Emily Conroy-Krutz’s highly readable book traces the history of American protestant missionaries’ surprisingly large role in U.S. foreign relations – what she calls “missionary diplomacy.” Though this topic has attracted attention, thus far scholars have viewed it through the lens either of diplomatic history or of the history of foreign missions, but never both simultaneously. “The story missionary diplomacy,” Conroy-Krutz writes, “is one of the overlapping political and religious narratives that are far too often told separately” (3). Even when covered by scholars, missionary diplomacy tends to be a sidebar to a different topic and not the featured story. Conroy-Krutz shifts this important story from the periphery to the center. Her book spans roughly 100 years, from the early nineteenth century to the 1920s. She tells her narrative in eleven engaging chapters that are grouped into three temporally defined sections: the 1810s–1840s, the 1840s–1880s, and the 1890s–1920s. For each section, Conroy-Krutz provides a short introduction that previews the major themes of that time period.
A major takeaway from this book is that missionary diplomacy evolved substantially over 100 years. In the early 1800s (section one), the United States aspired to assert influence on the world stage on a par with European nations. However, the young nation lacked the diplomatic infrastructure to actualize this ambition and so was compelled to recruit foreign missionaries, already out in the field. Government officials respected missionaries for their knowledge of foreign cultures, linguistic attainments, and ability to influence American opinion through publications and church presentations. In short, they valued the utility of missionaries, seeing them as a group capable of helping the United States achieve its overseas objectives. Missionaries reciprocated by becoming willing partners in this national project. In countries where no U.S. consul was deployed, missionaries even acted in an official capacity as representatives of the American government. Though it was a pressing need that forced the government to place missionaries in these roles, the arrangements largely worked. The two sides, both Protestant, were aligned in their overarching belief that the United States possessed a providential mission to influence the globe.
In Section 2, turbulence enters what had been a mostly harmonious relationship. As the U.S. government started to assign more consuls to posts overseas, it depended less on missionaries. At the same time, missionaries began to depend more heavily on their own governments. That is because the expansion of foreign missions multiplied opportunities for what Conroy-Krutz calls “missionary troubles” (12). Though the American government continued to view missionaries as an asset, the latter’s proclivity to run afoul of local governments and populations vexed the consuls, who were constantly asked to protect missionaries, intercede on their behalf, or seek redress from local governments. Though obligated to help American citizens abroad, consuls gravitated toward the opinion that many missionaries were disrupters, that they provoked gratuitously, and that they invited trouble by venturing into dangerous places despite being warned. Missionaries, in short, were often to blame for their misfortunes.
In Section 3, Conroy-Krutz shows that missionary diplomacy was further complicated by the rise of the United States as an imperial power. She zeroes in on the specific mission fields that witnessed the arrival of an American military presence: Cuba and the Philippines during the Spanish American War (1898) and China with the Boxer Uprising (1900). As the United States developed its diplomatic infrastructure overseas, this build-up called into question the role of missionaries. “After decades of missionaries being able to argue persuasively that they knew the places where they worked better than any other Americans,” Conroy-Krutz writes, “now…that seemed less true” (222). Missionaries were also changing in this period. With the advent of the social gospel, they increasingly deemphasized pure proselytization and prioritized tending to the humanitarian needs of local populations. Missions built schools and hospitals and addressed racial and gender injustice. According to Conroy-Krutz, this recalibration of the missionary project “brought missions into partnership with other Americans who saw the benefits to the whole world of a more interventionist United States” (182).
As this summary suggests, Conroy-Krutz has written a book with a broad temporal and geographic scope. She takes readers to almost every country that attracted missionaries and diplomats before and into the 1920s: Armenia, China, the Congo, Egypt, Greece, Hawaii, India, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Pacific Islands, Persia, the Philippines, Syria, Thailand, and Turkey. Despite the impressive nature of this list, the book is not comprehensive. For any given time period, Conroy-Krutz focuses only on a small number hot zones where she could link events to her larger themes. As I read, I debated whether her selective approach was a strength or weakness. One negative is that the knowledge she offers can seem inconsistent or haphazard. In any given chapter, readers may wonder why the author is concentrating on this country but not that one.
That being said, I came to the conclusion that Conroy-Krutz did adopt the right approach. Had she opted to write comprehensively on this vast topic, the book would have swelled in length, becoming a tome that scholars cited but did not read. By being selective, Conroy-Krutz has the space to explore fully the key historical events. She is able, for example, to include an entire chapter on the Congo Free State, where American missionaries attempted to pressure the U.S. government to respond to the atrocities inflicted on the Congolese by Belgium in the early 1900s. Her approach also made possible her extensive use of primary sources. She performed research at several archives holding missionary records, availed herself of the Library of Congress’s endless resources, and reviewed the papers of former presidents. Had she employed any other approach with so broad a topic, she would not have been able to exploit the richness of her primary sources with her skillful storytelling.
In sum, Conroy-Krutz has written an important book that fills a critical gap in our knowledge. Her emphasis on primary sources, accessible prose style, and engaging storytelling make the book a pleasure to read.
