China confidential: methodological and ethical challenges in global nursing historiography

As the history of nursing as a field of scholarship expands its global consciousness, it seems timely to join other scholars of international history in rethinking conventional approaches to historiography. The lament by mission scholars at the invisibility of nurses and indigenous workers in historical mission records coincides with calls by China scholars to reconsider traditional reliance on English-language data generation and interpretation for an English-speaking audience. In a similar way, nursing scholars are challenging historians of nursing to find ways to build a body of scholarship and a cadre of scholars that can open up new linguistic and cultural space for vibrant discussion and dialogue. Drawing on Sonya Grypma's research on the role of missionary nurses in the development of modern nursing in China and based on a series of interviews by the authors in China of participants with ties to a former Canadian mission hospital, we explore methodological and ethical challenges in global nursing historiography. By offering insights gleaned from our early attempts to capture voices not included in conventional mission records, we hope to stimulate more dialogue about conceptual and structural issues central to a "new" global nursing historiography.