臺勢教會 The Taiwanese Making of the Canada Presbyterian Mission

George Leslie Mackay (1844-1901) was a Scottish missionary active from 1871 to 1901 in Tamsui in northern Taiwan. He has been widely regarded as “one of the most successful missionaries of the nineteenth century”. He and his many admirers described his career as “phenomenal”, and Mark Dodge introduces him as the leading figure in a “miracle mission” that remains revered and celebrated in Taiwan to this day. In this new book, based on Mackay’s autobiography of 1903, a dozen more recent and brief biographical accounts in Chinese and English, a wealth of secondary sources on related topics, and freshly exploited primary sources, including genealogies and letters, Dodge also recognizes that Mackay’s maneuvering to extend an anthropologically informed Presbyterianism to northern Taiwan in the midst of competing Qing, British, French, and Japanese empires was something of an exercise in “cultural imperialism.” By means of careful research, nuanced analysis, and a clear narrative style, Dodge successfully transcends those two analytical poles and offers readers an absorbing account that brings to life many players in a drama featuring Mackay’s Taiwanese wife, Tiu Chhang-mia, and many other self-styled “helpers”, ranging from tea merchants to minority ethnic groups, who ultimately helped to turn the Mackays into associates of those many Taiwanese who were in search of a real and sustainable form of cultural autonomy in an inter-imperial world.

Roger V. Des Forges

Professor of History Emeritus

State University of New York at Buffalo