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British Missionary Archives and the Asian Historian
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2011
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The archives of various British missionary societies, whose representatives were scattered throughout large parts of Asia in the nineteenth century and earlier, contain many manuscripts of interest and are potentially useful to the historian and social scientist. With few exceptions, however, scholars have overlooked or ignored these collections: partly because they are not centrally located; partly because they often are inchoate or lack guides; and partly because their value has not been appreciated.
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- Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1965
References
1 The most notable exception, insofar as those interested in Indian studies arc concerned, is DrIngham, Kenneth who made extensive use of the archives of die Society for the Propagation of die Gospel, the Baptist Missionary Society, the London Missionary Society, and die Church Missionary Society while doing the research for his book, Reformers in India, 1793–1833: An Account of the Work of Christian Missionaries on Behalf of Social Reform (Cambridge, 1956Google Scholar ). Undoubtedly there are similar exceptions in other areas of Asian studies, but they are die exception radier tian what should be the rule.
2 Hereinafter known as die B.M.S.
3 Thomas and Carey landed in Calcutta on November 11, 1793. Carey, who in 1792 had been instrumental in founding die B.M.S., is often inaccurately referred to as die first British missionary to die East.
4 See the author's article, “The Baptist Missionaries of Serampore and die Government of India, 1792–1813,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History, XV (October, 1964), 229–246.Google Scholar
5 Howse, Ernest M., Saints in Politics: the Clapham Sect and the Growth of Freedom (Toronto, 1952).Google Scholar
6 The Charter of the East India Company, as renewed in 1813, in addition to depriving the Company of its trade monopoly in India, contained a clause declaring it to be the duty of Britain to “promote the interest and happiness” of the people by taking “such measures … as may tend to the introduction [among them] … of useful knowledge, and of religious and moral improvement,” among other ways by granting licenses to missionaries so that they could assist in the work of “accomplishing those benevolent designs.” Great Britain: Parliamentary Debates II (1812–1813), 15.Google Scholar Charter Renewal Bill as amended by the Committee of June 28, 1813.
7 First published as “Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain, particularly with respect to Morals, and on the means of Improving It. Written chiefly in the Year 1792,” Great Britain: Parliamentary Papers, X (1812–1813), 1–112.Google Scholar
8 India Office, Commonwealth Relations Office, Mss. Bengal Despatches, XXXI, 391. Letter in the Public Dept. from the Court of Directors to the Gov.-Gen. in Council, June 30, 1797. Carey and the fifteen other Baptists who entered India between 1793 and 1813 did so without obtaining the required licenses from the Court of Directors. Only one, a medical doctor named William Johns, was forced to return to England (1813).
9 India Office, Commonwealth Relations Office, Court Minutes, CVI, 439. Minutes of August 16, 1797.
10 Most of this correspondence is deposited in the B.M.S. archives. The extracts from these and other missionary letters published in the Periodical Accounts of the Society omit much of the material that would today be of greatest interest to the historian.
11 They are not included among the Fuller manuscripts in the B.M.S. archives or among those collections of his papers which are deposited in Oxford, Kettering or Bristol.
12 At the end of this particular letter Grant added, however, that he would revise what he had written about the Established Church “in consequence of your remarks.”
13 This explanation, presumably in another letter from Grant to Fuller, could not be found.
14 It was Grant who suggested that four Baptists sent to India in 1799 go directly to the Danish territory of Serampore (fifteen miles north of Calcutta) instead of landing in British India. Grant, however, did not think highly of Serampore as the seat of missionary operations. Circumstances, mainly hostility of British officials, forced the missionaries to establish their main station there, but, as Fuller reported to one of them, Grant “tho't Serampour a good citadel for you to possess but it was not sufficiently in the seat of action; too much among the Europeans, & too little among the natives.” Andrew Fuller to Wm. Ward, Kettering, July 14, 1800, B.M.S. Mss.
15 An account of Grant's activities in connection with the College can be found in Embree, , Charles Grant and British Rule in India, pp. 186–195.Google Scholar