American Missionary Universities in China and the Middle East and American Philanthropy: Interacting Soft Power of Transnational Actors
2014; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 28; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/13600826.2013.848188
ISSN1469-798X
Autores Tópico(s)Religion, Society, and Development
ResumoAbstractThis article investigates the interacting soft power of two important categories of American transnational actors: American missionary universities in China and the Middle East and American religious, foundation and individual philanthropy. These transnational actors have had and have soft power in Chinese and Middle East societies based on academic excellence and biculturalism. However, this transnational actor soft power has historically been limited by religious proselytising, unequal treaties between China and the West, the humiliation of China, and American China and Middle East policy. The universities have had and continue to have reverse soft power in the USA attracting resources and advocating on behalf of China and the Middle East. Philanthropic support for the educational, research, healthcare and social development work of these universities has contributed to university soft power in the host societies. The universities and their philanthropic donors have strengthened US national soft power regarding milieu goals of elite attraction to education, language and liberal norms. However, US national soft power concerning possession goals of acceptance of foreign policies in China and the Middle East has not been strengthened, and was also not a university, philanthropic or government goal. Notes1. Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2004); Brian Hocking, “Rethinking the 'New' Public Diplomacy”, in Jan Melissen (ed.), The New Public Diplomacy: Soft Power in International Relations (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave, 2005), pp. 28–43; Shaun Riordan, “Dialogue-Based Public Diplomacy: A New Foreign Policy Paradigm?”, in Melissen, The New Public Diplomacy, op. cit., pp. 180–195; Carnes Lord, Losing Hearts and Minds? Public Diplomacy and Strategic Influence in the Age of Terror (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2006).2. Geraldo Zahran and Leonardo Ramos, “From Hegemony to Soft Power: Implications of a Conceptual Change”, in Inderjeet Parmar and Michael Cox (eds.), Soft Power and US Foreign Policy: Theoretical, Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), pp. 12–31.3. William A. Rugh, American Encounters with Arabs: The “Soft Power” of US Public Diplomacy in the Middle East (Westport, CT and London: Praeger International Security, 2006); Nicholas John Cull, The Decline and Fall of the United States Information Agency: American Public Diplomacy, 1989–2001 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Nicholas John Cull, The Cold War and the United States Information Agency: American Propaganda and Public Diplomacy, 1945–1989 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Giles Scott-Smith, Networks of Empire: The US State Department's Foreign Leader Program in the Netherlands, France, and Britain 1950–1970 (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2008); Giles Scott-Smith, “Mending the 'Unhinged Alliance' in the 1970s: Transatlantic Relations, Public Diplomacy, and the Origins of the European Union Visitors Program”, Diplomacy & Statecraft, Vol. 16, No. 4 (2005), pp. 749–778.4. Noteworthy examples are Volker R. Berghahn, America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); Inderjeet Parmar, Foundations of the American Century: The Ford, Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations and the Rise of American Power (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012); Inderjeet Parmar, “Challenging Elite Anti-Americanism in the Cold War: American Foundations, Kissinger's Harvard Seminar and the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies”, in Parmar and Cox, op. cit., pp. 108–120; Edward H. Berman, The Ideology of Philanthropy: The Influence of the Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations on American Foreign Policy (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1983); Liping Bu, “Educational Exchange and Cultural Diplomacy in the Cold War”, American Studies, Vol. 33, No. 3 (December 1999), pp. 393–415.5. Joseph S. Nye, Jr. and Robert O. Keohane, “Transnational Relations and World Politics: An Introduction”, International Organization, Vol. 25, No. 3 (1971), pp. 329–349.6. Berman, op. cit.; Berghahn, op. cit.; Parmar, Foundations of the American Century, op. cit.; Parmar, “Challenging Elite Anti-Americanism”, op. cit., pp. 108–120; Liping Bu, “International Activism and Comparative Education: Pioneering Efforts of the International Institute of Teachers College, Columbia University”, Comparative Education Review, Vol. 41, No. 4 (November 1997), pp. 413–434; Liping Bu, “Cultural Understanding and World Peace: The Roles of Private Institutions in the Interwar Years”, Peace & Change, Vol. 24, No. 2 (April 1999), pp. 148–171; Peter D. Bell, “The Ford Foundation as a Transnational Actor”, International Organization, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Summer 1971), pp. 