This is a book focusing on one man’s life. That will at first sight seem a very small topic within the wide span of history, especially in the context of the great nation of China. And this indeed is how it began. The author David, Jowett’s youngest son, brought up in China and Chinese-speaking in his early years, explained its genesis in a letter to a close friend. ‘I inherited from my siblings the plan for an appreciation of my father’s life, with two initial sections about his family’s background and his own early years. Having explored archive sources, I shifted the focus from Jowett and his family to Jowett as a China missionary and the context in which he was living and working’ That was how the author summarised in two short sentences the genesis, aim, generation, and focus of his account. It gives the essence of the book. It is indeed a book about one man’s life – arguably the stuff of history that, carefully examined, can tell us much. But it is also, as noted by the author, about its setting in historical, cultural, educational, and, in this case, theological context. This brings a deeper understanding of mission and missionaries, and of their aspiration to spread enlightenment among the heathen, itself part of the story of western expansion and colonialism. Into this setting the book puts the actions of this one individual, Arthur Hugh Jowett Murray – helped, but also, at times hindered, by the events in the midst of which he was working.​

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LIMITED EDITION VERY EARLY March 2025

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“ The book makes two contributions to the study of Chinese and global Christianity. The first contribution concerns the enrichment of firsthand historical materials for Chinese Christian history, a subject once attracted many prestigious scholars such as J.K. Fairbank, P.A. Cohen and D.H. Bays as well many of younger generations. Unfortunately, because of the constraints from Chinese authorities, research on Christian history has faced many difficulties, for example, the access to archives. In this sense, Murray’s project provides new sources which are pretty precious at the moment. Through Jowett Murray’s missionary life, this manuscript will enhance the knowledge and understanding of Chinese Christian history, Sino-Western communication and particularly the introduction of Western educational institutions to modern China. Another major contribution is from the methodological sense. Based on biographies of Jowett Murray, the anthropologist Ruth Finnegan has made an inspiring reflection on what history is and whom history is for”

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Jifeng Liu, author of Negotiating the Christian Past in China: Memory and Missions in Contemporary Xiamen)