Missionary Education and Empire in Late Colonial India, 1860-1920 (Empires in Perspective)

Focusing on late colonial India, Bellenoit analyses education in colonial society. Most scholars view missionary teachers as handmaidens of the empire, and their theology as intrinsically imperialistic. However, Bellenoit argues that their interaction with India led them away from imperial norms; a simplistic division of colonisers and colonised is insufficient to explain power relations in late colonial India. Missionary Education and Empire contributes simultaneously to both British imperial and Indian history. It demonstrates that missionary understandings and interactions with India, rather than being party to imperial ideologies, often diverged from metropolitan and imperial norms. Emphasis on ideas and rhetoric has marginalized the important roles of theology and interaction in the colonial context. Bellenoit engages with 'new imperial histories', and offers a more nuanced understanding of colonial interactions by examining the interplay between institutions, interaction and ideologies. He ultimately raises the question whether missionary Christianity was an 'imperial religion'. The book draws upon numerous archival sources, colonial, missionary and Indian, in addition to printed primary sources and recent scholarship Contents......Page 6 List of Tables......Page 7 Acknowledgments......Page 8 Glossary......Page 10 List of Abbreviations......Page 14 Introduction......Page 16 1 Knowledge, Religion and Education in Early Modern India......Page 26 2 British Fears and Indian Society in the Emergence of North Indian Education, c. 1860–1920......Page 47 3 Between East and West: Orientalism, Representation of and Engagements with India......Page 77 4 The Failures of Education and its Sociological Bearings......Page 105 5 Religious Interaction, the Curriculum and Indian Contestations of Late Colonial Knowledge......Page 136 6 Maintaining Missionary Influence: Nationalism, Politics and the Raj c. 1870–1920......Page 169 Conclusion......Page 205 Notes......Page 222 Works Cited......Page 264 Index......Page 282 Introduction -- Knowledge, Religion And Education In Early Modern India -- British Fears And Indian Society In The Emergence Of North Indian Education, C. 1860-1920 -- Between East And West: Orientalism, Representations Of And Engagements With India -- The Failures Of Education And Its Sociological Bearings -- Religious Interaction, The Curriculum And Indian Contestations Of Late Colonial Knowledge -- Maintaining Missionary Influence: Nationalism, Politics And The Raj C. 1870-1920 -- Conclusion. Hayden J.a. Bellenoit. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 249-266) And Index. Contributes simultaneously to both British imperial and Indian history. This work demonstrates that missionary understandings and interactions with India, rather than being party to imperial ideologies, often diverged from metropolitan and imperial norms.