The Great Missionary Societies

The great missionary societies were, in their late-Victorian heyday, some of the largest and most thoroughly organised private enterprises in the world. The Baptist Missionary Society (1792), the London Missionary Society (1795), the Church Missionary Society (1799), the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society (1818), the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (1701, reconstituted 1826), and the (Free) Church of Scotland Foreign Missions Committee (1829) together fielded, by 1900, perhaps 4,000 European missionaries and an even larger number of indigenous catechists, schoolmasters, and medical staff. The total annual income of the British missionary societies grew from a few thousand pounds in 1800 to more than £1.5 million by 1900. The missionary societies were, in this respect, a substantial industry — and a substantial one, moreover, that operated on a global scale, in every inhabited continent.

The missionary societies were, however, not a single body. They differed in theology, in organisation, in geography, and in the extent of their entanglement with the British imperial state. The Baptist Missionary Society was a Calvinist body, working principally in India and the Congo; the London Missionary Society was a non-denominational body, working in southern Africa, the Pacific, and China; the Church Missionary Society was an Anglican body, working in West Africa, East Africa, India, and New Zealand; the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society was a Methodist body, working in the West Indies, the Pacific, and southern Africa; the SPG was a High-Church Anglican body, working in the Caribbean and India; the (Free) Church of Scotland was a Presbyterian body, working in India, the Caribbean, and central Africa; the Catholic orders — the Mill Hill Mission, the Society of African Missions, the Holy Ghost Fathers, and the White Fathers — were a separate family of bodies, working in the colonial periphery that the Protestant missionary societies had not yet occupied.

The Baptist Missionary Society

The Baptist Missionary Society (BMS) was founded at Kettering on 2 October 1792, with William Carey, a Northamptonshire shoemaker-turned-Baptist minister and schoolmaster, as its first missionary. The BMS was, in its origins, a Particular Baptist body, and it was, throughout the nineteenth century, the most theologically conservative of the major missionary societies. The BMS’s principal fields were Bengal (Carey’s Serampore mission, 1799–1834), the West Indies (the Jamaican mission, 1814– ), and the Congo (the Livingstone Inland Mission and the BMS Congo mission, 1878– ). The BMS’s most lasting contribution was, however, the Serampore mission’s translation of the Bible into Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, Oriya, and Assamese — a body of work that, in some respects, defined the modern Indian-language Bible.

The BMS’s most controversial moment was, however, the Jamaica mission. The 1814 mission was, in its origins, a response to the British abolition of the slave trade (1807) and the British colonial government’s policy of religious instruction for the enslaved. The mission was led by William Knibb, a Baptist minister from Bristol, who arrived in Jamaica in 1824 and was, in many respects, the principal British missionary opponent of the slave system. Knibb was, with the Quaker missionaries, the most consequential British missionary voice in the long campaign for the 1833 Abolition of Slavery Act. The BMS’s most lasting Jamaican contribution was the Calabar College (1843), the first theological seminary in the British Caribbean, and the Calabar High School (1912), the principal Jamaican Baptist secondary school.

The London Missionary Society

The London Missionary Society (LMS) was founded in 1795, on a non-denominational basis, by a group of London Dissenting ministers. The LMS was, in its origins, a Congregationalist body, although it was, in practice, a broad Protestant body that admitted Presbyterians, Methodists, and Anglicans. The LMS’s principal fields were southern Africa (the Kuruman mission of David Livingstone, 1841– ), the Pacific (the Duff expedition to Tahiti, 1797; the Samoa, Tonga, and New Hebrides missions, 1830– ), China (the LMS China mission, 1807– ), and Madagascar (the LMS Madagascar mission, 1818– ). The LMS was, throughout the nineteenth century, the most active of the British missionary societies in the Pacific, and it was, by 1900, the largest non-Catholic missionary body in the Pacific Islands.

