Early Nineteenth-Century ‘Murmurings and Disputings’ in the Ultra-Ganges Missions

Abstract

As messengers of a peaceful gospel, the ‘Christian soldiers’ put in charge of expanding the remit of the London Missionary Society to South-east Asia and, eventually, to South China frequently found themselves at war with each other. Based on the personal correspondence of missionaries stationed at Melaka, Batavia and Guangzhou, the present article analyses both the challenges faced by the missionary circle as well as the disagreements which developed. The Protestant missionaries sailed in the wake of the Dutch and British navies after the Napoleonic wars. They thus found themselves both protected and held at ransom by the colonial politics which ensued, resulting in personal decisions which could pit individual missionaries against each other. Not a few missionaries were of continental European origin – for example, Thomsen, Brückner and Gützlaff – accentuating rivalries between the colonial enterprises and between competing missionary societies. Differences in personality, such as Robert Morrison’s proverbial severity or the schoolmastery of William Milne, did little to alleviate such tensions. But arguably the most important reason for the ‘murmurings and disputings’ observed by Robert Morrison was radically different outlooks concerning the objectives of the mission. These related to conversion methods, to the educational paradigm of the Christian missions, and methods of outreach, pitting a highly mobile ‘entrepreneurial’ approach against the stability of the mission stations. Importantly in the polyethnic composition of south-eastern Asia, opinions differed on the utility of the Malayan languages, South Chinese vernaculars or the language used by Chinese officials. Dissension within the Ultra-Ganges Missions arose from the essential bifurcation between life in the ‘here & now’ and a future destiny in China.