Globalising British Christianity in the Nineteenth Century: The Imperial Anglican Emigrant Chaplaincy 1846–c. 1910

Abstract

This article argues for the importance of religion in mass emigration from Britain in the nineteenth century. It does so by examining the origins and development of the Anglican emigrant chaplaincy developed from the 1840s to nurture the spiritual welfare of British emigrants departing for the British settler colonies over the rest of the nineteenth century. Developed over succeeding decades by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, the chaplaincy expanded into a global network. By the 1880s it incorporated chaplains at British ports of embarkation and colonial ones of disembarkation, chaplains travelling on ships with emigrants and matrons supervising parties of single women. Although principally concerned with caring for Anglican emigrants, the chaplains regarded it as their business, as clergy of the national church, to provide ministry to a wide variety of emigrants, including Nonconformists, Germans and Jews. The article argues for the significance of the Anglican emigrant chaplaincy as an international network enabling the expansion of British Christianity and the export of social capital in the form of religious connectivity throughout the settler colonies of the British Empire.