Discovering the Frontier: Research from the West China Frontier Studies Society
by Zhou Shurong
About This Novel
In March 1922, 12 Western scholars headed by the American scholar Morse established the West China Frontier Studies Society at West China Union University in Chengdu. The society aims to study the politics, humanities, customs, environment and impact on local people in West China (Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Tibet, Gansu, etc.). It plans to promote research through surveys, loaning equipment, holding lectures, publishing papers, and publishing journals. Later, scholars from Britain, the United States, Canada, France, Germany, China, Australia and other countries joined, and the membership once reached more than 540 people. Chinese scholars joined in 1930, and by 1950, 120 people had participated. In the 1940s, Chinese scholars gradually became the main force in West China studies. The Society is the first international academic research institution in modern China with the West China Frontier as its purpose. It occupies an indispensable position in the academic history of modern China and also occupies an important position in Chinese Frontier Studies. It is an important symbol of the transformation from individual-based research methods to specialized academic institutional research activities. This project is the first to conduct a comprehensive and systematic basic research on the West China Frontier Studies Society itself, which will fill the gap in the academic community in the absence of academic monographs on the society itself. It not only corrects the view of the Society as a "reactionary Western academic institution" after 1950, but also re-evaluates the Society based on its archives and published documents. It also places the Society in the context of global politics and politics to discuss its founding and development, and comprehensively evaluates the Society's historical role, value, contribution and influence, and even its important position in the history of modern Chinese academic history, the history of modern Chinese frontiers, the history of international Sinology, the history of cultural exchanges between China and the West, and the history of the spread of Christianity in West China.
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