In 1972 ISPCK published a volume to celebrate the achievement of churches planted in the Anglican tradition in India in colonial times which, now fully fledged dioceses, joined the Church of South India in 1947 and the Church of North India in 1970. The Anglican Church in India 1600–1970 by M.E. Gibb, presents a more balanced account in some ways than this volume under review now because Miss Gibb begins the story with the East India Company chaplains who founded churches at the Company’s trading posts, later the cities of Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai, and integrates the story of their efforts and those of a number of influential lay people for mission work with that of pioneer missionaries and those commissioned exclusively for ‘overseas missions’. Muthuraj starts with the arrival of two German graduates of the University of Halle, Bartholomeus Ziegenbalg and Heinrich Pluetschau, who were sent by the King of Denmark to found a mission in the Danish colony of Tranquebar and after much hostility from the Governor and some of the foreign merchants, succeeded in doing so. Muthuraj does not discuss the problems created by having two parallel systems, chaplaincy and mission, and skates over the tensions created when missionaries were hired, deployed and paid (in this period rather erratically) by one dedicated agency and after 1822 were licensed by Anglican bishops. (See the correspondence between Bishop Middleton [1817–22] and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel preserved in Rhodes House Library, Oxford, and between Bishop Daniel Wilson [1832–58], the Calcutta CMS Corresponding Committee and the CMS Home Board preserved in the University of Birmingham, UK.) Instead the author concentrates on the theological differences between Lutherans and Anglicans at the end of the period, as contrasted with the more ecumenical approach in the eighteenth century. Then German missionaries educated in Halle in the ‘pietist’ devotional tradition were ordained by the Bishop of Zeeland on the instructions of the King of Denmark and dispatched to South India by the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge supported by its royal patrons including the German chaplains to the Hanoverian Kings of England. Muthuraj sees this co-operation as a beacon for the later struggle for Christian unity. This is indeed a very important paradigm to study, and the dedicated lives of some of the pioneers who spent their whole working lives in India and left their bones there, often after an early death, is inspiring. However, there are a disappointing number of flaws, and sometimes the narrative becomes as confused as the period it is trying to describe, when constant maritime warfare between the European colonial powers, periods of conflict on Indian soil and local wars between Indian states, famine and heavy taxation of the indigenous population, and at times complete breakdown of law and order such as during the polighar insurrection in Tirunelveli at the beginning of the nineteenth century, made missionary endeavour fraught with danger and financially very insecure.

To begin with the more superficial problems: first, lack of proper proofreading. Clorinda Rasa, the Marathi Brahman widow who did so much out of her own resources to build up the Tamil Church in Palayankottai, appears as Glorinda in places. (p. 120, for example). Kiernander, the Lutheran missionary who accepted an invitation from Robert Clive, Governor of Bengal, to move to Kolkatta in 1762 and built the Old Mission Church there with his wife’s bequest, is wrongly called ‘Daniel’ on p. 116, not Zachary, killed off in 1786, not 1798 despite his letters 1786–92 being quoted a few pages later, and is not given due credit for his achievements despite a list of Roman Catholic priests he ‘converted’ appearing in a discussion of ordination (p. 168-69). Secondly there are a number of factual errors. For example, the London Missionary Society (founded in 1795) is said to be ‘anabaptist’ (p. 163). It is not, and its Kolkata missionaries wrote leaflets attacking the Baptist Missionary Society’s practices in the 1820s. Kiernander is said to have died a few years before William Carey arrived in Bengal (1793) which is not true (p. 117). The most exasperating pages are m–n in the Bibliography where the entries are not alphabetical.

The plentiful footnotes are excellent, and contain much useful supplementary information. Some of the explanations, such as what ‘pietism’ is, would have been better in the main text. The great strength of the work is its use of the records of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, though it should be noted that in many cases the India generated material is lost, and we only have quotations by contemporary historians such as Robert Caldwell. The author uses the surviving Halle records well, too. Letters, Reports and Minutes are quoted which are not easily available and give a good flavour of the ‘management’ especially the SPCK secretaries. Strikingly lacking are the Indian voices. For this, one must turn to D. Dennis Hudson (2000) Protestant Origins in India: Tamil Evangelical Christians 1706–1835. This Curzon Press/Wm Eerdmans volume is a much more expensive work, but a lifetime’s Tamil scholarship lies in it. Muthuraj never mentions it, nor other key texts. It illustrates the thesis I have long argued, that the success of a mission depends on how quickly through it Christianity is indigenized and spread in Indian voices. Hudson illustrates this through the work of dynasties of Tamil poets, originally influenced by Tranquebar missionaries. Another ‘missing person’ is John Devasahayam, first South Indian Anglican clergyman and independent district missionary (d. 1864) who was educated by Lutheran missionaries in Thanjavur and worked for C.H.E. Rhenius who sparked the schism between Anglicans and Lutherans in 1833. It is clear from George Pettit’s The History of the CMS Tinnevelly Mission (1851) and A.S. Appasamy’s centenary history (1925) just how important Indian co-workers were. More also could have been said of the very rich literary and spiritual tradition, both Tamil and Sanskrit, into which the Gospel was planted and which shaped emerging Indian theology, and conversely in Europe, of the challenge of the Enlightenment. Finally there is a dearth of in-depth analysis as to causes and effect. Nevertheless, this is a useful work about a seminal period which K.S. Latourette and others omitted altogether. One just hopes the next volume will be more rigorously edited.