American Missionary Connections with Asia at the Dawn of the Global Age

FAIN: FT-60459-13

Edward E. Andrews
Providence College (Providence, RI 02918-7000)

This project explores the interconnections between Protestant missionary activity in America and similar efforts in India and Southeast Asia during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It builds upon the work of recent scholars who have urged American historians to take a broader, more expansive view of history by explaining how developments abroad shaped that history. It examines how evangelical texts, people, letters, and ideas passed between places as far away as Boston and southern India, London and Taiwan, Bermuda and Japan. The Summer Stipend will allow me to conduct two consecutive months of research in the manuscript and rare book collections at the University of Cambridge and the British Library, where I will work with the records of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and the British East India Company. One Soul will offer important insights into early modern globalization during its most formative years.