For students of the Brethren movement, this is an important collection. It also stands as an accurate reflection of the historiographical state of play: the collection is edited by the authors of two of the most impressive works of Brethren historiography, the names of many, if not all, of the contributors appear regularly on articles and reviews, and the man honoured by this collection has no small claim to be the founding father of modern Brethren history. The volume, a Festschrift for Harold H. Rowdon, comprises papers presented at a conference held in his honour in 2003.

Harold Rowdon's influence on modern Brethren historiography is immense. His Origins of the Brethren, 1825–1850 was ground-breaking in the degree of serious and critical academic attention that it paid to its subject. To a greater or lesser extent, the contributors to this volume are the self-conscious inheritors of this legacy: Rowdon's work is the ‘fons et origo’ (p. 1) of these later endeavours.

Following an introduction by the editors, the bulk of the volume is divided into four sections. Part i addresses the writing of Brethren history, offering a biographical sketch of Rowdon by Ian Randall, a survey of Brethren historiography by Tim Grass and ‘A meditation’ calculated to encourage historians of the Brethren by Beth Dickson. Part ii examines British Brethren experiences. This section opens with an essay by Gerald West, tracing John Eliot Howard's trajectory ‘from Friend to Brother’ and a study of ‘George Müller and the financing of the Scripture Knowledge Institution’ by Neil Summerton. These are followed by two local studies: Brethren origins in the Orkneys in the 1860s are investigated by Neil Dickson, and the early days of Brethren in Bearwood by Jean Johnson. Two treatments of more recent periods round out the section: Roger Shuff's ‘A bulwark of evangelism: Brethren as a lay movement in England in the 1930s’, and Harold Rowdon's own ‘Personal sketch’ of the Brethren in Britain, 1945–2000. Section iii examines worldwide Brethren experiences covering Germany, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, Jamaica, Zambia and Angola. This section also includes a short article by Pauline Summerton comparing and contrasting the African experiences of a Brethren missionary (Walter Fisher) and a colonial settler (the colourful Stewart Gore-Brown). Section iv, ‘The Brethren in international experience’, contains Timothy Stunt's ‘Anthony Norris Groves in an international context: a re-assessment of his early development’, David Bebbington's ‘The place of the Brethren Movement in international evangelicalism’, and a select bibliography of Rowdon's writings compiled by Tim Grass and Graham Johnson.

Evidently then the collection is pretty representative of recent Brethren history, both in terms of genre (with a predominant focus on local history, and ‘early days’ treatments) and contributors. There are some new names in this collection, but rather disappointingly, if unsurprisingly, the most significant contributions come from established scholars. Articles by Shuff, Rowdon, Stunt and Bebbington are, for this reviewer at least, the cream of the collection. A number of other articles merit honourable mention. Randall's biographical sketch of Rowdon is engaging and affectionate. Grass's historiographical survey is suggestive, if a little scant in places, and raises some interesting and important questions. Neil Summerton's economic analysis of the SKI is interesting for its insights, but even more so, perhaps, in its methodology. Pauline Summerton's article is a trifle short on detail, but usefully nuanced in its approach, and interesting in content. Moreover, in calling attention to the relationship of Brethren endeavour to the colonial project, it provides a valuable pointer to a neglected and potentially rewarding field of investigation.

The title of this collection promises a broader geographical coverage than has yet been seen in Brethren histories, and as the impact and experiences of the Brethren outside of Europe is largely uncharted but fascinating territory, it was with considerable alacrity that I turned to Section iii of the book. Sadly, this is the weakest section of this collection. Pioneering historical work – and the essays are genuinely that – is of greatest value when it draws clearly and carefully on primary source material. These essays, however, are only sketchily referenced. Short on analysis of evidence, they rely instead on assertion. They also fail to reflect on basic questions of definition, presenting blandly issues such as central organisation without ever addressing their implications for Brethren identity.

This volume is representative of the present state of Brethren history. It is unsurprising, therefore, that it faithfully embodies three crucial problems that beset this historiographical project. The first is the hegemony of a ‘progressive’ meta-narrative, inherited in great measure from Rowdon, but also drawing momentum from the equally important work of F. R. Coad and others. This narrative traces the trajectory of the Brethren movement from ecumenism to separatism to ossification and ultimately to irrelevance and decline, followed, in some cases, by redefinition and renewal. Like all such meta-narratives, it is not without its descriptive power; equally, it is not immune to challenge. There is a need for critical interrogation of this teleology, and while there has been some evidence of this sort of examination in recent Brethren historiography, it is not reflected in this collection. Secondly, and owing in part to the prevalence of this meta-narrative, the collection fails to acknowledge or investigate the international prosperity of highly conservative Brethren teaching – in South America, Africa, eastern Europe and India, among other places. To be fair, the editors would have had a struggle to uncover work on this aspect of the movement: the lacuna in the collection merely reflects a wider dearth. The third difficulty with this volume is its restricted version of Britain, which, in effect, means England, with a little Scotland. In light of the conservative nature of many Brethren assemblies in Northern Ireland this has the effect of eliding another challenge to the link made between redefinition and survival by those who have adopted the ‘progressive’ trajectory outlined above.

In summary, then, this is an interesting collection with a core of very valuable essays. It is a fitting honour for a distinguished Christian historian. It is also a telling snapshot of the strengths and weaknesses of Brethren historiography as it exists at the beginning of the twenty-first century.