01-26-2009, 12:59 AM
<b>Evangelicalism, Masculinity, and the Making of Imperial Missionaries in Late Georgian Britain, 1795-1820</b>
<i>by William C. Barnhart</i>
And whither can the fainting eye of human misery turn, but to this
<i> THIS QUOTE FROM Daniel Wilson, evangelical cleric and future Anglican bishop of Calcutta, reflects several ways in which religion and imperial interests were connected in the early nineteenth century evangelical propaganda in support of foreign missions. According to Wilson, Britain enjoyed a unique status as God's chosen nation, whose great Protestant religion was an important component of its growing overseas empire. <b>For Wilson and other evangelicals, the "signs of times" suggested that it was Britain's divinely ordained mission to rescue indigenous peoples by extending to them the benefits of civilization and true Christianity.</b> To support such a project, the evangelical press highlighted the mutually beneficial relationship between evangelization and the furtherance of imperial interests, and also constructed an image of a missionary hero who embodied all of the qualities necessary to carry out such an important task. How do we explain this connection between empire and foreign missions in evangelical propaganda? As the historian Andrew Porter recently pointed out, the formative era of the new evangelical missionary societies was a difficult one, and this may partly explain the convergence of religious and imperial interests in evangelical discourse. Plagued by a lack of suitable missionary candidates, lack of funding, a degree of public suspicion of missions, and sometimes the hostility of colonial and military authorities, <b>missionary societies were compelled to highlight the imperial benefits of evangelization to sustain their cause.</b> (2) <b>This was especially true regarding India, where commercial officials remained cautious in their support of missions in order to avoid upsetting indigenous religious sensibilities. </b>(3) It should also be noted, however, that the evangelical ideas of the empire were closely tied to late eighteenth century discussions of class, race, gender, politics, and nationhood, themes that have been explored in several important works. (4) This article will examine both those points in missionary propaganda when evangelicals positioned themselves as committed imperialists, and how this imperial spirit related to ideas of British nationhood. By employing numerous references to imperial affairs and the role evangelicals were assigned in the "sanctifying" of imperial conquests, missionary propaganda appealed to the religious and martial sensibilities of the public, while simultaneously cultivating an idea of nationhood, which stressed Protestant Britain's national mission to save the world, as well as ideas of British cultural, intellectual, and political supremacy. This article will also explore the ways in which notions of masculinity combined with imperial themes in the evangelical press to construct an image of the missionary as a type of national hero. Between 1795 and 1820, the evangelicals promoted foreign missionary service as a particularly masculine pursuit. Embodying the physical and moral virtues necessary for evangelization in a foreign climate, the evangelical missionaries were glorified as heroes on a par with scientists and explorers, such as Captain Cook, who were also identified with imperial progress.</i>
By 1763 and the end of the Seven Years War, the British Empire had changed. Although conceived in conquest, the prewar empire was perceived as mainly informal and commercial in nature, centering on the mostly white and Protestant North American colonies. As a result of victory in the Seven Years War, however, the empire grew to contain a much larger number of non-white people and non-Christian inhabitants, especially in India and the Caribbean, who were unable to enjoy the rights of freeborn Englishmen. (5) This growing "Empire of Conquest," as Kathleen Wilson observed, provoked new concerns as it encompassed tremendous racial and religious diversity and seemed to legitimize more authoritarian types of governance. (6) For certain sectors of the British public, political hegemony entailed a greater degree of responsibility for the moral and spiritual well-being of the indigenous subjects as anxieties about the growing number of imperial subjects and allegations of corruption and abuse of power among East India Company officials in India helped to stimulate a humanitarian impulse in evangelical Protestant circles. (7) There were concerns among contemporaries that the greed, vice, and misrule that allegedly characterized colonial rule in India might also have a damaging effect on Britain itself by threatening traditional liberties and the moral health of the nation. (8)
During the 1780s, evangelicals of all denominations mobilized to delegate themselves as those most qualified to oversee the moral health of both the nation and the empire, claiming that their organizations were the best vehicles not only to reform the homefront, but also to spread true (i.e., Protestant) religion and civilization across the globe. This sense of national mission and belief in Britain's status as a chosen nation, whose providential task was to Christianize and civilize the "heathen" across the globe, were key elements in ideas of nationhood in the late eighteenth century. (9) For example, according to Reginald Heber, second Anglican bishop of Calcutta, Britain's commercial success, overseas discoveries, and great empire, were indications of her special mission to promote the gospel, and because they were blessed with such an empire, the public was urged to "sanctify" their political privileges by supporting foreign missions. (10) Missionary work was portrayed as essential to the moral cleansing of the nation and would complement scientific and commercial advances, as the following hymn demonstrates:
In this sense, eschatological expectations figured heavily in evangelical ideas of nationhood, and the missionary awakening occupied a central position in millennial thought. Missionary millennialism, given shape during the Revolutionary Era, called for the conversion of the heathen, Jews and Catholics, that would usher in the Second Coming. (18) According to Thomas Raffles, as God's chosen nation, Great Britain was best suited to fulfill biblical prophecy because of its evangelizing spirit and libertarian heritage:
In a letter to The Times in 1818, the Reverend Daniel Wilson enumerated additional signs of the approaching millennium, such as:
Along with millennial expectations, Wilson's remarks highlight the frustration felt among Anglican evangelicals who saw the Church of England falling behind in the establishment of foreign missions as dissenting evangelicals launched the new foreign missionary organizations of the 1790s. Prior to the 1790s, the earliest evangelical foreign missionary efforts were those of continental Protestants such as the Moravians. (21) In 1792, however, the Baptist Missionary Society (BMS) was formed in England through the efforts of William Carey, a cobbler from Nottingham who later went on to celebrated missionary work in India. Inspired by the records of Cook's voyages and the formation of the BMS, the ecumenical but later Congregationalist-dominated London Missionary Society (LMS) was established in 1795 to focus on evangelization in Africa and the Pacific Islands. The Anglican evangelicals finally responded with the formation of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in 1799 to improve upon earlier missionary efforts made by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG). Because the older SPG failed to keep pace with the rapid expansion of the empire beyond North America, the CMS reflected shifting imperial interests after the American Revolution, and targeted Africa and Asia as spheres of activity. Overall the Anglican evangelicals brought a new missionary energy to the established church that was on the decline toward the end of the eighteenth century. (22) Thus, by 1800, the evangelicals of various denominations were synonymous with the foreign missionary movement in England to the extent that some even used the label "evangelical" to describe only those clerics who supported the foreign missionary cause. (23) That the foreign missionary movement in Britain emerged during a period of war with France and continued overseas expansion was a consideration not lost on its supporters who used both the wartime and imperial contexts to underscore the providential nature and durability of their cause. (24) Even in the midst of war, the evangelicals boasted, Britain remained committed to freedom and justice: "A friend of the oppressed--with a naval superiority unequaled in the history of the world and with an ardent zeal glowing in the hearts of multitudes to communicate their religious advantages, by means of this naval power, to other nations." (25) Because the British were such a "great maritime and commercial people," they had the power to extend their advantages, especially the Gospel, to millions in India. (26) The Protestant missionary enterprises, then, also went hand-in-hand with British naval expansion. (27) Indeed, the French Wars provided an effective backdrop for missionary propaganda, as they not only demonstrated Britain's military prowess but also gave the missionary project a heightened sense of urgency and optimism. A poem commemorating the anniversary of the LMS conveys this theme:
An 1804 hymn sung at the departure of the Baptist missionaries from Bristol to Serampore, India, celebrated the nobler aspects of their efforts during a time of war:
In the above hymn, the gospel is considered more valuable than any luxury item from Asia, and missionary work assumes a martial character that was fairly typical of evangelical missionary propaganda. Similarly, Melville Horne, a principal founder of the LMS, called for a missionary spirit equal to the zeal of British sailors and soldiers. He wanted missionary stations set up in all the major cities of the British Empire, just as the Apostles created churches in Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome. (30) In a letter to The Times in 1813, one missionary apologist predicted that
To further their cause, the evangelicals claimed that missionary expansion in India provided Britain with political, economic, and military advantages in the region. Influential Anglican evangelicals, such as Charles Grant, highlighted the political expediency of missions in India with their argument that the introduction of Protestant missions contributed to stability throughout the Asian empire. (36) To their critics who warned that missions might subvert the empire by upsetting Indian religious sensibilities, the evangelicals, such as Horne, replied that missionaries "abhorred every doctrine that disturbs the peace of society." He promoted missionary work as a stabilizing force in India and added that the general character of the Indians was such that rebellion was highly unlikely. (37) The missionary Joshua Marshman found it difficult to separate his desire, politically, to strengthen the empire, and his desire to convert the Indians to Christianity. He concluded that the best way to safeguard the empire was the propagation of Christianity. (38) In this line of argument, a strong missionary presence in India would ensure both commercial and military stability, and as the Indians became more civilized, they would demand more disposable commodities from Britain, thus greatly expanding the market. (39) Military and strategic advantages would be secured by forming a "brotherhood" of Christians in India loyal to the British crown, thereby minimizing the threat of rebellion and deterring Britain's enemies from attacking India with such a potentially fierce and loyal Christian community. (40)
In part, this proimperial rhetoric stemmed from the East India Company's rather cool attitude toward the missionary work in India, especially in the aftermath of the Vellore Mutiny of 1806 when the Sepoys killed 200 Europeans. The evangelical leaders were forced into a kind of defensive posture and espousing the imperial benefits of missionary projects helped to legitimize their cause. Not only were missionary projects tainted by their identification with evangelical "enthusiasm" and the influence of dissenting religious bodies, but there was also a concern among East India Company officials that if evangelization went unchecked, both Hindus and Muslims alike would mistakenly associate religious conversion with official government policy in India. Following the events in Vellore, the "India question" gained much publicity, prompting William Tennant to remark that there was perhaps "no other subject on which information is more generally wanted." Both supporters and critics of the missions in India prepared to do battle in the press in the years leading up to 1813, when the East India Company's charter was up for renewal. (41)
To supplement their growing influence in government circles, the evangelicals publicized their various causes through the expanded medium of print and extraparliamentary activities such as local and national meetings sponsored by various missionary societies. In this regard, missionary publicists took advantage of an effective organizational framework created by antislavery societies, with whom they forged a close affiliation. Like their abolitionist colleagues, missionary supporters circulated petitions, artifacts, and prints; presented magic-lantern shows; formed local auxiliary networks; and called annual meetings in London to discuss news, elect officers, and hear sermons. (42) The decisions concerning how and from whom to solicit contributions were usually made by the elected committees of the LMS and CMS at regular meetings in London. The importance of London as the epicenter of the missionary movement and antislavery efforts cannot be overstated: it was the headquarters of Anglican evangelicalism, most notably at Clapham, and a main site of middle class influence both within and outside Parliament. (43) Various tracts, pamphlets, sermons, and periodicals were printed in London and distributed to localities throughout England. Ministers who attended missionary meetings in London returned to their provincial churches and formed local auxiliaries for the collection of voluntary contributions.
