WOMEN MISSIONARIES

Part 1: Papers of the Women's Association for Foreign Missions, 1885-1930, (Church of Scotland) from the National Library of Scotland

The Church of Scotland decided to begin missionary enterprise in the 1820s. In common with most other societies, the role of women was limited. (The Female Education Society, founded in 1834, is a major exception. Its archive is included within our project, the Church Missionary Society Archive.) By the 1870s, opinions had changed, and the active involvement of women on the mission field (as missionaries, teachers or medical staff in their own right rather than as wives of missionaries) became much less problematic. The first missionaries were sent out to Calcutta, Madras and Darjeeling and Africa in 1888, and others soon followed. The society maintained missionaries working in India (Poona, Darjeeling, Calcutta, Madras, Punjab), China, Africa and Nyasaland.

For this project, Adam Matthew Publications has filmed in their entirety the letter books, minutes and associated material from 1885-1930 found in NLS MS.7624-37. This contains the correspondence between the area secretaries and the missionaries. It also includes the chairwomans (as she was styled) letter book, some more general letters, and some financial papers. The material has never previously been published. It is archived geographically rather than chronologically, an arrangement which simplifies detailed research into specific areas.

The archive contains much detail on the practicalities of mission, from the variety of jobs that missionaries did and the problems they encountered to how schools were appreciated. A particular strength is reports of illness and disease. One recurrent theme is the effect of marriage on missionaries: it was conventional for the wife to work with and for her husband, resulting in the Womens Association losing her services.

These letter books will be useful for scholars researching the textured nature of Britains involvement with her Empire, and with local responses to Empire. The detail extends from the personal (since many of the letters are diary based), to the religious and educational (contact with literate and socially complex non-European civilisations) to the social (the relationship between westerners and indigenous peoples). It will also be useful for Womens Studies, church historians and scholars of mission. As for any missionary society, there is an underlying theme of the changing relationship between the political and economic objectives of Empire, and the soteriological ambitions of missionaries.

Material in this project can be usefully compared with the accounts of female missionaries in Section II and III of the Church Missionary Society Archive, as well as more generally with CMS material and the Regions Beyond Mission Union Archive. The material complements the manuscripts in Womens Language and Experience, 1500-1940. A broader cultural context for the aspirations of women is found in the advice books, manuals and journals of Women and Victorian Values. These projects are all published by Adam Matthew Publications and details can be found on this website.