This beautifully printed, illustrated and well-bound book of over a thousand pages is the work of the holder of the Canada Research Chair and Director of the Indian Ocean World Centre at McGill University. Gwyn Campbell's earlier work, An economic history of imperial Madagascar, 1750–1895 (Cambridge 2005), demonstrated his familiarity with the background to Malagasy society, which provided the context for the early missions. He himself has family ties to the island, where he was born to Welsh missionary parents. Although brought up in Wales, he returned to Madagascar for research in 1978 and met another Welsh-speaking missionary, who gave him a copy of David Griffiths's Hanes Madagascar, his early history of the LMS mission, written in Welsh and until now never translated. David Griffiths (1792–1863), with another Welsh missionary David Jones (1796–1841), founded the London Missionary Society mission. Griffiths had attended the Gosport Seminary of David Bogue before sailing in 1821.

This book is divided into a number of parts. In an initial informative section (pp. 3–256), the author provides the main thesis of the work. There follows an English translation of Griffiths's history (pp. 262–402), with an extended commentary (pp. 403–930), which is replete with such subjects as the flora and fauna of the island, Malagasy customs, French involvement with much appeal to French writing, and the relationship between the Malagasy leadership and Mauritius with its British representatives, ambassadorial and naval. There is also extended biographical material on the many Europeans and others who feature in the story as missionaries, tradesmen, naturalists, printers and mercenary soldiers.

Griffiths's history runs from 1811 (the British capture of Mauritius) to the first LMS mission in Madagascar (founded 1818) during the comparatively benign reign of Radama i, during which he himself arrived to join David Jones after the death in 1821 of the other pioneer (Thomas Bevan). He established himself within the Malagasy hierarchy, not least with the king, who valued the educational input of the mission. Radama died aged thirty-six in 1828 to be succeeded by Queen Ranavolona. Her rule (1828–61) turned into a reign of terror for Malagasy Christians, part of which is recorded graphically in the history, which however ends at 1843. By then professing Christianity was punishable by death and Griffiths experienced the melancholy sight of some of his flock, paraded outside his house with deliberate intent, being led to martyrdom in July 1840. Although for some time the queen remained on friendly terms with Griffiths himself, as a general benefactor of her people, she finally banished him after he had been shown to be aiding escaping Christians.

The treatment meted out to David Griffiths by the leading figures of LMS, in particular by William Ellis, author of another History of Madagascar (1838), and the missionary Joseph Freeman (1774–1851), has troubled Gwyn Campbell. According to his interpretation, a combination of the two leaders tried to remove Griffiths from the mission, so that Freeman could gain control. They then used Griffiths's history and knowledge of the language, deployed towards the translation of the Bible in 1835, towards a rewriting of history which both wrote Griffiths out of the script and used his work without ascription for Ellis's popular LMS publications. It is certain that there was sufficient dissension in the LMS ranks in Madagascar, possibly fomented by Freeman, for a threat of withdrawal to be issued unless Griffiths left in 1834. This led to Griffiths's severing his links with the LMS and in due course to his return under his own initiative and finance to the field.

For anyone who has worked on the LMS papers held at SOAS in the Council for World Mission's collection it will be disappointing to see how easily the generally judicious leadership of the LMS at home could have been imposed upon by two determined detractors of Griffiths in Ellis and Freeman. A subtext here is how an alliance of Englishmen undermined the work of two pioneer Welshmen in David Griffiths and David Jones. Griffiths would seem to have deserved recognition as a pioneer missionary of great endurance, respected by the Malagasy leadership and plainly beloved as a Christian pastor and teacher by his large Malagasy flock, which grew substantially under his guidance. His mastery of the language made him a substantial contributor to the translation of the Bible, much of it resulting from work done with Jones between 1824 and 1828, as also to a Malagasy grammar of 1854.

In addition to the contents already noted, the book contains a glossary of Malagasy terms and an index to Griffiths's history in addition to a general index and twelve appendices as well as many illustrations and an extensive bibliography. In such a well-researched and fully substantiated text, based on both primary and secondary sources, it is hard to cavil at a few lapses. However there are a few points: the notes at the end of the history (nn. 27–9) do not appear at p. 400 but feature as part of the commentary (pp. 928–30), including one on no less a figure than T. F. Buxton; there is a misattribution of I Corinthians xiii in the note at p. 845; and appendices which feature alphabetically at p. 562 (‘Annex D’) become numerical at p. 938 (19). Such minor blemishes do not detract from an outstanding work of revisionist missionary history.