Both the annual meetings in London and the auxiliary meetings in the provinces reportedly drew crowds ranging anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand people, and were designed to elicit attention to missionary projects from all ranks of society. (44) Of the LMS's first general meeting in 1795, the Reverend Rowland Hill's biographer wrote:
<b>
There were present about two hundred ministers of various
denominations, forming a most impressive and animating spectacle,
which has been repeated for many years on the second Wednesday in
May, in the same place. The missionary day at Surrey Chapel was,
to its devoted pastor, in the brightest sense, a gala. (45)
</b>
While contributions and subscriptions for missionary projects were solicited from all quarters of the British public, children were often singled out as primary marketing targets for promoters of the new missionary societies. A more rational view of children and childhood emerged in the eighteenth century that placed more confidence in their ability to understand moral precepts and act in a civilized manner. As a result, children overall were deemed potential consumers of new toys, books, and other goods enjoyed for both pleasure and instruction. This new appreciation of a child's moral capacity also found expression in children's literature, which often contained themes designed to entertain and teach children about a variety of moral evils such as the slave trade and degraded condition of indigenous peoples. (46) Similarly, to encourage a missionary spirit among the young, the CMS sponsored such games as "Missionary Outposts" and "Missionary Lotto," and in 1812, the first Juvenile Auxiliary Missionary Society was formed in Bristol with others following in Hull and in London. (47) The LMS-affiliated Evangelical Magazine included a "Juvenile Department" replete with descriptions of native practices designed to shock young readers, such as the ways in which natives tried to gain pardon for "sins":
Young readers were also told of the poor financial state of the CMS and that they too could help. Instead of spending their pocket money on "toys, fruit, gingerbread, or pastry"--things that were bad for them--children were urged to put some of that money toward a collection for the missionary society in the hopes that someday, they, too, might become missionaries. (49) These young readers, especially males, targeted by the evangelicals as not only consumers, but also as potential missionaries, had to be persuaded that missionary service was among the most noble and honorable occupations, one that would test the limits of their manhood and all but guarantee them a spot in the ranks of imperial heroes. Missionary work was thus celebrated by the evangelicals as a manly pursuit, not to be undertaken by the faint of heart or those considered too "soft." (50) The ideal of foreign missionary service provided a bridge between competing notions of manliness in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The older ideas of manhood associated with the landed gentry included values, such as physical strength, that could be demonstrated through military skill or hunting and riding, along with social activities such as drinking and gambling. The new ideal of Christian manliness, as defined by the evangelical middle class, stressed the refinement of one's moral character through prayer, hard work, self-discipline, and more godly pursuits. According to Davidoff and Hall, the evangelical and other voluntary societies "provided alternative structures to the social calendar of the aristocracy and gentry with their hunts and race meetings linked to the agricultural seasons, and to the clubs and coffee houses frequented by middle class men in the eighteenth century." (51) Images of missionaries, as constructed in the evangelical press, appropriated the more physical attributes of aristocratic manliness and combined them with newer, evangelical notions of masculinity that stressed such moral and religious virtues as charity and sacrifice. Thus, as well as personal piety, missionary service required physical stamina and endurance in order to survive the rigors of a foreign climate.
Indeed, Anglican evangelicals saw expanded missionary efforts as a way to inject new life into a national church that, in their view, was plagued by both an entrenched complacency and clerics who neglected their spiritual duties. The country "squarson," who spent most of his time in leisurely pursuits while ignoring his parish duties, was a favorite target for middle class evangelicals who demanded a more active parish in which "vital" Christianity could be promulgated. (52) In 1797, William Wilberforce explained that the need to promote "vital" Christianity stemmed from an increase in the number of "nominal" as opposed to "real" or "practical" Christians. With new wealth generated by industrialization, more citizens were lulled into religious complacency and were thus more susceptible to the irreligion of the French. (53) Too many clergymen, it was argued, undertook the "employments of the country gentleman" and mingled with the "landed interest in almost every kind of secular business." (54) Melville Home criticized the "soft pulpits and well-dressed congregations, snug livings and quiet cures, good food and decent clothes" of Anglican clergy. He suggested they get out and do the dirty work of Christian missionaries who were men of "discipline and self-command" and whose characters were "divested of sloth, effeminacy, and indulgence." (55) Another interpretation held that because the British men prospered in a secure, tranquil environment, there was a tendency to "nourish a softness of mind, and to produce an indisposition for encountering the hardships to which a residence in Africa might be subject." (56) In short, aristocratic pleasure seeking had infiltrated the religious sphere and threatened to undermine the martial aspect of Protestant evangelization that was such an important component of imperial expansion.
