Sexual Health, Morality and the Missionary Press in Britain and the South Pacific, 1795–1850

This article explores the London Missionary Society’s textual production on the South Pacific in the first half of the nineteenth century and argues that sexuality was connected to moral and physical understandings of health in missionary texts. This was due to the nature of missionary and indigenous entanglements in the South Pacific and the era’s burgeoning medical print network. The discussion builds on current debates on mission and the cultural underpinnings of the British empire through showcasing the processes involved in the making of missionary texts and colonial knowledge production from the South Pacific.