Emily Conroy-Krutz's monograph examines the history of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (hereafter the ABCFM), which began in New England in 1810. The ABCFM sent Congregational and Presbyterian ministers, as well as laymen and -women, to preach the Gospel to the “heathens” of foreign lands, including India, Liberia, Palestine, and Singapore, as well as the Sandwich Islands and the Cherokee Nation. As the first and most prominent American foreign mission society in the nineteenth century, the ABCFM set the trajectory for later American Protestants who wished to convert the world. By 1860, the ABCFM had dispatched almost 1,300 missionaries to forty-one missions worldwide. The ABCFM believed its presence in the mission field was necessary not only to promote the Christianization and “civilization” of native peoples, but also to ensure a benevolent approach to empire building. Long before “profits, politics, and piety” became a catchphrase for American imperialists in the late nineteenth century, these early American missionaries were combining their “support for global missions” with a “sacred purpose in commercial and imperial expansion” (3).

The author defines the term “Christian imperialism” as relying less on states and more on “existing political and economic networks between supposedly Christian nations and the so-called heathen world. The missionaries were not primarily focused on the spread of Anglo-American governance; they were concerned with the spread of Anglo-American culture and the Protestant religion” (11). While other Americans were discussing western expansion and internal improvements, these Protestant missionaries had their energies directed toward global conversion. Similarly, rather than setting themselves apart from the British (and becoming enemies during the War of 1812), these missionaries looked to England and their mission organizations for guidance in entering the mission field. Though Anglo-American cooperation was achieved in India, American missionaries who served there were not above questioning British tactics, particularly the role of the East India Company in imperial politics.

This book delves into the politics of missionization, including how to set up a mission within a colony already occupied by Europeans (India), as well as how to deal with the racial dynamics of a new colony (Liberia). Once in the field, the ABCFM's desire to evangelize “heathens” was tempered by push-back from the local population. In India, for example, the ABCFM's plan to adopt, baptize, and give Christian names to local children was met with resistance, both from missionaries who argued that there was no scriptural basis for changing their names and from Hindus who found such a proposal culturally abhorrent. ABCFM missionaries in Liberia faced difficulties in navigating the conflicted relations between native Africans and African American colonizers, most of whom came to make a living, not convert the locals. Both white missionaries and black colonizers carried racial baggage with them to Africa; whites struggled to view blacks as equals, often calling them “lazy,” while some African Americans willingly participated in the local slave trade.

This is an institutional history of an early American religious organization dedicated to foreign missions. While it is important to document the ABCFM's history and early Americans' interest in global Christianization and imperial politics, this reader wanted to know more about these individual missionaries and everyday life. While many prominent male leaders are discussed in the text, with some mention of married missionaries, such as Ann and Adoniram Judson, more could have been done to explore the role and experience of mission families. Extended coverage of white women, both single and married (such as Cynthia Farrar, Betsey Stockton, or Lucy Goodale Thurston, who are not included), in mission activities would have shown their important contributions. Use of Thurston's 1842 memoir or the ABCFM publication of her reminiscences of life in the Sandwich Islands would have augmented some of the institutional focus. Finally, it is not clear why the author focussed on the areas listed above when the ABCFM was also active in Macau, Sumatra, and Ceylon, as well as many other Native American missions (in the Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota territories) in the same time period. Despite these concerns, this book poses some crucial questions about the periodization of American imperialism and the significance of religion and global politics during the early Republic. Scholars and students with an interest in global missions, evangelization, and religious imperialism will find this book worthy of study.