To counter such tendencies, the evangelical propaganda glorified missionary service as a courageous and masculine occupation to which all young men should aspire, and urged sincere Christian parents never to dissuade their sons from careers as foreign missionaries. Because a minister's place at home could easily be taken over by another, missionary work in foreign lands was promoted as more important, if not superior to, service in Britain. Young men were invited to join the ranks of famous missionaries such as David Brainerd, whose work in North America was often invoked to give missionary service a heroic quality, and after returning home from missionary service among the "heathen," the potential recruits were promised an honorable reception in England. (57) In a letter to The Times in 1818, the Reverend Daniel Wilson declared that foreign missionary service was the highest form of heroism:
The Baptist Robert Hall commented that those best able to extend the gospel were Protestant missionaries who carried out their work with a "manly and heroic prudence." (59) The implication here is that evangelical missionaries, who represented both the masculinity and Protestant sensibilities of the nation, would rescue indigenous peoples, especially the Indians, from their backward, effeminate cultures:
The South Seas provided another important site for the interplay of missionary manliness and imperial sentiment in the evangelical press. Much interest was generated in the Pacific region in the mid-eighteenth century because of the efforts of scholars, traders and explorers. As Peter Marshall and Glynder Williams note, "Between the ending of the Seven Years War in 1763 and the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars thirty years later, Britain and France in particular experienced a 'Pacific Craze,' in which a new type of national hero emerged in the shape of naval explorers and itinerant scientists." (61) The evangelicals added Protestant missionaries to the list of national heroes associated with the British Empire in the Pacific. For the LMS, who sent their first missionaries to Tahiti in 1797, it was imperative that evangelical Christians took advantage of Captain Cook's discoveries of the 1770s. (62) Thomas Haweis, one of the first promoters of the LMS, believed the Pacific held out special promise for missionary work. The islands contained fertile soil, a healthy climate, uncivilized natives that were no match for the Europeans, and a commercial interest in the region that would foster civilization. (63) Of Cook's discoveries, the Reverend James Johnston claimed that missionaries were "making an improvement which to the mere geographer could never have occurred." (64) For the evangelicals, the "improvement" to which Johnston referred was Britain's civilizing mission in the Pacific, and the missionary press offered the British public an alternative image of Polynesians that was in direct contrast to the idea of the "noble savage" celebrated by previous observers of South Seas' societies. (65) For example, the Reverend James Johnston deplored the celebrated image of Pacific Islanders in vogue in literary circles by the late eighteenth century:
The evangelical press through sermons, periodicals, and official reports, highlighted the degraded state of the Polynesians with sensational reports of sexual promiscuity, nudity, human sacrifice, and infanticide. To eliminate such practices and transplant true Christianity to the South Seas would necessitate a degree of personal faith, diligence, self-sacrifice, and sense of duty, which only the evangelical missionaries enjoyed. Additionally, the missionary projects in the Pacific, as those in India, would secure for the Britons a sense of moral superiority that was in stark contrast to the French imperial ambitions in the regions But what of the appropriate social origins and qualifications of the new missionary hero articulated by evangelicals to best represent the nation? While missionary societies were established, managed, and publicized by the middle class elites, the actual missionaries in the field were initially men of lower middle class origins who, because they were less susceptible to aristocratic excess and frivolity, were held up as those hearty enough to uphold the national honor. Thus, during the early years of the foreign missionary movement, there was a socioeconomic division between the organizers of the new foreign missionary societies and the actual missionaries in the field.6s As much as the evangelical leaders heralded missionary service as a manly pursuit, in reality they had some early difficulty in recruiting missionaries from the ranks of the upper middle class. For example, early on, the CMS was forced to recruit its first missionaries from German Lutheran seminaries because no suitable English candidates came forward. Perhaps out of necessity, leaders of the new evangelical missionary societies argued that not all missionaries needed a classical education, because it was the industrious and artisans among them who were best equipped to foster civilization among the indigenous peoples. For example, prospective LMS missionaries to the South Pacific were to be men "of a missionary spirit ... and approved as faithful. Men of a meek and lowly mind, willing to fill the plate allotted to them without murmuring or envy, ready to endure difficulties and sacrifice indulgences." (69) Early on, some within the organization hoped that prominent individuals would come forth as missionaries and a division emerged between those who supported learned men for missionary posts and those who wanted men trained in the "mechanic arts." Judging by the occupations of the earliest LMS missionaries in the Pacific Islands, the latter group eventually held sway. Of the thirty men selected to comprise the first mission to Tahiti, twenty-six were artisans and tradesmen, while only four were ordained clerics. (70)
An example of this connection between the lower classes and missionary work, as well as the more general association of evangelicalism with missions, can be found in an anonymous pamphlet entitled The Village in an Uproar. In this story Tom, a humble thresher, experiences a religious conversion after attending a missionary meeting in London and subsequently becomes a missionary himself:
The missionaries from the BMS and LMS were thus described by contemporaries as hailing from the "mechanic" class, as many were carpenters, wheelwrights, sawyers, and shoemakers. Indeed, one observer of the LMS' efforts in the Pacific Islands asked how "tailors, shoemakers, carpenters, tinmen, butchers, weavers, and coopers" could "convert an entire people?" (72) Being skilled in the "practical" arts, such men entered missionary service as a way of elevating their standing in the social community and gaining respectability in the eyes of the public, and God. These "godly mechanics" were expected to teach the Maori, for example, certain skills to promote civilization and pave the way for Christianity. Not until the late 1830s did more missionaries emerge from the professional classes, coming from backgrounds as factory managers and teachers. (73) Although they emerged from a variety of evangelical groups both within and outside the established church, the foreign missionary agencies celebrated their common devotion to Protestantism and the growth and stability of the empire. After the American Revolution, the evangelicals were in the vanguard of a movement to reform the British nation through the sanctification of imperial projects in India, the Pacific, and later in Africa. It is true that proselytism and religious activism were fundamental components of Evangelicalism that were transnational in scope, finding expression in continental European, North American, and British evangelical writings. (74) But during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the formative period in modern British missions, evangelical rhetoric often celebrated the important links between political and religious expansion and tied missionary work to ideas of nationhood. Evangelization would confirm Britain's status as a "chosen" nation, and serve to highlight the cultural and moral supremacy of Britons and the degraded state of the heathen abroad, thus reinforcing hierarchies of difference that were crucial to imperial expansion. (75) Missionary publicity combined a serious commitment to carry out God's order to evangelize with a desire to further Britain's imperial ambitions, and also reflected the more practical problems of missionary recruitment and fund-raising.
To stimulate more interest in missions and gain potential recruits, the evangelicals constructed an image of the missionary as a kind of national hero who exhibited the noblest features of evangelical manliness. The evangelical press ranked missionaries with explorers, soldiers, and traders as those best able to carry the imperial banner to the "dark" corners of the globe. In some ways, however, the missionaries were promoted as superior to other imperial heroes. Acquiring wealth or scientific knowledge was viewed by the evangelicals as ultimately inferior to the nobler mission of spreading the gospel abroad. As described by the evangelicals, the successful missionary would have to combine physical courage and moral virtue to sustain activity in an unfamiliar climate and be a model of piety to indigenous peoples. Disciplined and rugged but also sensitive and humble, Protestant missionaries were advertised as the ideal purveyors of the best Britain had to offer the uncivilized world, and thus became valuable symbols of imperial culture. Missionary manliness, with its stress on both physical and moral attributes, prefigured the male image found in Victorian writings on masculinity that emphasized similar qualities. (76)
By 1830 missionary societies enjoyed a higher number of recruits and increased funding through voluntary subscriptions. (77) Missionary work and humanitarianism, in general, remained important components of British national and imperial identity into the 1830s and 1840s. (78) Despite the enormous popularity of David Livingstone's Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, a lack of confidence in the civilizing mission emerged after the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the same year Livingstone's work was published. In part, this "crisis in confidence" could also be explained by the advent of "scientific racism" and social Darwinism. In a recent article, however, Andrew Bank located this shift in attitudes toward indigenous peoples at an earlier point. As early as the 1840s, with the British-Xhosa wars on the Cape, missionaries and colonial administrators became disillusioned as to the capacity of black South Africans for genuine advancement. With the deterioration of the "Liberal ideal" on the Cape, more emphasis was placed on outright conquest rather than accommodation. (79) This attitude and approach to indigenous societies remained in place going into the "high" imperial era of the 1870s and 1880s. However, such cynicism was not a permanent fixture in humanitarian circles. For, by the early twentieth century, we see another shift in attitudes, one in which missionary interests, informed by anthropology, advocated a more positive view of native peoples that could often be at odds with colonial administrative machinery. (80) As a result, the missionary movement became more international in scope, and was defined less by its connection to national interests and more by the evangelizing goals and strategies it shared with missionary societies worldwide. Another consequence was a deeper commitment to acquire a better understanding of indigenous religions. Taken together, such shifts in attitudes reveal the complex and ever changing relationship between religious ideas and British imperial interests. (81)
<i>by William C. Barnhart</i>
And whither can the fainting eye of human misery turn, but to this
Quote: great Protestant Empire, which God appears to have aggrandized, at
the present momentous period, with the design of employing her as
the herald of mercy to mankind? (1)
