Commerce and Christianity

'Commerce and Christianity': The Rise and Fall of a Nineteenth-Century Missionary
Slogan
Author(s): Andrew Porter
Source: The Historical Journal , Sep., 1985, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Sep., 1985), pp. 597-621
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2639141
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The Historical Journal, 28, 3 (I985), pp. 597-62 I
Printed in Great Britain
'COMMERCE AND CHRISTIANITY':

THE RISE AND FALL OF A
NINETEENTH-CENTURY MISSIONARY
SLOGAN *
ANDREW PORTER
King's College, London
"'What," some simple-minded man might say, "is the connection between
the Gospel and commerce?""'1 Speaking in Leeds in May i86o on behalf of
the Universities' Mission to Central Africa, Bishop Samuel Wilberforce was
characteristically robust with his rhetorical question and no less direct in
furnishing the answer. 'There is a great connection between them. In the first
place, there is little hope of promoting commerce in Africa, unless Christianity
is planted in it; and, in the next place, there is very little ground for hoping
that Christianity will be able to make its proper way unless we can establish
a lawful commerce in the country'. Britain's part in forging the connexion
was abundantly clear. It was
the intention of God to make it the interest of this, the most active, the most ingenious,
and the freest people on the face of the earth, to be up and doing, and to be in earnest
in the far more important work of spreading His Gospel throughout the world. Was
it written in vain by the prophet, 'and the ships of Tarshish first'? Was it not meant
that God had given us our commerce and our naval supremacy - that industry, that
patience which had enabled us to subdue the earth wherever we had settled.. .our
wealth, with our mutual trust in each other, that we might as the crowning work of
all these blessings, be the instruments of spreading the truths of the Gospel from one
end of the earth to the other?
Of course the answer was yes, for, as the Bishop argued, drawing examples
from the early history of the Christian church, the connexion rested on a dual
principle. 'The providence of God.. .has ordained that when Christianity is
placed in any great centre, it should be borne everywhere by the natural power
of commerce itself.. .commerce.. .is intended to carry, even to all the world,
the blessed message of salvation '.2 Just as commerce furthered Christianity,
so the reverse was also true. Christianity, according to Wilberforce, has 'the
* Earlier versions of this article were presented at the University of Sheffield, the University
of Aberdeen, and the Imperial History Seminar in the Institute of Historical Research, University
of London. I am very grateful to Dr Clyde Binfield and Professor Andrew Walls for their help
and hospitality, and to seminar members for their comments and criticisms, in particular Penny
Carson for information about sources.
I Samuel Wilberforce, Speeches on missions, ed. Rev. Henry Rowley (London, I874), p. 213.
2 Ibid. p. 212, speech at Leeds, 25 May i86o.
597

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5o8 ANDREW PORTER
effect of training the human race to a degree of excellence which it could never
attain in non-Christian countries', giving 'value to life', 'dignity to labour'
and 'security to possession', with the result that a Christian people would
tend to be 'a wealth-producing people, an exporting people and so a
commercial people'.3
In a notable recent article, Dr Brian Stanley has argued that the pattern
of thinking illustrated in these excerpts from Wilberforce's speech was very
common among mid-Victorians. The beliefs in God's providence, divine
contrivance, and benevolent design, the fundamental identity of duty and
self-interest, were, he suggested, the main components of a theological system
dominating evangelical reactions to the world about them. It was this set of
beliefs which 'enabled early Victorian Christians to regard the association of
commerce and Christianity as.. .a natural and harmonious alliance'. 'The
facility with which [they] coupled together commerce and Christianity is
explicable.. primarily in terms of the providentialism which dominated
nineteenth-century evangelical thought.'4 Stanley argues that these beliefs
were clearly expressed on numerous occasions in the i 840s and i 850s - at the
time of the Anglo-Chinese wars, in connexion with David Livingstone's
journey across Africa and his spell in Britain in I857, and above all as the
result of the Indian Mutiny. To avoid a repetition of the Mutiny, to make
the most of the new openings into China and Africa, to fulfil God's purpose
for the world, it was necessary that - in Livingstone's words - 'Those two
pioneers of civilization - Christianity and commerce - should ever be
inseparable'.5 The peak of missionary confidence and perhaps too of commercial
support for missions, the imperialism of the Gospel and of Free Trade, went
hand in hand.
This is an attractive argument, and Stanley has produced a wealth of
supporting illustration. Moreover, it is a type of analysis, one resting heavily
on assumptions about both the degree of autonomy to be attributed to ideas,
and the primacy of theological or intellectual beliefs in determining the
pattern of missionary action, which has been used elsewhere in writing about
late nineteenth-century missionary motivation.6 However, this article explores
the connexions which rnissionary supporters made between commerce and
Christianity over a longer period, and with more specific reference to
particular areas of missionary activity. It argues that if this is done, it becomes
increasingly difficult to accept an appeal to providentialist theology as the
principal factor in mid-Victorian arguments linking commerce with Chris-
3 Il)id.
4 B. Stanley, '"Commerce and Christianity": providenice theory, the missionary movement,
and the imperialism of free trade, I84.2-I 86o', Historical Jouirnal, 26 (I983), 72, 93.
5 Rev. William Monk (ed.), Dr Livingstone's Cambridge lectures (Cambridge, I858), pp. I9-2I;
Stanley, p. 93.
6 Andr-ew Porter, 'Cambridge, Keswick, and late nineteenith century attitudes to Africa',
Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, v (1976-7), 5-34; idem, 'Evangelical enthusiasm,
missionary motivationi, and West Africa in the late nineteenth cenitury: the career of G. W. Brooke',
ibid. vi (I977--8), 23-46.

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COMMERCE AND CHRISTIANITY' 599
tianity. The suggestion is made that far more significance ought to be attached
to the cumulative experience which societies acquired in the mission fields,
to the contrasting conditions under which missionaries had to work, and to
changes in the nature of British society. These produced marked variations
in the willingness of men to accept either the possibility or the necessity of
linking Christianity and commerce in any direct way, despite their common
theological persuasion.
The missionary movement of the late eighteenth century was not only the
product of the enthusiasm of the evangelical revival, but gathered strength
within a context provided by debate about the meaning of civilization and
especially the possibility of civilizing, or improving the conditions of,
non-European peoples. By the end of the century there was very little doubt
as to the actual characteristics of civilization; Britain's own culture and
institutions provided the yardstick. Already by the I 76os, Adam Smith had
established the progressive stages through which human societies advanced
to their culmination in 'the commercial age'. Under the influence of Scottish
writers, it became steadily more conventional to assume that with progress
in commerce came political sophistication. Development of the political arts
meant good government, order, and the liberty of individuals. Britain's
pre-eminence in commerce and industry produced moral benefits too, for these
pursuits provided 'bulwarks against passions, vice and weakness'.7 In matters
of faith and ethics, Christianity embodied the peak of religious perfection, a
point on which even Sydney Smith could speak for almost everyone. 'We
believe that we are in possession of a revealed religion; that we are exclusively
in possession of a revealed religion; and that the possession of that religion
can alone confer immortality, and best confer present happiness.'8 Such
pre-eminence and good fortune were very widely felt to create obligations to
less fortunate societies. By i8oo, there were few who took an uncritical or
broadly tolerant view of non-European societies, fewer still who admired their
achievements. The duty of benevolence was enjoined on both religious and
secular grounds: its fulfilment necessitated the civilization of the peoples of
Africa and Asia. There were, not unnaturally, sceptics and others who
ridiculed any such attempts. The general result, however, in the words of the
Eclectic Review, was that 'The melioration of the condition of the human race,
in every form, never employed so great a number of active and benevolent
minds, as at the present time. ..one directs his views to one object, and another
to another... but all unite in endeavours to augment the sum of human felicity.'9
7 P. J. Marshall and G. Williams, The great map of mankind: British perceptions of the zvorld in the
age of enlightenment (London, I982), pp. I 47, I 49.
8 Edinburgh Review, xiI (April I 8o8), 15 I-8 I, 'Publications respecting Indian Missions', p. I 70.
9 Eclectic Review, I (October I805), 762, in reviewing Indian recreations by the Rev. William
Tennant.

