Christianity as as arm of empire: The ambiguous case of India under the company, c. 1813-1858

Historical Journal

Volumn 49, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 1025-1054

  Copland, Ian ^a  

^a MONASH UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CHURCH ROLE; CULTURAL HISTORY; IMPERIALISM; POLITICAL HISTORY; RELIGION;

ASIA; EURASIA; INDIA; SOUTH ASIA;

EID: 37849185629     PISSN: 0018246X     EISSN: 14695103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0018246X06005723     Document Type: Article

References (156)

1. Rev. John Newton, quoted in Allan K. Davidson, Evangelicals and attitudes to India, 1786-1813: Missionary publicity and Claudius Buchanan (Sutton Courtney, 1990), p. 39.
2. On the varieties of nineteenth-century Protestant Evangelicalism, see David W. Bebbington, The dominance of Evangelicalism : The age of Spurgeon and Moody (Leicester, 1988), ch. 2. The movement embraced all established Protestant denominations, except the Quakers, and created quite deep rifts within them, not least in the case of the Church of England, which persist to this day.
3. Swartz to Rev. Gashim, sec., Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 13 Feb. 1794, Parliamentary Papers (PP), 1831-2, VIII, Report of the Select Committee on the Affairs of the East India Company, App. I, p. 92 (my italics).
4. John Wesley's Plan for the Society for the Establishment of Missions Among the Heathen (1783), Anglican David Brown's 'A proposal for establishing a Protestant mission in Bengal and Bahar' (1787),
5. and Baptist William Carey's An enquiry into the obligations of Christians, to use means for the conversion of the heathens (1792) were the most influential.
6. Andrew Porter suggests that by 1900, 10,000 British Protestant missionaries were working overseas. Christopher Bayly gives a figure of 100,000 for Africa, but this must be a misprint. Andrew Porter, 'Religion, missionary enthusiasm and empire', in Porter, ed., The Oxford history of the British Empire, vol. III (Oxford and New York, 1999), p. 222
7. and C. A. Bayly, The birth of the modern world, 1780-1914: Global connections and comparisons (Oxford, 2004), p. 349. There would have been at least as many again Americans, who dominated the China field. Catholic missionaries were fewer, but probably numbered in extent of 15,000 world wide around 1900.
8. Brian Stanley, The Bible and the flag: Protestant missions and British imperialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Leicester, 1990), pp. 58-9.
9. 'The empire and the church', in Charles Sydney Goldman, The empire and the century: A series of essays on imperial problems by various writers (London, 1905), p. 166.
10. J. A. Hobson, Imperialism: A study (3rd edn, London, 1938), p. 216.
11. E. A. Benians, Sir James Butler, and C. E. Carrington, eds., The Cambridge history of the British Empire, III (Cambridge, 1967), p. 344.
12. K. M. Panikkar, Asia and western dominance (London, 1959), p. 314.
13. See, for example, A. P. Thornton, The imperial idea and its enemies: A study in British power (London, 1963), p. 15.
14. Susan Visvanath, 'The homogeneity of fundamentalism : Christianity, British colonialism and India in the nineteenth century', Studies in History, 16 (2000), p. 227.
15. Susan Thorne, Congregational missions and the making of an imperial culture in nineteenth century England (Stanford, 1999)
16. and Catherine Hall, Civilising subjects: Metropole and colony in the English imagination (Cambridge, 2002).
17. T. O. Beidelman, Colonial evangelism: A socio-historical study of an East African mission at the grassroots (Bloomington, IN, 1982), e.g., p. 6.
18. Porter, 'Religion, missionary enthusiasm and empire', pp. 238-9.
19. Andrew Porter, 'Religion and empire: British expansion in the long nineteenth century', Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 20 (1992), pp. 376-7
20. and ibid., p. 245.
21. Andrew Porter, Religion versus empire? British Protestant missionaries and overseas expansion, 1700-1914 (Manchester, 2004). The book seeks to bring out the 'vanity and nuance of missionary standpoints, their detachment from empire and the measure of anti-imperialism ... associated with Britain's Christian missionary enterprise'.
