History of the First Chinese-English school in Asia

What is it about?

Missionaries Robert Morrison and William Milne founded the Anglo-Chinese College (ACC) in 1818 in Malacca, and it continued to operate there until 1843, when it relocated to Hong Kong. As the first Protestant school for Chinese and Europeans in Asia founded by the first two missionaries to China from the London Missionary Society, it has attracted much interest in cross-disciplinary missiological and historical studies, in the West and in the East, then and now; though few focus on its students, often giving scant details. This article provides an overview of the three types of ACC students from these earliest years, highlighting some prominent ones, including Walter Henry Medhurst, James Legge, Leang Fah and Ho Tsun-sheen.

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Why is it important?

Drawing on many primary and secondary sources, it explores the activities and lives of these people in school and after graduation, in the hope of gaining new insights into the roles they played in Sino-Western cultural exchanges, dissemination of Christianity, and development of parts of Asia in the nineteenth century.