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6oo ANDREW PORTER
British law, commerce, good government, literature, education, were all it

seemed for export, and even those who ridiculed the missionary were likely
to approve his purpose. Sydney Smith roundly asserted the obligation to
disseminate Christianity. 'This religion.. teaches us the duties of general
benevolence: and how, under such a system, the conversion of Heathens can
be a matter of indifference, we profess not to be able to understand.'10
Consideration of how this process of civilization might be achieved began
to encourage closer attention to priorities, and to the ways in which aspects
of civilized society might be mutually supportive. The precise relations
between Christianity and commerce, evangelism and trade, might appear at
this point to become of logical importance to the discussion. Yet this was not
how contemporaries saw things. In debates about the policy to be adopted
towards India or Africa, or discussion of the best missionary methods, a
distinction frequently drawn was that between Christianity on the one hand
and civilization on the other. The questions to be answered were which
should be introduced first, and in what forms?
For some, concerned often with law or administration, there was no doubt
that the answer lay with civilization. Churchmen often reproached such
unsympathetic lay critics for making the 'common, but absurd mistake, that
the sublime doctrines of the gospel are not to be addressed to heathens, because
their untutored minds are not prepared to comprehend them'.11 Yet the right
approach to missions and other agencies of improvement also brought
divisions within the churches. Richard Watson, bishop of Llandaff, expected
little result from missionary work; rather it was through the 'extension of
science and commerce... [that] India will be christianized by the government
of Great Britain'.12 Civilization under government auspices would bring
Christianity in its train. Evangelicals often despaired at such opinions, as for
example when the Reverend William Tennant wrote hopefully of agriculture
and the level of manufactures in India but appeared 'to consider attempts
to convert the Hindoos, in their present state, as a fruitless effort'. 'Exceedingly
sorry we are, to perceive such sentiments drop from the pen of a clergyman',
complained one outraged reviewer.13 Even supporters of missions fell out over
the priority of civilization or Christianity. The experience of the Moravian
Brethren, for example, was used as ammunition on both sides of the
argument.14 Within the Presbyterian Church of Scotland a long-running
dispute was carried on between Moderates, such as Hill and Inglis, who
believed that a degree of 'civilization' was an inescapable prerequisite for
conversion, and evangelicals who trusted that the true and universal religion
10 Edinburgh Review, xii (April i 8o8), I 70.

11 Eclectic Review, I (December I805), 884, in reviewing African memoranda by Capt. P. Beaver.
12 R. Watson, Aniecdotes of the life of Richard IWVatson (London, I 8 I 7), p. 1 98.
13 Eclectic Review, i (December i 805), 896.
14 Edinburgh Review, xxi (February I 8 I 3), 64-6, in reviewing Travels into Southernl Africa by Henry
Lichtenstein; Rev. W. Hanna, Memoirs of the life and writings of Thomas Chalmers (4 vols., Edinburgh,
i849-52), I, 390-2.

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'COMMERCE AND CHRISTIANITY' 6oi
could be grasped by human beings who were everywhere the same. After his
experience of contrasting Scottish parishes, Thomas Chalmers was convinced
that 'There is no controverting the existence of a moral sense in the rudest
of barbarians.. .in all countries you have a ground upon which you can
enter.'15 Nevertheless, even while many evangelicals tended to argue that
Christianity could perfectly well precede civilization, there was certainly no
clear feeling that it should necessarily do so.
These discussions, in so far as Christians were involved, took place within
the framework of providentialist theology. This was the world of Bishop
Butler's Analogy, Archdeacon Paley's Evidences of Christianity, and William
Wilberforce's Practical view of religion. Yet commerce and Christianity were
regarded as essentially separate issues, and were not linked together in the way
that was to become common fifty years later. Commerce, particularly foreign
trade, was a fundamental characteristic of a civilized society, but 'civilization'
which lay at the centre of the general concern was felt both to comprise far
more than commercial activity and to be clearly distinguishable from
Christianity. The understanding of commerce above all as the exchange of
primary produce or raw materials for manufactures, and the identification
of such a system of exchange as a prime factor in the dissemination and support
of Christianity among non-Europeans, were not features of late eighteenth-
and early nineteenth-century debates about evangelization. In I 792 the
Baptist missionary William Carey was quite as struck by Isaiah's reference
to 'the ships of Tarshish' as was Samuel Wilberforce, but he saw far less
immediate relevance in it. 'This seems to imply that in the time of the glorious
increase of the church, in the latter days, (of which the whole chapter is
undoubtedly a prophecy,) commerce shall subserve the spread of the
gospel.. navigation, especially that which is commercial, shall be the means of
carrying on the work of God...'"6 For the time being, however, Carey saw
in the adventurousness of the trader evidence that heathen territories were
closer than one might think, and a reproof to Christians who nevertheless
preferred to turn their backs on the wider world, rather than an auxiliary
for the contemporary evangelist.17 So too, newly founded missionary societies
like the London Missionary Society and the Church Missionary Society were
at pains to dissociate themselves as much from commercial activity as from
any involvement in 'political' matters.18 To appreciate more fully some of the
reasons for this, it is useful to look at the examples of India and Sierra Leone
as important subjects of evangelical concern.
15 W. J. Roxborough, 'Thomas Chalmers and the mission of the Church with special reference
to the rise of the missionary movement in Scotland' (Aberdeen, Ph.D. thesis, 1978), pp. 307, 359.
16 William Carey, An enquiry into the obligations of Christians, to use meansfor the conversion of the heathens
(Leicester, 1792), p. 68. The biblical reference is to Isaiah, ch. lx, verse 9.
17 Ibid. pp. 67, 81-2.
18 David Bogue, 'Objections against a mission to the heathen, stated and considered', Sermons
preached in London at theformation of the missionary society (London, 1795), pp. 132-3; the published
Instructions of the committee of the Church Missionary Society and Proceedings of the Church Missionary Society
when missionaries left for the field are full of warnings on these questions.

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602 ANDREW PORTER
II
On Indian questions the views of Charles Grant, first a servant and later
director of the East India Company, may stand for many. He seems always
to have accepted the maxim that benevolence, whether in the promotion of
good government or in fair trading, brought reflex benefits. Following his
conversion in i 776, his faith in the company as an agent of improvement and
civilization continued to grow; but so too did his conviction that good laws
and decent customs were of no use without the integrity and moral discipline
which Christianity alone could produce in those who directed or lived under
the company's administration. He became increasingly critical of the company's
past policies on the grounds that the value of its work had been totally
undermined by its lack of concern with Christian teaching even for its own
employees, and its effective prohibition of missionary activity among Muslims
and Hindus. By I792 Grant was clear in his own mind that the civilization
and reformation of Indian society was not only necessary, but entailed nothing
less than the steady introduction of the whole of Western learning.19 He pressed
increasingly for the dissemination of Christianity, notjust as a body of doctrine
or collection of sublime truths, but as the essential ingredient required to bind
western ways and culture together. His strategy was education, his medium
the English language, and missionaries his agents. Missionaries he also
defended not for any contribution which they might make to economic
advance, but for their cultivation of the sense of community and common
values between rulers and ruled: nothing could do more to secure Britain's
government in India. Grant wholeheartedly opposed the expansion of
commerce which many proposed to achieve by opening India to all traders.
Preservation of the East India Company's monopoly, the restriction of trade,
was essential, for it supported the company's administrative structure, the only
agency capable of encouraging religion and so of changing India for the better.
He was prepared to admit that 'moral improvement would lead to economic
improvement and help our commerce', but trade in any direct sense was
irrelevant to the propagation of his faith.20 In his mind conversion had almost,
one might say, driven out trade.
Why did evangelicals feel commerce of so little importance to their work
in India? If Grant were alone in his views he might be dismissed as someone
concerned simply to reconcile his religious opinions with a vested interest in
the company's own chances of profit. His suggestion that missionaries
contributed to security might be written off as another instance of the facility
with which evangelicals and humanitarians attempted to win wide support
19 Charles Grant, Observations on the state of society among the Asiatic subjects of Gr-eat Britain, wri
in I792, printed in P.P. I83I-2, VIII (734), Repor-tfr-om the select comminittee on the affairs of the
India Comnpany, General Appendix I.
20 A. T. Embree, Charles Grant and British r-ule in India (London, I963), pp. 47, i i8, I42-4, and
passim; Grant, Observations, p. 88.