22. Ibid., p. 330.
23. Porter, 'Religion and empire', p. 377
24. Davidson, Evangelicals, p. 241
25. Porter, 'Religion, missionary enthusiasm and empire', p. 240
26. Arthur Schlesinger Jr, 'The missionary enterprise and theories of imperialism', in John King Fairbank, ed., The missionary enterprise in China and America (Cambridge, MA, 1974), p. 359
27. and Robert Eric Frykenberg, 'Christians and religious traditions in the Indian Empire', in The Cambridge History of Christianity, VIII (Cambridge, 2006), p. 491.
28. Stanley, The Bible and the flag, p. 182.
29. Andrew Porter, '"Commerce and Christianity": The rise and fall of a nineteenth century missionary slogan', Historical Journal, 28 (1985), pp. 615-16.
30. Letter of 12 Oct. 1838, quoted in Anthony Copley, Religions in conflict - ideology, cultural contact, and conversion in late-colonial India (Delhi, 1997), p. 9.
31. Alexander Duff, The Indian rebellion (London, 1858), p. 255.
32. Evidence of Thomas Cockburn before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Affairs of the East India Company, 28 Apr. 1813, PP, 1812-13, VII, p. 288.
33. See also minute by William Thackeray, Board of Revenue, Madras, dated [Nov. 1822], British Library (BL), Oriental and India Office Collection (OIOC), F/4/960/27324.
34. M. D. David, Missions: Cross-cultural encounter and change in western India (Delhi, 2001), p. 37.
35. Joshua Marshman, Advantages of Christianity in promoting the establishment and prosperity of the British government in India ... (London, 1813), p. 6.
36. Davidson, Evangelicals, p. 45
37. and Porter, 'Religion, missionary enthusiasm and empire', p. 230.
38. John Jebb and George Pattison, Court of Directors, to George Canning, president of the Board of Control, 27 Feb. 1818, PP, 1812-13, VIII, p. 253.
39. In London, Company directors Sir Charles Forbes and Sir Hyde East attributed the disaffection of the Barrackpore sepoys to the 'shoals of missionaries which have been allowed to go in among them'. E. Daniel Potts, British Baptist missionaries in India, 1793-1837: The history of Serampore and its missions (Cambridge, 1967), p. 152.
40. For instance, Kaye reports that when Coorg was annexed in 1834, its inhabitants were assured 'that their civil rights and religious usages will be respected'. John Kaye, Christianity in India : An historical narrative (London, 1859), p. 393.
41. Marquess Wellesley to the Court of Directors, 9 July 1800, in Ramsay Muir, ed., The making of British India, 1756-1858 (Karachi, 1969), p. 243.
42. Shah 'Abd al-Aziz in 1809 issued a celebrated fatwa, condemning the changes introduced by British rule. 'Islamic law', he wrote, 'does not prevail at all. ' This ignited a fierce debate among the country's Islamic theologians as to whether India was still dar-ul-Islam - a place fit for Muslims to inhabit. Aziz Ahmad, Islamic Modernism in India and Pakistan, 1857-1964 (London, 1967), pp. 18-20.
43. The Bombay Times, 1 Apr. 1840, p. 211.
44. Robert Eric Frykenberg, 'Fundamentalism and revivalism in South Asia', in James Björkman, ed., Fundamentalism, revivalists and violence in South Asia (Riverdale, MD, 1988), pp. 29-30.
45. Quoted in Sir P. Maitland to the duke of Richmond [1839], Bombay Times, 13 May 1840, p. 308.
46. Petition of D. O. Allen and H. Ballantine of the American Mission in Bombay and George Candy, corresponding sec. of the CMS, Bombay, 17 Dec. 1852, First Report of the Select Committee on Indian Territories, PP, 1852-3, XXVII, App. 7, p. 43.
47. Robert Eric Frykenberg, 'Religion and Company Raj in South India', Fides et Historia, 17 (1985), p. 13
48. Quoted in G. D. Bearce, English attitudes to India, 1774-1858 (London, 1961), p. 81.
49. John Sullivan to T. Hyde Villiers, 21 Feb. 1832, PP, 1831-2, IX, p. 267.
50. R. Nelson, sub-collector Tanjore, to N. W. Kindersley, principal coll., Tanjore, 10 Oct. 1828, and D. Elliot, sec., Board of Revenue (BOR), Madras, to Kindersley, 11 Dec. 1828, BL, OIOC, F/4/1263/50837A.
