The contribution of the Serampore missionaries to education in Bengal, 1793–1837

Abstract

Baptist missionaries were the first to operate effectively in northern India. William Carey arrived in 1793, and worked for six years mainly in North Bengal, moving in 1800 to the Danish settlement of Serampore to join Joshua Marshman and William Ward. From the beginning they were concerned with education, starting schools at first in their immediate vicinity and eventually throughout the province of Bengal, from Dacca and Chittagong in the east to Suri in the west; meanwhile other Baptist missionaries in connexion with Serampore ranged south-east as far as the Moluccas and north-west to Ajmer, with many intermediate stations. The climax of their educational efforts in Bengal was reached in the years 1816–18, when over 100 elementary schools were established, and also Serampore College for higher education. During these same years, however, a group of younger Baptist missionaries broke away to form a separate mission based on Calcutta, and simultaneously disputes developed between the Serampore Trio and the officials of the Baptist Missionary Society in London, which resulted in a complete separation between them in 1827. But in December 1837 the Serampore Mission found it impossible to continue, for financial reasons, and had to agree to a reunion with the BMS; Joshua Marshman, the last survivor of the original Trio—and the one mainly responsible for their educational work—died in the same month.