The first BIPOC students at Bryn Mawr were Japanese and Chinese students. There were Japanese and Chinese Scholarship funds established relatively early in the college’s history. One question that often comes up is, quite simply, why were a small number of Chinese and Japanese students accepted at Bryn Mawr while other BIPOC students were excluded?
This is a question that can be answered from numerous angles. One is the missionary work of Quakers and how the desire to spread their brand of Christianity influenced their willingness to accept non-white students at a school that was otherwise conceptualized for middle to upper-class white, Christian women.
By 1937, Quakers had been operating missions in Japan and China for 50 years or more. Edith Sharpless, the daughter of Dr. Isaac Sharpless—for whom a building at Haverford is named—cites 1885 as the first year that Quakers established missions in Japan—the same year that Bryn Mawr was founded. Missions in China started at a similar time.
Foriegn Christian missionaries often founded schools and hospitals, and this is true also of the Quakers. On the surface, these endeavors can seem noble and humanitarian. This has certainly been the dominant historical narrative. However, the primary motivation for these efforts, as told by the Quakers themselves, was conversion to Christianity. In addition, the attitude that missions were approached with was very often paternalistic and deeply enmeshed with the idea of “saving” non-Christian people and “uplifting” them. These goals are predicated on an assumption of the inferiority of existing religions, cultures, education, medical care, et al.
In the same 1937 issue of the Bulletin of Friends Historical Association that Edith Sharpless wrote in, there are a number of articles focusing specifically on Quaker missions in China and Japan, including Edith Sharpless’ article about Japan, as well as articles by William Cadbury and Dr. Swun Deh Du about Quakerism in China. These articles reveal the primary purpose of the Quakers (conversion) and their attitudes toward the people they were proselytizing to, as well as how those attitudes were received by some.
“…in the year 1883 a group of women Friends met to consider their responsibility toward their ‘sisters’ in other lands who had not had the advantages of the Christian gospel.” (Edith Sharpless, “Fifty Years of Quakerism in Japan”).
”The object of the Society (the Medical Missionary Society of China) was the course pursued by the Saviour Himself, who, while seeking first and chiefly the good of the soul, did not fail to care for the bodies of men.” ( William Cadbury, “Friends in China”)
”Fifty five years ago an article titled “Shall the Gospel be preached to this generation of China?” was published by George King in London. Members of the Society of Friends were impressed by the fact that they had no representative engaged in missionary work in China.” (Swun Deh Du, “Quakerism in West China”)
Dr. Swun Deh Du also talks about a tendency for Quaker missionaries and the association funding them to focus on the spiritual over the humanitarian work they are theoretically there to accomplish (though he, as a Quaker himself, is supportive of Quaker religious missions and work).
So, Quakers were happy to explicitly state that they wanted to spread the Christian Gospel, and saw their schools and hospitals as an extension of that goal. Similarly, the Chinese Scholarship was founded at least partially on the idea that Chinese students educated at Bryn Mawr would return home and “interpret Western culture” to China. This blog post doesn’t have the space to fully discuss the complexities of how and why particular students were accepted for the scholarship, but it is clear that many of them already attended Christian schools in China and that admissions favored students whose families already had close ties to the US and Christian and Quaker institutions (Note: This is also due, at least in part, to the requirement of English proficiency).
The relationship between the Quakers who founded Bryn Mawr and the Quakers pushing missionary efforts in East Asia were close, and the same desire to spread and impose Christianity and “Western culture” (as they saw it) that motivated those missionaries was also present in the motivations for founding programs like the Chinese and Japanese Scholarship Funds. The fact that there were strong Christian and Quaker missions in China and Japan, including schools, explains (in part) why small numbers of students from those two countries were accepted to Bryn Mawr while BIPOC from the USA and other parts of the world were not.
For further understanding of the racist beliefs that influenced how white Americans viewed people from Asia see “Belonging At Bryn Mawr Then” in the 2022 WBBM? Exhibit
See also M. Carey Thomas Goes Abroad by Grace Foresman
Bibliography and Further Reading:
Cadbury, William W. “Friends in China.” Bulletin of Friends Historical Association 26, no. 2 (1937): 86–87. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41944050
Du, Swun Deh. “Quakerism in West China.” Bulletin of Friends Historical Association 26, no. 2 (1937): 88–91. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41944051
Rauss, Olivia D. “Scholarship on Quaker Missionaries in China: A Sparse Past but a Rich Future?” Quaker History 105, no. 1 (2016): 48–64. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24896280
Sharpless, Edith F. “Fifty Years of Quakerism in Japan.” Bulletin of Friends’ Historical Association 26, no. 2 (September 1937): 91–99. https://doi.org/10.1353/qkh.1937.a395411.