Both the author and publisher of this volume are to be congratulated for making available a well-written, well-researched study of Timothy Richard (1845–1919), who went to China in 1870 as a member of the English Baptist Missionary Society (BMS) and subsequently stayed there for over forty years. Andrew T. Kaiser's work is a direct outcome of his doctoral thesis (University of Edinburgh, 2014), which, in becoming book, does not seem to have been substantially revised. References to “this thesis” are found in the book's pages. Assuming this to be the case (as I have not compared the two versions), there is no question that Kaiser's thesis was of such quality that it deserved to be widely read by researchers with an interest in the history of Protestant missions and Sino-foreign intercourse in late Qing China.

The book covers the first twenty years of Richard's China career. Apart from the Introduction (Chapter 1), which addresses methodological, historiographical, and missiological issues, and the Conclusion (Chapter 9), which sums up the book's main arguments, the remaining seven chapters are organised into Three Parts. Part One (‘Encounter China’) explores Richard's Welsh Nonconformist family and educational background and his early experiences of working in Shandong province, China (Chapter 2). Dissatisfied with the evangelical methods then in use, Richard came up with his own “innovations”, which included “seeking the worthy” (Chapter 3), adapting to the Chinese context, and learning from China's Three Teachings (Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism) and sectarian religions (Chapter 4).

Part Two (‘Richard Encountering Famine’) examines Richard's early claim to fame as relief organiser during the North China Famine (Chapter 5), which afforded him opportunities to appeal to Chinese consciences with Christian “moral evidences”. His involvement led him to ponder the meaning of the Kingdom of God not only for the hereafter but also for this life on earth and to propose reforms as a safeguard against Chinese suffering in future calamities (Chapter 6). Richard's evangelical methods, however, generated discord among fellow missionaries (Part Three: ‘Richard Encountering Conflict’). Chapter 7 investigates Richard's uneasy relationship with James Hudson Taylor, the famed founder of the China Inland Mission (CIM), and Chapter 8 revisits Richard's clashes with Baptist colleagues in Shanxi province. Richard's decision in 1891, with BMS's approval, to become secretary of the Society for the Diffusion of Christian and General Knowledge among the Chinese in Shanghai gave respite of sorts to all concerned about his work in China. The book ends where Richard was about to embark on a new phase of his career.

One of the book's great strengths is the author's solid research. Kaiser's command of primary sources is impressive. From Richard's personal letters to published articles, from BMS archives to contemporary periodicals like the Chinese Recorder, he navigates through them with ease and confidence. His use of Chinese materials sets his work apart from many studies of Richard based solely on English sources, including Eunice V. Johnson's recent Timothy Richard's Vision: Education and Reform in China, 1880–1910, (ed.) Carol Lee Hamrin (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2014). The bibliography is also well worth a close look as it contains useful titles on Christian thought, mission history, and Chinese sectarian religions and local history. Sources do not really speak for themselves, and Kaiser's prudence in citing them is evident in a good number of remarks in the text and in footnotes on their value or limitations. Like others before him, Kaiser debunks the liberal-conservative dichotomy in characterising Richard's evangelism. While admiring of his subject, Kaiser strives to hold his scholarly balance. Noting, for instance, that it is “not unwarranted” to call Richard “the Founder of ‘Famine Relief’ in China”, he ascribes to Richard what was “indeed [a] small” role when compared to other relief efforts like the “massive state-sponsored programs” (pp. 106–107).

Judicious assessment is commendable but can also fall short. Chapter 7 delves into Richard's “conflict” with Hudson Taylor, who reportedly had criticised Richard for being “not orthodox” and with “Romish” tendencies. After wading through relevant but inconclusive evidence, Kaiser acknowledges that there “are simply too many unknowns” (p. 171) for a definite explanation of the falling-out between the two men while intimating that Taylor may have made Richard a “convenient scapegoat” for CIM personnel problems. The lack of a clear picture, after the preliminary build-up, is a letdown. As a stand-alone chapter, it is a weak part of the book.