<i> THIS QUOTE FROM Daniel Wilson, evangelical cleric and future Anglican bishop of Calcutta, reflects several ways in which religion and imperial interests were connected in the early nineteenth century evangelical propaganda in support of foreign missions. According to Wilson, Britain enjoyed a unique status as God's chosen nation, whose great Protestant religion was an important component of its growing overseas empire. <b>For Wilson and other evangelicals, the "signs of times" suggested that it was Britain's divinely ordained mission to rescue indigenous peoples by extending to them the benefits of civilization and true Christianity.</b> To support such a project, the evangelical press highlighted the mutually beneficial relationship between evangelization and the furtherance of imperial interests, and also constructed an image of a missionary hero who embodied all of the qualities necessary to carry out such an important task. How do we explain this connection between empire and foreign missions in evangelical propaganda? As the historian Andrew Porter recently pointed out, the formative era of the new evangelical missionary societies was a difficult one, and this may partly explain the convergence of religious and imperial interests in evangelical discourse. Plagued by a lack of suitable missionary candidates, lack of funding, a degree of public suspicion of missions, and sometimes the hostility of colonial and military authorities, <b>missionary societies were compelled to highlight the imperial benefits of evangelization to sustain their cause.</b> (2) <b>This was especially true regarding India, where commercial officials remained cautious in their support of missions in order to avoid upsetting indigenous religious sensibilities. </b>(3) It should also be noted, however, that the evangelical ideas of the empire were closely tied to late eighteenth century discussions of class, race, gender, politics, and nationhood, themes that have been explored in several important works. (4) This article will examine both those points in missionary propaganda when evangelicals positioned themselves as committed imperialists, and how this imperial spirit related to ideas of British nationhood. By employing numerous references to imperial affairs and the role evangelicals were assigned in the "sanctifying" of imperial conquests, missionary propaganda appealed to the religious and martial sensibilities of the public, while simultaneously cultivating an idea of nationhood, which stressed Protestant Britain's national mission to save the world, as well as ideas of British cultural, intellectual, and political supremacy. This article will also explore the ways in which notions of masculinity combined with imperial themes in the evangelical press to construct an image of the missionary as a type of national hero. Between 1795 and 1820, the evangelicals promoted foreign missionary service as a particularly masculine pursuit. Embodying the physical and moral virtues necessary for evangelization in a foreign climate, the evangelical missionaries were glorified as heroes on a par with scientists and explorers, such as Captain Cook, who were also identified with imperial progress.</i>
By 1763 and the end of the Seven Years War, the British Empire had changed. Although conceived in conquest, the prewar empire was perceived as mainly informal and commercial in nature, centering on the mostly white and Protestant North American colonies. As a result of victory in the Seven Years War, however, the empire grew to contain a much larger number of non-white people and non-Christian inhabitants, especially in India and the Caribbean, who were unable to enjoy the rights of freeborn Englishmen. (5) This growing "Empire of Conquest," as Kathleen Wilson observed, provoked new concerns as it encompassed tremendous racial and religious diversity and seemed to legitimize more authoritarian types of governance. (6) For certain sectors of the British public, political hegemony entailed a greater degree of responsibility for the moral and spiritual well-being of the indigenous subjects as anxieties about the growing number of imperial subjects and allegations of corruption and abuse of power among East India Company officials in India helped to stimulate a humanitarian impulse in evangelical Protestant circles. (7) There were concerns among contemporaries that the greed, vice, and misrule that allegedly characterized colonial rule in India might also have a damaging effect on Britain itself by threatening traditional liberties and the moral health of the nation. (8)
During the 1780s, evangelicals of all denominations mobilized to delegate themselves as those most qualified to oversee the moral health of both the nation and the empire, claiming that their organizations were the best vehicles not only to reform the homefront, but also to spread true (i.e., Protestant) religion and civilization across the globe. This sense of national mission and belief in Britain's status as a chosen nation, whose providential task was to Christianize and civilize the "heathen" across the globe, were key elements in ideas of nationhood in the late eighteenth century. (9) For example, according to Reginald Heber, second Anglican bishop of Calcutta, Britain's commercial success, overseas discoveries, and great empire, were indications of her special mission to promote the gospel, and because they were blessed with such an empire, the public was urged to "sanctify" their political privileges by supporting foreign missions. (10) Missionary work was portrayed as essential to the moral cleansing of the nation and would complement scientific and commercial advances, as the following hymn demonstrates:
Quote: Shall science distant lands explore,In promoting Christian civilization, the Britons might disprove their image as a "horde of merchants, who, instigated only by base thirst of gain, fatten on the spoils of pillaged provinces" and refute Napoleon's claim that Britain was nothing more than a nation of shopkeepers. (12) Thus, the British nation was still unconverted, and global evangelization would aid in its moral recovery and help complete the reformation process begun in the sixteenth century. (13) The loss of the American colonies, the unsavory behavior of the East India Company as publicized by the Hastings' trial, native idolatry, and slavery were all issues that provoked the ire of a broad spectrum of evangelical opinion. (14) For the evangelicals, the twin causes of abolition of the slave trade and overseas evangelization were crucial to the nation's moral recovery. For example, one scholar of the British antislavery movement views the American Revolution as a crucial event in the mobilization of public opinion against slavery. The defeat at the hands of the Americans led to a reevaluation of imperial interests and calls for political and religious reforms. Britain now had to atone for the national sin of going to war against fellow Protestants, and abolition of the slave trade could be a kind of repentance. (15) Through such activities, the evangelical abolitionists and missionary supporters believed Britain would usher in a new age of universal enlightenment and an "eventual time of jubilee world-wide." (16) The Reverend Thomas Raffles, a Congregationalist minister affiliated with the London Missionary Society, proclaimed that a new era had begun with the missionary movement. Not only was Britain a world leader in arts and arms, but also in the expansion of Christianity:
Commerce her wealth convey,
Shall sin extend from shore to shore
Its desolating sway?
And shall there not be Christians found,
Who will for Christ appear,
To make a stand on Heathen ground,
And preach salvation there?
Shall Britain to remotest climes
Transmit her guilt alone,
And not (with her infectious crimes)
Make her great Saviour known? (11)
Quote: But Britain is awakening now to justice; the debt which she has been
accumulating for ages, she is about to pay; she is preparing to
balance with the world her vast account: and whilst she dispenses
justice to those to whom the mighty sum is due, she stretched forth
the liberal hand of her spontaneous bounty to millions who never
heard her name. (17)
In this sense, eschatological expectations figured heavily in evangelical ideas of nationhood, and the missionary awakening occupied a central position in millennial thought. Missionary millennialism, given shape during the Revolutionary Era, called for the conversion of the heathen, Jews and Catholics, that would usher in the Second Coming. (18) According to Thomas Raffles, as God's chosen nation, Great Britain was best suited to fulfill biblical prophecy because of its evangelizing spirit and libertarian heritage:
Quote: Who has not turned with rapture to Great Britain, the missionary,
the Bible society, the Instructress of the globe, the ark of
freedom, the Asylum of liberty, the couch on which outcast monarchs
may recline at ease? Who does not cherish the delightful hope that
God is about to make Great Britain, by her Bibles and her
missionaries, the herald to prepare the way for the second coming
and universal reign of the messiah? (19)
In a letter to The Times in 1818, the Reverend Daniel Wilson enumerated additional signs of the approaching millennium, such as:
Quote: Our immense Indian Empire, our increasing commerce, the reviving
piety which seemed to descend from Heaven all around, the example
of other religious communities, the warning hand of Divine
Providence in the commotion of the European states, the long
reproach which had rested on the church for her remissness in
this labor, the comparatively small exertions of the only two
societies within her pale which had any concern with
missions.... (20)
Along with millennial expectations, Wilson's remarks highlight the frustration felt among Anglican evangelicals who saw the Church of England falling behind in the establishment of foreign missions as dissenting evangelicals launched the new foreign missionary organizations of the 1790s. Prior to the 1790s, the earliest evangelical foreign missionary efforts were those of continental Protestants such as the Moravians. (21) In 1792, however, the Baptist Missionary Society (BMS) was formed in England through the efforts of William Carey, a cobbler from Nottingham who later went on to celebrated missionary work in India. Inspired by the records of Cook's voyages and the formation of the BMS, the ecumenical but later Congregationalist-dominated London Missionary Society (LMS) was established in 1795 to focus on evangelization in Africa and the Pacific Islands. The Anglican evangelicals finally responded with the formation of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in 1799 to improve upon earlier missionary efforts made by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG). Because the older SPG failed to keep pace with the rapid expansion of the empire beyond North America, the CMS reflected shifting imperial interests after the American Revolution, and targeted Africa and Asia as spheres of activity. Overall the Anglican evangelicals brought a new missionary energy to the established church that was on the decline toward the end of the eighteenth century. (22) Thus, by 1800, the evangelicals of various denominations were synonymous with the foreign missionary movement in England to the extent that some even used the label "evangelical" to describe only those clerics who supported the foreign missionary cause. (23) That the foreign missionary movement in Britain emerged during a period of war with France and continued overseas expansion was a consideration not lost on its supporters who used both the wartime and imperial contexts to underscore the providential nature and durability of their cause. (24) Even in the midst of war, the evangelicals boasted, Britain remained committed to freedom and justice: "A friend of the oppressed--with a naval superiority unequaled in the history of the world and with an ardent zeal glowing in the hearts of multitudes to communicate their religious advantages, by means of this naval power, to other nations." (25) Because the British were such a "great maritime and commercial people," they had the power to extend their advantages, especially the Gospel, to millions in India. (26) The Protestant missionary enterprises, then, also went hand-in-hand with British naval expansion. (27) Indeed, the French Wars provided an effective backdrop for missionary propaganda, as they not only demonstrated Britain's military prowess but also gave the missionary project a heightened sense of urgency and optimism. A poem commemorating the anniversary of the LMS conveys this theme:
Quote: Oh! happy days--Oh! highly favored hour,
When patriot-passions beat in every vein;
When every bosom owns compassion's power.
And weeps the wide extent of Satan's reign.