465–478.7. These questions are also addressed in Bertelsen, op. cit.; Bertelsen and Møller, op. cit.8. Nye, Soft Power, op. cit.9. Steven Lukes, “Power and the Battle for Hearts and Minds: On the Bluntness of Soft Power”, in Felix Berenskoetter and M.J. Williams, Power in World Politics (London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 83–97; Janice Bially Mattern, “Why 'Soft Power' Isn't So Soft: Representational Force and Attraction in World Politics”, in Berenskoetter and Williams, op. cit., pp. 98–119.10. David Baldwin, “Power Analysis and World Politics: New Trends Versus Old Tendencies”, World Politics, Vol. 31, No. 2 (1979), pp. 161–194.11. Nye, Soft Power, op. cit.12. Ibid.13. Bertelsen and Møller, op. cit., pp. 1–39; Bertelsen, op. cit., pp. 293–311.14. Bertelsen and Møller, op. cit., pp. 1–39; Bertelsen, op. cit., pp. 293–311; Parmar, Foundations of the American Century, op. cit.; Parmar, “Challenging Elite Anti-Americanism”, op. cit., pp. 108–120.15. Nye, Soft Power, op. cit.16. Parmar, Foundations of the American Century, op. cit.; Parmar, “Challenging Elite Anti-Americanism”, op. cit., pp. 108–120; Bertelsen, op. cit., pp. 293–311; Bertelsen and Møller, op. cit., pp. 1–39.17. Bertelsen and Møller, op. cit., pp. 1–39; Bertelsen, op. cit., pp. 293–311.18. These definitions are also discussed in Bertelsen, op. cit., pp. 293–311.19. These motivations are also discussed in Bertelsen, op. cit., pp. 293–311.20. This concept was first introduced in Bertelsen and Møller, op. cit., pp. 1–39; Bertelsen, op. cit., pp. 293–311. From there it was referenced in Joseph S. Nye, Jr., The Future of Power (New York: Public Affairs, 2011), p. 85. Similar concepts can be found in Dong Wang, Managing God's Higher Learning: US–China Cultural Encounter and Canton Christian College (Lingnan University) 1888–1952 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007), p. 130; Xi Lian, The Conversion of Missionaries: Liberalism in American Protestant Missions in China, 1907–1932 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997). Reverse soft power resembles what Lian calls “reflex influence”.21. Arnold Wolfers, Discord and Collaboration: Essays on International Politics (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962); Nye, Soft Power, op. cit.; Jan Melissen, “The New Public Diplomacy: Between Theory and Practice”, in Melissen, The New Public Diplomacy, op. cit., pp. 3–27; Bertelsen, op. cit., pp. 293–311.22. John Waterbury, “Hate Your Policies, Love Your Institutions”, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 82 (2003), p. 67.23. Bertelsen and Møller, op. cit., pp. 1–39; Bertelsen, op. cit., pp. 293–311.24. Bertelsen and Møller, op. cit., pp. 1–39; Bertelsen, op. cit., pp. 293–311.25. The AUB and AUC cases draw on Bertelsen, op. cit., pp. 293–311.26. Bayard Dodge, The American University of Beirut; a Brief History of the University and the Lands which it Serves (Beirut: Khayat's, 1958); Munir Antonios Bashshur, The Role of Two Western Universities in the National Life of Lebanon and the Middle East: A Comparative Study of the American University of Beirut and the University of Saint-Joseph, Doctor of Philosophy, University of Chicago; Stephen Beasley Linnard Penrose, That They May Have Life; the Story of the American University of Beirut, 1866–1941 (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1970); John Murchison Munro, A Mutual Concern: The Story of the American University of Beirut (Delmar, NY: Caravan Books, 1977); Daniel Bliss and Carleton S. Coon, Daniel Bliss and the Founding of the American University of Beirut (Washington, DC: Middle East Institute, 1989); Ussama Makdisi, “Reclaiming the Land of the Bible: Missionaries, Secularism, and Evangelical Modernity”, The American Historical Review, Vol. 102, No. 3 (1997), pp. 680–713; American University of Beirut, “History of the American University of Beirut”, available: (accessed 13 February 2007); Ussama Samir Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008); Betty Signe Anderson, The American University of Beirut: Arab Nationalism and Liberal Education (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2011); Lawrence R. Murphy, The American University in Cairo, 1919–1987 (Cairo, Egypt: American University in Cairo Press, 1987), pp. 1–23, 41, 57–58, 65–66, 163–170. Interviews, “Interviews in Beirut, Cairo, Cambridge, MA, Medford, MA, New York and Washington, DC”, 2008–2010. The author has conducted 100 interviews on American higher education in the Middle East with an emphasis on the classical universities in Beirut and Cairo, the AUB, the AUC and the Lebanese American University. The interviews were with American and Middle Eastern academics, administrators, US diplomats, civil servants and lobbyists. The interviews were conducted in confidence between 2008 and 2010.27. Interviews, 2008–2010.28. The discussion of American missionary universities in China draws on Bertelsen and Møller, op. cit., pp. 1–39.29. Jessie Gregory Lutz, China and the Christian Colleges 1859–1950 (New York: Cornell University Press, 1971), p. 56.30. Ibid., pp. 147–148; Philip West, Yenching University and Sino-Western Relations, 1916–1952 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), pp. 251–252; Peter Tze