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'COMMERCE AND CHRISTIANITY 603
by clairning that their policies served fundamental national interests.21 In fact

his arguments were widely representative, and carried conviction because they
rested on both historical fact and present experience. This was demonstrated
by the debates in i8I3 on the renewal of the East India Company's charter
and the admission of missionaries to India.
Evangelicals who pressed for changes in the charter were convinced that
commerce as such had done nothing to improve India, even if it appeared
that the company itself had been reformed since the supposedly rapacious days
of the mid-eighteenth century. The past record of trading activity hardly
suggested a latent capacity for supporting effective evangelism. It is, after all,
very noticeable that while supporters of missions were happy to see pressure
from all sides put on the company to change its ways, they avoided aligning
themselves with free traders anxious to open India to all and sundry.22 Many
evangelicals seem to have been ready to accept the company's own argument
that, while there might be honourable traders, nevertheless 'far the greater
number would be adventurers of desperate or needy circumstances'.23
Supporters of the admission of missionaries and more clerics were consequently
at pains to impress on parliament by contrast their own sobriety and orderly
intentions. For example, 'all the ministers and licentiates [of the Church of
Scotland] have received a regular university education, which qualifies them
both for teaching schools, and for performing the services of religion, and
which at the same time affords a presumption in favour of their discretion
and the propriety of their conduct'.24 Programmes of action were to be
similarly restrained. The London Missionary Society stated its intention 'to
rely for their success upon the divine blessing attending a candid statement
of the evidences which sustain the Christian religion, of the sacred doctrines,
promises and precepts of which it principally consists, and on their exemplary
and blameless lives, attended by deeds of kindness and good-will to the
natives'.25 William Wilberforce emphasized the great importance of the
general education and diffusion of knowledge which missionaries would also
provide. These he saw as the essential counterpart of the religious instruction
in that they broadened the native mind and placed local superstitions in a
different light. The combination of reason and truth, enlightenment and
Christian mission, would be irresistible: 'the natives of Hindostan.. would,
in short, become Christians, if I may so express myself, without knowing it'.26
It might be objected that these were just arguments for the occasion. It is
21 Cf. the argument in R. T. Anstey, The Atlantic slave trade and British abolition, I760-
(London, I975), ch. I4; and Thomas Chalmers, The uitility of missions ascertained by exper-ience
edn, Edinburgh, i8i6), p. I9.
22 See the petitions from supporters of missionaries in I 8I 3, Parliamentary Debates, xxv a
23 Parliamentary Debates, XXVI, 453, 3I May I8I3, speech by Grant.
24 Ibid. xxv, I092-3, 28 April I8I3, Petition of elders and ministers of the provincial synod
of Glasgow.
25 Ibid. 8 I 7-I 8, I 4 April I 8 I 3, petition.
26 Ibid. xxvi, 832-3, 22 June I813-

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604 ANDREW PORTER
of course true that missionaries suffered from an especially bad press early in
the nineteenth century. Sydney Smith's reference to 'little detachments of
maniacs... benefiting us much more by their absence than the Hindoos by their
advice' was only remarkable in being more stylish than the general run of
abuse.27 Missionaries certainly needed to defend their own character and the
reasonableness of their brand of religion. Moreover, uncertainty as to the
outcome of the Charter revision compelled evangelicals to avoid arguments
which might antagonize trading interests on either side. Representations in
favour of an educational strategy were arguably calculated to do both.
However, there was more to this distancing of Christianity and the
missionary cause from commerce than either an historical assessment of India's
progress or calculations of immediate political expediency. Although practical
caution may have prompted supporters of missions to India to present their
case in ways which played down links between the expansion of commerce
and that of Christianity, even on occasions when connexions were made it was
with a view to assisting or justifying the missionary presence rather than
drawing out any direct instrumental connexion between conversion and
economic pursuits.28 Wilberforce himself called reluctantly for an alliance with
commercial interests in order to destroy the restrictive powers of the East India
Company, not because he expected the diffusion of Christianity to be assisted
by freer trade.29 In fact the case had gone against any such link for two main
reasons. On the one hand, circumstances were such that prospects for the
expansion of British trade with India were widely regarded as poor or even
non-existent. On the other, few who believed in a rosy commercial future saw
in the introduction of Christianity a sufficient condition for growth: India's
stunted development was the product of the East India Company's monopoly,
and only its abolition could open the way for expansion. It was thus possible
for both commercial pessimists and optimists to believe that Christianity and
civilization might flourish apart from commerce, and that the best means of
promoting Christianity were independent of trade.
Lord Teignmouth, for example, had no doubt that entry for missionaries
into the company's territory was desirable, that conversion was possible, and
that the introduction of Christianity 'would tend to the improvement of [the
Hindus'] civil condition'. But when asked if an improved civil and moral
condition 'would tend to increase their consumption of the various manu-
factures of their own or of any other country', he was certain it would not.30
27 Edinburgh Review, xii (April I8o8), I79-80; cf. Parliamentary Register, XVIII, 685, I I June I802,
speech by General Gascoyne on Sierra Leone.
28 Claudius Buchanan at the C.M.S. Anniversary Meeting, i8io, quLoted in G. Bearce, British
attitudes towards India, I784-i858 (Oxford, I96I), p. 82; Grant in his Observations, talking of the
diffusion of 'our religion and knowledge' as 'the noblest species of conquest', added 'and
wherever, we may venture to say, our principles and language are introduced, ouLr commerce
will follow.', P.P. I83I-2, VIII (734), General Appendix I, p. 88.
29 R. I. Wilberforce and S. Wilberforce, The life of William Wilberforce (5 vols., London, I838),
IV, I4, diary entry, I4 February I8I2.
30 P.P. I8 I2-I3, VII I8. Lord Teignmouth, previously SirJohn Shore, governor-general in India,
I793-8, servant of the East India Company I769-89, and member of the Board of Control
I807-28.

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COMMERCE AND CHRISTIANITY 605
He and many others who gave evidence to the parliamentary inquiry into the
affairs of the East India Company argued that the reason for the limited trade
of India and the company's own losses lay chiefly in the poverty of Indians,
their lack of purchasing power, and the absence of any actual need for
European goods.31 Economic facts of life rather than the religious and moral
state of India's inhabitants governed the levels of trade.
If the promotion of Christianity would not further trade, neither did
expanding trade promise or depend on religious conversion. Grenville put the
anti-monopolist view that trade once opened would perpetuate itself unaided.
By commerce, commerce will increase, and industry by industry. So it has ever

happened, and the great Creator of the world has not exempted India from this
common law of our nature. The supply, first following the demand, will soon extend
it. By new facilities new wants and new desires will be produced. And neither climate
nor religion, nor long established habits, no, nor even poverty itself, the greatest of
all present obstacles, will ultimately refuse the benefits of such an intercourse to the
native population of that empire. They will derive from the extension of commerce,
as every other people has uniformly derived from it, new comforts and new
conveniences of life, new incitements to industry, and new enjoyments in just reward
of increased activity and enterprize.32
In his view neither Hinduism nor Islam were barriers to commerce, and such
obstacles as existed required not a religious transformation but the divorce
of secular sovereignty from commercial monopoly.
That freer trade had little to offer the evangelicals seemed to be further
confirmed by first-hand experience. Even the most enthusiastic Baptists had
found themselves drawn rapidly into teaching and the scholarly work of
translation and publishing. Moreover, such economic activities as they became
involved in seem to have had little connexion with trade. Their concern was
overwhelmingly with poor relief, and the encouragement of subsistence
through limited agricultural improvements.33 It is therefore not surprising to
find evangelicals, well before the great debate on the East India Company in
I813, firmly convinced as to the only worthwhile methods. Discussing two
of a series of dissertations 'on the best Means of Civilizing the Subjects of the
British Empire in India, and of diffusing the light of the Christian Religion
throughout the Eastern World', the Eclectic Review was gratified 'that both
the present writers, though of different national establishments, concur... in the
opinion we formerly intimated, that it is from the united measures of
circulating the scriptures, and of employing suitable missionaries, [by which
was meant well-trained educated men] that we most reasonably may hope
for the advancement of Christianity in the Eastern World'.34 Preaching and
31 Parliamentary Debates, xxv, 493-500, 527-32, 648-56, April I8I3, evidence of Thomas Graham,
and Major-Gen. Alexander Kyd; ibid. XXVI, 436, May I813, evidenlce of Mr Bruce.
32 Ibid. xxv, 739-40, April I8I3.
33 E. D. Potts, British Baptist missionaries inl India, i793-i837 (Cambridge, I967), pp. 70-4;
K. Ingham, Reformers in India, i793-i833: ail accozunt of the work of C/lristian inzssionaries oil behalf
of social reform (Cambridge, I 956).
34 Eclectic Review, ii (July i8o6), 536.