Yes, we deplore--but not devoid of hope
Our prospects brighten as the scene expands;
We hail the era that gives ample scope
To all the energy of Britain's hands.
Urged on by love, her hands can never withdraw
Till every nation learn Jehovah's law. (28)
An 1804 hymn sung at the departure of the Baptist missionaries from Bristol to Serampore, India, celebrated the nobler aspects of their efforts during a time of war:
Quote: Farewell to the Missionaries.
From Indian plains, on albion's shore
See gold, and gems, and fragrance smile;
But Britain, in a richer store,
Returns it from our native isle.
Lo! with the gospel's glorious prize,
With truths irradiant as the sun,
In vain the sparkling treasure vies;
We sent the pearl of price unknown.
The nations feel the pangs of war,
And wrath with boundless tumult reigns;
And Gallic fury raves from far,
And British heroes fill the plains:
But Zion's gentler hosts engage,
Impatient for nobler fight,
Through every land the war to wage,
And put confederate worlds to flight. (29)
In the above hymn, the gospel is considered more valuable than any luxury item from Asia, and missionary work assumes a martial character that was fairly typical of evangelical missionary propaganda. Similarly, Melville Horne, a principal founder of the LMS, called for a missionary spirit equal to the zeal of British sailors and soldiers. He wanted missionary stations set up in all the major cities of the British Empire, just as the Apostles created churches in Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome. (30) In a letter to The Times in 1813, one missionary apologist predicted that
Quote: Future ages will tell with astonishment, that in the midst of a most<b>Thus evangelization did not merely follow in the wake of military expansion, but both encouraged and played an active role in the creation of an overseas empire. </b>(32) Of all Britain's imperial holdings, <b>India held out the most promise for evangelical missionary energies. Closely identified with the prosperity and imperial supremacy of Britain, India was deemed strategically, economically, and politically of vital importance. In evangelical missionary propaganda, it was essential that India be protected from the political ambitions of France and the Catholic missionaries</b>. In 1813, one commentator in The Times noted that the hundreds of petitions to both houses of Parliament in favor of wider missionary work on the subcontinent reflected the concern that India might come under the sway of the Papacy and France. (33) In an article he wrote while a student at Cambridge, Hugh Pearson, Claudius Buchanan's biographer, suggested that to combat the potential dangers of Roman Catholicism, the scriptures had to be translated into the vernacular throughout India. (34) Likewise, his mentor, Buchanan, in an 1810 commencement sermon, called for a Protestant establishment in India to counter the Franco-Papal threat. (35)
awful and perilous war, while infidelity was triumphant abroad, and
kingdoms were crumbling around us, Britain should rise in the
greatness of her strength, and the majesty of her benevolence, with
one hand to dash in pieces the chains of the oppressor, and with the
other to hold out the everlasting gospel to the inhabitants of every
region under heaven. (31)
To further their cause, the evangelicals claimed that missionary expansion in India provided Britain with political, economic, and military advantages in the region. Influential Anglican evangelicals, such as Charles Grant, highlighted the political expediency of missions in India with their argument that the introduction of Protestant missions contributed to stability throughout the Asian empire. (36) To their critics who warned that missions might subvert the empire by upsetting Indian religious sensibilities, the evangelicals, such as Horne, replied that missionaries "abhorred every doctrine that disturbs the peace of society." He promoted missionary work as a stabilizing force in India and added that the general character of the Indians was such that rebellion was highly unlikely. (37) The missionary Joshua Marshman found it difficult to separate his desire, politically, to strengthen the empire, and his desire to convert the Indians to Christianity. He concluded that the best way to safeguard the empire was the propagation of Christianity. (38) In this line of argument, a strong missionary presence in India would ensure both commercial and military stability, and as the Indians became more civilized, they would demand more disposable commodities from Britain, thus greatly expanding the market. (39) Military and strategic advantages would be secured by forming a "brotherhood" of Christians in India loyal to the British crown, thereby minimizing the threat of rebellion and deterring Britain's enemies from attacking India with such a potentially fierce and loyal Christian community. (40)
In part, this proimperial rhetoric stemmed from the East India Company's rather cool attitude toward the missionary work in India, especially in the aftermath of the Vellore Mutiny of 1806 when the Sepoys killed 200 Europeans. The evangelical leaders were forced into a kind of defensive posture and espousing the imperial benefits of missionary projects helped to legitimize their cause. Not only were missionary projects tainted by their identification with evangelical "enthusiasm" and the influence of dissenting religious bodies, but there was also a concern among East India Company officials that if evangelization went unchecked, both Hindus and Muslims alike would mistakenly associate religious conversion with official government policy in India. Following the events in Vellore, the "India question" gained much publicity, prompting William Tennant to remark that there was perhaps "no other subject on which information is more generally wanted." Both supporters and critics of the missions in India prepared to do battle in the press in the years leading up to 1813, when the East India Company's charter was up for renewal. (41)
To supplement their growing influence in government circles, the evangelicals publicized their various causes through the expanded medium of print and extraparliamentary activities such as local and national meetings sponsored by various missionary societies. In this regard, missionary publicists took advantage of an effective organizational framework created by antislavery societies, with whom they forged a close affiliation. Like their abolitionist colleagues, missionary supporters circulated petitions, artifacts, and prints; presented magic-lantern shows; formed local auxiliary networks; and called annual meetings in London to discuss news, elect officers, and hear sermons. (42) The decisions concerning how and from whom to solicit contributions were usually made by the elected committees of the LMS and CMS at regular meetings in London. The importance of London as the epicenter of the missionary movement and antislavery efforts cannot be overstated: it was the headquarters of Anglican evangelicalism, most notably at Clapham, and a main site of middle class influence both within and outside Parliament. (43) Various tracts, pamphlets, sermons, and periodicals were printed in London and distributed to localities throughout England. Ministers who attended missionary meetings in London returned to their provincial churches and formed local auxiliaries for the collection of voluntary contributions.
Both the annual meetings in London and the auxiliary meetings in the provinces reportedly drew crowds ranging anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand people, and were designed to elicit attention to missionary projects from all ranks of society. (44) Of the LMS's first general meeting in 1795, the Reverend Rowland Hill's biographer wrote:
<b>
There were present about two hundred ministers of various
denominations, forming a most impressive and animating spectacle,
which has been repeated for many years on the second Wednesday in
May, in the same place. The missionary day at Surrey Chapel was,
to its devoted pastor, in the brightest sense, a gala. (45)
</b>
While contributions and subscriptions for missionary projects were solicited from all quarters of the British public, children were often singled out as primary marketing targets for promoters of the new missionary societies. A more rational view of children and childhood emerged in the eighteenth century that placed more confidence in their ability to understand moral precepts and act in a civilized manner. As a result, children overall were deemed potential consumers of new toys, books, and other goods enjoyed for both pleasure and instruction. This new appreciation of a child's moral capacity also found expression in children's literature, which often contained themes designed to entertain and teach children about a variety of moral evils such as the slave trade and degraded condition of indigenous peoples. (46) Similarly, to encourage a missionary spirit among the young, the CMS sponsored such games as "Missionary Outposts" and "Missionary Lotto," and in 1812, the first Juvenile Auxiliary Missionary Society was formed in Bristol with others following in Hull and in London. (47) The LMS-affiliated Evangelical Magazine included a "Juvenile Department" replete with descriptions of native practices designed to shock young readers, such as the ways in which natives tried to gain pardon for "sins":
Quote: One makes a vow to keep his fist clenched till the nails go through
the back of his hand; another hangs himself by the middle of the
body upon an iron hook. Many offer up their children to a river,
which they worship as a god, by putting the poor little creatures
into baskets, and throwing them into the water to be devoured by
crocodiles. Not a few burn widows alive along with the corpses of
their departed husbands. Some bring their poor aged sick parents to
the banks of a river at low water, and leave them there, that
when the tide rises it may wash them away; but others even eat them,
and choose that time of the year when limes and salt are cheap,
because they use them to season the flesh of their parents and make
it palatable. (48)
Young readers were also told of the poor financial state of the CMS and that they too could help. Instead of spending their pocket money on "toys, fruit, gingerbread, or pastry"--things that were bad for them--children were urged to put some of that money toward a collection for the missionary society in the hopes that someday, they, too, might become missionaries. (49) These young readers, especially males, targeted by the evangelicals as not only consumers, but also as potential missionaries, had to be persuaded that missionary service was among the most noble and honorable occupations, one that would test the limits of their manhood and all but guarantee them a spot in the ranks of imperial heroes. Missionary work was thus celebrated by the evangelicals as a manly pursuit, not to be undertaken by the faint of heart or those considered too "soft." (50) The ideal of foreign missionary service provided a bridge between competing notions of manliness in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The older ideas of manhood associated with the landed gentry included values, such as physical strength, that could be demonstrated through military skill or hunting and riding, along with social activities such as drinking and gambling. The new ideal of Christian manliness, as defined by the evangelical middle class, stressed the refinement of one's moral character through prayer, hard work, self-discipline, and more godly pursuits. According to Davidoff and Hall, the evangelical and other voluntary societies "provided alternative structures to the social calendar of the aristocracy and gentry with their hunts and race meetings linked to the agricultural seasons, and to the clubs and coffee houses frequented by middle class men in the eighteenth century." (51) Images of missionaries, as constructed in the evangelical press, appropriated the more physical attributes of aristocratic manliness and combined them with newer, evangelical notions of masculinity that stressed such moral and religious virtues as charity and sacrifice. Thus, as well as personal piety, missionary service required physical stamina and endurance in order to survive the rigors of a foreign climate.
