Mission Boys

Written on the back, "Some of the stuff we work with: Remy and Florian and Michael-who, with Raphael the Novice, make a quartet that is hard to beat intellectually and spiritually-in India.  ASPS  22/8/53"

I'm not real big on missionaries.  Yes, I do understand that many of them provide health care, food, and education in countries where many people go without those things.  But the way I figure it, if someone wants to switch religions, they'll do it without outside interference.  

Anyway, I'd like to recommend a book.  Head Hunting In the Solomon Islands by Caroline Mytinger.  And no, it's not what you think.  It's a very vintage, probably out of print, travel book about two young American women who bum their way to the south seas, earning money painting portraits of the local colonial grandees so that they can also paint portraits of the native islanders.  (At least Caroline paints.  Her companion Margret plays the ukulele.)  The book has it's fair share of racial and ethnic insensitivity, par for the course for a book written in the 1930s and published in 1942, but it also has some interesting insights on the British colonials, and their odd sense that the islands and their peoples were property to be used and exploited as needed.   I'd check thrift shops and used book stores.  So much more satisfying than Amazon.  Remember, Jeff Bezos is not your friend.  

Dr. Henry Chung

A magic lantern slide or glass transparency, take your pick.  Labeled on the front, "Made by Committee on Conservation and Advance, 740 Rush St., Chicago, Ills."  And on the back, "Neg. 89658 Slide 56  Leet. X-Hermit  Dr. Henry Chung"

A search for Dr. Henry Chung didn't get me much.  There are a lot of Dr. Henry Chungs out there.  And that's just in the United States.  A search for Committee on Conservation and Advance, on the other hand, was a bit more fruitful.  The Committee was a branch of the Methodist Episcopal Church  that was active in Korea from 1908 to 1922 and was very successful in converting Koreans to Christianity.  The Methodists, and other Christian church missionaries, were so successful that Korea is one of the most Christianised countries in Asia.  

But the real find was at digitallibrary.usc.edu/search/controller/collection/kda-m7.html, The Reverend Corwin and Nellie Taylor Collection, a group of glass slides documenting the Committee on Conservation and Advance's activities in Korea.  It's part of the Korean Heritage Collection at the University of Southern California.  It's easy to access and well worth a look.  The only problem I had with it was that it made me want to find all the images in the collection and that's a daunting task.  And one more bit of information.  I found this slide in the USC collection.  Dr. Chung is listed as the author of The Case of Korea.  Don't know whether that's a book or a pamphlet; whether it's about Korea's political situation or about Christianity.  Whatever it is, it doesn't have an internet presence.

Burma

At first glance, this isn't much of a postcard.  With it's amazing detail, it's clearly a photograph, most likely a black & white photograph, that has been hand colored.  Labeled "Pension Francaise Maurice" it was probably given out to guests passing through Naples. A nice image, but not all that exciting.

But turn it over and it gets far more interesting.  There are two postmarks, one from Naples, and one from Burma.  The Italian stamp is mostly obscured, but the Burmese, "MANDALAY  11 OCT 28  2:30 P.M."   is easily read.  It's addressed to "Miss H. M. Price, A.B.M. Girls School, Mandalay, Burma, Brit. India"  And the message, "We are coming along toward Burma at a pretty rapid clip.  Sail tonight for Bombay, ought to reach R by Oct. 10th.  Hope to see you soon after that.  Our journey has been so rapid I haven't had time to write any letters.  Shall have lots to tell you.  I have a pkg. for you I think you'll like.  Yrs, B."

I punched A.B.M. girls school into the search engine, not expecting much.  My initial thought was that it had to be a school for the daughters of British, colonial administrators.  I was wrong.  A.B.M. stands for American Baptist Missionary, and it wasn't a school for white children, but a church school that taught Christianity along with useful skills to Burmese girls.  The earliest reference to a Baptist missionary school in Burma that I could find was from 1895, a boy's school in Mandalay.  For girls, 1906, also in Mandalay.  So that means that Miss Price must have been a teacher.  I couldn't find anything about her on the web, but I did find mention of an L. W. Price, a Baptist missionary in Burma,  from 1900.  Possibly a relative of some kind, although 1928 is quite a gap.  So maybe not.

Mandalay was the last royal capital of Burma, now Myanmar.  In 1885, the British conquered the country, exiled the king and queen, and added it to their colonial empire.  The palace was looted.  The art, and symbols of state are in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, some of which are on display.  I suspect that "R" refers to Rangoon, now Yangon.  After the British conquest, they moved the capital from Mandalay to Rangoon.  While Rangoon, a seaport, would become a major commercial hub for the British, Mandalay would remain the center of Buddhist and Burmese culture.  Burma became independent in 1948.  In 2002, the military junta running the country began construction of a brand new city, Naypydaw. In 2006, it became the new capital of Myanmar.  Several years ago the military was forced to cede power to an elected, civilian government.  Only time will tell how stable it will be.

An uncle of mine was in the British military in World War 2.  He served in the CBI theater.  That's China, Burma, India.  He told me stories of taking Japanese prisoners up in DC-3 transports and throwing them out over the jungles and mountains of Burma. An interrogation technique that rarely worked.  He told me how the soldiers would beat and imprison any Burmese thought to be disloyal to the British Empire.  It always amazed me that he didn't understand why the British were so despised by their colonial subjects.

Missionaries

One of the pleasures of collecting old photographs is...well, guessing. Even when an image is labeled with dates, names, and locations, the best that can be done, even if the image is something that can be researched, is to make an educated guess. When I look at this real photo postcard, I see the wife and son of a missionary. There are a lot of other explanations, but that's what I see.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the United States joined the British in shipping out young men and their families to convert the heathen, and like the British, had mixed results. A lot of the natives had no desire to be converted, and many simply added Christ to the pantheon of deities they already worshipped.

One of the most noted American missionaries was William Sheppard, often referred to as Black Livingston. Like the Scott, David Livingston, Sheppard, the first African American sent to Africa as a missionary, used his church assignment as a platform to pursue his real interests. During his time in the Congo Free State, he excelled as an explorer, big game hunter, anthropologist, ethnographer, art collector, and on his return trips to the United States, lecturer. And while British diplomat Roger Casement, wrote reports on the genocide in the Congo, the legacy of King Leopold of Belgium, and Mark Twain wrote about it in his book, King Leopold's Soliloquy, it was Sheppard at the risk of his life, who trekked through the Congo and documented the mass murder of Africans, by the Belgians that left so many dead. While we can never know for sure, one figure cited by historians for the final death toll of Leopold's rule is 10,000,000. All for piano keys, jewelry, and pneumatic tires.