In his ambitious and meticulously documented David Griffiths and the Missionary ‘History of Madagascar’, Gwyn Campbell, the noted religious and economic historian of Madagascar, connects the micro-politics of nineteenth-century European missionaries working with the London Missionary Society (LMS) in Madagascar with the larger dynamics of shifting global power struggles including European imperialism and religious persecution. The result is a sweeping narrative that will be of interest to scholars across the fields of history, anthropology, Malagasy studies, and religious studies.

This 1000-page volume may be considered three books in one. In the first section, Campbell presents his main analytical argument, asking the seemingly straightforward question: How did the famed English missionary figure, the Rev. Stephen Ellis, come to claim credit for a seminal work on Madagascar missionary history published in 1938, when he was involved only as an editor, drew exclusively from the accounts of other missionaries, and indeed had not even visited Madagascar at the time the book was published? What follows from this question is a bit of a detective story, as Campbell peels back overlapping layers of missionary intrigue, plagiarism, and politics.

Overall, Campbell argues that influential members of the LMS deliberately blocked the Welsh LMS missionary David Griffiths from being rightfully recognized as the premiere European missionary historian and cultural expert of Madagascar. Campbell illustrates how the personal rivalries and political maneuvering of the LMS players manifested through tactics including who controlled paper coming in and out of the island, who socialized with which circle of ex-patriots in Antananarivo, and who could best navigate the mercurial royal personalities of the Malagasy court. Throughout the account, Griffiths emerges as the protagonist of the LMS drama and is presented as a dedicated Christian, a serious scholar, and a respectful advocate for Malagasy language and culture.

In the second part of the book, Campbell translates Griffiths's own published work on the missionary history of Madagascar, which was originally published in Welsh in 1842. The resulting text provides a fascinating collection of materials that reveal not only the religious climate of the time, but also the larger milieu of economic production, cultural violence, and political instability throughout the central highlands of Madagascar. The text also serves as a potential corrective in places to the widely-cited missionary history credited to Ellis.

In the third section of the text, Campbell presents his own annotations of Griffiths's text. At times nearly overwhelming in its detail, the notes represent an impressive display of knowledge and documentation on material ranging from the art of beekeeping, to the history of cattle on the island, to an analysis of the traditional Malagasy lunar calendar.

Although the personal politics of the Christian missionaries can seem petty at times, Campbell does not let the reader lose sight of the real stakes involved in being aligned with the Christian community in Madagascar during the nineteenth century. For example, Malagasy Christians were often brutally persecuted and executed. The European missionaries themselves faced the constant danger of political fallout, as well as threats from malaria and other tropical diseases that often claimed their lives and the lives of their family members.

For all its strengths, there are several ways in which the text could be enriched. First, in the championing of Griffiths as a missionary anti-hero, Griffiths seems at times a bit one-dimensional. In a similar way, there is a tendency for the text to be sympathetic towards the Malagasy leaders who overall supported the Christian mission, such as King Radama, who ruled the island from 1810 to 1828. This treatment tends to overlook the violence perpetuated through Radama's rule, including his forced labor policies and widespread military conscriptions. Finally, in Campbell's admirable attention to the everyday facets of the missionary experience, I was left curious as to the role of missionary wives, particularly that of Mary Griffiths, in assisting their husbands navigate the complex norms of Malagasy social etiquette.

Still, these are small concerns with a text that provides an impressive resource for Malagasy scholars in particular, and scholars of religious history and cultural anthropology more generally. Overall, by combining a fine-grained ethnographic sensibility with a large-scale appreciation for global history and politics, Campbell illustrates that missionaries were not a monolithic group, but were rather shaped by personal politics, rivalries, anxieties, and ideals – with important ramifications for both the politics of the countries where they came from, and for the lives of the people across the globe for whom they were ordained to serve.