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This chapter investigates the campaign for female education in Anglican missions in Madagascar through the women's wing of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and particularly through the work of Emily Lawrence and Gertrude King. In the late nineteenth century, missionaries and the indigenous Merina state engaged in a collaborative effort that tied evangelism to education; however, the day‐to‐day work of evangelism involved a constant struggle over the terms and meanings of Christianity, particularly in the context of illness and healing, and the rituals surrounding rites of passage. Moreover, the French colonization of the island in 1895 undermined Protestant hegemony. This chapter traces the how the ideology and practice of residential education responded to this changing political and social context, shifting from a rescue effort for protecting young girls to a professional scheme for training Malagasy women.

Religious outreach to the maritime world in the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries constituted a movement to overcome the moral hazard of the ocean and to inscribe the sea and seafaring peoples within the Protestant moral order that was increasingly becoming constitutive of English national identity in this period. An analysis of the networks of largely Anglican religious and charitable associations engaged in Christianization efforts throughout the maritime empire opens up the analysis of mercantilism to a plurality of actors that constituted civil society and political authority in the early modern world; as such, it offers a new narrative by which one can understand the multiple processes by which the oceanic space of the Atlantic came to be controlled, patrolled, and nationalized in the eighteenth century.

In step with the gradually unfolding imperial policies of the successive governments of King Charles I and later monarchs, the Church of England was extended to the northern part of the Western hemisphere between 1662 and 1829. Under the supervision of the Board of Trade and Plantations until 1701, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts from that year, decade after decade an increasing number of men of differing origins and places of collegiate education in Britain came to serve missions of the Church in early America. The ranks included natives of England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and the American colonies, who were supported by the SPG or the legislatures of the provinces in which the Church was established. Development was shaped by imperial policies and administration over 160 years amid rising populations, changing political situations, and the consequences of war and diplomacy.

The study opens with an overview of transatlantic missionary and educational charities from the early 1700s through the early 1760s. Members of the British Atlantic community tightened their bonds through a broad range of projects, such as the missions of the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge and the Society for Promoting Religious Knowledge and English Language among the German Immigrants in Pennsylvania, designed to strengthen the empire. In addition, British Americans integrated the colonies’ urban charitable infrastructures more closely with Britain’s as they set up hospitals, ethnic-aid societies, and other charities, and they contributed to British projects such as the Marine Society. This chapter explains the centrality of political and economic integration, imperial and religious rivalry, and international Protestantism to charitable developments on both sides of the Atlantic. It also explains eighteenth-century ideas about sympathy and moral responsibility that made aiding strangers a fraught issue.

This chapter provides the first critical survey of those societies that worked under the rubric of the Church of England over the course of its ‘long eighteenth century’. Transcending a scholarly focus on the voluntary quality of such groups and challenging more general assumptions about the supposedly areligious nature of ‘enlightened’ sociability and learning, it shows how the Church of England revitalized its authority by utilizing extra-parochial societies to reconstitute its relationship with its national and international communion. As a reference work, the chapter seeks to inform the general reader whilst guiding specialists towards new lines of enquiry. But its insights into societies such as the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge underscore the extent to which ‘Anglican religious societies’ actively shaped the wider history of the English-speaking world.

Anglican missionary societies in the nineteenth century had to negotiate their own pathways between the dominant voluntary society model of missionary organization and the distinctive ethos of Anglican episcopal polity. In the 1830s the CMS moved in the direction of a fuller recognition of the authority of the bishops, while the SPG moved in the opposite direction, towards a greater reliance on voluntary organization. Later in the century the UMCA, Cowley Fathers, Cambridge Mission to Delhi, and Oxford Mission to Calcutta represented a more explicitly Anglo-Catholic approach to missions. The chapter also discusses the growing role of women in missions.

While some of the global reach of Dissenting traditions is due to the vagaries of migration from Britain in the early modern period, much of it is also the result of the deliberate propagation of the faith in which the Missionary Societies, formed between the French Revolution and the early nineteenth century, were key. Older scholarship tended to celebrate evangelical Dissent as being central to this movement. More recent exploration has shown that unlike earlier Pietist and Anglican missionary activity, the Baptist Missionary Society (1792) and London Missionary Society (1795) had a global reach, rather than being limited to strong national/colonial networks. Given the independence from state control of these new societies, they were also entirely reliant on philanthropic giving to finance their activities.

The chapter explores the growth of Anglicanism within the British Empire, the relations of Church and imperial state, and the dreams of an imperial Anglicanism. There are three distinct narratives. In the colonies of European settlement, Anglican Churches developed independent synodical governments and increasingly distanced themselves from the imperial state. In India, the Anglican establishment failed in its aim of converting the Hindu and Muslim populations, but left a legacy of social service institutions, including schools and hospitals. In the crown colonies and dependencies, dedicated Anglican missionaries, often led by missionary bishops, laid the foundations for future independent Anglican Churches.

This chapter traces Mary's move to Pon Pon, South Carolina, and reflects upon the likely process by which she was educated and converted to Christianity. Mary came to South Carolina at about seven years of age and was later taught to read by schoolmaster Ross Reynolds. Nathaniel Osborne, the first priest of St. Bartholomew's Parish, probably completed her education and baptized her. In order to understand the depth of her immersion in English culture, the chapter explores the subtext embedded in Mary's school books, a church catechism and a primer. It also explores the formative role played by the Yamasee War (ca. 1715) in shaping her outlook on Anglo-Indian relations, arguing that the terror and suffering inflicted by that war explains why Mary worked throughout her life trying to avoid another one like it.

When the Christian movement inserts itself into a culture, indigenous institutions serving to inculcate values and to teach both a world-view and religious rites are necessarily affected. In societies where Islam was dominant or was reviving in the period 1910–2010, Christian schools had to win acceptance from local parents as well as from political authorities. Anglican missionaries in northern India; in greater Syria, Egypt, and Sudan; and in East and West Africa engaged their host societies at differing levels. Some proffered literacy in local languages, aiming to equip Bible readers and Church leaders. Others aimed to prepare elites to become social leaders using Western logic and techniques. Some Anglican schools retained their Christian ethos by confining their work to underserved populations, or by good service to elites; others were absorbed into state-run school systems.

Anglican missionaries went to China in the early nineteenth century, following Western political and commercial expansion to Asia, and all over the world. Somewhat later, missionaries from the United States and the various British societies entered Japan (1859) and Korea (1885). This chapter explores the efforts of British, American, and Canadian missionaries in East Asia, in the context of the broader Christian missionary developments. Anglican and Episcopal work in translation, education, and evangelism laid the foundation for the establishment of the indigenous church in each country, although there were tensions between missionary dominance and local aspirations. The interactions of the early missionaries and their somewhat different approaches in China, Japan, and Korea are significant. The chapter concludes with the efforts that led up to the establishment of the Chung Hua Sheng Kung Hui (Holy Catholic Church of China).

Anglican and American Episcopalian missionaries went to China in the early nineteenth century, following Western political and commercial expansion to Asia, and all over the world. Somewhat later, missionaries from the United States and the various British societies entered Japan (1859) and Korea (1885). This chapter explores the efforts of British, American, and Canadian missionaries in East Asia, in the context of the broader Christian missionary developments. Anglican and episcopal work in translation, education, and evangelism laid the foundation for the establishment of the indigenous church in each country, although there were continuing tensions between missionary dominance and local aspirations. The interactions of the early missionaries and their somewhat different approaches in China, Japan, and Korea are significant. The chapter concludes with the efforts that led to the establishment of the Chung Hua Sheng Kung Hui (Holy Catholic Church of China.)