question
§ DNFTS, Baxter Vernacular schools, Fairlea school and Victoria Home and
Orphanage were important institutions that saved Chinese girls from
entering the Mui Tsai system
§ A Chinese Victoria Home CMS woman missionary Mrs Shann
commented:
§ “A Society for the protection of Mui Tsai and other children who are ill-
treated has been formed here, and it is hoped by persuasion and
friendly advice from welfare workers of the Society to get better results
than is possible through the police courts. This is interesting, being a
new and unofficial way of tackling the Mui Tsai question.” (CMSAR 1930-
31, p. 47 )

24. Counter-argument
§ What were Eurasian boys and girls’ roles in your interpretation?
§ How did linguistic diversity in early colonial Hong Kong affects your
argument?
§ What was Confucianism’s role in protestant missionary education,
and did it affect students’ numbers?

25. Conclusion
§ The making of Hong Kong as the making of its colonial nature?
§ In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Hong Kong, Christian
Chinese male elites, Chinese female students and protestant women
missionaries utilised their skills and seized opportunities to engage in a
‘collaborative relationship’ with the British colonial government and
Westminster, thereby consolidating their position on society.
§ By establishing civic organisations and charities, they attempted to depoliticise
political issues which created stability for the colonial state, which was not
only helpful for British colonial administration, but in their interest.

26. Bibliography
Hong Kong School of Hong Kong History
§ Carroll John. Edge of Empires: Chinese Elites and British Colonials in Hong Kong. Cambridge, 2005:
Harvard University Press, pp. 1-36.
§ Chan Wai Kwan. The making of Hong Kong society: three studies of class formation in early Hong Kong,
Oxford : Clarendon, 1991.
§ Hayes James. Great Difference: Hong Kong's New Territories and Its People 1898-2004, Hong Kong
University Press, 2006.
§ Lethbridge Henry, 'The District Watch Committee, the Chinese Executive Council of Hong Kong' , Journal
of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol . 11 , 1971, pp. 116-41 .
§ Smith Carl. T. Chinese Christians: Élites, Middlemen, and the Church in Hong Kong. Oxford, 1985: Hong
Kong University Press.
§ Sinn Elizabeth. Power and Charity: A Chinese Merchant Elite in Colonial Hong Kong. Hong Kong, 2003:
Hong Kong University Press.
§ Tsai Jung-Fang, Hong Kong in Chinese history: community and social unrest in the British colony, 1842-
1913, New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.

27. Bibliography
Colonial and Marxist School of Hong Kong History
Colonial School
§ Eitel John, Europe in China. Hong Kong; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.
§ Endacott George and She Dorothy, The diocese of Victoria, Hong Kong: A hundred years of church history,
1849-1949, Hong Kong: Messrs. Kelly & Walsh, 1949.
§ Endacott Geroge, A History of Hong Kong. London: Oxford University Press, 1958.
Marxist School
§ You Ding. Xianggang chuqi shihua 1841-1907 [Hong Kong’s Early History 1841-1907] Beijing: Joint
Publishers, 1958.

28. Bibliography (Secondary literature)
§ Cooper Tamara, British women missionaries, Chinese women, and the Protestant rescue project in Hong
Kong and China, 1850-1940, Doctor of Philosophy thesis, School of Humanities and Social Inquiry,
University of Wollongong, 2019.
§ Chiu Patricia, ‘“A Position of Usefulness”: Gendering History of Girls’ Education in Colonial Hong Kong
(1850s–1890s)’, History of Education, vol 37⁄6, 2008, 789–805.
§ Smith George, A Narrative of the exploratory Visit to each of the Consular Cities of China, and to the
islands of Hong Kong and Chusan, London, 1847.
§ Pennycook, Alastair. English and the Discourses of Colonialism. London: Taylor & Francis Group, 1998. pp.
188-219.
§ Wickeri, Philip L, Christian Encounters with Chinese Culture : Essays on Anglican and Episcopal History in
China. Aberdeen: Hong Kong University Press, 2015. pp. 1-78.

29. Bibliography (Primary source)
§ Church Missionary Society China Mission: Original papers, 1845-1879 ‘The Protestant Missions of Hong
Kong’, a lecture by Dr E. J. Eitel, 1875, pp. 78-81. (archive reference: C/CH/O13/7 (or
CMS/B/OMS/C/CH/O13/7 in the online catalogue).
§ Church Missionary Society Annual Report 1930-31, p. 47.
§ Annual Report of the Society for Promoting Female education in the East January 1865, p.5.
§ Female Missionary Intelligencer VII (May 2, 1864): 90.
§ The Hong Kong Government Gazette, 27th February, 1875, p. 66, 68.
§ The Hong Kong Government Gazette 26th January, 1878, p. 28.

30. Bibliography (image source)
§ Figure 1, View of The Harbour of Hong Kong, From East Point, Source: The Church Missionary
Intelligencer, Vol 1, issue 19, p. 446
§ Figure 2, View of The Victoria Harbour, Source: Taken by author
§ Figure 3, Bishop George Smith Source: George Endacott and Dorothy She, The diocese of Victoria, Hong
Kong : A hundred years of church history, 1849-1949, Hong Kong: Messrs. Kelly & Walsh, 1949.
§ Figure 4, St Paul’s College in the nineteenth-century, Source: Anthony Sweeting, Education in Hong Kong
pre-1841 to 1941: Fact and Opinion, Hong Kong University Press, HKU, 1990, p. 295.
§ Figure 5, Wu Ting-fang portrait Source: Ernest Benn Ltd
§ Figure 6, Group portrait of Miss Mary Anne Eaton with her pupils Source: The Female Missionary
Intelligencer VII (May 2, 1864): 89
§ Figure 7, Portrait of Lydia Leung with three younger students Source: The Female Missionary
Intelligencer VII (January 1, 1864): 1

31. Abbreviations
CMS – Church Missionary Society
LMS – London Missionary Society
SPFEE – Society for Female Education in the East
FES – Female Education Society
DNFTS – Diocesan Native Female Training School
DHO - Diocesan Home and Orphanage
DBS - Diocesan Boys’ school
DGS - Diocesan Girls’ School
HKGOVG – Hong Kong Government Gazette
CMSAR – Church Missionary Society Annual Report
CMR - Church Missionary Society Record
CMI - Church Missionary Society Intelligencer
CMCHO – Church Missionary Society China Mission Original Papers
CMSCHO – Church Missionary Society South China Mission Original Papers
SPFEEAR - Society for Female Education in the East Annual Report
FMI - Female Missionary Intelligence

32. Thanks for watching
Any comments and questions would be
welcomed
William Wong
BA (Hons) History and Political science (Birmingham)