The Civilizing Mission and the English Middle Class,1792-1850 The 'Heathen' at Home and Overseas

by Twells, Alison

• ISBN13: 9781403920409
• ISBN10: 1403920400
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780230234727
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-02-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This book concerns the missionary philanthropic movement which burst onto the social scene in early nineteenth century in England, becoming a popular provincial movement which sought no less than national and global reformation. It central concerns are: the significance of the civilizing mission for the English middle class, from the domestic lives of individual families, through local and regional networks, to high political campaigns; the relationships between missionary men and women, and the importance of "domestic reform" within the movement; and the relationship between missions at home and overseas and their significance for changing understandings of class and cultural difference.

Author Biography

Alison Twells is a Lecturer in Social and Cultural History at Sheffield Hallam University, UK.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	p. x
Acknowledgements	p. xi
List of Abbreviations	p. xiv
Introduction: The Missionary Movement, the Local and the Global	p. 1
The middle class and the civilising mission	p. 4
Women and missionary philanthropy	p. 7
Missions, power and colonialism	p. 10
The 'heathen' at home and overseas: issues of race and class	p. 12
The Bible and cultural history	p. 16
The local, the national and the global	p. 20
'One Blood': The 'Heathen' at Home and Overseas in Late-Eighteenth and Early-Nineteenth-Century Missions	p. 25
'Like Cherokees and Mohawks, but more wicked': early Methodist missions	p. 27
Old Dissent and 'all the world'	p. 30
The missionary impulse: collaborations and conflicts	p. 34
'A sort of Botany Bay experiment': Hannah More and the missionary solution	p. 37
Philanthropic women and the Corpus Christianum	p. 43
Conclusion	p. 50
Charity Begun at Home: Missionary Philanthropy and the New Middle Class in Sheffield	p. 52
Middle-class men and philanthropic networks	p. 54
The monitorial system and global civilisation	p. 64
Women, domestic reform and the visiting system	p. 69
Women and the missionary public	p. 76
Conclusion	p. 81
Missionary Domesticity and 'Woman's Sphere': The Reads of Wincobank Hall	p. 83
Making Christian children: the evangelical mother's mission	p. 86
Happy English children and the 'heathen other'	p. 89
Missionary domesticity: Wincobank Hall	p. 99
Missionary domesticity and woman's sphere	p. 103
Missionary mothers and public men	p. 110
Conclusion	p. 112
'Bringing about the World's Restoration': Missionary Women and the Creation of a Global Christian Community	p. 115
Missionary women and global Christianity	p. 118
Hannah Kilham's domestic mission	p. 123
Wretched cabins, little palaces: domestic reform in Ireland	p. 127
African huts: Gambia and Sierra Leone, 1823-1832	p. 133
Conclusion	p. 142
Trembling Philanthropists? Missionary Philanthropy under Pressure	p. 144
Little black climbing boys: the early evangelical critique of overseas missions	p. 146
A 'repugnant perversion of traditional Christian values': political economy, Christianity and civilisation	p. 154
'Pluck out first the beam out of thine own eye': missionary priorities	p. 156
Medical men, phrenology and the challenge of science	p. 161
Secular knowledge and the Mechanics' Institute	p. 165
The 'wants of mankind at home': 'physical civilisation' and domestic missions	p. 168
Conclusion	p. 175
'A Christian and Civilized Land': The English Missionary Public and the South Pacific	p. 178
'A moral miracle': evangelical representations of the South Pacific	p. 180
'Nothing behind our own countrymen': God's family on earth	p. 192
Missionary disappointments and anxieties of conversion	p. 198
'The associations awakened by their presence': England's civilisation	p. 205
Conclusion	p. 209
Conclusions	p. 211
Notes	p. 220
Bibliography	p. 292
Index	p. 338
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