Missionaries, Indigenous Peoples and Cultural Exchange

This book brings together fresh insights into the relationships between missions and indigenous peoples, and the outcomes of mission activities in the processes of imperial conquest and colonization. Bringing together the work of leading international scholars of mission and empire, the focus is on missions across the British Empire - including India, Africa, Asia, the Pacific - within transnational and comparative perspectives. The topics include: collusion or opposition to colonial authorities, intercultural exchanges, the work of indigenous and local Christians in new churches, native evangelism and education, clashes between variant views of domesticity and parenting roles, and the place of gender in these transformations. Missionaries could be both implicated in the plot of colonial control, in ways seemingly contrary to Christian norms, or else play active roles as proponents of the social, economic, and political rights of their native brethren. Indigenous Christians themselves often had a liminal status, negotiating as they did the needs and desires of the colonial state as well as those of their own peoples. In some mission zones where white missionaries were seen to be constrained by their particular views of race and respectability, black evangelical preachers had far greater success as agents of Christianity. The book contains contributions by historians from Australasia and North America, who observe the fine grain of everyday life on mission stations, and it presents broader insights on questions of race, culture, and religion. It makes a timely intervention into continuing debates about the relationship between mission and empire. *** "This book provides much needed nuance in the discussion on historicizing colonialism and mission. Readers persuaded by postcolonial critique may still call for more inclusion of the indigenous voice, but as a contribution to mission history, the conclusions drawn here are valuable and needed if we are to approximate a more balanced assessment of colonial encounters involving mission and missionaries." David Golding, Claremont Graduate University, Anglican and Episcopal History, December 2012, Vol. 81 No. 4