China Historical Christian Database

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/2144/49527

The China Historical Christian Database (CHCD) quantifies and visualizes the place of Christianity in modern China (1550-1950). It provides users the tools to discover where every Christian church, school, hospital, orphanage, publishing house, and the like were located in China, and it documents who worked inside those buildings, both foreign and Chinese. Collectively, this information creates spatial maps and generates relational networks that reveal where, when, and how Western ideas, technologies, and practices entered China. Simultaneously, it uncovers how and through whom Chinese ideas, technologies, and practices were conveyed to the West.

This project breaks new ground in providing quantifiable data about modern Sino-Western relations. Its intuitive interface generates visualizations, lists, and maps for use by the general public, students and teachers in secondary education and colleges, in the US and globally, with English and Chinese navigation. Advanced DH users have open access to its data for elaboration. BU’s digital infrastructure guarantees long-term sustainability, and CHCD’s international collaborations in the USA, Asia, and Europe help promote historical understanding between China and the rest of the world.

The CHCD is hosted by the Center for Global Christianity and Mission at Boston University.

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    The China Historical Christian Database: An Essential Tool for the Cartography and Prosopography of Christianity in China
    (2024) Mayfield, Alex; Ireland, Daryl; Menegon, Eugenio; Frei, Greta
    The China Historical Christian Database (CHCD) is a powerful new tool for the study of Christianity in China. Through the creation of a cutting-edge geographic and relational database, an innovative online platform, and strategic international partnerships, the CHCD offers a new approach to resolving some of the classic problems of historical research on Christianity in China: the linguistic plurality and geographic spread of sources. Moreover, the technologically driven approach of the project is poised to create a field-changing resource that opens new forms of analysis in the study of Christianity in China. This white paper details how such a task is possible and currently being undertaken.
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    China Historical Christian Database version 2.5
    (2024-12-04) Mayfield, Alex; Ireland, Daryl; Menegon, Eugenio; Frei, Greta
    The China Historical Christian Database (CHCD) is a rich repository of historical, relational, and geographical data about Christianity in China from 1550 to 1950. The CHCD addresses these challenges by curating an open-access database built in Neo4j that records information about Christian institutions in China and those that worked inside of them. Drawing on historical sources, the CHCD contains temporal, relational, and geographic data. The CHCD will enable scholars to leverage geospatial analysis, network science, and data analytics to examine the religious, political, philosophical, and technological exchanges between China and the West.
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    The China Historical Christian Database: A Dataset Quantifying Christianity in China from 1550 to 1950
    (MDPI AG, 2024-06) Mayfield, Alex; Frei, Margaret; Ireland, Daryl; Menegon, Eugenio
    The era of digitization is revolutionizing traditional humanities research, presenting both novel methodologies and challenges. This field harnesses quantitative techniques to yield groundbreaking insights, contingent upon comprehensive datasets on historical subjects. The China Historical Christian Database (CHCD) exemplifies this trend, furnishing researchers with a rich repository of historical, relational, and geographical data about Christianity in China from 1550 to 1950. The study of Christianity in China confronts formidable obstacles, including the mobility of historical agents, fluctuating relational networks, and linguistic disparities among scattered sources. The CHCD addresses these challenges by curating an open-access database built in neo4j that records information about Christian institutions in China and those that worked inside of them. Drawing on historical sources, the CHCD contains temporal, relational, and geographic data. The database currently has over 40,000 nodes and 200,000 relationships, and continues to grow. Beyond its utility for religious studies, the CHCD encompasses broader interdisciplinary inquiries including social network analysis, geospatial visualization, and economic modeling. This article introduces the CHCD’s structure, and explains the data collection and curation process.