One of the book's major themes is Richard's endeavour to blend in with the Chinese. The emphasis is well taken, though hardly surprising. Save for the haughtily contented, the doggedly insensitive or the dogmatically rigid, who were so self-absorbed in their own ways as to be wholly indifferent to the cultural ‘other’, some degree of acculturation, accommodation, adaptation, empathy, or in more fashionable parlance, cultural appropriation was to be expected. (Years ago, when this reviewer was going through the David Hill papers at the Methodist Missionary Society in London, he came across a large box containing Hill's Chinese costume, complete with a long gown, a pair of cloth socks, and a cap with an artificial queue attached to the back.) Richard was no exception. What was remarkable about him is the great lengths he had gone to in immersing himself in the Chinese milieu. As a missionary's wife noted in December 1878, Richard looked like “a thorough Chinaman in dress, food, manners, and love, and sympathy for the people” (p. 124). The remark is telling, but the book's reiteration of the point gets tedious and gratuitous at times.

While recognising Richard's “pragmatic, reactive development as a missionary” (p. 20), Kaiser chooses to emphasize, as seen in the book's subtitle, Richard's ‘thought’. The tendency is to over-intellectualise Richard's reason for action. Kaiser argues that Richard's role in famine relief “cannot be understood” apart from his evangelicalism and empathy for the Chinese (p. 97). One would assume, in contrast, that any decent person in similar circumstances, missionary or not, foreign or Chinese, would try to help when the people, according to a North China Herald report, “are dying …… like flies” (Jan. 31, 1878, p.116). It also seems hasty to suggest that Richard's Christian philanthropy might lead some Chinese to wonder if “the West [is] morally superior to China?” (p. 114). Disaster relief was not unknown in Chinese society, and Westerners’ participation in it would likely have humanised them as benefactors and friends and helped mitigate, if not altogether remove, the stigma attached to them as ‘foreign devils’. It is a leap in argument, however, to extrapolate that the question of moral superiority would have thereby arisen in Chinese minds.

Of Richard's “seeking the worthy”, Kaiser puts forward a fresh interpretation. Espoused in Matt 10:11, Jesus's exhortation to the Apostles to embark on itinerant-preaching came to Richard through his reading of the Bible and the writings by, among others, Edward Irving, the controversial Church of Scotland minister. Kaiser takes issue with scholars who “mistakenly connect” “the worthy” to Richard's “later interactions with Chinese intellectual and political elites” (p. 65). Rather than a top-down strategy of proselytisation, Richard's engagement with Chinese elites was merely to acquaint them with the true nature of Christianity so that they would desist from instigating or condoning actions against missionaries and Chinese Christians. “The worthy” to Richard, in Kaiser's view, comprised “the religiously inclined devout seekers after truth” (p.150), who would be more receptive to the Christian message of salvation. Kaiser's argument is vigorous but does not seem, to me, to settle the issue. Such a definition of “the worthy” implies a choice of target audience that is both discriminatory and, from the standpoint of the evangelist's daily routine, hardly practicable. What was a missionary supposed to do before or after such “devout seekers after truth” were identified or found? How was “devoutness” to be measured or verified? These “seekers after truth” and the political and social elites, if Richard did uphold the distinction, were not, conceivably, mutually exclusive. Although Richard had already cultivated ties with Chinese elites during his first twenty years in China, his more notable interactions with them, like the court dignitaries in Beijing, to which his Forty-five Years in China gives no scant mention, took place in the 1890s. Is it possible, given the evolving style of Richard's thought and practice, that “the worthy” had also shifted or expanded in meaning over time?

As if in anticipation of criticisms of Richard by fellow missionaries (Part Three), the book is apologetic about Richard's evangelical commitment, which, Kaiser contends, had never wavered or diminished. Action and thought, “transformation and continuity” (p. 223), China contingencies and Richard's Welsh Nonconformist background are recurrent dual-themes in the book. The tensions inherent in these polarities are well worth exploring but can perhaps be best elucidated in a broader time frame and fuller treatment. We look forward to a sequel to this fine study.