"A penny for the little Chinese": The French holy childhood association in China, 1843-1951

American Historical Review

Volumn 113, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 79-92

  Harrison, Henrietta ^a  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 40949118023     PISSN: 00028762     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/ahr.113.1.72     Document Type: Article

References (96)

1. Annales de l'Oeuvre de la Sainte Enfance [hereafter Annales] 25 (1874): 69. All translations in this article are my own.
2. Geliaogou cunweihui dang'anju [Geliaogou Village Party Committee Archive Office], Baochihui dang'an [Orphanage Archives], 1902-1944, Chen Zhiwan, 1902/1/28.
3. C. A. Bayly, Sven Beckert, Matthew Connelly, Isabel Hofmeyr, Wendy Kozol, and Patricia Seed, "AHR Conversation: On Transnational History," American Historical Review 111, no. 5 (December 2006): 1441-1464.
4. Annales 1 (1846-1847): 17, 36, 64.
5. Musée des Familles: Lectures du Soir 16 (1848-1849): 213-214.
6. Annales 3 (1851): 290; 11 (1859): 94-100; 18 (1866): 80-85, 160-163; 21 (1869): 75;
7. Paul Lesourd, Histoire générale de l'Oeuvre Pontificale de la Sainte-Enfance depuis un siècle (Paris, 1947), 109.
8. The only study is Lesourd, Histoire générale.
9. Zhongyang yanjiuyuan jindaishi yanjiusuo, Jiaowu jiaoan dang [Archives of Religious Affairs and Cases], 21 vols. (Taibei, 1974), series 1: 915.
10. Akira Iriye, Global Community: The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contemporary World (Berkeley, Calif., 2002).
11. See Christine Adams, "Maternal Societies in France: Private Charity before the Welfare State," Journal of Women's History 17, no. 1 (2005): 87-111.
12. Rachel Ginnis Fuchs, Abandoned Children: Foundlings and Child Welfare in Nineteenth-Century France (Albany, N.Y., 1984), 72;
13. Volker Hunecke, I trovatelli di Milano: Bambini esposti e famiglie espositrici dal XVII al XIX secolo (Bologna, 1989), 306.
14. These statistics are complex, in part because not all of the children left in a city's foundling home came from within the city. Giovanna da Molin, who computed figures for abandonment for Italian regions for 1869, concluded that in Sicily and Umbria, more than 6 percent of all children were abandoned after birth. Giovanna da Molin, "Illegittimi ed esposti in Italia dal Seicento all'Ottocento," in Società italiana di demografia storica, La demografia storica delle città Italiane: Relazioni e comunicazioni presentate al convegno tenuto ad Assisi neigiorni 27-29 ottobre 1980 (Bologna, 1982).
15. Huang Liuhong, Fuhui quanshu [A Complete Book Concerning Happiness and Benevolence], 32 juan (1699), 31: 16-20;
16. Gabriel Palatre, L'Infanticide et l'Oeuvre de la Sainte-Enfance en Chine (Changhai, 1878), 2-114;
17. Zhang Jianmin, "Lun Qingdai niying wenti" [On the Problem of Female Infanticide in the Qing], Jingjipinglun, no. 2 (1995): 75-82;
18. Michelle King, "Drowning Daughters: A Cultural History of Infanticide in Late Nineteenth-Century China" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, 2007);
19. James L. Watson, "Transactions in People: The Chinese Market in Slaves, Servants, and Heirs," in Watson, ed., Asian and African Systems of Slavery (Berkeley, Calif., 1980);
20. James Z. Lee and Cameron D. Campbell, Fate and Fortune in Rural China: Social Organization and Population Behavior in Liaoning, 1774-1873 (Cambridge, 1997);
21. Lillian M. Li, "Life and Death in a Chinese Famine: Infanticide as a Demographic Consequence of the 1935 Yellow River Flood," Comparative Studies in Society and History 33, no. 3 (1991): 466-510. There are many anecdotal accounts of infanticide. One of the most striking is in Carma Hinton's 1985 documentary film One Village in China, in which a woman explains that, under pressure from her in-laws, she smothered her second son as an infant during the 1940s because she had two babies and not enough food.
