Analysis of West China Missions Personnel Trends, 1916-1941

Item

Title
Analysis of West China Missions Personnel Trends, 1916-1941
Identifier
DS0022
Description
Dataset of bar charts tracking West China missions’ personnel trends with comparisons between American (Baptist and Methodist) and Canadian (Methodist and United Church), as well as by gender within each mission, over the decades.
Commentary
This dataset consists of a series of bar charts (linked to this record) that trace trends in Canadian and American mission boards whose missionaries were predominantly of the social gospel theological persuasion. These are the Canadian Methodist Mission (CMM, 1895-1925), which transformed into the United Church of Canada Mission (UCCM, 1926-1951), as well as the American Methodist Episcopal Mission (MEM) and the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society (ABFMS).

The reason for this limitation is that these groups compose a cohort that came from similar backgrounds (small towns in east and middle North America, highly educated both men and women, childhoods in which the church played a major role), and were recruited to the mission career through the same institutional mechanisms (Student Christian Movement, Student Volunteer Movement and YM/WCA, which had chapters at campuses all across the US and Canada).

Personnel statistics for the CMM/UCCM and the MEM are derived from directories of foreign missions from 1917-1940. Those for the ABFMS are taken from the Society’s annual reports from 1916 to 1941. These different sources account for the slight slippage between 1916/1917 and 1940/1941 in the comparative analyses. Other inconsistencies may skew the results slightly. For example, different missions dealt with those on furlough and wives of missionaries differently in their statistics. However, these minor discrepancies do not change the overall trends.

Three major trends can be seen in these datasets. First, that the Canadian mission dominated the mission field throughout the entire time. Second, that women predominated both Canadian and American mission fields. Third, that American missions suffered attrition to a much greater extent than the Canadian mission after the 1928 Nationalist Revolution in which Chiang Kaishek came to power and foreigners lost their extraterritorial rights. More detailed analyses may be found in the individual records of the bar charts.
Creator
Cory Willmott
Date Created
2026-05-05
Location
Sichuan
Provenance
Original research.
Access Rights
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Publisher
SIUE
Record Date
2026-05-13
Type
Dataset
Item sets
Willmott Family Archives
Datasets
Media
DS0022_Personnel_Dataset_Graphic.png

Linked resources

Items with "Is Part Of: Analysis of West China Missions Personnel Trends, 1916-1941"
Title Class
American Methodist Episcopal West China Missionary Attrition Dataset
Canadian West China Missions’ Personnel Trends Dataset
Percentage of Canadian versus American Missionaries in West China, 1916/17 - 1940/41 Dataset
West China Mission Personnel Trends, 1916/17 - 1940/41 Dataset