Three Variations on a Theme : Writing the Lives of Scottish and New Zealand Missionary Children, ca. 1900–1950

Abstract

This article contributes to an emerging body of scholarship and elaborates how to narrate historical Protestant missionary children’s lives. It focuses on the early to mid-twentieth century and makes use of both archival and oral history sources. The article’s holistic reading, using examples drawn from the two culturally similar and connected British world contexts of Scottish and New Zealand Presbyterian missionary families, argues that scholars consider together the voices of parents, children, and religious institutions. It likewise presents a procedural model of three overlapping or coalescent sets of narrative lenses: family/parental narratives; institutional/denominational narratives; and children’s/child-centered narratives.