Hugh Morrison's nuanced and ambitious exploration of New Zealand's Protestant missionary efforts is a welcome addition to the historiography. It makes a significant contribution to the literature on both the national and international importance of New Zealand's evangelization efforts and argues persuasively that New Zealand's missions, while part of a global movement, were uniquely shaped by white Christians' interactions with Maori and New Zealand's own colonial experience. New Zealand was both periphery and metropole, depending on one's vantage point, in the evangelical missionary world. The missionaries' motivation is analyzed through the intersection of various traits, from the gendered to the cultural and theological, to create a portrait of the missionaries and their desired converts. Morrison further contributes to the scholarship on settler colonialism, and he aptly shows how the missions helped formulate settler identity.

The book is divided into two parts, local and global. Part 1 focuses on the local development of the missionary base: from the individuals who constituted it to their theological positions and the international influences that helped shape and inform it. The fourth chapter examines motivations. Part 2 examines the international context and shows the historical and historiographical developments that affected the missions' identities. As a colonial society on the furthest periphery of a thriving empire, New Zealand's white settlers found added meaning in their missions beyond the conversions that were the ostensible objective.

Not all Protestant churches were equally involved in the mission efforts. Presbyterians, Baptists, and Anglicans had the largest missions, though Presbyterians dominated the missionary landscape. Only twice did male Baptist missionaries exceed the numbers of Presbyterians: in the last fifteen years of the nineteenth century and in the interwar decades. Although men served longer than women, on average, by the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, women made up a great proportion of the missionary workforce. Missions also garnered a lot of support from children and young people. At the same time, institutions such as compulsory grammar schools and colonial Sunday schools thrust the missionary experience into the consciousness of New Zealand students, who came to think of missions as part of their national identity. The curriculum was pro-imperial and emphasized the sad, ignorant state of the world's non-Christian people.

Maori, who were occasionally among the international missionaries, were more often the objects of missionary endeavors in the period before 1870. In turn, Maori converts became missionaries to their own hapu and to other iwi. Catholic and Anglican Maori were the least evangelical. The experience for Maori was often oppressive, though a New Zealand exceptionalism emerged that often emphasized the superiority of Maori over other indigenous people. Only in the late twentieth century did the missions move away from paternalism toward partnership with the Maori and the other minority populations being evangelized.

Some of the most interesting stories in the book concern the motivations of the missionaries themselves, and occasionally popular notions of New Zealand are dispelled. New Zealand's reputation as a reforming nation, a social laboratory, is well established, but reform did not dominate the motives of women who set out to evangelize. Theological issues appear to have been the primary motivations. Closely connected to these theological ideas, though, were ideas of social uplift. Many of the women in the missions were also members of the Women's Christian Temperance Union and similar reform societies. The personal narratives of the missionaries reveal that most had a lifelong exposure to Christian beliefs and practices. Many experienced either a spiritual conversion or a crisis in adolescence that confirmed their commitment to the Christian life.

The willingness of young people to travel the world, often to places the missionaries called “the great beckoning fields” and “regions beyond,” is remarkable (139). These places were depicted as not only non-Christian but as uncivilized. As they lived among the local populations to be converted, missionaries became educated about others. They learned to admire aspects of the communities they evangelized, but they also retained and perpetuated racist stereotypes. As missionaries returned to their settler communities and published memoirs or histories, they contributed to identity formation at home.

The book is densely written. While the prose is clear, the layers of analysis make it necessary to read carefully and slowly. Settler colonialism, reflex impact, and intersectionality are concepts that are critical to the analyses here, but readers will need to be familiar with them before embarking on this book. The tables in the book give useful data and are well presented. The audience for the book is one somewhat versed in the historiography already. Morrison conducted extensive research in the archives, and the variety of sources contributed to the richness of the book. The monograph emerged from his dissertation and several articles he has published, and the long period over which he has thought about the subject is reflected in its intricate structure. For any serious student of New Zealand history, imperial history, or religious history in the nineteenth century, this book is a valuable volume. No single history has done as much to illuminate the missionary movement in such a sophisticated manner.