Missionary Writing and Empire, 1800-1860

Arguing that missionaries occupied ambiguous positions in colonial cultures, Anna Johnston analyzes missionary writing under the aegis of the British Empire. Johnston reveals how missionaries were caught between imperial and religious interests through an examination of texts published by the largest and most influential nineteenth-century evangelical institution, the London Missionary Society. Texts from Indian, Polynesian, and Australian missions are also examined to highlight their representation of nineteenth-century evangelical activity in relationship to gender, colonialism, and race.