Missions and Empire [Paperback]

The widespread idea that Christian missions went hand in hand with Imperialism and colonial conquest is challenged here by a group of eminent historians. By showing the variety of missions and the vital role played by indigenous men and women, they place missions in a long historical perspective. Special attention is paid to emerging themes such as the missionary role in anthropology, gender relations, language, medicine, and decolonization.

Introduction,Norman Etherington
1. Prelude: The Christianizing of British America,Eliga H. Gould
2. Missionaries and Empire: An Overview 1700-1914,Andrew Porter
3. Humanitarians and White Settlers in the Nineteenth Century,Alan Lester
4. Where the Missionary Frontier Ran Ahead of Empire,John Barker
5. Christian Missions and the Raj,Robert Eric Frykenberg
6. New Christians as Evangelists,Peggy Brock
7. 'Trained to Tell the Truth': Missionaries, Converts, and Narration,Gareth Griffiths
8. Women and Cultural Exchanges,Patricia Grimshaw and Peter Sherlock
9. Language,Paul Landau
10. New Religious Movements,Robert Edgar
11. Anthropology,Patrick Harries
12. Education and Medicine,Norman Etherington
13. Decolonization,David Maxwell

Etherington accepted an unwieldy charge in agreeing to edit this collection, and he deserves great credit for producing a book that is finely nuanced, thoroughly coherent, and accessible. Etherington's introduction provides a flexible and comprehensive framework with which to connect the thirteen essays that follow. It is a brilliant introduction, offering a clear overview of the historiography, as well as concise explanations of the collection's thematic composition and analytical priorities. This book features essays of uniformly high quality that articulate many important parts of the relationship between missions and empire. -lC)