How did missionaries envision peace? How did they enact ideas of peace in their work? How did Indigenous people whom missionaries interacted with interpret and utilize notions of peace? What is the relationship of peace to violence and to power? These questions are among the themes explored by the authors of Pacifying Missions: Christianity, Violence, and Empire in the Nineteenth Century. Although peace permeated missionary rhetoric, it remains a largely unexplored topic. As the editor Geoffrey Troughton notes in his introduction, Pacifying Missions constitutes “the first sustained analysis of peace in the context of nineteenth-century missionary Christianity” (3). To examine the complexities and centrality of peace, the volume investigates missions in two broad regions. Chapters by Elizabeth Elbourne, David Maxwell, Esme Cleall, and Amy E. Stambach concentrate on missionaries in Africa, while the contributions by Jane Samson, Norman Etherington, and Joanna Cruickshank and Bronwyn Shepherd focus on the Pacific. The authors’ nuanced analyses of a range of rich sources – from missionaries’ accounts to legal records to the journal of Christian Māori teacher – provide new insights into not only the connection between peace and missions but also the relationship between missionaries and empires and the complex and varied interactions between missionaries, colonial governments, and Indigenous people.

Because of the paucity of research on peace and missions, there are many promising directions for future studies on this topic. In his introductory chapter and conclusion, Troughton discusses some of these possibilities, including the value of comparative studies with other regions, such as the Middle East and the Caribbean. Expanding the geographic scope would facilitate a deeper analysis of myriad topics, notably gender. Some chapters in this volume touch upon gender, particularly notions of masculinity, but a more comprehensive examination of gender and women’s roles in missions could enrich understanding of the ideas and operations of peace and is just one productive avenue for further research. Pacifying Missions provides a crucial foundation for greater explorations of this significant yet understudied topic by demonstrating how a focus on peace can valuably enhance our knowledge of missions and missionaries as well as colonialism and conflict.