Missionary families: Race, gender and generation on the spiritual frontier (Studies in Imperialism, 108)

Missionary families were an integral component of the missionary enterprise, both as active agents on the global religious stage and as a force within the enterprise that shaped understandings and theories of mission itself. Taking the family as a legitimate unit of historical analysis in its own right for the first time, Missionary families traces changing familial policies and lived realities throughout the nineteenth century and powerfully argues for the importance of an historical understanding of the missionary enterprise informed by the complex interplay between the intimate, the personal and the professional. By looking at marriage, parenting and childhood, along with professionalism, vocation and domesticity, this first in-depth study of missionary families reveals their profound importance to the missionary enterprise, and concludes that mission history can no longer be written without attention to the personal, emotional and intimate aspects of missionary lives. Missionary families were an integral component of the missionary enterprise, both as active agents on the global religious stage and as a force within the enterprise that shaped understandings and theories of mission itself. Taking the family as a legitimate unit of historical analysis in its own right for the first time, Missionary families traces changing familial policies and lived realities throughout the nineteenth century and powerfully argues for the importance of an historical understanding of the missionary enterprise informed by the complex interplay between the intimate, the personal and the professional. By looking at marriage, parenting and childhood; professionalism, vocation and domesticity; race, gender and generation, this first in-depth study of missionary families reveals their profound importance to the missionary enterprise, and concludes that mission history can no longer be written without attention to the personal, emotional and intimate aspects of missionary lives. Missionary families: Race, gender and generation on the spiritual frontier 1 Half Title Page 2 Title Page 4 Copyright 5 CONTENTS 6 LIST OF FIGURES 8 GENERAL EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 10 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 13 LIST OF ABREVIATIONS 15 PREFACE 16 CHAPTER ONE: Introduction 40 CHAPTER TWO: The rise and fall of the missionary wife 62 CHAPTER THREE:Missionary marriage 95 CHAPTER FOUR: The missionary family 135 CHAPTER FIVE: Missionary mothers and fathers 168 CHAPTER SIX: Missionary children 201 CHAPTER SEVEN: Epilogue: second-generation missionaries 229 CHAPTER EIGHT: Conclusion 245 APPENDIX 251 BIBLIOGRAPHY 257 INDEX 287 Argues for the significance of missionaries' familial relations in the philosophy, conduct, and outcomes of mission work during the 19th century, using both personal writings of individual missionaries and the institutional records of the London Missionary Society to show the effect of missionaries' personal lives on the history of Christian missions Presents an innovative argument for the significance of missionaries’ familial relations in the philosophy, conduct and outcomes of mission work during the nineteenth century. -- .