22. Annales 2 (1848-1850): 45; 16 (1864): 171.
23. e siècles," Études Chinoises 4, no. 1 (1985): 15-54;
24. Xiao Qian, "Qingdai Jiangxi minjian yuying shiye yanjiu" [Research on Foundling Care in Qing Dynasty Jiangxi], Zhonggiio shehui jingjishi yanjiu, no. 1 (2001): 38-46;
25. Fuchs, Abandoned Children.
26. Alain Bideau and Guy Brunet, "La mortalité des enfants trouvés dans le département de l'Ain aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles," in Società italiana di demografia storica, Enfance abandonnée et société en Europe XIVe-XXe siècle: Actes du colloque international (Rome, 1991), 245;
27. Fuma Susumu, "Shindai Shōko ikueido no keiei to chihō shakai" [Local Society and the Actual Management of the Hall for Infant Relief in Qing Dynasty Songjiang], Tōyōshi kenkyū 45, no. 3 (1986): 74-75;
28. Angela Ki Che Leung, "Relief Institutions for Children in Nineteenth-Century China," in Anne Behnke Kinney, ed., Chinese Views of Childhood (Honolulu, 1995).
29. Annales 19 (1867): 279.
30. Cf. Lisa Cartwright, "Images of 'Waiting Children': Spectatorship and Pity in the Representation of the Global Social Orphan in the 1990s," in Toby Alice Volkman, ed., Cultures of Transnational Adoption (Durham, N.C., 2005).
31. Annales 21 (1869): 355.
32. Annales 27 (1876): 345.
33. Annales 24 (1873): 215.
34. Annales 19 (1867): 343.
35. Annales 26 (1875): 137.
36. Annales 23 (1871-1872): 133.
37. Annales 27 (1876): 14.
38. G.-Eug. Simon, "La famille chinoise," La nouvelle revue 21 (1883): 391.
39. Lisa Tiersten, Marianne in the Market: Envisioning Consumer Society in Fin-de-Siècle France (Berkeley, Calif., 2001), 188-199.
40. Annales 1 (1847): 142-143, 436; 2 (1848-1850): 16, 20-23, 172-173.
41. Annales 5 (1853): 441.
42. e siècle, November 9, 1875.
43. Simon, "La famille chinoise," 390.
44. For the origins of the accusation, see John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquitv to the Renaissance (Chicago, 1988), 138-179, 414-415.
45. Annales 5 (1853): 152-158.
46. Annales 18 (1866): 11.
47. e siècle (Rome, 1902), 114.
48. Pontificia Opus Sancta Infantia, Archive, Rome [hereafter POSI], file C432, Louis Moccagatta, September 1878; C437, Mission du Chansi- Méridional État de l'Oeuvre, July 14, 1894-July 14, 1895; "Giornale dal 1° Giugno 1910 al 31 Agosto 1912" (manuscript; Zhongguo tianzhujiao lishi ziliao zhongxin [China Catholic Historical Materials Center], Taiyuan, China). Statistics for Holy Childhood baptisms in Shanxi from 1866 are available in the annual reports contained in POSI C432. The average is pulled up by the huge figure for 1878. In most years, the number of baptisms was around 4,000.
49. Annales 32 (1881): 295-297; 35 (1884): 313-317: 37 (1886): 370.
50. Palatre, Infanticide, 75;
51. Annales 20 (1868): 221-222; 23 (1871): 88; 25 (1874): 90;
52. Deborah A. Symonds, Weep Not for Me: Women, Ballads, and Infanticide in Early Modern Scotland (University Park, Md., 1997), 167.
