Missions and Empire, a volume in the companion series of the Oxford History of the British Empire, offers a multifaceted and thought-provoking study of the relationship between missions and the British Empire between the seventeenth and late twentieth centuries. The contributors to the collection have two goals: to demonstrate the remarkable diversity of missions and their influences and to refute the durable, popular assumption that the “Bible and the flag” were inextricably linked in imperial expansion and rule. It is noteworthy that serious scholars of empire and missions have done little to promote this assumption over the years. In fact, there remains a conspicuous gulf between the fields of missiology and imperial history, a gulf that scholars began to bridge systematically after 1996 under the aegis of the North Atlantic Missiology Project. Ten years later, the editor of this volume, Norman Etherington, can still observe, “Just as the history of the British Empire can be written without much attention to missions, the history of missions can be written without much attention to the Empire” (3). In bringing these histories together, the contributors to this collection repeatedly use the words “problematic” and “ambiguous” to describe the relationship between missions and empire—and rightly so. This complex relationship defies generalizations at the same time that it invites particular, fascinating comparisons, which one finds throughout this volume. Etherington accepted an unwieldy charge in agreeing to edit this collection, and he deserves great credit for producing a book that is finely nuanced, thoroughly coherent, and accessible.

The contributors represent a variety of academic disciplines, and they employ a variety of methodologies. None of the contributors are missiologists, that is, scholars who prioritize issues of faith and theology and who generally share the denominational commitments of their subjects. It is noteworthy, however, that Etherington and two contributors, Andrew Porter and Robert Frykenberg, have played important roles in building bridges to missiology by addressing the roles of faith and theology in their previous scholarship on missions and colonialism. By contrast, there are other contributors, Eliga Gould and Patrick Harries, who established their reputations outside the study of missions and empire. This creative mix of contributors addresses disparate, thematic subjects—and it repeatedly occurred to me, as I read through the collection, that the contributors’ emphasis on diversity might have produced a book weak with incongruity. Instead, the essays consistently engage with and complement each other.

Etherington's introduction provides a flexible and comprehensive framework with which to connect the thirteen essays that follow. It is a brilliant introduction, offering a clear overview of the historiography, as well as concise explanations of the collection's thematic composition and analytical priorities. Any student new to the subject of missions and empire would do well to begin by reading this introduction. Gould then provides an excellent “prelude” on the Christianizing of British America, a prelude that persuasively refutes portrayals of American exceptionalism. Finally, the stage is set by Porter's fine discussion of general developments and turning points in the global expansion of British missions until 1914. “Empire held limited potential when set within the global perspective of evangelical Christianity,” Porter argues. “Christ's death was for all mankind, as were the promises of grace and salvation” (48).

The subsequent essays focus on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They can be divided into three categories. First, there are essays that emphasize the experiences of British missions and Western missionaries within and beyond the empire. Second, there are essays that emphasize the experiences of colonial subjects who converted to Christianity, and, third, there are essays that examine how missionaries and indigenous Christians constructed, used, and imparted knowledge. The most successful essay in the first category is Patricia Grimshaw and Peter Sherlock's “Women and Cultural Exchanges,” which combines an overview of the development of scholarship on women and missions with a general discussion of the many roles of Western women on mission stations. “It is a central if unacknowledged fact of mission history,” the authors observe, “that by the end of the nineteenth century the largest group of missionaries were not clergy or married couples, but single women” (184). The best essay in the second category is Robert Edgar's “New Religious Movements,” which examines independent churches established by colonial subjects in response to the racist leadership of white ministers or cultural misunderstandings. Edgar draws insightful parallels between independent churches in sub-Saharan Africa and in New Zealand, and he offers an especially interesting discussion of missionary religion and healing (220). Finally, in the third category, Harries provides an intriguing discussion of “the emergence and decline of missionary contributions to anthropology” (238). Harries illuminates the crucial role of missionaries in early anthropological studies and the increasing conflict between missionary and secular anthropology after 1918. It appears that the terms of this conflict also bear upon the divide between missiologists and imperial historians.

This book does justice to the diversity of the relationship between missions and empire. There are, of course, particular subjects that one might add to the mix—for example: how overseas missionary societies recruited, trained, raised funds, and built auxiliary networks within Britain itself. It would also have been interesting to see an essay that dwelled upon distinctions between the theologies of missions and explained how these theologies influenced different institutional relationships to empire. These are not oversights of the collection but subjects that would simply augment an already ambitious and successful project. This book features essays of uniformly high quality that articulate many important parts of the relationship between missions and empire.