Indeed, Anglican evangelicals saw expanded missionary efforts as a way to inject new life into a national church that, in their view, was plagued by both an entrenched complacency and clerics who neglected their spiritual duties. The country "squarson," who spent most of his time in leisurely pursuits while ignoring his parish duties, was a favorite target for middle class evangelicals who demanded a more active parish in which "vital" Christianity could be promulgated. (52) In 1797, William Wilberforce explained that the need to promote "vital" Christianity stemmed from an increase in the number of "nominal" as opposed to "real" or "practical" Christians. With new wealth generated by industrialization, more citizens were lulled into religious complacency and were thus more susceptible to the irreligion of the French. (53) Too many clergymen, it was argued, undertook the "employments of the country gentleman" and mingled with the "landed interest in almost every kind of secular business." (54) Melville Home criticized the "soft pulpits and well-dressed congregations, snug livings and quiet cures, good food and decent clothes" of Anglican clergy. He suggested they get out and do the dirty work of Christian missionaries who were men of "discipline and self-command" and whose characters were "divested of sloth, effeminacy, and indulgence." (55) Another interpretation held that because the British men prospered in a secure, tranquil environment, there was a tendency to "nourish a softness of mind, and to produce an indisposition for encountering the hardships to which a residence in Africa might be subject." (56) In short, aristocratic pleasure seeking had infiltrated the religious sphere and threatened to undermine the martial aspect of Protestant evangelization that was such an important component of imperial expansion.
To counter such tendencies, the evangelical propaganda glorified missionary service as a courageous and masculine occupation to which all young men should aspire, and urged sincere Christian parents never to dissuade their sons from careers as foreign missionaries. Because a minister's place at home could easily be taken over by another, missionary work in foreign lands was promoted as more important, if not superior to, service in Britain. Young men were invited to join the ranks of famous missionaries such as David Brainerd, whose work in North America was often invoked to give missionary service a heroic quality, and after returning home from missionary service among the "heathen," the potential recruits were promised an honorable reception in England. (57) In a letter to The Times in 1818, the Reverend Daniel Wilson declared that foreign missionary service was the highest form of heroism:
Quote: What is so heroic as to quit the comforts of our native land, and
cheerfully to encounter the danger of a foreign climate, and all the
labors and sufferings incidental to missionary undertakings? Surely
there treads not on this earth a man so truly magnanimous as the
faithful missionary! (58)
The Baptist Robert Hall commented that those best able to extend the gospel were Protestant missionaries who carried out their work with a "manly and heroic prudence." (59) The implication here is that evangelical missionaries, who represented both the masculinity and Protestant sensibilities of the nation, would rescue indigenous peoples, especially the Indians, from their backward, effeminate cultures:
Quote: Anxious to learn, and capable of learning, they will advance with
accelerated speed in the paths of science and religion. The
advantages of British refinement, and the blessings of Protestant
Christianity, will open on their view. From our commerce they will
obtain affluence, from our manners civilization and from our
instruction manliness and independence. (60)
The South Seas provided another important site for the interplay of missionary manliness and imperial sentiment in the evangelical press. Much interest was generated in the Pacific region in the mid-eighteenth century because of the efforts of scholars, traders and explorers. As Peter Marshall and Glynder Williams note, "Between the ending of the Seven Years War in 1763 and the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars thirty years later, Britain and France in particular experienced a 'Pacific Craze,' in which a new type of national hero emerged in the shape of naval explorers and itinerant scientists." (61) The evangelicals added Protestant missionaries to the list of national heroes associated with the British Empire in the Pacific. For the LMS, who sent their first missionaries to Tahiti in 1797, it was imperative that evangelical Christians took advantage of Captain Cook's discoveries of the 1770s. (62) Thomas Haweis, one of the first promoters of the LMS, believed the Pacific held out special promise for missionary work. The islands contained fertile soil, a healthy climate, uncivilized natives that were no match for the Europeans, and a commercial interest in the region that would foster civilization. (63) Of Cook's discoveries, the Reverend James Johnston claimed that missionaries were "making an improvement which to the mere geographer could never have occurred." (64) For the evangelicals, the "improvement" to which Johnston referred was Britain's civilizing mission in the Pacific, and the missionary press offered the British public an alternative image of Polynesians that was in direct contrast to the idea of the "noble savage" celebrated by previous observers of South Seas' societies. (65) For example, the Reverend James Johnston deplored the celebrated image of Pacific Islanders in vogue in literary circles by the late eighteenth century:
Quote: Looking to man with an eye distorted by 'philosophy and science
falsely so called,' they form the most unjust notions of what is
the most proper state and situation for a reasonable being. They
seem to consider that to be the more perfect state of man, which
is farthest from civilization. They paint the manners of the rude
heathen in such glowing colors, as if they proposed them for
patterns to the rest of the species. (66)
The evangelical press through sermons, periodicals, and official reports, highlighted the degraded state of the Polynesians with sensational reports of sexual promiscuity, nudity, human sacrifice, and infanticide. To eliminate such practices and transplant true Christianity to the South Seas would necessitate a degree of personal faith, diligence, self-sacrifice, and sense of duty, which only the evangelical missionaries enjoyed. Additionally, the missionary projects in the Pacific, as those in India, would secure for the Britons a sense of moral superiority that was in stark contrast to the French imperial ambitions in the regions But what of the appropriate social origins and qualifications of the new missionary hero articulated by evangelicals to best represent the nation? While missionary societies were established, managed, and publicized by the middle class elites, the actual missionaries in the field were initially men of lower middle class origins who, because they were less susceptible to aristocratic excess and frivolity, were held up as those hearty enough to uphold the national honor. Thus, during the early years of the foreign missionary movement, there was a socioeconomic division between the organizers of the new foreign missionary societies and the actual missionaries in the field.6s As much as the evangelical leaders heralded missionary service as a manly pursuit, in reality they had some early difficulty in recruiting missionaries from the ranks of the upper middle class. For example, early on, the CMS was forced to recruit its first missionaries from German Lutheran seminaries because no suitable English candidates came forward. Perhaps out of necessity, leaders of the new evangelical missionary societies argued that not all missionaries needed a classical education, because it was the industrious and artisans among them who were best equipped to foster civilization among the indigenous peoples. For example, prospective LMS missionaries to the South Pacific were to be men "of a missionary spirit ... and approved as faithful. Men of a meek and lowly mind, willing to fill the plate allotted to them without murmuring or envy, ready to endure difficulties and sacrifice indulgences." (69) Early on, some within the organization hoped that prominent individuals would come forth as missionaries and a division emerged between those who supported learned men for missionary posts and those who wanted men trained in the "mechanic arts." Judging by the occupations of the earliest LMS missionaries in the Pacific Islands, the latter group eventually held sway. Of the thirty men selected to comprise the first mission to Tahiti, twenty-six were artisans and tradesmen, while only four were ordained clerics. (70)
An example of this connection between the lower classes and missionary work, as well as the more general association of evangelicalism with missions, can be found in an anonymous pamphlet entitled The Village in an Uproar. In this story Tom, a humble thresher, experiences a religious conversion after attending a missionary meeting in London and subsequently becomes a missionary himself:
Quote: Mr. Wealthy: 'why, Trusty's man [Tom], who formerly lived with me,
whom I turned off for his insolence, has been to London, to what
they term the missionary meeting, and I understand it has not only
produced strange effects upon himself, but by his whispering to
some, and talking to others, many are affected with his
enthusiastic nonsense. (71)
The missionaries from the BMS and LMS were thus described by contemporaries as hailing from the "mechanic" class, as many were carpenters, wheelwrights, sawyers, and shoemakers. Indeed, one observer of the LMS' efforts in the Pacific Islands asked how "tailors, shoemakers, carpenters, tinmen, butchers, weavers, and coopers" could "convert an entire people?" (72) Being skilled in the "practical" arts, such men entered missionary service as a way of elevating their standing in the social community and gaining respectability in the eyes of the public, and God. These "godly mechanics" were expected to teach the Maori, for example, certain skills to promote civilization and pave the way for Christianity. Not until the late 1830s did more missionaries emerge from the professional classes, coming from backgrounds as factory managers and teachers. (73) Although they emerged from a variety of evangelical groups both within and outside the established church, the foreign missionary agencies celebrated their common devotion to Protestantism and the growth and stability of the empire. After the American Revolution, the evangelicals were in the vanguard of a movement to reform the British nation through the sanctification of imperial projects in India, the Pacific, and later in Africa. It is true that proselytism and religious activism were fundamental components of Evangelicalism that were transnational in scope, finding expression in continental European, North American, and British evangelical writings. (74) But during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the formative period in modern British missions, evangelical rhetoric often celebrated the important links between political and religious expansion and tied missionary work to ideas of nationhood. Evangelization would confirm Britain's status as a "chosen" nation, and serve to highlight the cultural and moral supremacy of Britons and the degraded state of the heathen abroad, thus reinforcing hierarchies of difference that were crucial to imperial expansion. (75) Missionary publicity combined a serious commitment to carry out God's order to evangelize with a desire to further Britain's imperial ambitions, and also reflected the more practical problems of missionary recruitment and fund-raising.
