ABSTRACT
Just as the missionaries provide a context for thinking about the subject of clothing, so do they offer a framework for considering Robert Louis Stevenson's attitudes toward the nature of memory and recollection, concerns that often dominated his imagination. The commentators feared that because of foreign pressures the indigenous peoples were relinquishing a devotion to primitive traditions and losing their cultural memories. The fact is that a significant number of missionaries were keenly sensitive to the crisis of memory — to the disappearance of traditions — and eventually functioned not only as the destroyers but also as the preservers and protectors of a compromised culture. One missionary establishment that became important for preserving the cultural memories of the South Sea Islands and for the work of the scientific community was the London Missionary Society Museum in the Old Jewry.
