The relationship between British Protestant missionary evangelization and the growth of British imperialism in the second half of the nineteenth century was multifaceted. This dual interaction between the missionaries and the complexity of British imperial aspirations and expansion is surveyed in this book through six case studies. These studies focus primarily on the Anglican Melanesian Mission and the labor trade, Methodists and the annexation of Fiji, the London Missionary Society (LMS) and the British Protectorate in Papua, the failed proposal to transfer The Gambia to France, Church Missionary Society (CMS) involvement in Lagos and Yorubaland, and the repercussions of slavery in East and Central Africa.

The comparative approach highlights similarities and differences both within and between the Pacific and West and East Africa. The author's attention is centered largely on the missions and their imperial relationships so that indigenous agency is largely passed over (the Buganda Mission is the major exception). The conclusion reached is that while the missionary task was primary for the British Protestant missionaries and their supporting societies, most of them nevertheless contributed both consciously and unconsciously to the advance of British imperialism. This approach fits in with the work on mission and empire by other scholars such as Brian Stanley and Andrew Porter. What Darch contributes is a detailed, nuanced study which highlights the varying influences of different individuals such as imperial activists like John Paton in the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) and reluctant imperialists like W. G. Lawes in Papua. The study holds in creative tension the locale of missionary action in the Pacific and Africa, and the metropolitan response seen in London in the Colonial and Foreign Offices, the missionary societies, and Parliament.

The opening chapter on “Missions and Missionaries” provides helpful background although there is a much larger preceding history which does have relevance for this study. In the Pacific, for example, the CMS and Wesleyans were closely involved in New Zealand becoming a British colony in 1840, and the LMS, after over forty years of work in Tahiti, experienced the humiliation of French annexation in 1842. These actions became part of the missionary and imperial experience that influenced missionary administrators, missionaries, and politicians in the period covered by this book. The murder of the LMS missionary, John Williams, at Erromanga, New Hebrides (Vanuatu), in 1839 (depicted on the cover of the book), is also part of this backstory.

The author makes excellent use of both British missionary and government primary papers, pointing to the richness of the archival sources available for this kind of study. Some of the Pacific secondary sources are somewhat dated. W. P. Morrell, Britain in the Pacific Islands (Oxford: Clarendon, 1960), for example, is frequently cited. While representing a rather old fashioned imperial Anglocentric approach, Morrell is still very useful because of his use of primary sources and sensitivity to the interrelationship of the themes of mission and imperialism, which have sometimes been ignored or misrepresented by more recent historians.

Darch has drawn particular attention to the role played by missionary intermediaries and supporters in Britain who were informed through their direct links with missionaries. Henry Venn, the CMS clerical secretary, receives deserved attention. Venn was the leading British missionary theorist of his age. Through his contacts both in England and with the missionaries, Venn was in touch with what was happening on “the mission field” and able to interact with politicians and business leaders in advocating for indigenous rights and missionary interests.

The flow of letters between England and the missionaries—and the occasional visits to Britain by people like David Livingstone, John Paton, and James Chalmers—helped publicize the missionaries' perspectives and provide firsthand information for missionary and humanitarian activists. The murder of Bishop Patteson at Nukapu in the Solomon Islands in 1871 became the catalyst for the British Parliament to set up the Western Pacific High Commission to oversee the actions of British subjects in the Pacific. This was in part precipitated by the nineteenth-century evangelical campaigns against slavery and the linking of Patteson's death with the abuses associated with the recruitment of Melanesian laborers to work on sugar plantations in Queensland and Fiji.

Slavery provides a linking theme between some of Darch's case studies. But in each place, as he rightly notes, the nature of this “slavery's” history and impact varied. Only in its extreme abuses did the labor traffic in the Pacific approximate that of African slavery. These nuances could easily be lost when pressure groups and missionary propagandists were advocating their cause in London. The tragedy of missionary idealism and propaganda, when confronted with the social and geographic realities of Africa, is seen in the disastrous beginnings of the Livingstone-inspired Universities Mission to Central Africa and the LMS Central African Mission.

Darch's study centers on the contests over imperial policies and the role of missionaries and their supporters in influencing them. The absence of the indigenous voice reflects the way in which missionaries and imperialists were largely acting for, rather than with, the local people. At several points in the book, the author uses the word “discovered” anachronistically for what was new knowledge for Europeans but what was already well-known to Africans. This issue of perspective was at the heart of the Victorian missionary enterprise and the expansion of British imperialism. While Darch concludes that “Missionaries were primarily messengers of the Christian gospel and its attendant values,” he has creatively pointed to the ways in which the missionaries and their agencies also became involved in “incidental imperialism—an ‘imperialism of result’ rather than an ‘imperialism of intent’”(246).