One very important historiographical shift in the study of Christianity since the 1960s has been the revived recognition of the ‘missionary encounter’ between the Christian world and ‘the rest’, sometimes called ‘the north and the south’. In these two volumes, drawing on recent German work and best considered together, editors have assembled twenty-one contributors to survey the current field. This was no simple task: the rapid growth in geographical extent, chronological coverage of publications and range of subject matter demanding attention, has been enormous. For example, those accustomed to think of modern missionary activity largely in terms of an Anglo-American monopoly, will find in Martin Gregerson's account of ‘Swedish medical missionary narratives in the Missionstiding’ a source of genuine revelation. Similar insights may be derived from James De Lorenzi's work on Italian Protestants, ‘Missionaries and the making of colonial notables…in Eritrea and Ethiopia, 1890 to 1935’. Essays by Albert Wu on ‘Nineteenth-century German missionary periodicals’; by Amin Owzar on ‘The image of Islam in German missionary periodicals, 1870 to 1970’; by Jeremy Best on ‘The Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift and missionary nationalism’; and by Felicity Jenzs on ‘Diverging reports of European politics and imperial aspirations in the periodical accounts and in the Missions-Blatt’, provide both an invaluable bibliography of recent writing and intriguing evidence of the regional and denominational differences between sections of the German movement. Despite claims to a postcolonial lineage, they are eminently readable.

However, serious engagement with the debates of 1870–1930 by contemporaries both then and now called for something much more intellectually ambitious. As in so many areas of scholarship there was a general and decisive shift away from both the ‘celebratory narratives’ and the biographical or political approaches which had emerged everywhere as the standard responses of recorders and memorialists of an earlier period. Missionary agendas were thus redefined in ways that gave more secular-minded thinkers room for influence. Historians, doctors and anthropologists, to mention but a few, found new and extended outlets; philosophers and social scientists in particular injected a critical scrutiny of the processes of social and cultural change and context. The case for investigating fresh areas of the missionary enterprise, including especially the Islamic world, is made in several of the essays. For example, those by Heather Sharkey, ‘The Gospel in Arabic tongues: British Bible distribution, evangelical mission, and language politics in North Africa’; by Beth Baron, ‘Colonialism, Islamism, and the Egyptian welfare state’; and by Laura Robson, ‘Palestinian Arab Episcopalians, nationalism, and revolt, 1936–1939’. Despite considerable recent advances, however, it can still be claimed that we have much to learn about who were and who were not missionaries, especially if the scope of the missionary movement is to be extended as far as these volumes would have us go. Notwithstanding the pivotal roles of women, children and their families, recognition of their contribution to evangelism was so slow in coming to the fore that one cannot but wonder what other obstacles to the advance of significant groups in previous phases of missionary expansion could have been at once both so considerable and yet so far kept from sight. What have we missed or dismissed?

Sharkey's volume concerns itself above all with questions of cultural change and mergers, with syncretism and the ‘unexpected consequences of Christian missionary encounters’. It is the focus on what are effectively case studies of people and places that gives her volume its coherence, providing justification for grouping her chapters thematically. Essays by David Gordon, and Chandra Mallampalli on ‘Hindu law and Christian custom in India's Deccan, 1750–1863’, home in on conflicts involving different groups of Christians; on rivalries between world religions, by Stephen Berkwitz and Paul Landau; and on German missionary scholarship by Mrinalini Sebastian, in the service of ‘Language, identity, and knowledge’. Our understanding of the term ‘conversion’ constantly rears its head with respect to both theory and practice, demonstrating the different ways in which the ‘missionary endeavour’ was pushed forward as far as frontiers and funding allowed. It adapted itself to progressive figures of speech and claims to recognition as a branch of global history as well as a source of colonial, imperial and nationalist political aspirations. Missions and their supporters did not need to align themselves directly with governments in order to be deeply involved with state politics.

One can hardly do more than hint at the range and widespread interest of these two collections, and space prevents reference to other contributors. At first sight the volume edited by Jensz and Acke appears to be an elaborate exercise in methodology, identifying the problems facing the historian wishing to use published missionary materials as sources. This is not a new insight, but the illustrations of the principle itself are of great interest and variety as, for instance, Amelia Bonea shows (‘Discourses of labour, religion and race … The “Indian coolie mission” in Fiji’). The juvenile missionary literature examined by Hugh Morrison in ‘Empire, nation, and religion’ in Canada and New Zealand reveals different pictures of colonial life from that for adults, a contrast in ‘missionary discourses’ to be examined and not simply taken for granted. The ‘editorial voice’ guiding a periodical often diverged from that of the general body of subscribers, thus allowing the imperialist views of Gustav Warneck to dominate the Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift. Contributors suggest piecing together other ‘discourses’ of mission – hospital patients and catechists for example – but have surprisingly little direct discussion on one particularly significant line of advance, links between missions, theology and race. Here the British experience may provide clues. Three important articles by this reviewer (Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History [1975–9]) raised issues only now being reopened, for example by Timothy Larsen, A people of one book: the Bible and the Victorians (Oxford 2011), and Colin Kidd, The forging of races: race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600–2000 (Cambridge 2006). Nevertheless these volumes are of great value. They escape the criticism of incoherence so often levied at collective works and will be essential reading for all researchers in the field for some time to come.