53. Annales 21 (1869): 229-231; 35 (1884): 317.
54. Interview, Qingyuan County, Shanxi, September 8, 2005. In the summer of 2005, I conducted interviews in the north China village whose orphanage is depicted in Figure 3. I spoke at length with four women in their seventies and eighties who had spent their childhood in the orphanage. For a more generalized account of this system, see Edoald Berden, "A Question about Orphanages," China Missionary 2 (1949): 665-666.
55. "Lettera del Padre Ugolino di Doullens M.O. alla R.ma Madre Generale delle Suore Francescane Missionarie di Maria," Le Missioni Francescane in Palestina ed in altre regioni della terra 3, no. 11 (1893): 660; Franciscan Order Curia Generalizia, Archive, Rome, Sinae 1870-1872, SK541, Relazione dell'origine progresso e stato presente della Missione dello Xan-si in Cina 1870; POSI C431, Hugolin Villeret, July 17, 1889; C432, Louis Moccagatta, August 1883-July 1884. The total income for Holy Childhood operations in Shanxi diocese was 51,890 francs, the total expenditure 69,199 francs (because the mission was subsidizing the work). The cost of providing wet nurses for all the children admitted would have been 100,000 francs.
56. Kerval, Le R.P. Hugolin de Doullens, 163;
57. Annales 15 (1863): 306-307, 319-320;
58. Zhongguo fulihui, Children's Tears (Shanghai, 1952), 34.
59. For alternatives to the strict patrilineal family, see Ann Waltner, Getting an Heir: Adoption and the Construction of Kinship in Late Imperial China (Honolulu, 1990);
60. Matthew H. Sommer, "Making Sex Work: Polyandry as a Survival Strategy in Qing Dynasty China," in Bryna Goodman and Wendy Larson, eds., Gender in Motion: Divisions of Labor and Cultural Change in Late Imperial and Modern China (Lanham, Md., 2005).
61. Annales 15 (1863): 93;
62. The Tientsin Massacre, Being Documents Published in the Shanghai Evening Courier, from June 16th to Sept. 10th, 1870, with an Introductory Narrative, 2nd ed. (Shanghai, [1870]), 27.
63. POSI C431, Gregorio Grassi Mission dello Chan-Si in Cina État de l'Oeuvre, August 1, 1886-July 31, 1887; C432, Shansi Notes pour servir à connaître le sens de la lettre Gabriel [Grioglio] da Moretta du 3 Octobre 1855, and Antonio Feliciani Compte-rendu de Exposés du Xansi, January 1,1862-January 1, 1863; C433, M. Immaculée, September 9, 1920; C436, Hugolin Villeret, September 27, 1890; Annales 18 (1866): 388.
64. Annales 24 (1873): 39.
65. POSI C432, Hugolin [Villeret] de Doullens, February 15, 1888; C433, Chan-si septentrional (soeurs), August 31, 1910; Annales 27 (1876): 160; 30 (1879): 381; Geliaogou cunweihui dang'anju, Woman Zhou, 1904/3/26, and Qiao Jingxing, 1907/9/19.
66. Interview, Qingyuan county, Shanxi, September 8, 2005; Fuchs, Abandoned Children, 30-31; POSI C431, [Gregorio] Grassi, July 24, 1887;
67. Geliaogou cunweihui dang'anju, Gao Renyi, 1909/7/20; Annales 18 (1866): 97; 26 (1875): 267-268.
68. POSI C432, [Louis] Moccagatta, October 1, 1883; C437, Chan-si meridional [Jean] Hofman, 1892; ibid., Mission du Chansi Méridional État de l'Oeuvre, July 15, 1904-July 14, 1905; ibid., Oeuvre de la Sainte Enfance Année 1917 Mission du Shansi Méridional; Geliaogou cunweihui dang'anju, Gao Renyi, 1909/7/20; Shanxi beijiaoqu dang'an [Archives of the North Shanxi Diocese], 1901-1949, Zhongguo tianzhujiao lishi ziliao zhongxin, Taiyuan, Zhang Baolu, March 6, 1905, and Du Yongqing [February 13, 1905]; William Hinton, Shenfan (London, 1983), 531.