The LMS’s most famous missionary was David Livingstone, who was sent to Kuruman in 1841 as an LMS missionary and who, after his 1852–56 trans-African journey, became the most celebrated of the British missionary explorers. The LMS’s most lasting contribution was, however, the educational and medical institutions of southern Africa. The Kuruman mission’s Moffat Institution (1821) and Livingstone’s own Kolkeng (1847) and Linyanti (1853) missions were the principal LMS foundations in southern Africa; the LMS’s Lovedale institution (1824, transferred to the Free Church of Scotland in 1841) was the principal missionary school in the Cape Colony. The Lovedale Free Church Institution (1841–1930) was, in many respects, the most consequential missionary educational foundation in southern Africa.

The Church Missionary Society

The Church Missionary Society (CMS) is the subject of a separate article; for present purposes it is enough to note that the CMS, in its late-Victorian heyday, was the largest of the British missionary societies, with 1,140 European missionaries in the field in 1900. The CMS was, throughout the nineteenth century, the principal Anglican missionary body, and it was the principal British missionary body in West Africa, East Africa, and New Zealand. The CMS’s most lasting contribution was the educational institutions of West Africa, East Africa, and New Zealand, and the translation of the Bible into Yoruba, Igbo, Twi, Swahili, and Māori.

The Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society

The Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society (WMMS) was founded in 1818, as a separate body from the Wesleyan Methodist Conference, with a particular focus on the West Indies. The WMMS’s principal fields were the West Indies (the Jamaican mission, 1789– ; the Antigua mission, 1786– ; the Bahamas mission, 1808– ; the Trinidad mission, 1809– ), southern Africa (the Cape Colony mission, 1814– ), and the Pacific (the Fiji mission, 1835– ; the Tonga mission, 1826– ). The WMMS was, throughout the nineteenth century, the largest Methodist missionary body in the world, and it was, by 1900, the principal British missionary body in the Pacific Islands.

The WMMS’s most consequential moment was, perhaps, the establishment of the WMMS High School, Georgetown, British Guiana (1831); the Calabar Government School, Barbados (1835); and the Jamaica College (1789, refounded 1907). The WMMS’s most lasting contribution to the West Indies was, however, the establishment of a substantial Wesleyan body of preachers and catechists, who, by 1900, were the principal indigenous Christian leaders of the West Indies. The West Indian Methodist Church (the successor to the WMMS in the West Indies) is, in many ways, the institutional descendant of the WMMS’s West Indian work.

The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel

The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG) was, in its origins, the oldest of the British missionary societies. The SPG was founded in 1701 by the Bishop of London, Henry Compton, and chartered by William III. The SPG was, in its early decades, principally a North American mission; the American Revolution destroyed the SPG’s North American work, and the society turned, in the early nineteenth century, to the British colonies of the Caribbean, India, and the Pacific. The SPG was, throughout the nineteenth century, the principal High-Church Anglican missionary body, and it was, by 1900, the second-largest of the Anglican missionary societies (after the CMS).

The SPG’s most consequential foundation was Codrington College, Barbados (1745), the oldest Anglican theological college in the Western Hemisphere; the SPG’s other Caribbean foundations — the Codrington Library, Barbados (1745); the Bishop’s High School, Antigua (1856); the Codrington All-Age School, Barbados (1925) — were the principal Anglican educational institutions of the British Caribbean. The SPG’s Indian work, which began in 1826 with the appointment of Bishop Daniel Wilson as Bishop of Calcutta, was, in many respects, more modest; the SPG’s most lasting Indian contribution was the Bishop’s College, Calcutta (1820), a theological seminary.

