Carstairs Douglas

Carstairs Douglas
Missionary and Linguist
Born	27 December 1830 Kilbarchan, Renfrewshire, Scotland
Died	26 July 1877(1877-07-26) (aged 46) Xiamen, Fujian, China (Qing dynasty)
Residence	Scotland China
Nationality	Scottish
Alma mater	University of Glasgow University of Edinburgh
Title	LL.D.
Parent(s)	Rev. Robert Douglas Janet Monteath

Carstairs Douglas (Chinese: 杜嘉德; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Tō· Ka-tek) (born 27 December 1830 in Kilbarchan, Renfrewshire; died 26 July 1877 in Xiamen, China) was a Scottish missionary, remembered chiefly for his writings concerning the Southern Min language of Fujian, in particular his Chinese–English Dictionary of the Vernacular or Spoken Language of Amoy.

Castairs Douglas was born a son of the manse in Kilbarchan in Renfrewshire, Scotland, the youngest or second-youngest of seven children. His father Rev Robert Douglas, was the parish minister, and his elder brother Robert was also closely involved in the church. Douglas studied at the University of Glasgow from 1845 until 1851, gaining an MA degree, and was later awarded the LL.D. by his alma mater in recognition of his scholarly achievements. Going on to study Divinity at the University of Edinburgh, Douglas professed a keen interest in missionary work. He was ordained in February 1855 and set sail for China a month later.

As one of the treaty ports opened to Westerners in 1842, Xiamen (then known in the West as Amoy) was one of the few places in China where missionaries could go about their work relatively unmolested. During his tenure Douglas was responsible for increasing the single church in Xiamen to a congregation of twenty-five churches, composed mostly of Chinese members. Contemporaries of Douglas were heavily involved in producing material concerned with the local language, including Elihu Doty who wrote the Anglo-Chinese Manual with Romanized Colloquial in the Amoy Dialect and John Van Nest Talmage, author of the Ê-Mn̂g Im ê Jī-tián (Dictionary of the Amoy Speech). While stationed in Xiamen, Douglas visited Formosa (modern-day Taiwan) and was influential in the decision by the English Presbyterian Mission to send missionaries to the island. In his last significant position Douglas was elected joint Chairman of the Shanghai Missionary Conference of 1877, a gathering of 150 or so missionaries employed in the China field.