Arthur Henderson Smith

Missionary and author from the United States in China (1845–1932)

Arthur Henderson Smith (July18, 1845August31, 1932) (Chinese name: 明恩溥; pinyin: Ming Enpu) was a missionary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions noted for spending 54 years as a missionary in China and writing books which presented China to foreign readers. These books include Chinese Characteristics, Village Life in China and The Uplift of China. In the 1920s, Chinese Characteristics was still the most widely read book on China among foreign residents there.

He was born in Vernon, Connecticut, to a middle class Protestant family described by historian Lydia H. Liu as "rich on either side with clergy and local respectability." He served as a Wisconsin Infantry soldier in the Civil War before graduating from Beloit College

In 1907 Smith was elected the American co chair of the China Centenary Missionary Conference in Shanghai, a conference attended by more than 1,000 Protestant missionaries. He retired in 1926, 54 years after his arrival in China. His wife died the same year. He died in California in 1932 at the age of 87.

In 1898 and 1899 an indigenous anti foreign movement arose in Shandong province. One of the missionaries there, possibly Smith, named the participants, mostly farmers, the “Boxers” because of their athletic rituals. The Boxer movement rapidly spread to several provinces in northern China and, eventually, received the support of the Chinese government. Smith and his wife were attending a missionary conference in Tongzhou in May 1900 when all the missionaries in Northern China found it necessary to seek safety from the Boxers by fleeing to Beijing or Tianjin. The missionary William Scott Ament rescued Smith, 22 other American missionaries and about 100 Chinese Christians in Tongzhou and escorted them to Peking. They took refuge in the Legation Quarter during the siege of the legations from June20 to August14, 1900. Smith’s role in the siege was a minor one as a gate guard, but he gathered material for his book, China in Convulsion, which is the most detailed account of the Boxer Rebellion. In 1906, Smith helped to persuade President Theodore Roosevelt to devote the indemnity payments China was making to the United States to the education of Chinese students. More than $12 million was spent on this Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program.

Smith's acerbic style and pithy judgments excited interest in both Chinese and Westerners. Chinese Characteristics was translated into Japanese, and from that translation into Chinese. One study found that among English readers the book was the most widely read book on China until it was replaced by Pearl Buck's The Good Earth (1931). Gu Hongming, who idealized Imperial China, harshly criticised Smith, but the pioneer of China's new literary language Lu Xun wrote that he was influenced by Chinese Characteristics. Smith drew a range of comment from later Western historians and critics. Harold R. Isaacs, in his influential Scratches on Our Minds (1958), said Smith wrote with a "suggestion of exhausted patience" as he undertook to write in the "scholarly manner", complete with "prefatory warnings against generalizations and a text dotted with sweeping statements." Isaacs quoted extensively from Smith and singled out examples of his dismissive characterization of Chinese society. He wrote that Smith also deplored the widespread use in the United States of the phrase "John Chinaman" applied to all Chinese because it spread the idea that all Chinese were alike and had no individual identities Timothy Cheek for instance, wrote that Smith’s work exemplified the ‘thinly disguised racism’ contained in the writings of many Protestant missionaries in China at that time. Smith is also remembered for speaking out against the Chinese practice of infanticide of girls and drawing attention to this often ignored practice.