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606 ANDREW PORTER
teaching were the essential means; their effectiveness was to be increased by

improving their quality and volume, not by linking them up with economic
agencies. The British and Foreign Bible Society, supported strongly by Grant,
Teignmouth, and Wilberforce, and the Religious Tract Society, were the
purest expression of contemporary missionary strategies.35
III
In the case of Sierra Leone, despite the direct commercial interest and
missionary concern of its evangelical promoters, a similar pattern of attitudes
can be discerned: there emerged no instrumental connexion between commerce
and Christianity. After the failure of Granville Sharpe's project for resettling
poor blacks in a self-sufficient self-governing 'Province of Freedom', the Sierra
Leone Company was founded in I 790.36 Taking over Sharpe's concession, its
object was 'the Introduction of Civilization into Africa'.37 This the Company
expected to achieve by the establishment of a trading settlement handling
tropical produce; this would build up links with neighbouring tribes and serve
as an example to them by its own industry, peace and prosperity. Persuasion
by rational example would contribute to the abolition of the slave trade, the
root cause of Africa's barbarity.
Civilization with the assistance of 'legitimate' trade, however, did not
involve the intimate linking of commerce and Christianity which the
Company's association with the Clapham Sect might lead one to expect.
Others have noted how 'the Sierra Leone Company began with hardly any
thought about the possible uses of either education or missionary work'.38 In
the early days of the venture there were perhaps good reasons for this. It was
mounted hastily, in part to rescue the earlier scheme, and Nova Scotian blacks,
supposedly already educated Christians, were brought in. The missionary
movement itself was only just beginning. The accent on legitimate trade may
have owed more than anything to domestic political necessity: Wilberforce
and his friends found in that idea something with which to counter the
pro-slavery lobby's arguments that slavery was ineradicably rooted in African
conditions, and abolition would seriously damage Britain's interests.39 How-
ever, one has to explain not just the start of the company, but the persistence
of this predominant concern with the secular aspects of civilization through-
out the company's life.
35 As examples of this commonly held view, Wilberforce, Life, iv, III, William Wilberforce to
Lord Wellesley, 6 April I8I3; and Henry Martyn, Sermons (Calcutta, I822), no. xx, on the British
and Foreign Bible Society.
36 P. D. Curtin, The image of Africa: British ideas and action, I780-i850 (London, I965), chs. 4-5;
Christopher Fyfe, A history of Sierra Leone (Oxford, I962), p. 94; J. Peterson, Province offreedom:
a history of Sierra Leone, I787-i870 (London, I969), ch. I.
37 P.P. I8o I-2, II (339), Report from the coin,nittee on the petition of the court of directors of the Sierra
Leone Company, p. 7.
38 Curtin,; Image of Africa, p. 262.
39 Ibid., and pp. I05-7; R. A. Austen and W. D. Smith, 'Images of Africa and British slave
trade abolition: the transition to an imperialist ideology', African Historical Stuzdies, II (I969).

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'COMMERCE AND CHRISTIANITY' 607
The emphasis certainly owed a lot to bitter experience, not least of

recalcitrant colonists and intractable physical conditions. Parliamentary
defenders of the Company in I802 made much of claims to some educational
progress. Castlereagh mentioned details, and Henry Thornton, the Company's
chairman, appealed to the 'wisest legislators and the most celebrated writers
[who] agreed in this position, that the introduction of knowledge must ever
precede civilization'. Directors in submissions to the parliamentary Select
Committee examining their affairs observed that it 'need scarcely be remarked
how much Civilization is forwarded by promoting regular Industry and good
Order, by affording complete Protection, by facilitating the fair Acquisition
of Property, and by securing the quiet enjoyment of legitimate Influence and
Power'.40 But these were piecemeal gains. By I807, Thornton could claim no
more than to have proved what he had professed to believe when setting up
the company nearly twenty years before, 'the practicability of civilizing
Africa'.41
Thornton's explanation of his conviction is worth noting.42 'What were the
great impediments to the improvements of a country?', he asked his
parliamentary audience. 'Either something, first, in the climate; or, secondly,
in the soil; or, thirdly, in the character of the inhabitants.' He then commented
on each to show that in 'no one of these respects was there any insuperable
obstacle to civlization'. Not only was the creation of an expanding trade
possible: thanks to the Company, there now also existed 'a body of colonists
on the coasts of Africa, speaking the English language, attached to the English
people, advancing in civilization and morals, and increasing in numbers'.
From both the trade and the colonists, Britain might expect 'substantial
advantages'.
Here, mention of Christianity and the role of conversion were notable by
their absence. Despite the wish of the Company's supporters to introduce
'among the natives... .the blessings of religion',43 there was no suggestion either
that hopes for commerce rested on the establishment of Christianity or that
commerce would in any way be the vehicle for religious progress. In India
many evangelicals had either ignored or been frankly sceptical about
commercial prospects. In Sierra Leone, where it was impossible to ignore the
future of legitimate trade, they were also apparently convinced of its potential.
Yet there was still no marriage of trade with religion, in either theory or
practice. Most graphically illustrative of the separation was the complete
removal from Sierra Leone of the sons of local notables: for their education
and religious instruction they were brought to board beside Clapham
Common.44 Such missionary activity as there was in Sierra Leone (the CMS
had been at work since I 799 and the Wesleyans entered later in i 8 I)
followed models familiar in India. Where possible the village school, a range
40 Parliamentary Register, XVIII, 683-7, I I June I802; P.P. I80I-2, II (339), 22.
41 Cobbett's Parliamentary Debates, ix, I 04, 29 July I 807.
42 Ibid. I003-5-
43 Parliamentary Register, xviii, 686-7, I I June I802, Henry Thornton.
44 P.P. I80I-2, II (339), 30-I, evidence of William Greaves.

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6o8 ANDREW PORTER
of English learning, religious

mode; at a higher level, where Bishop's College, Calcutta, led the way, the
Fourah Bay Institution followed.
IV
Despite the existence in all essentials of a theological framework which early

evangelicals were to share with their mid-nineteenth-century successors, these
were the responses to problems of missionary expansion from a world which
in other respects was still very different. Forging a link between expanding
commerce and conversion to Christianity was later to be proved possible within
a providentialist system of reference. Indeed, one of the beauties of such a
system was that, just as under God all things were possible, so, given the
assumptions of benevolent purpose and overall design, all things were in fact
interdependent and connected. The historian, however, has to explain not so
much the logical possibilities inherent in the system of belief, as the preference
of one generation of evangelicals for certain connexions rather than others.
Inevitably a range of circumstances is important here. In emphasizing the
overriding importance of teaching, literacy, and the diffusion of the Scriptures,
the early missionary movement, its enthusiasm notwithstanding, was drawing
heavily on the rationalist traditions of eighteenth-century thought in matters
other than its theology. In their reluctance to link Christianity with the
commerce which it was generally agreed heralded a major advance in
civilization, early evangelicals implicitly denied that Christianity and a
particular culture necessarily went hand in hand. Alongside their individualistic
understanding of conversion and religious commitment, the universality of
reason and conscience were no less impressive than the concept of civilization
and the idea of progress towards it by historical stages. In the debate about
civilization, Christianity was frequently placed separately and on one side.
Evangelicals were often involved in that debate and tended to preserve the
separation, convinced that Christianity was universally acceptable and
brought benefits to any society which embraced it. They continued to think
that Christianity could be introduced by universally applicable methods,
preaching and education. When the L.M.S. opened their Missionary Academy
at Hoxton, they did so with the conviction that 'Education and the press are
the two great means, which in connection with preaching, will bring about
the moral revolution of the world'.45 Their belief in the efficacy of these
methods reflected not only the state of contemporary knowledge concerning
non-European societies, but also observations of their own. At the beginning
of the nineteenth century Britain was still a society where rank and hierarchy
were important, where many thought that while a man might rise, most were
still born to their station. Where no one class yet regarded itself as the national
45 J. A. James, Missionary prospects: a sermon the substance of which was delivered in Hoxton
Chapel.. .826, at the opening of Hoxton College as a missionary academy (Birmingham, I 826), p. 24.

