Frontier Service And Chinese Frontier Studies In The 1930s And 1940s

Frontier Service is a periodical on border affairs founded by the Frontier Service Department of the All-China Federation of the Church of Christ,the purpose of this paper is to investigate the establishment background,distribution process,main content,author group and frontier research characteristics of the journal.Frontier service movement is the missionary work of Christ Church of China in the rear area of the Anti-Japanese War,The Frontier Service is the text work of the frontier service movement,This journal was founded in Chengdu in April 1943,and issued for 8years,consisting of 29 issues,until May 1950,the publication ceased.Since its inception,this journal has been aimed at serving the border area,mainly publishing articles on the education of border residents in southwest China,border medical treatment,frontier culture,frontier agriculture,frontier work,frontier news and so on,the introduction of the border and local conditions fully recorded the work of the border service movement,which promoted the attention and importance of the people to the border,on the basis of field visits and based on their experience,scholars and believers wrote investigation reports and research treatises on border inspection,offering suggestions and suggestions for the government to develop and build the border area.Through a comprehensive review of the Frontier Service published content,this paper divides it into four categories:education of frontier residents and research on diseases in frontier areas,investigation and research on environment and agriculture and sideline industry in frontier areas,research on customs and history and culture in frontier areas,and research on border politics and border affairs,according to their different identities,authors can be divided into three groups:leaders and believers,researchers and scholars in universities,and outstanding youth of ethnic minorities to show their overall academic outlook.As far as the characteristics of frontier research are concerned,this paper holds that the journal does not carry out pure theoretical frontier research,and the regional ethnic characteristics of the southwest frontier are more prominent,as a frontier affairs journal founded by the Frontier Service Department of Christian Churches,it has obvious Christian religious color,its frontier research method was influenced by the Huaxi School of Anthropology.The study of this journal in the 1930 s and 1940 s shows the common feature of frontier reasearch in this period,namely,the emergence of a large number of frontier research institutions and newspapers,whose strong attention to various issues of frontier,nation and country leads to the same destination.Tracing back to its theoretical basis,it is the localization of the Gleason’s Western Studies,such as anthropology,sociology and ethnology,which provided methodological support for fromtier studies.