This book is nothing if not thorough. Extending nearly 1000 pages before bibliography and index, it mobilizes an astonishing array of sources, mostly in European languages (though not Russian), to chronicle the work of diverse American, British, French, German, Italian, Scottish, and Swiss missionaries for a century or so in Persia and southern Russia. The result is an indubitably informative book, but one that also groans, almost literally, under the weight of voluminous detail. The larger meaning of Flynn's chronicle accordingly remains elusive.

The book describes a particular manifestation of the spiritual awakenings of the early nineteenth century that projected western Christians all over the world in missionary pursuits. Flynn's volume is noteworthy for scrutinizing a wide range of groups, mostly Protestant but also Catholic, and the assorted communities among which they operated: Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, and eastern Christians of manifold teachings. The relations and tensions among adherents of these diverse faiths strike me as the most interesting aspect of the study. Using letters, diaries, and reports to sponsoring organizations, the author reveals the challenges that missionaries encountered, their relations with local communities and political authorities, and curious ethnographic detail on local life. For Flynn, the larger importance of the missionaries appears to reside in their defense of marginalized minorities and their insistence “on the protection of their dignity and basic human rights” (938) as well as in their promotion of “the gradual and continuing removal of mutual misunderstandings and prejudices concerning beliefs among the educated” in Persia (942). These claims are interesting, but Flynn could have more systematically structured his book around them.

Instead, detail and specifics overwhelm many of the conclusions, and few readers will command the stamina required to get through the entire text. Revealing is Flynn's description of the book as “predominantly a narrative” and “not ‘problem oriented,’” even as he admits that “problems” could have structured the work (1). Proposing that there was “little or no direct contact” among the missionary enterprises in question (2), the author also treats each of them largely in isolation from the others, which necessitates repetition and renders each massive chapter largely a variation on an already familiar theme. At some points, the reader is inundated with names too numerous to assimilate, while at others many pages of text are devoted to the experience of just one person. Several footnotes become remarkable exhibitions in unrestrained prolixity. All of this is a pity. The story here is an interesting one and has much to tell us about cross-cultural contacts, translation and language, the complicated boundary between eastern and western Christianity, and the relationship in different societies between religious and political authority. The first half of the nineteenth century was, in many respects, formative for the modern world, and the issues that Flynn discusses are relevant to that process. No doubt, the book contains curious and sometimes astute observations, but in the end, the author makes little effort to extract a greater significance from the massive story he tells. The book, in short, is encyclopedic; it is a work that might serve scholars well on particular points but remains too unwieldy to be read as a discrete product.

Other problems also warrant note. Flynn never fully defines or justifies the territorial scope of the book. The center of gravity is clearly Persia, but portions of southern Russia appear as well. Why these parts of Russia and not others? Is it because western missionaries were present? If so, why not say more about Siberia? Is it because these territories were close to Persia? If so, are not Crimea and Orenburg too distant to be included? What exactly is the role of Russia in the book? Similar problems concern the chronological scope. 1760 represents a logical starting point—when missionaries of the United Brethren began their work at Sarepta in southern Russia (though Flynn also has two massive chapters on “forerunners”). But why is 1870 the terminal point? There is no indication that missionary activity ceased then. Did it enter a new phase? If so, what changed? Is there an existing work that explores the later period? Such questions remain unaddressed.

One can also argue with the author's contention that the missionaries “were not colonialists” (940). It is true that they kept their distance from imperial states and “eagerly chose to learn the culture, traditions and languages of Western Asia” (940). But by the author's own admission, they sometimes brought European diplomatic intervention to bear on Persia, and in this sense their presence enabled foreign intrusion. By definition, moreover, missionaries sought to undermine attachments to Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism—that is, to alter indigenous culture. Is there nothing colonial in this? My own view is that the relationship between missionaries and colonialism is complicated, but Flynn's account dismisses the connections as quickly as others might wish to assert them. In the end, I sense that Flynn sympathizes with the missionaries too much. He rightly admires their selflessness and fortitude, while also acknowledging that they brought “religious divisiveness” to new lands (239). But he accepts their analyses and observations too uncritically and thus repeats orientalist tropes about such things as the unchanging character of Islamic world and the superstitious reliance on external religious observance among Armenians.

Encyclopedic and meticulous, then, The Western Christian Presence comes up short analytically. A more concise, focused study on this important topic would almost surely have been preferable.