Good Citizens: British Missionaries and Imperial States, 1870-1918

A.J. Pell is rector of Christ Church in Hope, B.C., and a lecturer in
the Anglican Studies Programme at Regent College in Vancouver.

Good Citizens deals with a period of history encompassing four crises in
British foreign affairs: the rush by European states to build empires in
Africa and the Pacific, the Boer War, the Boxer Rebellion, and the First
World War. Greenlee and Johnston, both historians, examine the
involvement of British missionaries in these crises. We discover that
there were intense divisions not only among the missionaries themselves
but also between the missionaries and Whitehall officials and
politicians. The societies and/or specific missionaries were often being
blamed by secular officials for creating difficulties; the officials
were in turn blamed for secular ineptitude that put missions in
jeopardy.

The authors undertook the valuable and labor-intensive work of
searching the archives of the six great missionary societies: Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (Anglican), Baptist
Missionary Society, London Missionary Society (Congregationalist),
Church Missionary Society (Anglican), Wesleyan Methodist Missionary
Society, and Foreign Missions Committee of the Presbyterian Church of
England. Their meticulously researched book (more than 20 percent of
which is devoted to notes) gives voice to the missionaries and
administrators who found their religious endeavors caught up in
political events. Both church and political historians will find this a
valuable reference work for years to come.