ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the ways in which missionaries were involved in the introduction of Western modes of commerce, labor relations and manufacturing in nineteenth-century Polynesia. It focuses in detail upon the written record of the missionaries of the London Missionary Society, one of the predominant British organizations in the region. The chapter describes that representations of trade and commerce proliferated in missionary texts because evangelical Protestants believed that trade was a critical indicator of the success of the Christian project during this period. It focuses on the ways in which missionary writers represented and mediated their relationships with indigenous peoples and other Europeans. Missionaries criticized the exploitation of island produce and Pacific Islander labor by European adventurers, but then manipulated indigenous labor and manufacturing for their own benefit. The cross-cultural relationship between British missionaries and Pacific Islanders proved to be highly controversial, and issues of sexuality, government and trade proved most contentious.