To stimulate more interest in missions and gain potential recruits, the evangelicals constructed an image of the missionary as a kind of national hero who exhibited the noblest features of evangelical manliness. The evangelical press ranked missionaries with explorers, soldiers, and traders as those best able to carry the imperial banner to the "dark" corners of the globe. In some ways, however, the missionaries were promoted as superior to other imperial heroes. Acquiring wealth or scientific knowledge was viewed by the evangelicals as ultimately inferior to the nobler mission of spreading the gospel abroad. As described by the evangelicals, the successful missionary would have to combine physical courage and moral virtue to sustain activity in an unfamiliar climate and be a model of piety to indigenous peoples. Disciplined and rugged but also sensitive and humble, Protestant missionaries were advertised as the ideal purveyors of the best Britain had to offer the uncivilized world, and thus became valuable symbols of imperial culture. Missionary manliness, with its stress on both physical and moral attributes, prefigured the male image found in Victorian writings on masculinity that emphasized similar qualities. (76)
By 1830 missionary societies enjoyed a higher number of recruits and increased funding through voluntary subscriptions. (77) Missionary work and humanitarianism, in general, remained important components of British national and imperial identity into the 1830s and 1840s. (78) Despite the enormous popularity of David Livingstone's Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, a lack of confidence in the civilizing mission emerged after the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the same year Livingstone's work was published. In part, this "crisis in confidence" could also be explained by the advent of "scientific racism" and social Darwinism. In a recent article, however, Andrew Bank located this shift in attitudes toward indigenous peoples at an earlier point. As early as the 1840s, with the British-Xhosa wars on the Cape, missionaries and colonial administrators became disillusioned as to the capacity of black South Africans for genuine advancement. With the deterioration of the "Liberal ideal" on the Cape, more emphasis was placed on outright conquest rather than accommodation. (79) This attitude and approach to indigenous societies remained in place going into the "high" imperial era of the 1870s and 1880s. However, such cynicism was not a permanent fixture in humanitarian circles. For, by the early twentieth century, we see another shift in attitudes, one in which missionary interests, informed by anthropology, advocated a more positive view of native peoples that could often be at odds with colonial administrative machinery. (80) As a result, the missionary movement became more international in scope, and was defined less by its connection to national interests and more by the evangelizing goals and strategies it shared with missionary societies worldwide. Another consequence was a deeper commitment to acquire a better understanding of indigenous religions. Taken together, such shifts in attitudes reveal the complex and ever changing relationship between religious ideas and British imperial interests. (81)
Quote:(1.) Daniel Wilson, A Defense of the Church Missionary Society Against the Objections of the Reverend Josiah Thomas, M.A. Archdeacon of Bath (London: G. Wilson, 1818), 37.
(2.) Andrew Porter, Religion Versus Empire? British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700-1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), chapters 2-3.
(3.) Penelope Carson, "An Imperial Dilemma: The Propagation of Christianity in Early Colonial India," Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 18 (1990): 169-90.
(4.) Susan Thorne, Congregational Missions and the Making of an Imperial Culture in Nineteenth Century England (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999); Kathleen Wilson, The Island Race: Englishness, Empire and Gender in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Routledge, 2003); Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992).
(5.) Peter Marshall, "Empire and Authority in the Later Eighteenth Century," Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 15 (1987): 105-22; "Imperial Britain," ibid., 23 (1995): 385; Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 102.
(6.) Kathleen Wilson, "Citizenship, Empire and Modernity in the Provinces, c. 1720-1790," Eighteenth Century Studies 29 (1995): 86.
(7.) Peter Marshall, "Britain Without America--A Second Empire?" The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Eighteenth Century, ed. Peter Marshall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 392.
(8.) Wilson, "Citizenship, Empire and Modernity in the Provinces," 86; H. V. Bowen, "British India, 1765-1813: The Metropolitan Context" The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Eighteenth Century, 530-52.
(9.) Tony Claydon and Ian McBride, "The Trials of the Chosen Peoples: Recent Interpretations of Protestantism and National Identity in Britain and Ireland," in Protestantism and National Identity: Britain and Ireland c. 1650-1850, eds. Claydon and McBride (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 10-11; Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 18-55.
(10.) Reginald Heber, "The Conversion of the Heathen. A Sermon Preached for the Church Missionary Society, at Whittington, Salop, April 16, 1820," Sermons Preached in England. By the Late Right Reverend Reginald Heber (New York: E. Bliss, 1829), 203-04; George Chapman, Tracts on East India Affairs; or Collegium Bengalese, a Latin Poem, with an English Translation; and a Dissertation on the Best Means of Civilizing the Subjects of the British Empire in India, and of Dispensing the Light of the Christian Religion Through the Eastern World (Edinburgh: n.p., 1804), 10-11.
(11.) "Obligations of Britons to Promote the Gospel" Missionary Hymns (London: T. Williams, 1810), 57-58.
(12.) John Mitchell, An Essay on the Best Means of Civilizing the Subjects of the British Empire in India, and of Diffusing the Light of the Christian Religion Throughout the Eastern World (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1805), 6-7; Church Missionary Society (CMS) Proceedings (1806): 38.
(13.) Claydon and McBride, "The Trials of the Chosen Peoples," 27-28;Wilson, The Island Race, 80-84; Thorne, Congregational Missions and the Making of an Imperial Culture, 42.
(14.) From 1773 to 1785, Warren Hastings was the governor general of India. Led by Edmund Burke, the Parliament impeached Hastings for extortion in a much-publicized trial. He was eventually acquitted in 1795.
(15.) J. R. Oldfield, Popular Politics and British Anti-Slavery (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), 33, 117-18; Ainslie Embree, Charles Grant and British Rule in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), 8-10.
(16.) David Turley, The Culture of English Anti-Slavery, 1780-1860 (New York: Routledge, 1991), 229.
(17.) Thomas Raffles, Missions to the Heathen Vindicated from the Charge of Enthusiasm. A Sermon Delivered at the Tabernacle, Moorfields, Before the Missionary Society, May 11, 1814 (Liverpool: Sunday School Press, 1814), 19.
(18.) W. H. Oliver, Prophets and Millennialists: The Uses of Biblical Prophecy in England From the 1790s to the 1840s (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1978), 85-90.
(19.) Raffles, Missions to the Heathen Vindicated, 31-32.
(20.) Reverend Daniel Wilson's letter to The Times 8 January 1818; Charles Buck, "The Close of the Eighteenth Century Improved: A Sermon Preached ... December 28, 1800"; in Which the Most Remarkable Religious Events of the Last Hundred Years Are Considered (London: n.p., 1801), 35.
(21.) Porter, Religion Versus Empire?, 11, 15.
(22.) John Walsh and Stephen Taylor, eds., The Church of England c. 1689-1833: From Toleration to Tractariansim (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 14.
(23.) David Hopkins, The Dangers of British India From French Invasion and Missionary Establishments ... Some Account of the Countries Between the Caspian Sea and the Ganges ... and a Few Hints Respecting the Defense of British Frontiers in Hindostan. By a Late Resident at Bhagulpore (London: Black, Parry and Kingsbury, 1808), 22.
(24.) The Times, 20 September 1813; Evangelical Magazine 8 (1800): 252.
(25.) CMS Proceedings (1810): 86, emphasis mine.
(26.) "Paulinus," Christian Observer 16 (1817): 370.
(27.) For another example from an LMS-affiliated publication, see Evangelical Magazine 16 (1808): 408.
(28.) Ibid., 20 (1812): 327-28.