The Church of Scotland and the Free Church of Scotland

The Church of Scotland and the Free Church of Scotland were, throughout the nineteenth century, the principal Presbyterian missionary bodies. The Church of Scotland’s Foreign Missions Committee was founded in 1829, with a focus on India (the Scottish mission at Bombay, the Scottish mission at Madras, the Scottish mission at Calcutta) and the West Indies (the Scottish mission at Jamaica, the Scottish mission at Trinidad, the Scottish mission at British Guiana). The Free Church of Scotland’s Foreign Missions Committee was founded in 1843, on the Disruption, with a focus on the Cape Colony (the Lovedale mission) and central Africa (the Livingstonia mission, the Blantyre mission). The two bodies were, in many respects, complementary — the Church of Scotland in India, the Free Church of Scotland in southern Africa — but they were also, in many respects, rivals.

The most consequential Scottish missionary institution was, perhaps, the Lovedale institution (1824, transferred to the Free Church of Scotland in 1841), the principal missionary school in the Cape Colony; the Scottish mission’s most lasting Indian contribution was the Scottish Church College, Calcutta (1830), which is now the principal Presbyterian college in India. The Scottish missions’ educational and medical work was, in many respects, the most substantial of the British missionary enterprises in the British Empire, and it was, by 1900, the largest of the British Presbyterian missionary bodies.

The Catholic Orders

The British Catholic missionary enterprise was, throughout the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, a much smaller and a much more cautious body than the Protestant missionary enterprise. The Catholic orders active in the British colonies were, in the main, the Mill Hill Mission (founded 1866), the Society of African Missions (founded 1856), the Holy Ghost Fathers (founded 1703, refounded 1848), the White Fathers (founded 1868), the Benedictines (active in Australia from 1834), the Jesuits (active in South Africa from 1879), and the Redemptorists (active in the West Indies from 1852). The Catholic orders were, on the whole, working in the colonial periphery that the Protestant missionary societies had not yet occupied — the Belgian Congo, the German East Africa, the French West Africa, the Portuguese Mozambique, the Italian Eritrea, the southern Sudan.

The most consequential British Catholic missionary institution was, perhaps, the Mill Hill Mission, the principal Catholic missionary body in the British colonies of West Africa (the Mill Hill Mission at Sierra Leone, 1866; the Mill Hill Mission at the Gold Coast, 1880; the Mill Hill Mission at Nigeria, 1892) and East Africa (the Mill Hill Mission at Uganda, 1895). The Mill Hill Mission’s educational and medical work was, in many respects, the most substantial Catholic missionary enterprise in the British colonies, and it was, by 1900, the largest Catholic missionary body in the British Empire.

The Edinburgh World Missionary Conference

The Edinburgh World Missionary Conference of 1910 was, in many respects, the apotheosis of the late-Victorian missionary movement. The conference, which was attended by 1,200 delegates from more than 80 missionary societies, was the first truly global missionary conference; it was, in some respects, the first genuinely ecumenical missionary gathering; and it was, in many respects, the first major international conference of the twentieth century. The conference’s principal achievement was the establishment of the International Missionary Council (1921), the first international body of Christian missionary organisations.

The Edinburgh Conference was, however, also the high-water mark of the late-Victorian missionary movement. The conference’s optimistic accounts of the imminent Christianisation of the non-Christian world were, in many respects, the swan-song of the older generation. The post-1910 missionary movement was, in fact, a much more cautious and a much more ecumenical body. The missionary societies went, in the 1920s and 1930s, through a long process of self-examination and self-criticism; the older society-based missionary enterprise was, in the 1960s and 1970s, largely replaced by the indigenous churches of the post-colonial world.

Historiographical Note

The historiography of the British missionary movement has been transformed, since the 1960s, by the work of Andrew Porter, Brian Stanley, and the contributors to the Cambridge History of Christianity. The earlier celebratory accounts — the centenary histories of the BMS, the LMS, the CMS, the WMMS, and the SPG — have been supplemented, and in places supplanted, by the more critical accounts of the post-colonial generation. The unresolved question in the field is the same as for the missionary movement more generally: how to weigh the genuine humanitarianism of the societies’ work against the destructive consequences of the missionary encounter with non-Christian societies. The present generation of historians has, on the whole, declined to give the societies a clean bill of health.

In this Section

Other Sections