The Evangelistic Imperative and the Modernity of Knowledge Production: Tibetology at the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1857–1952

The Tibetological research of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (NCBRAS) traces a historical process by which a missionary-led membership drove shifts in Tibetological knowledge production and research paradigms, thereby exposing the constitutive tensions of its modernization. In the nineteenth century, the Society operated under a triad of aims—evangelization, empire, and scholarship—and oriented its output toward the Western world. Its Tibetology bore a marked Orientalist imprint. After 1900, missionary members such as J. H. Edgar and T. Torrance introduced modern disciplinary methods, including anthropology, into Tibetological study, placing the field on a more scientific and professional footing. Yet this transformation was simultaneously shaped by colonial politics and the Christian missionary enterprise. Even as the Society secularized in the 1920s, missionary research continued to serve evangelistic ends. Taken together, the trajectory of NCBRAS Tibetology offers a microcosm of missionary knowledge production in modern China and illuminates the interplay among mission, empire, and scholarship.