The Church Missionary Society (CMS) Medical Missions and Anglo-Russian Rivalry, 1865–1914

Abstract

This essay examines the public views of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) (medical) missionaries in North-western British India of Anglo-Russian rivalry. In their reports, the missionaries recognized the value of their work as worth a “regiment” to the British government. The essay shows that this claim is comparable to views of some of the early nineteenth-century missionaries, who talked about the providential-purpose of the empire, arguing that the extension of the national church was beneficial culturally, religiously, and politically. In contrast to these missionaries, however, the CMS missionaries did not talk about the spread of Christianity per se or the dissemination of the English race or ethical values. Rather, they claimed their work was politically important because it had been instrumental in obtaining people’s “trust” and “friendship”. They justified this view on at least two grounds: firstly, they claimed they could generate a new archive of knowledge about the region; secondly, they declared they were winning local people for the colonial establishment by changing their feelings. Overall, the essay introduces a point of view from which to tell the story of missionaries and Anglo-Russian rivalry. Moreover, it contributes to emerging studies that have scrutinized the often-ambivalent political effect of “friendship” across axes of colonizer–colonized divide.