Christian Imperialism

Historians of the early republic were among the last Americanists to embrace the transnational turn. But in the last five years some who study the nation's first decades have looked beyond U.S. borders to examine topics as diverse as privateering, slavery, and the rise of capitalism. Christian Imperialism likewise gains analytical traction by placing a familiar development—the rise of evangelical religion—against a broader backdrop. Emily Conroy-Krutz narrates the history of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (abcfm) from its establishment in 1810 through the 1840s. Instead of focusing on the group's Protestant founders in New England, Conroy-Krutz follows its missionaries into the field, pursuing their stories around the globe. With fascinating in-depth studies of missions in Bombay, Hawaii, Liberia, Singapore, and among Cherokees, the author convincingly demonstrates that “Americans of the early republic were attuned to events and peoples of the world around them” (p. 207). This, however, is a modest statement of Conroy-Krutz's goals. Elsewhere she makes bolder claims, asserting that “missionaries and their supporters were ... international and imperial in their thinking about their nation in the world” (p. 5). The Christian imperialism of the book's title does not refer to the imposition of state power; Conroy-Krutz admits that missionaries “were not primarily focused on the spread of Anglo-American governance” (p. 11). They were not empire builders, but they were interested in spreading Anglo-American culture and Protestant religion to people they judged as culturally inferior. For Conroy-Krutz, this is the crux of Christian imperialism: “missionaries presumed their right to come into foreign spaces and transform them” (p. 10

Capitalism · Economic history · Empire · Globe · Political science · Power (physics · Protestantism · Sociology · The Republic · Theology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · History · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Religious studies

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