51. See the 'Petition of the Christian inhabitants ... in the Zillah of Tinnevelly', encl. in memorial from the CMS to parliament dated 27 May 1853, quoted in Robert Eric Frykenberg, 'Conversion and crises of conscience under Company Raj in South India', Colloques Internationaux du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 582 (July 1978), p. 314.
52. Davidson, Evangelicals, pp. 40-1.
53. Rev. D. Corrie to Rev. Josiah Pratt, 31 Dec. 1813, CMS, C/I/E/26.
54. Evidence of the Rev. W. Keane before the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Government of Indian Territories, 19 July 1853, PP, XXXII, p. 315.
55. Jeffrey Cox, Imperial fault lines: Christianity and colonial power in India, 1818-1940 (Stanford, 2002), p. 32.
56. Potts, British Baptist missionaries, pp. 176, 202.
57. Hall, Civilising subjects, p. 371
58. and Schlesinger, 'The missionary enterprise', p. 347.
59. Porter, Religion versus empire?, p. 64.
60. The tract, in Persian, was critical of the Prophet Muhammad. Potts, British Baptist missionaries, pp. 172, 202.
61. Frykenberg, 'Christians and religious traditions', p. 483.
62. The Friend of India, 20 Feb. 1840, quoted in the Bombay Times, 7 Mar. 1840, p. 156.
63. Percival Spear, The Nabobs: A study of the social life of the English in eighteenth century India (London, 1963), p. 110.
64. Bernard S. Cohn, 'Recruitment and training of British civil servants in India, 1600-1860', in Ralph Braibanti et al., eds., Asian bureaucratic systems emergent from the British imperial tradition (Durham, NC, 1966), pp. 119, 129, and 132.
65. Minute by Sir Thomas Munro dated 15 Nov. 1822, BL, OIOC, F/4/960/27324.
66. Waters to the sec., Madras BOR, 10 Sept. 1828, BL, OIOC, F/4/1261/50732.
67. M. A. Laird, Missionaries and education in Bengal, 1793-1837 (Oxford, 1972), p. 237.
68. Rev. J. Linke to the lay sec., CMS, Calcutta, 30 Mar. 1832, CMS, C1/1/M5.
69. Evidence of the Rev. W. Keane before the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Government of Indian Territories, 19 July 1853, PP, 1852-3, XXXII, p. 315.
70. Potts, British Baptist missionaries, pp. 92, 96, 112, 174-6.
71. The most eloquent and influential contemporary exposition of this theme was the multi-volume History of India (1817) by James Mill, the Company's chief examiner of correspondence.
72. Evidence of Sir John Malcolm before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Affairs of the East India Company, 7 May 1813, PP, 1812-13, VII, p. 408
73. and evidence of Sir Thomas Munro before the same committee, 12 Apr. 1813, ibid., p. 123.
74. Charles Grant, Observations on the state of society among the Asiatic subjects of Great Britain, particularly with respect to morals; and the means of improving it, App. I to Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Affairs of the East India Company, 16 Aug. 1832, PP, 1831-2, VIII, pp. 62-3
75. Minute of 2 Feb. 1835, quoted in William Theodore de Bary, gen. ed., Sources of Indian tradition (New York, 1958), II, p. 49 (T. B. was the son of Zachary, a leading Evangelical and close associate of Wilberforce).
76. Evidence of Sir Charles Trevelyn before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Indian Territories, 7 July 1853, PP, 1852-3, XXVIII, p. 45.
77. Report of the Education Commission of 1882 (Calcutta, 1883), p. 307.
78. Quoted in Ramsay Muir, ed., The making of British India, 1756-1858 (reprint, Lahore, 1969), pp. 296-7.
79. S. Nurullah and J. P. Naik, History of education in India (during the British period) (Bombay, 1951), I, p. 91.
80. This was still the case in 1852. Petition of the Madras Native Association dated 10 Dec. 1852, PP, 1852-3, XXVII, p. 465.
81. Laird, Missionaries and education, p. 7.
82. Quoted in Porter, '"Commerce and Christianity"', p. 603.
83. Quoted in Bruce Tiebout McCully, English education and the origins of Indian nationalism (Gloucester, MA, 1966), p. 39.
84. Laird, Missionaries and education, pp. 240-2.
85. On the itineration versus education controversy, see William Buyers, Letters on India, with special reference to the spread of Christianity (London, 1840), p. 129.
