The evolution of missionary case in space and time in Guangdong (1584-1910)
广东基督教教案的时空演变 (1584~1910)

Missionary case is one of the most direct reflectations of the conflict and combination between foreign religious culture and local culture. The paper obtains data from the relevant historical literatures and uses GIS graphical technique and the mathematical statistical analysis method to conduct study.It is found out that the evolution process of Guangdong missionary case before 1911 can be categorized into four stages: newborn, multiple, climax, and recession. Their imbalanced spatial distribution in Guangdong can be seen obviously: the Pearl River Delta (PRD) is the distribution center of missionary case from beginning to end; Chaoshan region and Hakka areas in the east of Guangdong also become the inferior centers successively. Furthermore, an analysis on geographic concentration indexes of missionary cases in every state of Guangdong before 1911 evidences the structural character of the centeral areas of missionary case. In view of the cultural dissemination pattern, the diffusion of missionary cases in Guangdong not only belongs to the ink-mark type of migration proliferation, but also obviously has some features of hierarchical proliferation, in which the level of population density is taken as the primary diffusion character, and then is the administrative area rank. The regional cultural causes of the distribution and diffusion of missionary case lie in the geographic environment in Guangdong, which is enclosed to inland and opened to outseas, leading to different regional cultures of various localities among themselves. Our geographical research on the missionary cases gives a new and unique perspective on how to decrease growing regional religious conflicts in the world. Some geographical research methods, including GIS &; GCI(Geographic Concentration Index), which is used in the context,could find a new way for the research on religious geography.