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'COMMERCE AND CHRISTIANITY 609
repository of universal virtues, it was natural to reflect that 'here, and

everywhere, the success of the Gospel is, and always has been, greater among
the lower and middling classes of society than among the rich, noble and wise'.
For the evangelical, concerned as often as not with the reformation of manners
and extirpation of vice at all levels of society at home as well as with missions
overseas, the conclusion was unavoidable: although 'a high state of civilization
presents advantages for the introduction of Christianity, it may.. .be attended
with disadvantages which over-balance them'.46 In such a world, commercial
advance and religious conversion were not easily linked.
One implication of the argument so far is that as changes took place in the
mission field, as evangelical experience of missionary problems grew, and as
socio-economic circumstances altered at home, so the evangelical formulation
of the link between civilization and Christianity, Christianity and commerce,
would also change. Certainly this seems to have happened, for despite the
persistent framework of evangelical theology, shifts in thinking are clearly
discernible in the I82os. Although at first these were often unsystematic,
thinking crystallized rapidly in the following decade, and on two particular
occasions in the I830s missionary leaders were not only provided with the
opportunity but were self-confident enough to spell out their views at length.
In outline, missionary attitudes to India changed least of all. Notwithstanding
the expansion of British commerce after i8I 3 and the further expectations of
growth when the East India Company's monopoly of the China trade was
ended in I833, the educational strategy remained fashionable. Commercial
activity seemed to bear no relation to successful conversion, and the total
numbers of converts remained very small. It therefore seemed more rational
to alter the content of the education missionaries provided. The curriculum
was progressively broadened to link Christianity more closely with western
learning; under the influence of Alexander Duff, the emphasis on higher
education was increased in the hope of converting Brahmins, so producing
able native agents with the intention of undermining Indian religions from
the top.
Elsewhere, different conditions prompted alternative approaches. In both
the British West Indies and Cape Colony, missionaries became steadily more
aware of the extent to which the development of colonial rule had promoted
conditions of subordination for large numbers of non-Europeans which were
incompatible with a truly Christian existence. Not only were the activities of
missionaries themselves severely restricted by colonial officials, white settler
farmers, and planter-dominated assemblies. Conditions of life for slaves or for
the notionally free but hardly less restricted Khoikhoi labourers of the Cape
were such as to deprive them of both opportunities to hear the Gospel and
the freedom or liberty of choice essential to practical Christian morality. Under
46 Eclectic Review, ii (May i8o6), 364.

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6io ANDREW PORTER
such conditions, many missionaries' thoughts turned to prescriptions of

political and economic change.
Where such alternatives as already existed - like the hunting or peripatetic
pastoralism still found in parts of the Cape - seemed hardly more conducive
to conversion than labour for white masters, missionaries began openly to
support the causes of slave emancipation, legal protection for free labour, and
recognition of rights to the ownership of land. They thus came to favour the
acquisition of property, the accumulation of capital, and the security of a
settled existence for non-Europeans as essential supports to an independent
Christian way of life. At the Cape, for example, it was the progress of their
settlement at Bethelsdorp which brought home to L.M.S. missionaries the links
between encouraging the Khoikhoi as both producers and consumers deeply
involved in the commercial life of the colony, and the advance of Christianity.47
The development of other stations from the i 820S onwards - Griqua Town,
Philipolis, and finally the Kat River Settlement - only seemed to confirm the
possibilities inherent in an alliance of commerce and Christianity.48
For missionaries in the field, however, commerce could also have other
connexions with successful efforts at conversion. This was perhaps most
forcefully illustrated in another area of L.M.S. activity, the Pacific. There,
the perennial complaints by missionaries about inadequate salaries were
exacerbated by extreme isolation, highly irregular contact with the outside
world, and desperate shortages of supplies. Trade in these circumstances
became essential to subsistence. While it would appear that for some
missionaries like George Pritchard or John Williams, 'trading acquired a
virtue of its own' and even diverted them from missionary effort, others again
appreciated the extent to which commerce also widened their influence and
a trading ship extended their geographical range.49
This drawing together of Christianity and commerce was further encouraged
by the general necessities of missionary strategy and finance as perceived from
societies' headquarters in London. The L.M.S. directors were both anxious
to press on with the proliferation of mission stations 'from the Eastern to the
Western Shore of Africa', and acutely concerned at the society's dire financial
position. A settlement like Bethelsdorp offered a solution to both problems:
growing prosperity and the accumulation of wealth through involvement in
industry and commerce would enable its inhabitants 'to contribute towards
47 For criticisms of a 'wandering' existence as inimical to Christianity, The jozurnials of the Rev.
T. L. Hodgson, missionary to the Seleka-Rolong and the Griqzuas, i82i-3i, ed. R. L. Cope gJohannesburg,
I977), pp. 66, 76; notes by DrJohn Philip, ? i840, Philip papers, Rhodes House Library, Oxford,
MSS Afr. s. 2I9C, fo. 59I ;James Read (L.M.S. missionary) to SirJohn Cradock (governor, Cape
of Good Hope), 23 Jan. i8I2, Council for World Mission Archive, School of Oriental and African
Studies, London (hereafter L.M.S.) 5/i/B/I 2.
48 The Kitchingman papers: missionary letters andjozurnals, 1817 to i848, fromn the Brenthiurst collection,
johannesburg, ed. Basil Le Cordeur and Christopher Saunders Johainnesburg, I976), pp. I29-34,
I38-45, I56-9.
49 Niel Gunson, Messengers of grace: evangelical miiissionaries in the Sozuth Seas, I797-i860 (Melbouirin
I978), pp. I I5-2 I, I36; John Williams, A narrative of missionary enterprises in the Sozuth Sea Islan
(London, I837).

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COMMERCE AND CHRISTIANITY 6I I
the expense of the Mission and the support of the Missionaries', thus freeing
metropolitan resources for employment elsewhere.50 Before long the London
directors were asking the explicit question 'how far is it right to spend money
on stations which cannot be made productive' ?51
As evidence of the cumulative effect of these piecemeal changes occurring
over some twenty-five years, the arguments developed by evangelicals in
testimony to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Aborigines in 1836-7
are of particular significance. This committee was set up to 'consider what
Measures ought be adopted with regard to the NATIVE INHABITANTS
of Countries where BRITISH SETTLEMENTS are made, and to the
neighbouring Tribes, in order to secure to them the due observance ofJustice
and the protection of their Rights; to promote the spread of Civilization among
them, and to lead them to the peaceful and voluntary reception of the Christian
Religion'.52 Among those giving evidence were the secretaries of the three
principal missionary societies, the C.M.S., the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary
Society, and the L.M.S., who drew on their acquaintance with a wide range
of British settler communities and non-European societies in South Africa, New
Zealand, North America, and the South Seas.53
Whatever reservations had existed about European activity overseas at the
end of the eighteenth century had been multiplied and confirmed. Coates,
Beecham, and Ellis for the missionary societies were unanimous that 'the effect
of European intercourse has been, upon the whole, a calamity on the heathen
and savage nations', tending 'to prevent the spread of civilization, education,
commerce and Christianity'.54 In these circumstances, it is scarcely surprising
that the eighteenth-century question, as to introducing first either Christianity
or civilization, they answered unequivocally by asserting that Christianity
both could and should pave the way.55
Although these statements can be seen as more authoritative confirmations
of older views, further evidence to the committee focused on the question of
how conflict was to be minimised, and shows missionary arguments beginning
to take a turn which points clearly in the direction of Livingstone's and
Wilberforce's views of i86o. Here the influence of South African and New
Zealand examples was very strong, and it emerged that appropriation of native
lands and attempts to control their labour were the greatest source of
grievance.56 Protection of native possessions and working conditions were felt
50 L.M.S. directors toJames Read, April I8I2, L.M.S. 5/I/D/25.

5' L.M.S. directors toJohn Philip, 9 April I8I9, Philip papers, MSS Afr. S.2I6, fo. 70.
52 P.P. I836, VII (538), and P.P. I837, VII (425), contain the reports and proceedings of the select
committee.
53 See D. Coates, John Beecham and William Ellis, Christianity the mneans of civilization (London,
I837), in which the missionary evidence was also published for a wider audience.
54 P.P. I836, VII (538), Aborigines (British settlements): reportfrom the select committee, qq. 4329-43;
P.P. I837, VII (425), Reportfrom the select committee on aborigines (British settlements), p. 74.
55 P.P. I836, VII (538), qq. 4376, 4385-6.
56 T. F. Buxton papers, Rhodes House Library, Oxford; G. R. Mellor, British imperial trusteeship,
I783-I850 (London, I95I), ch. 7; W. M. Macmillan, The Cape colour question: a historical survey
21 HIS 28