86. Nurullah and Naik, History of education, p. 181.
87. Distribution was uneven though, during the first decade or so of the scheme, due to the hostility of some directors of public instruction toward missionary schools. Report of the Education Commission of 1882, p. 435.
88. In framing the dispatch, Wood consulted, amongst others, Macaulay, Marshman, and the 'Church missionaries ', while the General Assembly's Alexander Duff made drafting suggestions. McCully, English education, pp. 136-7.
89. Major shareholders in the Company had voting rights in the Court of Proprietors, to which the Court of Directors had to report.
90. Court of Directors to Govt of Bengal, 2 Feb. 1831, PP, 1831-2, IX, p. 345.
91. Dispatch of 20 Feb. 1833, quoted in Kaye, Christianity in India, p. 417.
92. Evidence of Frederick J. Halliday before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Indian Territories, 25 July 1853, PP, 1852-3, XXIX, p. 56
93. and Report of the Education Commission of 1882, p. 129.
94. Maitland to the duke of Richmond [1839], quoted in the Bombay Times, 13 May 1840, p. 308.
95. Quoted in T. R. Metcalf, The aftermath of revolt : India, 1857-1870 (Princeton, NJ, 1965), p. 94.
96. Edwardes to Lawrence, 31 Aug. 1857, BL, OIOC, Mss Eur F90/18.
97. Kaye, Christianity in India, p. 484.
98. Although there was a brief flurry of anxiety when Lawrence became viceroy in 1864.
99. Statement by Venn on behalf of the CMS Corresponding Committee [Oct. 1857], Times, 7 Oct. 1857, p. 7.
100. Minute by Lord Canning dated 27 Apr. 1859, BL, OIOC, L/PS/6/464.
101. Quoted in Metcalf, Aftermath of revolt, p. 45.
102. See also the speech by Benjamin Disraeli in the House of Commons, 27 July 1857, Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, 147, c. 461.
103. Quoted in Gerald James Larson, 'Modernization and religious legitimation in India, 1835-1885', in Bardwell L. Smith, ed., Religion and the legitimation of power in South Asia (Leiden, 1978), p. 33.
104. Tim Allender, 'Anglican evangelism in North India and the Punjab missionary classroom: The failure to educate the masses, 1860-1877', History of Education, 32 (May 2003), p. 276.
105. For Fraser's views, see his Among Indian rajahs and ryots (London, 1904), ch. 19.
106. Cox, Imperial fault lines, p. 33.
107. Penelope Carson, 'An imperial dilemma: The propagation of Christianity in early colonial India', Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 18 (1990), p. 170.
108. Allender, 'Anglican evangelism', p. 276.
109. I do not have access to earlier comparisons, but it is unlikely that private education would have been any less competitive in the 1850s. Report of the Education Commission of 1882 (Chairman, Sir W. W. Hunter), p. 454.
110. Evidence of Rev. J. C. Marshman before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Indian Territories, 18 July 1853, PP, 1852-3, XXIX, p. 25.
111. Evidence of the Rev. J. Kennedy before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Indian Territories, 8 Aug. 1853, PP, 1852-3, XXIX, p. 172.
112. Evidence of Rev. Alexander Duff before the Select Committee of the House of Lords on Indian Territories, 6 June 1853, PP, XXXII, p. 88.
113. Quoted in John Wilson, 'Anti-Christian petition addressed to the governor of Bombay', Oriental Christian Spectator, Jan. 1840, BL, OIOC, F/4/1833/76054.
114. Evidence of John Walter Sherer before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Affairs of the East India Company, 19 July 1832, PP, 1831-2, IX, p. 251.
115. Evidence of Major M. J. Rowland before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Indian Territories, 4 Aug. 1853, PP, XXIX, p. 156.
116. This was certainly the impression created by the missionary lobby in England. Hall, Civilising subjects, p. 396.
117. Minute by Sir H. Pottinger, gov. of Madras, dated 1 Nov. 1852, quoted in Petition of the Madras Native Association dated 10 Dec. 1852, PP, 1852-3, XXVII, p. 464.
