The history of Quakerism in Sichuan (or "West China") began in 1887 when missionaries began to arrive from the United Kingdom. Missionaries founded schools and established meeting groups. Nonetheless, missionary activity in China generated controversy among many native Chinese and faced armed opposition during both the Boxer Rebellion and the later Chinese Communist Revolution. Although the former did not affect Sichuan so much as some other parts of China, the province was one of the hotbeds of anti-missionary riots throughout its ecclesiastical history.

Numerous mission properties and native church leaders in Sichuan were respectively destroyed and killed by communists in the mid-1930s. Missionaries were expelled and activity ceased after the communist take over of China in 1949. Under government oppression, ties were cut with foreign Quaker groups, and Quakerism in Sichuan was merged into the Three-Self Patriotic Church.

In 1882, an article titled "Shall the Gospel be preached to this generation of the Chinese?" by Dr. George King was published in London. Several members of the Society of Friends reading it, were impressed with the fact that the Society had no representatives engaged in missionary effort in China. Three years later (1885), two Irish Friends, Robert John Davidson and his wife Mary Jane Davidson, were appointed by the Friends' Foreign Mission Association (FFMA, belonging to London Yearly Meeting) as missionaries to work in China. They left England in September, 1886, and reached Sichuan the following year. At a local medical assistant Mr. Sie's suggestion, the Davidsons paid their first visit to Tungchwan in the end of 1887.

In 1889, after a series of problems regarding their long-term settlement with the local authorities of Tongchuan (Tungchwan), they were told that they had "no right to be there". R. J. Davidson had no choice but to turn to Chongqing, the only place which seemed open to him. There a small house was rented until the following spring, when the large premises in the White Dragon Fountain Street became the first home of the Mission. Opening services were held in March 1890, and a dispensary was opened soon after. Frederic S. Deane joined the Mission and established a boys' school at the Great Ridge Street in 1892. That winter four more missionaries were added to the band. Leonard Wigham joined Deane at the young men's house, while Alice M. Beck and Margaret Southall went to another mission house; and Caroline N. Southall had already started a girls' school on those premises. In 1893, Mira L. Cumber and Isaac Mason joined the mission. A meeting house was opened in March 1894.

In May 1894, R. J. Davidson and Mason travelled to Yangtaochi in Tongchuan. They rented part of an inn for dispensing medicine. In the autumn of 1894, Mason returned alone to Yangtaochi. He spent several weeks there, living at an inn, dispensing medicine and preaching daily. He had gathered a few people during this period, and with them he held many meetings in dirty little rooms at the inns where he stayed. These visits subsequently extended to the cities of Taihezhen (Taihochen) and Shehongxian (Sehunghsien), which had been developed into an important branch of the Tongchuan work later known as the Mission's Northern District.

In 1895, a serious outbreak of anti-foreign agitation spread throughout the province. Open-air preaching had been considered dangerous for long periods at a time, and dispensary patients decreased by half the number. The missionaries lived for weeks together in constant fear of an outbreak. In 1897, the FFMA purchased an estate on the hills south of Chongqing and turned it into a school for missionaries' children, which was opened in March 1898.

In 1899, A. Warburton Davidson went to reside at Shehongxian. He was pursued and severely beaten by a crowd after selling books in a temple yard at one of the neighbouring markets named Yu Lung Chen. In consequence of his injuries he was taken to Chongqing for rest. That same year Mason and his party were appointed to live at Tongchuan, they took up residence early in 1900. They opened a dispensary and held meetings for worship in a very dilapidated chapel made out of unused small rooms. In 1902, Mira L. Cumber and Dr. Lucy E. Harris joined the Tongchuan mission, the latter being FFMA's first qualified medical missionary in China. The Tongchuan Boys' School was opened before the missionaries taking up residence in that prefecture. The Girls' School was commenced in 1902 by Cumber. It had only eight students the first year, but there were thirty the following year, and by 1905 the number had doubled.

During this period, two new mission centres were opened in Chengdu, the capital, and Suining (Sui-ling Hsien), a county situated between Tongchuan and Chongqing. The former was opened by Robert J. and Mary J. Davidson, the work was joined by Dr. Henry T. and Elizabeth J. Hodgkin in 1905. Isaac and Esther L. Mason moved to Suining, work at Tongchuan had been taken up by Edward B. and Margaret Vardon.