The 1814 memoir of missionary wife Harriet Newell was important for awakening the early nineteenth-century American Evangelical imagination on behalf of the burgeoning missionary cause. As young women ‘read the self’ and patterned their lives according to the literary examples they encountered, Newell's memoir used the language of ‘usefulness’ as a powerful theological plot. This article hopes to address the lacuna of scholarship regarding the theological aspects of Newell's writing and how it was those aspects in particular which subsequent generations venerated in the creation of missionary wife memoirs.

Between about 1850 and 1940 the Dutch Protestant missionary movement reached its ascendancy and set out to establish the kingdom of God in overseas territories. In doing so, mission became inextricably linked with Dutch imperialism. This article investigates this connection through the lens of cartography. Missionary maps of the world in general and the colonies in particular were produced and distributed in schools and churches to inform a Dutch audience about mission and to gather support. This article concludes that mission and imperialism were different strands that became increasing entangled towards the end of the nineteenth century.