118. Quoted in Fraser, Among Indian rajahs and ryots, p. 267.
119. Kaye, Christianity in India, p. 467.
120. Journal of the Rev. G. Francis, p. 137, entry of 5 Sept. 1831, CMS, C1/1/ M5.
121. Journal of the Rev. W. Bowley, p. 11, entry of 3 Aug. 1831, CMS, C1/1/M5.
122. The memoirs of Henry Martyn, p. 337, BL, OIOC, Sutton Hall Coll., MSS EUR F128/217.
123. Evidence of Rev. J. Tucker before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Indian Territories, 28 July 1853, PP, 1852-3, XXIX, p. 93
124. and David, Missions, p. 43.
125. Metcalf, Aftermath of revolt, p. 81.
126. Journal of the Rev. W. J. Deare, p. 282, entry dated 17 Aug. 1832, CMS, CI/1/M5.
127. Journal of the Rev. C. Kruckeberg, p. 222, entry dated 26 Jan. 1832. CMS, CI/1/M5. Kruckeberg was visiting when the above incident occurred.
128. Journal of the Rev. W. J. Deare, p. 283, entry dated 19 Aug. 1832, CMS, CI/1/M5.
129. The Friend of India, 20 Feb. 1840, quoted in Bombay Times, 7 Mar. 1840, p. 156.
130. This was in 1839. Frykenberg, 'Religion and Company Raj', p. 23.
131. Bombay Times, 8 May 1839, p. 292.
132. Frykenberg, 'Christians and religious traditions', p. 483.
133. Carson, 'An imperial dilemma', pp. 184-6
134. and Frykenberg, 'Conversion and crises of conscience', p. 315.
135. Porter, Religion versus empire ?, p. 177.
136. The extent of this only became fully apparent in 1857, when the leaders of the rebellion flagged religious interference as one of their major grievances. But as early as 1839 the Court of Directors registered its concern over the 'misperceptions' circulating about its religious policy. Court to Bombay, 7 Aug. 1839, BL, OIOC, E/4/1064.
137. Metcalf, Aftermath of revolt, p. 131.
138. Evidence of the Rev. J. C. Marshman before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Indian Territories, 21 July 1853, PP, 1852-3, XXIX, p. 30.
139. Allender, 'Anglican evangelism', p. 277.
140. Ibid., pp. 278-86
141. and Porter, Religion versus empire ?, pp. 170-6 and 265-6.
142. Porter, 'Religion and empire', p. 386,
143. and Religion versus empire ?, pp. 324, 330.
144. Porter, Religion versus empire ?, p. 316.
145. Michael Edwardes, The necessary hell : John and Henry Lawrence and the Indian empire (London, 1963).
146. Northcote to Sir John Lawrence, 15 Aug. 1867, BL, OIOC, Lawrence papers, sec. of state's letters, vol. 4 (my italics).
147. Evidence of J. C. Marshman before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Indian Territories, 18 July 1853, PP, 1852-3, XXIX, p. 28.
148. See, e.g., the comments of Sir John Strachey and the viceroy Lord Lytton, quoted in Anil Seal, The emergence of Indian nationalism : competition and collaboration in the later nineteenth century (Cambridge, 1968), p. 133.
149. G. Smith, The conversion of India (London, 1893), p. 204
150. and Copley, Religions in conflict, p. xiv.
151. A. P. Joshi, M. D. Srinivas, and J. K. Bajaj, Religious demography of India (Chennai, 2003), tables 2.1 and 2.3.
152. Richard M. Eaton, 'Comparative history as world history: Religious conversions in modern India', Journal of World History, 8 (1997), table 1, p. 246
153. and Richard M. Eaton, 'Conversion to Christianity among the Nagas, 1876-1971', Indian Economic and Social History Review, 21 (1984), Table 2, p. 18. The percentage of the Naga population that claimed to be Christian rose from 17.9 in 1941 to 45.7 in 1951 and to 45.7 in 1951. The upward trend has continued. But Eaton's analysis shows that the takeup rate varied considerably between different sections of the community.
154. James M. McCutcheon, ' Protestant missionaries in Asia and the Pacific: agents of change for what purpose' (unpublished paper delivered at the Asian Studies Association of Australia Biennial Conference, June 1992), p. 2.
155. Frykenberg, 'Christians and religious traditions', p. 492.
156. See, e.g., Eaton, 'Conversion to Christianity'. Eaton argues that the conversion of the Nagas was assisted by innovative strategies developed by the American Baptists, which included the transmission of the Christian message through a culturally sensitive translation of the Bible that meshed with local cosmologies.