This article investigates the history of midwifery from the 1920s to 1940s in China through looking at the linkage between modern midwifery and maternal mortality in urban areas. It first shows that people’s perceptions of maternal mortality and its causes changed from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, and that a modern form of midwifery service took shape in the Republican era (1912–49) in order for reducing maternal mortality rate and building a strong nation. Evidence from urban areas of Beijing and Sichuan between the 1920s and the...
