No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2016
Reflecting trends in international scholarship, recent explanations of the rise of Dutch missionary activity and thought in the period around 1800 tend to draw on a revised image of the Dutch eighteenth century as a period of Enlightenment. This revised image is based on the twofold claim that there was an Enlightenment in the Netherlands and that this Enlightenment was Christian or Protestant in character. At the turn of the eighteenth century, it is maintained, the strong influence of revivalism and pietism led to widespread missionary fervour, and this newly-found enthusiasm was able to bear fruit because it was spread through the private societies and social activism developed during, and characteristic of, the Dutch Enlightenment. Thus in recent accounts the positive connotations of the Enlightenment and the emancipatory significance of the new missionary enterprises have been strongly emphasised.
1 Boneschansker, J., Het Nederlandsch Zendeling Genootschap in zijn eerste periode. Een studie over opwekking in de Bataafse en Franse Tijd (Leeuwarden, 1987), pp. 180–5Google Scholar; Enklaar, I. H., ‘De aanvangsperiode van de nieuwere Nederlandse zending. Motieven, doelstelling en internationale verbondenheid’, in idem, Kom over en help ons! Twaalf opstellen over de Nederlandse zending in de negentiende eeuw (The Hague1, 1981), pp. 16–22Google Scholar; Holtrop, P. N., Tussen pië’tisme en Réveil. Het ‘Deutsche Christentumgesellschaft’ in Nederland, 1784-1833 (Amsterdam, 1975), pp. 152–70.Google Scholar
2 Kruijf, E. F., Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap (Groningen, 1894)Google Scholar; Enklaar, I. H., Life and Work of Dr. J. Th. van der Kemp 1747-1811. Missionary Pioneer and Protagonist of Racial Equality in South Africa (Cape Town and Rotterdam, 1988).Google Scholar
3 Neill, S., A History of Christian Missions (Harmondswortli, 1964), pp. 243–60Google Scholar; for references to recent literature, see above all Cracknell, K., Justice, Courtesy and Love. Theologians and Missionaries Encountering World Religions, 1864-1914 (London, 1995), Chapter 1.Google Scholar
4 E.g. Bosch, D. J., Transforming Mission. Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, NY, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Berg, J. van den, Constrained by Jesus’ Love. An Inquiry into the Motives of the Missionary Awakening in Great Britain in the Period Between 1698 and 1815 (Kampen, 1956)Google Scholar. For a discussion of the literature, cf. B. Stanley, ‘Enlightenment and Mission: A Re-Evaluation’, unpublished paper written for the North Atlantic Missiology Project Consultation on the Evangelical Revival and the Missionary Movement, Cambridge, 1996.
5 Neill, A History of Christian Missions, p. 252.
6 Cracknell, Justice, Courtesy and Love, p. 3.
7 Bosch, Transforming Mission, pp. 277, 327-34.
8 Van den Berg, Constrained by Jesus’ Love, p. 106.
9 Kruijf, Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, pp. 3–7.
10 My approach is partly based on my thesis ‘God, Nederland en Oranje. Dutch Calvinism and the Search for the Social Centre’ (Kampen, 1993), but is particularly indebted in its focus on missions to Peter T. van Rooden’s chapter on missions and national consciousness in his Religteuze regimes. Over godsdienst en maatschappij in Nederland 1570-1900 (Amsterdam, 1996), pp. 121–46 (ch. 4: ‘Beelden van bekering. Religieus nationalisme en de opkomst van de zending’).
11 The term ‘publicity’ is derived from Jiirgen Habermas’s conception of Óffentlichkeit; for its enduring applicability to the eighteenth century, see e.g. Vopa, A. J. La, ‘Conceiving a Public: Ideas and Society in Eighteenth-Century Europe’, in JMH 64 (1992), pp. 79–116.Google Scholar
12 Van Rooden, Religieuze regimes, pp. 78–120.
13 Cf.Joosse, L. J., ‘Scoone dingen sijn swaere dingen ’. Een onderzoek naar de moetieven en activiteiten in de Nederlanden tot verhreiding van de gereformeerde religie gedurende de eerste helft van de zeventiende eeuw (Leiden, 1992), pp. 528–81Google Scholar, on the motives of seventeenth-century mission. These motives were doxological (spreading the true religion so as to further the glory of God), christocratic (but allowing for connections between the regnum Christi and the magistrate), and soteriological (with, again, an emphasis on the true religion, as defined in officially and publicly recognized confessions).
14 See my De Mutua Christianorum Tolerantia. Irenicistn and Toleration in the Netherlands: The Stinstra Affair, 1740-1745 (Studi e testi per la storia della tolleranza in Europa nei secoli XVI-XVIII 2) (Firenze, 1998).
15 Hoadly, B., The Nature of the Kingdom or Church of Christ, or a Sermon Preach’d before the King, at the Royal Chapel of St. James’s, on Sunday, March 31st, 1717 (London and Edinburgh, 1717), p. 13Google Scholar; Stinstra, J., De natuure en gesteldheid van Christus Koningrijk, onderdaanen, kerk en godsdienst afgeschetst in vijf predicatien (Harlingen, 1742), pp. 13–43Google Scholar; Honert, J. van den, ‘Academische redenvoering over de onderlinge verdraagsaamheid der christenen’, in idem, Derde versameling van heilige mengebtoffen (Leiden, 1747), p. 322, note (i).Google Scholar
16 ‘Eene voordragt, van het noodzaakelijke en heilzaame der bekeering van heidensche volken’ (1801), in: Gedenkschriften van het Nederlandsch Zendeling-Genootschap, 2 vols (Rotterdam, 1801-5), 1, pp. 57–99.
17 The discussion in the nineteenth-century Netherlands on the question of what comes first, civilization or the gospel, was analogous to the debate on the topic in England and elsewhere. The supporters of the Dutch Mission Society had to contend with critics who stressed that bringing civilization was a precondition to spreading the Word. In 1808 one critic even argued that it is impossible to supplant deep-rooted non-western cultures by western civilization, and tried to demonstrate that two centuries of missions had, in fact, changed very little; see Haafner, J., ‘Antwoord op de vraag: welken dienst hebben de zendelingen in de twee jongst-verlopene eeuwen aan de voortplanting des waren Christendoms gedaan, en welk eene vrucht heeft men van de tegenwoordig werkzame zendings-genootschappen ten dezen opzigte te wachten?’, in Verhandelingen, raakende den natuurlyken en geopenbaarden godsdienst, uitgegeeven door Teyler’s Godgeleerd Genootschap, 22 (Haarlem, 1807), pp. 1–296.Google Scholar
18 [Alphen, H. van], Predikt het Euangelium alien creaturen! Eene staatsmaxime in het rijk van waarheid en deugd. Vit de papieren van den Christelijken Spectator (Den Haag, 1801).Google Scholar
19 Cf. Bosch, Transforming Mission, pp. 285–345, on the various motifs within the ‘modern Enlightenment paradigm’, including the glory of God, Christian charity, culture, and Manifest Destiny; Boneschansker, Het Nederlandsch Zendeling Genootschap, pp. 53–9, on commiseration for pagans, eschatology, Christian charity, ecumenism, and civilization. The motive of charity is discussed broadly in Van den Berg, Constrained by Jesus’ Love.
20 Van Alphen, Predikt het Euangelium, pp. 1, 70-1, 171.