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612 ANDREW PORTER
to require the strengthening of colonial governors' powers, a considerable

increase in the numbers of carefully chosen colonial officials, the extension of
colonial jurisdiction beyond the formal frontiers, and official backing for
missionaries.57 This was essentially the programme which some missionaries
in local settings, like Dr John Philip at the Cape, had pressed for since the
i820S.58 Like Philip before them, both witnesses and Committee members
realized that such measures, by promoting native security and independence,
would in many respects reduce the contact between natives and colonizers; on
the other hand, they argued, commercial contacts could be expected to
increase.59 Arguments in favour of official support for missionaries were put
forward not only because their presence had minimized the problems of
contact between aborigines and settlers, but because it was expected to
promote trade to a degree impossible without them.60 If, as these proposals
were designed to ensure, 'commerce were conducted on truly Christian
principles [it] might be made the means of communicating the most
substantial benefits to the different aboriginal nations of the world'.6'
Commerce between whites and blacks, then seen as a relationship of equal
exchange, held out more promise for all than white agriculture with black
labour.62
Discussion of the results expected from this prior introduction of Christianity
led in a similar direction. Although in practice Christianity should be first on
the scene, its effects were such that 'the moment Christian principle begins
to bear upon the mind of man, from that moment his condition as a civilized
being advances, and hence Christianity and civilization advance pari passu'.63
Consideration of the civilization which 'invariably followed' Christianity64
began to reveal further tendencies in evangelical thinking, namely the adop-
tion of a more restricted definition of 'true' civilization and a stress on its
commercial aspects. If the hallmarks of civilization could be defined as broadly
as ever, it was now felt perfectly possible for a people to possess most of them
'and at the same time [be] little better than savages'.65 Not only was a high
degree of culture without Christianity to be dismissed as barbarism; it was
(London, I 92 7), chs. I 0- I 3; idem, Bantu, Boer, and Briton: the makting of the South African native probl
(Oxford, I963, rev. edn), pp. I87-90.
57 P.P. I836, vii (538), qq. 4350, 4375, and passim.
58 J. Philip, Researches in South Africa (2 vols., London, I828), especially I, ch. x, and II, 355-6I;
Macmillan, Cape coloured question. For evidence of Philip's ow~n change of views under the impact
of experience in the field, compare Rev. John Philip, Necessity of divine influence: a sermon preached
before the Missionary Society...May I2, 1813 (London, I8I3), with views of I820-2, Philip papers,
MSS Afr. S.2I6, fos. 9I, I43.
59 P.P. I837, VII (425), Report.
60 P.P. I836, vii (538), qq- 4345-7-
61 Ibid q. 4367.
62 Kitchingman papers, p. 272; Philip to Miss Buxton, 15 March I832, Philip papers, MSS Afr.
S.2i9B, fo. 328.
63 P.P. I836, vii (538), q- 4383-
64 Ibid. qq. 446, 4397.
65 Ibid. qq- 44I2, 4376, 4385-

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'COMMERCE AND CHRISTIANITY' 613
becoming clearer that Christianity too required the right cultural underpinning.
After the guarantee of peace, 'It is also necessary... to their moral and religious
improvement, to encourage industry and commerce.' Here again was an
opening for the British government to act as an essential complement to the
missionary societies: it should send out 'individuals to promote agriculture
and manufactures among uncivilized tribes on the borders of our colonies'.
That done, it 'would not be perhaps too much for a government standing in
the position which the British Government does, to afford to people in such
circumstances every facility and encouragement in commerce which the
remission of... duties would afford'.66 Freer trade would thus assist 'moral and
religious' transformation. The introduction of Christianity and 'social
improvement' was itself referred to not only in an older language which still
spoke of compassion or benevolence and atonement for wrong, but also now
as 'a fair remuneration for the loss of their lands', in other words in the
language of contract and exchange.67
The proceedings of the Aborigines Committee suggest that for evangelicals
experience had confirmed the promotion of a system of trading relations as
the only way of organizing mutually beneficial contact between settlers and
natives. Trade could be expected to follow right on the heels of Christianity
anid in such circumstances could be seen as a necessary support. Outside the
Committee Room, missionary society policy was being developed to give effect
to this conviction. Responding at last to suggestions from their missionaries
in the Pacific, the L.M.S. and the Wesleyans were sanctioning the extension
of those local developments which tied the expansion of Christianity more
closely to trade.68 In areas outside the Aborigines Committee's brief,
experience also prompted the same equation of commerce and Christianity.
The extent of the slave trade in West Africa was continuing to alarm
humanitarians. Sierra Leone had failed to set the hoped-for example. Britain's
slave trade squadron on the coast, diplomatic negotiations with European
powers, treaties with local African rulers, had all made little impact; as a result,
it was said, Christianity 'had made but feeble inroads'. On the other hand,
'were this obstacle removed' by a successful promotion of legitimate trade,
'Africa would present the finest field for the labours of Christian missionaries
which the world has yet seen'. 69
The writer of these words was T. F. Buxton, leading humanitarian,
chairman of the Aborigines Committee, and chief spokesman for the
anti-slavery movement. In the literature touching his career, Buxton's
preoccupation with that Committee through at least two parliamentary
sessions (I836-7) has been seen as little more than a diversion from the
66 Ibid. q. 4375.
67 Ibid. q. 4367. In later years, commercial language and analogies were still more consciously
developed by commentators: Rev. James Johnston (ed.), Repost of the centenary conference on the
protestant missions of the world (2 vols., London,i888), pp. I I I-I2.
66 Gunson, pp. I I5-I9, I 32-6, and ch. I4, 'The gospel of civilization'.
69 T. F. Buxton, The African slave trade (London, i83q, 2nd edn), pp. xi-xii.
21-2

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6I4 ANDREW PORTER
anti-slavery cause. Attention has been paid not to the width of Buxton's
humanitarian concerns but to his published plans of i839-40 for extirpating
the slave trade and, against a background of popular agitation, their outcome
in the government-supported Niger Expedition of I84I-2, with its ideas for
the civilization of Africa by promoting legitimate trade based on African
agriculture well inland.70 From the perspective of the developing links between
Christianity and commerce, however, it is the interplay between the different
aspects of Buxton's wide-ranging activity which is most striking. Buxton
arrived at his conviction that if legitimate trade were organized on a proper
basis then the slave trade could not hope to survive the competition. This was
in the summer of I837, just as he finished writing the Aborigines Committee
Report. That report embodied many of the missionaries' recommendations,
and Buxton attached great importance to it as a statement of policy.7' Clearly
it was not something to be pushed quickly to one side; it remained to influence
the West African planning to which he now turned.
Although in details his ideas altered, and constantly echoed points made
by earlier writers on West Africa,72 the coherence of Buxton's Niger scheme
owed much to the Aborigines Report of I837. Buxton argued amongst other
things that 'Government should take on itself the whole duty and expense of
preserving the peace, and of affording the necessary protection to new British
settlements in Africa'.73 It was of the greatest importance that missionaries
should be placed in all these centres of legitimate trade as agents of Christian
instruction, material prosperity, and civilization. In justifying these arguments
Buxton quoted extensively from the Aborigines Committee evidence.74 No
wonder the C.M.S. associated itself closely with the Niger venture. Beecham
of the W.M.M.S., impressed by the reception of his ideas before Buxton's I837
Committee, also now supported him, as did other missionary societies.75 In
this way missionary supporters rallied to the flag of legitimate trade. Men
like Buxton were delighted: impressed by missionary evidence to the I837
Committee, they now believed there were no more reliable supporters of the
standard to be found.
Analyses of changing circumstances in areas of white settlement, and in the
very different conditions of both the Pacific and West Africa, pointed in the
same direction. The purposeful combination of legitimate trade and missionary
work above all held out the best prospect of peace, security, and civilized
relations between black and white.76 These connexions suggested by events
70 J. Gallagher, 'Fowell Buxton and the new African policy, I838-42', Cambridge Historical
Journal, x (I 950), 40; Curtin, p. 299; Macmillan, Bantu, Boer, and Briton, pp. 186-7; P. M. Pugh,
Calendar of the papers of Sir T. F. Buxton, I786-i845: List and Index Society: special series, Vol. I3
(London, I979).
71 C. Buxton (ed.), Memoirs of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, Bart. (London, I 882), pp. I 84-5.
72 Curtin, p. 300.
73 T. F. Buxton, The remedy (London, I840), quoted in Gallagher, p. 43.
74 T. F. Buxton, The African slave trade and its remedy (London, I840, 2nd edn), ch. 6 'The eleva-
tion of native minds', pp. 502 ff. 75 Gallagher, p. 49.
76 P.P. I842, XI (55i), Report from the select committee on the West Coast of Africa,
647 I-539, 7688-725-

