CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY ARCHIVE

Section VI: Missions to India
Part 2: North India Mission, 1844-1886

Part 2 provides Mission Books 1844-1880 and Individual Letter Books for 1852-1886 for the North India Mission.

• There are Minutes of the Calcutta Correspondence Committee.
• There are lots of extracts from journals of individual missionaries such as Rev R Clark, Rev C G Pfander, Rev J P Menger - describing his tour from Gorrukpore to Juanpoor, Rev C B Leupoldt and Rev C F Cobb - describing his visit to Lucknow in 1859.
• Other significant papers include conferences in the Agra district, the Benares Conference of 1853, minutes of the missionary conference held at Amritsar in January 1855, and documents on the progress of the mission in the Punjab which was opened in 1852.
• Many papers cover the Indian Mutiny of 1857 and its immediate aftermath, the destruction of mission property and the renewed emphasis on education with the re-establishment of direct British rule.

“The CMS Archive provides a rich repository of source materials on South Asian history and culture.  Missionaries and their Indian subordinates were active among most classes in the population, especially the elite and lower castes and classes. They therefore provided evidence and comment on a wide range of issues, including matters outside the purview and experience of Government officers and either overlooked or ignored in official correspondence. The CMS missionaries had much to say about landlord/tenant relations and social issues as caste and Hindu forms of marriage, not to mention intellectual, religious and political movements which took place during the colonial period.”
Dr Geoffrey Oddie,
Honorary Research Fellow, Department of History, University of Sydney.