ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the story of how missionaries contributed to the construction and dissemination of the civilizing mission as a discourse of colonial obligation that shaped nineteenth-century British identity. It provides a historical overview of the emergence of missionary agencies at the end of the eighteenth century and explains the rise of the missionary movement during the opening decades of the nineteenth century. Despite the initial tension between conversion and the civilizing mission in the early years of the missionary agencies, the two began to merge as the missionary movement gained greater momentum by the mid-century. The chapter understands how Christianity and the notion of “civilization” converged to frame Britain’s colonial ambitions in terms of a religiously driven moral obligation to civilize. Civilization could not be properly established without Christianity, but Christianity would undoubtedly lead to civilization.
