Missionary writing and empire, 1800-1860
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...
| Summary: | 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. The British Empire, colonialism, and missionary activity -- Gender, domesticity, and colonial evangelisation -- Empire, India, and evangelisation -- Missionary writing in India -- Imperialism, suffragism, and nationalism -- Polynesian missions and the European imaginary -- Missionary writing in Polynesia -- The Australian colonies and empire -- Missionary writing in Australia -- Conclusion: missionary writing, the imperial archive and postcolonial politics |
|---|---|
| Item Description: | Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015) |
| Physical Description: | 1 Online-Ressource (xii, 262 pages), digital, PDF file(s). |
| ISBN: | 0511550324 |
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511550324 |