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'COMMERCE AND CHRISTIANITY' 6I5
on the fringes of British activity overseas were also confirmed in other ways.
In the very difficult years of I83 7-42, conditions for large numbers in Britain's
industrial cities were extremely harsh; the recovery and expansion of the
country's foreign trade seemed to offer most hope of reviving industry and
development. Evangelicals commonly applied themselves and the same
formulae to domestic as to foreign missions, and Buxton's writings suggest that
he was no exception in this. Not only might 'a legitimate commerce with
Africa. ...be.. the attendant, of civilization, peace, and Christianity' for blacks:
it held out help to handloom weavers as well. 'Any extension...of the trade
to Africa.. will [also] cause a corresponding increase in the demand for the
labour of a class of individuals who have lately been truly represented as
suffering greater privations than any other set of workmen connected with
the cotton trade.'77 Civilization, Christianity, and commerce were on the verge
of becoming identified in the evangelical mind not only abroad but at home.
One further alteration was required to make possible the identification of
commerce and Christianity in the manner understood by Samuel Wilberforce,
Livingstone, or a mid-century missionary strategist like the C.M.S. Secretary,
Henry Venn. For the evangelicals of the late I83os and early i840s, the state
still had an important part to play in supporting true religion, by upholding
the conditions of peace and legality within which missionaries could operate
and legitimate trade thrive. Twenty-five years later, there was not only a much
firmer conviction that trade and Christianity would reinforce each other; more
significant was the expectation that evangelists and traders could proceed
together and be kept in harness without the intervention of government.
Providential theology surely had scant relevance to this change, even if it
was capable of encompassing it. On the one hand, the change can be attributed
to a silent acknowledgement by evangelicals of afait accompli. Especially after
the failure of the Niger Expedition, no home government was prepared to back
the expansion of missionary enterprise in association with legitimate trade in
tropical Africa. After the widespread expansion of influence or territorial
control in the I840s, there followed numerous imperial moves to abandon
awkward or costly responsibilities. Evangelical protests were inadequate to
halt the process by which local powers of self-government were extended in
white settler colonies, and the warnings of the I837 Committee were largely
ignored. The change was only strengthened by the steady abolition of
restraints on trade and government refusal to make protective concessions,
notably in the case of the West Indies, which might have upheld particular
evangelical enterprises. The tendency too of governments towards neutrality
in religious questions at home inevitably depressed evangelical expectations.
If government was proving itself a broken reed, then evangelicals had to
look elsewhere. They did so with growing optimism because, again, experience
rather than theology prompted them to do so. Numbers of native converts
were growing significantly by I850. Buxton had anticipated this possibility
in I839; a decade later, Henry Venn in his jubilee address to the C.M.S.
77 T. F. Buxton, The African slave trade (London,i839, 2nd edn), pp. I95, 233.

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6i6 ANDREW PORTER
confirmed their importance.78 In West Africa above all, the problem of

recruiting missionaries and the effects of European mortality led missionary
organizers to place weight on the contribution of native converts to the
organization and support of their own churches. In the I840s and I850S
mission-educated Africans came to play significant parts as ministers, while
others, especially traders, largely financed and ran their churches. The
missionary societies at home enthusiastically supported the growth of these
African Christian commercial communities.79 In the south of the continent
too Livingstone came to his awareness of the potential in an alliance of
commerce and Christianity by way of experience leading him to conclude that
'the Africans are all deeply imbued with the spirit of trade'.80 In the person
of the African convert and merchant was the answer to Livingstone's feeling
that much of the future depended on it being found ' that Christian
missionaries and Christian merchants can remain throughout the year in the
interior of the continent'.8' The promise perceived in Bethelsdorp early in the
I820S seemed capable of fulfilment in many other parts of the continent by
the I85os.
VI
The association of Christianity and commerce in the minds of mid-nineteenth-

century evangelicals took place within a framework of providentialist
theology, but cannot helpfully be explained 'primarily in terms of' these
principles.82 The understanding of Christianity and commerce as mutually
supportive, expanding in tandem, self-sustaining, and equivalent in all
essentials to 'civilization', was only gradually achieved. It rested on both a
theory of historical development by stages as well as experience of colonial
and metropolitan societies accumulated over at least seventy years. It was affec-
ted by the changing relationships of evangelicals and governments. It held
great attraction for those thinking chiefly of Africa, very little for those whose
focus was India or the East, despite a growing tendency apparent there in
the I850S to question the educational strategy evolved twenty years before.
It gained additional credence from the growth in numbers and nature of indi-
genous converts, again particularly in Africa.
Nevertheless, while recognizing the widespread adoption of the slogan in
the I850s, it is clear from what has already been said that the association
of commerce and Christianity was never complete. Not only was its ap-
7 Ibid. pp. xi-xii; W. Knight, Memoir of the Rev. H. Venn: the missionary secretariat of Henry Venn,
B.D. (London, i88o), p. 277.
79 J. B. Webster, 'The Bible and the plough', Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, II(I963),
4 I 8-34; J. F. A. Aj ayi, 'Henry Venn and the policy of development', ibid. i (I 959), 33 I -42; idem,
Christian missions in Nigeria, 1841-1891 (London, 1965), chs. 3-6.
0 I. Schapera (ed.), Livingstone's missionary correspondence, i84i-1856 (London, I96I), p. 30I, I2
October I855.
81 Ibid. p. I 85, I 7 October I 85 I. 82 Stanley, p. 93.

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COMMERCE AND CHRISTIANITY 617
plicability geographically restricted,83 but certain trades, not to mention

trading methods, were always regarded as corrupt. The slave trade was now
obviously condemned out of hand; so increasingly was the traffic in arms,
opium and alcohol. These three were frequently encouraged by governments
in anticipation of both their cumulative commercial effects and essential
revenues. In effect they were a further reason for the waning of evangelicals'
desire for government assistance from its peak about I840; their continued
expansion later in the century was a persistent reminder of the imperfections
of even the most promising agencies. Eventually the impotence of missionaries
faced with these trades led supporters of missions who prided themselves on
their realism to argue that such commerce was after all of very little
importance. Robert Cust, for example, a prolific and respected writer on
missionary subjects and very influential inside the C.M.S., trenchantly
criticized those who agitated 'on the subject of the Cultivation of the Poppy
and Manufacture of Opium, the export of Rum and Gin, and the Immorality
of the British Soldier'. These were matters 'which have no direct bearing on
the Evangelization of the World'; instead, concern with them only served to
make the missionarv cause unpopular.84
That such forms of exchange could be seen by the i88os as irrelevant to
missionary strategy is telling evidence that belief in the productive union of
Christianity and commerce was not only imperfect, but also short-lived. Cust
was not arguing against such causes simply because he disliked their
supporters; he felt it was 'idle to fight against Nature, free-trade, and the
liberty of each man to control his own actions in things not forbidden by the
laws of civilized nations'. As his own writings demonstrated, it was very little
distance from such a position to the revival of arguments that missions should
studiously avoid all economic activity. 'It is not wise', he said, 'for a missionary
to engage in Commerce, or Manufactures, or Agriculture: it takes the
spirituality out of him.'85 The early and mid-nineteenth-century evangelical
support for well-ordered, acceptable, 'legitimate' trade had been very directly
the offspring of the struggle against trades regarded as unacceptable because
they threatened the possibility of a truly Christian existence. As the latter forms
of exchange ceased to matter, so naturally did the promotion of righteous
substitutes.
This drift of even mainstream missionary thinking away from commerce
gathered force in the i86os in places where hopes of the union had been
highest. Most dramatic perhaps was the collapse of Livingstone's own plans.
'I go back to Africa to try to make an open path for commerce and
Christianity', he told his audience in the Cambridge University Senate House
in December i857.86 Soon the Universities' Mission to Central Africa was
established in order, as many people thought, to help him; but the venture
83 Stanley also points out that Christianity and commerce were not linked in the context of South
America, ibid. p. 94.
84 R. N. Cust, Notes on missionary subjects (London, I 889), p. I I 8.
85 Ibid. pp. II 2, 42. 86 Cambridge lectuires, p. 24.