69. Kerval, Le R.P. Hugolin de Doullens, 161.
70. Annales 22 (1870): 389; 26 (1875): 267; Shanxi beijiaoqu dang'an, Zhang Baolu, December 20, 1904, and Tian Jingshi, November 12, 1904; Interview, Qingyuan County, Shanxi, September 8, 2005.
71. Geliaogou cunweihui dang'anju, Ren Wutao, 1910/8/20.
72. [Register of Orphanage Residents, 1917-1950], Zhongguo tianzhujiao lishi ziliao zhongxin; manuscript missing front pages. Cf. Lydia Murdoch, Imagined Orphans: Poor Families, Child Welfare, and Contested Citizenship in London (New Brunswick, N.J., 2006).
73. Annales 16 (1864): 93-98; 17 (1865): 8; 20 (1868): 362-367; 27 (1876): 12; POSI C432, Louis Moccagatta, September 1878;
74. He Changling, Naian zouyi [Collected Draft Memorials of Naian], 12 Juan (1918), 4: 33-34;
75. Guizhou tongshi [General History of Guizhou], 5 vols. (Beijing, 2002), 3: 287-494;
76. Li Hongzhang, Li Wenzhong gong quanji [The Complete Works of Mr. Li Wenzhong], 165 juan (1905; repr., Hainan, 1997, under the title Li Hongzhang quanji), yishu hangao 20: 34.
77. Annales 11 (1859): 115-116; 15 (1863): 306; 18 (1866): 18; 19 (1867): 232; 23 (1871): 19;
78. Edoardo Manini, Episodi della Rivoluzione Cinese, 1900 (Parma, 1901), 19;
79. Antonius Maria Fu, "Relatio de ultima persecutione in Sims," Acta Ordinis Fratrum Minorum 20 (1901): 176;
80. Barnabas [Nanetti] d'Alsazia, "L'Infanzia in Cina," Oriente Serafico 4 (1892): 402;
81. Jiaowu jiaoan dang, series 2: 866; series 5: 685.
82. Annales 22 (1870): 362-366;
83. The Tientsin Massacre; Chen Fangzhong, "Tianjin jiaoan zai tan" [A Further Investigation of the Tianjin Religious Case], Furen lishi xuebao 11 (2000): 133-160.
84. Philip A Kuhn, Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 (Cambridge, Mass., 1990);
85. Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Death without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil (Berkeley, Calif., 1992), 233-242.
86. Annales 25 (1874): 175.
87. POSI C433, Eugenio Massi Mission du Chansi Sept. État de l'Oeuvre, August 31, 1911-August 31, 1912; Ryan Dunch, Fuzhou Protestants and the Making of a Modem China, 1857-1927 (New Haven, Conn., 2001);
88. Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of Christian Missions in China (London, 1929), 464.
89. POSI C327, Franciscus Liou, March 22, 1931.
90. POSI C450, Pierre Tch'eng. September 21, 1934; Pierre Ly, October 6, 1935; and Joseph Tchang, November 3, 1936, August 22, 1938, September 30, 1939.
91. POSI C493, Hermengildus Focaccia, November 1, 1939.
92. Su Ruoyi, Zhongguo jindai jiaonan shiliao (1948-1957) [Materials on China's Modern Religious Persecution (1948-1957)] (Taibei, 2000), 51-44-45;
93. Zhongguo fulihui, Children's Tears, 21-25;
94. Nicola Cerasa, Breve Storia della Missione di Taiyuan Shansi (Rome, 1998), 204; Shanxi ribao [Shanxi Daily News], July 8, 1951, 1.
95. Nicola Cerasa, Gioioso Centenario: Biografia di Mons. Luca Dornenico Capozi (Pofi, 1999), 204.
96. Nara Dillon, "New Democracy and the Demise of Chinese Charity in Shanghai," in Jeremy Brown and Paul G. Pickowicz, eds., Dilemmas of Victory: The Early Years of the People's Republic of China (Cambridge Mass., 2007), 98.