Ming Ng et al., Changing Paradigms of Christian Higher Education in China, 1888–1950 (New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2002), p. 146.31. John K. Fairbank, The Great Chinese Revolution 1800–1985 (New York: Perennial Library, 1987).32. Lutz, op. cit., pp. 212–213, 243–244, 248–249, 257, 263; West, op. cit., pp. 147–148.33. West, op. cit., pp. 142–143.34. Bertelsen and Møller, op. cit., pp. 1–39; Bertelsen, op. cit., pp. 293–311.35. Lutz, op. cit., p. 56; Edward Yihua Xu, “Liberal Arts Education in English and Campus Culture at St. John's University”, in Daniel H. Bays and Ellen Widmer (eds.), China's Christian Colleges: Cross-Cultural Connections, 1900–1950 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), pp. 107–124.36. Dodge, op. cit., pp. 37–46; Bashshur, op. cit.; Penrose, op. cit., pp. 130–165; Munro, op. cit.; Faith M. Hanna, An American Mission: The Role of the American University of Beirut (Boston, MA: Alphabet Press, 1979); Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven, op. cit.; Bertelsen, op. cit., pp. 293–311.37. Lutz, op. cit., pp. 142–144, 517; Interviews, op. cit.; E. Richard Brown, Rockefeller Medicine Men: Medicine and Capitalism in America (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1979); Berman, op. cit., pp. 24–26; Mary Brown Bullock, The Oil Prince's Legacy: Rockefeller Philanthropy in China (Washington, DC and Stanford, CA: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Stanford University Press, 2011); Mary Brown Bullock, An American Transplant: The Rockefeller Foundation and Peking Union Medical College (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980); E. Richard Brown, “Rockefeller Medicine in China: Professionalism and Imperialism”, in Robert F. Arnove (ed.), Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism: The Foundations at Home and Abroad (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1982), pp. 123–146; E. Richard Brown, “Public Health in Imperialism: Early Rockefeller Programs at Home and Abroad”, American Journal of Public Health, Vol. 66, No. 9 (1976), pp. 897–903; Merle Curti, American Philanthropy Abroad: A History (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1963), pp. 148, 170.38. West, op. cit., p. 138.39. Interviews, op. cit.; Bertelsen, op. cit., pp. 293–311.40. See also Bertelsen and Møller, op. cit., pp. 1–39; Bertelsen, op. cit., pp. 293–311.41. David Ekbladh, The Great American Mission: Modernization & the Construction of an American World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010); Bertelsen, op. cit., pp. 293–311; Bertelsen and Møller, op. cit., pp. 1–39.42. Nadim G. Khalaf, The Economics of the American University of Beirut: A Study of a Private University in the Developing World (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1977); Murphy, op. cit.; Bertelsen and Møller, op. cit., pp. 1–39; Bertelsen, op. cit., pp. 293–311.43. Lutz, op. cit., p. 98; John K. Fairbank, China Perceived: Images and Policies in Chinese–American Relations (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1974), p. 231; Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven, op. cit.44. Also note the example of Charles K. Edmunds, president of Lingnan University and later president of Pomona College. Dong Wang, “From Lingnan to Pomona: Charles K. Edmunds and His Chinese American Career”, in Bays and Widmer, op. cit., pp. 173–188; Wang, Managing God's Higher Learning, op. cit., Chapter 5.45. Lutz, op. cit., p. 99; Terrill E. Lautz, “The SVM and Transformation of the Protestant Mission to China”, in Bays and Widmer, op. cit., pp. 3–21.46. Murphy, op. cit., p. 1; Wang, Managing God's Higher Learning, op. cit.; Donald Fisher, Fundamental Development of the Social Sciences: Rockefeller Philanthropy and the United States Social Science Research Council (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1993).47. Lutz, op. cit., p. 116.48. Curti, op. cit., pp. 323–325.49. Lutz, op. cit., p. 102; Fairbank, China Perceived, op. cit., pp. 213–218; Ng et al., op. cit.; Wang, Managing God's Higher Learning, op. cit., Chapter 3; Curti, op. cit.50. Lutz, op. cit., p. 102; Fairbank, China Perceived, op. cit., pp. 213–218; Ng et al., op. cit., p. 147; Curti, op. cit., pp. 148, 170, 589; Bu, “Educational Exchange and Cultural Diplomacy”, op. cit., pp. 393–415; Berman, op. cit., pp. 70–93, Chapter 3.51. Dodge, op. cit., pp. 54–83; Penrose, op. cit., pp. 222–236, 256, 270–281; Khalaf, op. cit.; Munro, op. cit.; Murphy, op. cit., p. 98; Curti, op. cit., pp. 148, 170, 323–325; Bertelsen, op. cit., pp. 293–311.52. Interviews, op. cit.; Bertelsen, op. cit., pp. 293–311.53. Murphy, op. cit., pp. 116, 141, 176, 227–228; Bertelsen, op. cit., pp. 293–311.54. Bullock, The Oil Prince's Legacy, op. cit., p. 115.55. Fisher, op. cit., Chapter 1.56. West, op. cit., pp. 201–203.57. Ibid., pp. 189–190.58. Ibid., pp. 193–194; President and Fellows of Harvard College, “Harvard-Yenching Institute”, available: (accessed 21 July 2010); Paul Daniel Waite and Peichi Tung Waite, “China's Christian Colleges and the Founding of the Harvard-Yenching Institute”, in Bays and Widmer, op. cit., pp. 241–266.59. Nye, The Future of Power, op. cit.
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