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6i8 ANDREW PORTER
inland up the Zambezi collapsed, and amid mutual recrimination the

missionaries resettled themselves at Zanzibar.87 The promised openings in
central Africa did not materialize, and in much of eastern Africa the absence
of obvious cash crops like the palm oil of the west made the emphasis on
commerce seem misplaced. Even on the west coast progress did not match
expectations. Elsewhere in the empire this experience was repeated: in the
West Indies by i86o there was little sign of the free, prosperous, Christian
societies to which evangelicals had looked forward for many years. By the
I870S, with setbacks to metropolitan economic activity and worsening terms
of trade, even legitimate commerce frequently became a source of conflict and
tension between European and non-European. As a result, the discussion of
'Commerce and Christian Missions' at the London Missionary Conference
of i 888 was full of reservations, with participants conscious that far more often
than not experience showed that commerce and Christianity had failed to
support each other.88 Criticism of the standards of native converts everywhere
began to grow, and was frequently directed at their involvement in commercial
pursuits.
The failure of commerce to materialize and of Christianity to advance
according to expectations were associated with both criticism of existing
missionary strategies and the search for alternatives. A profound reaction
against missionary methods involving any measure of westernization, and the
growth of missionary bodies marked by simplicity of organization, intense
personal faith, and a commitment to itinerant evangelism, were features of
the years I865-90. Old-established societies like the Wesleyans and C.M.S.
were deeply split by these developments.89
It is certainly possible to see these changes as closely connected to decisive
shifts in theological opinion. There is no doubt that the providentialism and
rationality characteristic of much late eighteenth-century evangelical theology
were breaking down. Potent sources of new inspiration not only for foreign
missions but for evangelicals generally were the German pietist thinkers, whose
influence has been studied in connexion with the origins of Hudson Taylor's
China Inland Mission founded in i865, and the American-influenced revival
or holiness movements, whose impact began to be very marked after i870.90
However, if the historian asks in what circumstances the new ideas were able
to take root and flourish, the influence of material and social conditions begins
to loom large.
The genesis of the China Inland Mission is instructive here. The nineteenth-
century expansion of the missionary work in China began from the Treaty
Ports established in I842 and i858-6o, and was to a large extent associated
with commercial privileges. However, in China above all missionaries were
87 0. Chadwick, Mackenzie's grave (London, I959); D. R. Neave, 'Aspects of the Universi

Mission to central Africa, I858-Igoo' (York, M.Phil. thesis, I975).
88 Report of the centenary conference, 1, 1I1-37. 89 Porter, 'Evangelical enthusiasm'.
90 Porter, 'Cambridge, Keswick, and late nineteenth century attitudes'; B. Stanley, 'Ho
support for overseas missions in early Victorian England, c.I838-I873' (Cambridge, Ph.D. the
1979), ch.7, 'The origins of "faith" missions'.

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COMMERCE AND CHRISTIANITY 6I9
likely to be conscious of the obstacles which these privileges created for

evangelism, linked as they were with conquest and the opium trade. The
extension of missionary freedoms in the Treaty of Tientsin (i858) and the
Peking Convention (i86o) after the second Opium War generated a wave of
optimism; however, neither trade nor evangelism expanded as expected.
Instead, anti-foreignism revived, and with it opposition to Christianity and
missions on a scale long since unknown.91 In this context the strategy of the
C.I.M. which involved playing down all links with western agencies and
stressing where possible its identification with Chinese ways, made abundant
practical sense whatever its specific theological justification.
There is no need to multiply examples of missions whose members and
supporters rejected the mid-century slogan after i870; indeed, the greater
difficulty by far lies in finding evangelicals who had confidence in the beneficial
association of Christianity and commerce. For the faith missions, dissociation
of the two was imperative; plans to 'evangelize the world in this generation'
necessarily involved not only great haste, but directed attention to areas which
had never previously had the opportunity of hearing the Gospel message. A
far more ready response was expected where Europeans had not yet made
contact. A common theological outlook was not a prerequisite for abandoning
the mid-century's conventional wisdom. Baptists and Plymouth Brethren on
the Congo had their sentiments re-echoed by High Anglicans in the U.M.C.A.
or the Oxford and Cambridge Missions to India. Livingstone had valued
commerce in part for 'speedily letting the tribes see their mutual dependence.
It breaks up the sullen isolation of heathenism'.92 For Chauncy Maples or
Bishop Weston in eastern Africa, however, the isolation came to seem vital.
'We are getting too much in the world, and too civilized here for my tastes.
It draws one away from one's real work, all this entertaining of Europeans,
the calling of steamers, etc.', wrote Maples. In addition to being a distraction,
commerce and European contact were debasing in all manner of ways.93 Less
thoughtful, more middle-of-the-road Anglicans like Bishop Knight-Bruce in
southern Africa inclined to a similar view.94
Finally, one may observe again how not only conditions in the mission fields
but metropolitan circumstances also reinforced the change of direction. Some
missionaries were doubtless influenced by the mounting conviction that the
racial characteristics of non-Europeans meant that religious and cultural
changes would never follow the path already trodden by white societies.
Historians have also argued that racial stereotyping mirrored the development
P' p. A. Cohen, China and Christianity: the missionary movement and the growth of Chinese anti-foreignism,
i860-i870 (Cambridge, Mass. I963); idem, 'Christian missions and their impact to I900', Th
Cambridge history of China, X. Late Ch'ing, i800o-9ii, ed. J. K. Fairbank and D. Twitche
(Cambridge, I976), pp. 543-90.
92 Miissionary correspondence, p. 301.
93 E. Maples, Chauncy Maples (London, I897), p. 350, 3I August 1893, and p. 354; H. M. Smith,
Frank Bishop of Zanzibar: life of Frank Weston, D.D., i87I-I924 (London, I926), pp. 24, 4I, 96-7,
242.
9' G. W. H. Knight-Bruce, Memories of Mashonaland (London, I895), pp.

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620 ANDREW PORTER
in Britain of a rigidly class-divided society.95 In such a situation it was perhaps

natural that notions of equal commercial exchange should give way to a
greater emphasis on European management or employment of non-European
labour, and theology be called in to dignify a new set of economic relations.
Some recent work, however, seems to suggest that the influence of class and
intellectual persuasion assisted the decline of 'commerce and Christianity' in
more subtle ways. It is striking that in India, where the juxtaposition of the
two had always been weakest, missions had also attracted from the beginning
a high proportion of graduates and others of significant social status. This
continued to be true of India, and after I870 spread much more widely
throughout the missionary world.96 Even where this was not the case, and
missionaries were still drawn from 'the lower middle and artisan classes',
patterns of recruitment and training were increasingly such as to encourage
only those who shared or aspired to the essentially non-commercial 'ethos of
the clergy of Cheltenham' and 'the clerical establishment'.97
VII
It is appropriate to end with a caveat. The variety of missionary experience

and writings, the volume and variety of support for evangelism, and the
consequent wealth of material for historians, create difficulties of many kinds.
Ruthless selection is necessary, and exceptions to a pattern such as that
sketched in this article are likely to be legion. This is particularly the case where
terms like civilization, commerce, and even Christianity, were handled with
the looseness inevitably associated with widespread and common usage.
Periodization is especially difficult given the overlap between different
generations of missionaries or metropolitan committee members, and the
inevitable distance between home-based theorists and isolated evangelists
wrestling with their day-to-day problems. Samuel Marsden backing his
'civilization first' strategy in New Zealand in the I830s, and those Scottish
businessmen and missionaries who nurtured the African Lakes Company after
I875, show how the nature and pace of broad changes in metropolitan
thinking or rhetoric continued to coexist with discordant variety in individuals
and local circumstances.98
Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to conclude that the association of
95 A. Lorimer, Colour, class and the Victorians: English attitudes to the negro in the mid-nineteenth ce
(Leicester U.P., I978).
96 S. Piggin, 'The social background, motivation, and training of British protestant missionarie
to India, I789-I858' (London, Ph.D. thesis, I974), ch. I.
97 C. P. Williams, "'Not quite gentlemen": an examination of "middling class" protestant
missionaries from Britain, c. I850-I900', Jfournal of Ecclesiastical History, xxxi (I980), 30I-I5.
98 Rev. J. B. Marsden, Memoirs of the life and letters of the Rev. Samuel Marsden (London, I858);
The letters and journals of Samuel Marsden, I765-i838, ed. J. R. Elder (Dunedin, I932);
H. W. Macmillan, 'The origins and development of the African Lakes Companly, I878-I908'
(Edinburgh, Ph.D. thesis, I970); J. McCracken, Politics and Christianity in Malawi, i875-I94
(Cambridge, I977).

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'COMMERCE AND CHRISTIANITY 62I
Christianity and commerce, while often regarded as characteristic of Victorians,

was in fact only slowly developed, and declined far more rapidly than it had
arisen. Its rise and fall were decisively influenced by a range of considerations
among which theological views often seem to have had little influence. It is,
however, also clear that changing theological convictions could provide an
independent source of inspiration, and that missionary activity did not neatly
parallel Britain's expansion as a commercial and industrial society. What is
still required is an account of missionary expansion in the nineteenth century
which will place it firmly within the context of both intellectual and material
life.

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'Commerce and Christianity': The Rise and Fall of a Nineteenth-Century Missionary

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