For many general readers, the concept of a 19th-century Protestant missionary brings to mind a single archetype: a missionary explorer like David Livingstone preaching to the masses and saving souls. Emily Conroy-Krutz’s Missionary Diplomacy: Religion and Nineteenth-Century American Foreign Relations complicates this narrative and explores the many facets of the international missionary efforts of American Protestants during the long 19th century. The study centers the many roles missionaries played in shaping how the fledgling United States saw the world and how the rest of the world saw the United States.
Conroy-Krutz sets out to understand and illustrate the “entangled” roots of the U.S. Department of State and American Protestant foreign missions (11). Illustrating the shared growth and expansion of both from the 1810 founding of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to the aftermath of the First World War, the book argues that missionary diplomacy was essential to the formation of the United States’ global strategic interests. In so doing, the book centers two critical questions: 1) to what extent do U.S. missionaries serving abroad benefit from the protection of the U.S. Government? And 2) how does the relationship between the two ebb and flow as the standing of the U.S. Government and missionary efforts shift over time?
To answer these questions, and many others that arise throughout the work, Conroy-Krutz divides American Protestant missionary activity of the 19th century into three time periods, each denoted by the evolving relationship of Protestant missionaries with the U.S. Government: Missionary Intelligence (1810s-1840s), Missionary Troubles (1840s-1880s), and Diplomatic Missions (1890s-1920s). Within each era, Conroy-Krutz develops a series of descriptors to focus each of the eleven chapters on a particular facet of how the missionaries saw themselves or were seen by others, including “Experts,” “Citizens,” “Troublemakers,” and “Imperialists.” The combination of the temporal and thematic taxonomies is a useful rhetorical device to shape readers’ understanding of the various roles missionaries played in their work and in their relationship with the U.S. Government. What emerges is a global history impressive for its geographic scope, engaging prose, and diversity of source material. From the Pacific Islands and East Asia to the Middle East and Africa and on to Latin America and indigenous communities in the United States, the book considers numerous cases of cooperation and conflict between the State Department and American missionaries and their competing, yet complementary, efforts to promote commerce, Western civilization, and Christian faith. These examples draw on a rich base of primary source material from the presidential journals of John Quincy Adams and diplomatic correspondence to missionary periodicals and major newspapers of the time.
The work would have been enriched by a deeper consideration of the actions and perceptions of non-Americans. At its core, this book is a study of American history taking place around the world, but consistently through the lens of the United States. Even documents and correspondence traveling across continents tend to consider U.S. citizens engaging with U.S. citizens. The limited engagement with sources from the global communities where missionaries and diplomats served, without the filter of missionary reporting, is a missed opportunity to tell a more inclusive story. This gap in understanding of how racially, ethnically, and religiously diverse populations experienced American and Christian expansion is ripe for further historical study.
The book as a whole is accessible and engaging, making it a strong addition to undergraduate and graduate seminars on a broad range of topics, including American imperialism, religious history, missiology, peace and conflict studies, and diplomatic studies. Notably, race and gender, while not the focus of the work, are considered thoughtfully throughout. This is most evident in Conroy-Krutz’s consideration of the shift in gendered roles in missions and the understanding of the atrocities of the Congo Free State under King Leopold II. The singular focus of the final chapters of the book are accessible independent of the work as a whole, and these chapters could be assigned as course readings on U.S. imperialism in the Philippines (chapter 8), the Boxer Rebellion (chapter 9), the atrocities of the Congo Free State (chapter 10), and the Armenian Genocide (chapter 11).
Conroy-Krutz accomplishes her goal of interrogating the relationship between American Protestant missions and the foreign relations and diplomatic efforts of the United States in the 19th century. This work is a valuable intervention in the field of mission history and efforts to understand the religious history of American foreign policy and the rise of American imperialism. The work provides a strong basis for further scholarship—by Conroy-Krutz and others—to dig further into the many cases presented in the work, which are rich for additional study and exploration.
Will O’Brien is a doctoral student in peace studies and history at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
William O'Brien
Date Of Review:
August 16, 2024
