Missionary Writing and Empire, 1800-1860

Book excerpt: 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. 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.