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Anna Johnston analyses missionary writing under the aegis of the British Empire. Johnston argues that missionaries occupied ambiguous positions in colonial cultures, caught between imperial and religious interests. She maps out this position through an examination of texts published by missionaries of the largest, most influential nineteenth-century evangelical institution, the London Missionary Society. These texts provide a fascinating commentary on nineteenth-century evangelism and colonialism, and illuminate complex relationships between white imperial subjects, white colonial subjects, and non-white colonial subjects. With their reformist, and often prurient interest in sexual and familial relationships, missionary texts focused imperial attention on gender and domesticity in colonial cultures. Johnston contends that in doing so they rewrote imperial expansion as a moral allegory and confronted British ideologies of gender, race and class. Texts from Indian, Polynesian and Australian missions are examined to highlight their representation of nineteenth-century evangelical activity in relation to gender, colonialism and race.

Missions, English --- English missions --- History --- London Missionary Society --- LMS --- Congregational Council for World Mission --- LMS (London Missionary Society) --- Missionary Society (London, England) --- Commonwealth Missionary Society --- Arts and Humanities --- Literature --- Imperialism

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This is the first comprehensive study of the role of gender in British Protestant missionary expansion into China and India during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Focusing on the experiences of wives and daughters, female missionaries, educators and medical staff associated with the London Missionary Society, the China Inland Mission and the various Scottish Presbyterian Mission Societies, it compares and contrasts gender relations within different British Protestant missions in cross-cultural settings. Drawing on extensive published and archival materials, this study examines how gender, race, class, nationality and theology shaped the polity of Protestant missions and Christian interaction with native peoples. Rather than providing a romantic portrayal of fulfilled professional freedom, this work argues that women's labor in Christian missions, as in the secular British Empire and domestic society, remained under-valued both in terms of remuneration and administrative advancement, until well into the twentieth century. Rich in details and full of insights, this work not only presents the first comparative treatment of gender relations in British Christian missionary movements, but also contributes to an understanding of the importance of gender more broadly in the high imperial age.

RHONDA A. SEMPLE is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Northern British Columbia, Canada.

missiegeschiedenis --- vrouwen --- zendingsbeweging [protestants] --- Verenigd Koninkrijk van Groot-Brittannië en Noord-Ierland [land in werelddeel Europa] (x) --- China [land in werelddeel Azië] --- India [land in werelddeel Azië] --- 19de eeuw (x) --- 1900-1914 (x) --- History --- Christian religion --- Ecclesiology --- Sociology of the family. Sociology of sexuality --- anno 1800-1899 --- Great Britain --- Missions, British --- Protestant churches --- Women in missionary work --- Missions --- Protestant sects --- Christian sects --- Protestantism --- British missions --- Missions&delete& --- China Inland Mission --- London Missionary Society --- LMS --- Congregational Council for World Mission --- Chung-kuo nei ti hui --- Overseas Missionary Fellowship --- History. --- LMS (London Missionary Society) --- Missionary Society (London, England) --- Commonwealth Missionary Society --- Gender --- Mission --- Book --- British Protestant Mission. --- China. --- Christian Interaction. --- Early 20th Century. --- Gender. --- High Imperial Age. --- India. --- Late 19th Century. --- Native Peoples. --- Religious Conversion.