(29.) Printed in Evangelical Intelligencer 1 (1805): 360.
(30.) Melville Home, Letters on Missions Addressed to the Protestant Ministers of the British Churches (Andover: Flagg & Gould, 1815), 40.
(31.) The Times, 20 September 1813.
(32.) See also, Reginald Heber, "The Conversion of the Heathen," 203-4.
(33.) The Times, 5 June 1813.
(34.) Hugh Pearson, A Dissertation on the Propagation of Christianity in Asia (Oxford: n.p., 1808), 128-29, 125.
(35.) Claudius Buchanan, Commencement Sermon, Preached Before the University of Cambridge, on Sunday Morning, July 1, 1810 (Boston: Armstrong, 1811), 39.
(36.) Embree, 8-10, 118-20, 141-57.
(37.) Horne, 92-94.
(38.) Joshua Marshman, Advantages of Christianity in Promoting the Establishment and Prosperity of the British Government in India (London: Smith's, 1813), 6.
(39.) Pearson, A Dissertation on the Propagation of Christianity in Asia, 211; Report of Speeches at a Meeting of the Inhabitants of Kingston Upon Hull, Called to Consider the Duty of Petitioning Parliament for the Toleration of the Preaching and Profession of the Christian Religion in British India (Edinburgh: n.p., 1813), 43.
(40.) William Tennant, Thoughts on the Effects of the British Government on the State of India ... With Hints Concerning the Means of Conveying Civil and Religious Instruction to the Natives of that Country (Edinburgh: n.p., 1807), 38-39; William Dealtry, Duty and Policy of Propagating Christianity; A Discourse Delivered Before the Church Missionary Society for Africa and the East, May 4, 1813 (London: Whittingham and Rowland, 1813), 23.
(41.) Ibid., 66; The missionary debates of 1813 have received much scholarly attention. Carson, "An Imperial Dilemma," 168-75; Karen Chancey, "The Star in the East: The Controversy Over Christian Missions to India, 1805-1813," The Historian 60 (1998): 507-22; Jorg Fisch, "A Pamphlet War on Christian Missions in India 1807-9," Journal of Asian History 19-20 (1985-86): 22-70; Allan Davidson, Evangelicals and Attitudes To India, 1786-1813: Missionary Publicity and Claudius Buchanan (Abingdon: Sutton Courtenay, 1992).
(42.) C. Duncan Rice, "The Missionary Context of the British Anti-Slavery Movement," in Slavery and British Society 1776-1846, ed. James Walvin (London: Macmillan, 1982), 159; Thorne, Congregational Missions and the Making of an Imperial Culture, 7.
(43.) David Spring, "The Clapham Sect: Some Social and Political Aspects," Victorian Studies 5 (1961): 35-49; Ernest Howse, Saints in Politics: The Clapham Sect and the Growth of Freedom (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1971); Catherine Hall, White, Male and Middle Class: Explorations in Feminism and History (New York: Routledge, 1992), 80-81.
(44.) The Times, 22 December 1813; Eugene Stock, The History of the Church Missionary Society (London: CMS, 1899), I: 114; Thorne, Congregational Missions and the Making of an Imperial Culture, 4.
(45.) Quoted in Edwin Sidney, The Life of the Reverend Rowland Hill A.M. (New York: Robert Carter, 1848), 172-73. Hill gave the first annual missionary sermon.
(46.) Roy Porter, English Society in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Penguin, 1983), 284-86; Oldfield, Popular Politics and British Anti-Slavery, 16-19, 146-48.
(47.) Bradley, The Call to Seriousness, 74-78; Evangelical Magazine 20 (1812): 306-07.
(48.) Ibid.
(49.) Ibid.
(50.) Hall, White, Male and Middle Class, 219.
(51.) Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, 109-11, 81-83; Charles Smyth, "The Evangelical Movement in Perspective," Cambridge Historical Journal 7 (1941-43): 69.
(52.) Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, 100.
(53.) William Wilberforce, A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians in the Higher and Middle Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity (London: T. Cadell, jun. & W. Davies, 1797), 109-10.
(54.) Eclectic Review I (1805): 69; James Bean, A Charge Addressed to the Clergy of Any Diocese in the Kingdom (n.p., 1792), 9-10.
(55.) Horne, 100-101, 116, 51.
(56.) Christian Observer I (1802): 540.
(57.) Evangelical Magazine 9 (1801): 476; Horne, Letters on Missions, 29; Missionary Magazine 2 (1797): 29, 32.
(58.) Reverend Daniel Wilson's letter to The Times, 8 January 1818.
(59.) Robert Hall, "An Address to the Public, On an Important Subject, Connected with the Renewal of the Charter of the East India Company" Entire Works of the Reverend Robert Hall, 6 vols (London: Holdsworth and Ball, 1831-32), 1: 293.
(60.) Francis Wrangham, A Dissertation on the Best Means of Civilizing the Subjects of the British Empire in India, and of Diffusing the Light of the Christian Religion Throughout the Eastern World (n.p., 1805), 20. On the importance of individual autonomy as a manly trait, see David Alderson, Mansex Fine: Religion, Manliness and Imperialism in Nineteenth Century British Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 14-15. On the concept of effeminacy in colonial India, see Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity, The 'Manly Englishman' and the 'Effeminate Bengali' in the Late Nineteenth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), 18-22.
(61.) Peter Marshall and Glynder Williams, The Great Map of Mankind: Perceptions of New Worlds in the Age of Enlightenment (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), 258.
(62.) Jane Samson, Imperial Benevolence: Making British Authority in the Pacific Islands (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998), 7-23; Richard Lovett, The History of the London Missionary Society, 1795-1895 2 vols. (London: Henry Froude, 1899), 1:20; Charles Horne, The Story of the London Missionary Society (London: LMS, 1908), 11; Melville Horne, Letters on Missions, 102-3.
(63.) Thomas Haweis, An Impartial and Succinct History of the Revival and Progress of the Church of Christ; From the Reformation to the Present Time (Worcester: Greenleaf, 1803), 379-80.
(64.) James Johnston, The Pastoral Care of Jesus Over the Heathen: Illustrated in a Sermon Preached Before the Dundee Society for Propagating the Gospel Among the Heathen, at Their First General Meeting, 18th October 1796 (Dundee: T. Colvill, 1796), 24.
(65.) Marshall and Williams, Great Map of Mankind, 293-95; Bernard Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985).
(66.) Johnston, The Pastoral Care of Jesus Over the Heathen, 5.
(67.) Wilson, The Island Race, 80-84.
(68.) Elizabeth Isichei, A History of Christianity in Africa: From Antiquity to the Present (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdman's, 1995), 77.
(69.) Thomas Haweis, An Impartial and Succinct History of the Revival and Progress of the Church of Christ, 393-94; Evangelical Magazine 8 (1800): 473, 36.
(70.) Cecil Northcott, Glorious Company: One Hundred and Fifty Years Life and Work of the London Missionary Society, 1795-1945 (London: LMS, 1945), 31-32.
(71.) Anonymous, The Village in an Uproar, or The Thresher's Visit to the Missionary Meeting in London, May 1814. Containing Among a Variety of Other Particulars, the Thresher's Account of the African Friend's Report of His Mission Among the Wild People (London: Williams and Son, 1814), 19.
(72.) New London Review 2 (1800): 146.
(73.) Niel Gunson, Messengers of Grace: Evangelical Missionaries in the South Seas, 1797-1860 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1978), 31-36, 41; Hall, White, Male and Middle Class, 225; John Comaroff, "Images of Empire, Contests of Conscience: Models of Colonial Domination in South Africa," in Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, eds. Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 176-78.
(74.) See Mark Noll, David Bebbington, and George Rawlyk, eds., Evangelicalism: Comparative Studies of Popular Protestantism in North America, The British Isles, and Beyond (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 6.
(75.) Wilson, The Island Race, 80-84.
(76.) See J. A. Mangan and James Walvin, eds., Manliness and Morality: Middle Class Masculinity in Britain and America 1800-1940 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987), 1-7.
(77.) Porter, Religion Versus Empire?, 91.
(78.) Andrew Porter, "Trusteeship, Anti-Slavery, and Humanitarianism," in The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Nineteenth Century, ed. Andrew Porter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 198.
(79.) Andrew Bank, "Losing Faith in the Civilizing Mission: the Premature Decline of Humanitarian Liberalism at the Cape, 1840-60," in Empire and Others: British Encounters With Indigenous Peoples, 1600-1850, eds. Martin Daunton and Rick Halpern (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 364-73.
(80.) Porter, "Trusteeship, Anti-Slavery, and Humanitarianism," 198.
(81.) Porter, Religion Versus Empire?, 314-15.
William C. Barnhart is associate professor of history at Caldwell College.