Since Brian Stanley’s The Bible and the Flag, historians have been working to complicate the relationship between the missionary enterprise and the empire within which, for which, and sometimes against which, it operated. Andrew May’s Welsh Missionaries and British Imperialism: The Empire of the Clouds in North-east India provides a microhistory of one small-scale missionary endeavour among the Khasi, a tribal people who live in hilly terrain with such difficult accessibility that Wales seemed little farther in distance than Calcutta. What makes this context of interest is that, in this case, both the Welsh missionary enterprise itself and the mission field existed at the “margins of empire”. The micro-narratives of Thomas Jones and others presented in May’s work reveal how the actions of organizers, the aspirations of the Khasi people, the hierarchies of empire, and the individuals involved shaped the Welsh Mission in the Khasi Hills. The book has four main sections that work thematically and chronologically. The concept of distance very much situates them all. It begins with the context that produced Welsh missionaries, carries through the voyage with other imperial travellers, engagement with “The Orient”, and ends in north-east India. It is in some sense a hero’s journey, both made possible and ultimately spoiled by empire.

The first section briefly situates the mission itself within the landscape of Welsh Nonconformity at a time when, though still marginalized within the United Kingdom, large diasporic communities in Liverpool and elsewhere were growing. The move by Welsh nonconformists to form a missionary society was part of a broader “assertion of collective identity” (13). When qualified would-be Welsh missionaries refused postings by the putatively non-denominational London Missionary Society, the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Foreign Missionary Society formed. May then briefly examines previous missionary endeavours undertaken by Europeans and South Asian Christians in the area before Jones’ arrival. The network of missionaries near the Khasi Hills would be instrumental in the success of the mission.

The second section of the book examines how the Khasi hills came to be in the orbit of British power. May shows how the production of colonial knowledge of the region, its indigenous peoples, and colonizers themselves, produced hierarchies and ambiguities. The promise of Khasi’s almost Edenic splendour fit nicely with an imperial Britain that increasingly saw the knowledge and products it appropriated as powerful symbols of “the might and reach of the British empire” (111). The second section ends with an examination of personal motivations for those who would go out to empire as soldiers, administrators, and missionaries. The overarching power-dynamics of empire, while necessary for theoretical understanding, are in many ways remote from lived experiences of those who peopled the empire. May shows how family traditions of service in the empire loomed largely for many who found themselves in a variety of occupations in north-east India. Though their official jobs were with the military, trade, or administration, many were heartily in favour of missionary work even though it was discouraged by the British East India Company.

The third section covers the founding of the Cherrapunji mission from its early successes to a crisis that threatened the operations of the mission and the reputation of its leadership. It reveals how the missionaries established relationships within the local population based on reciprocity. Language was a primary means for the success of the Cherrapunji mission. Language instruction and literacy, long connected with proselytization in Wales, proved a valuable commodity to Khasi’s people, particularly regarding trade. Language also animated the world of mission staff. Writing supplies were precious, as were communications from Wales and Calcutta at this remote station. May offers isolation as a critical component of lived experience for the mission staff of Cherrapunji. Contact by letter had the effect of amplifying disagreements, whether among mission staff or between mission staff and powerful administrative and commercial agents like Henry Inglis. Through the conflict between the mission and Inglis, May reveals that while for the missionary, Thomas Jones, it might have been right that “the primary rationale of imperial expansion was to open new worlds to the Christian message”, it remained for men like Inglis one of wealth extraction (132).

The final section expands on the crisis surrounding the Jones versus Inglis affair and reveals how authority, from missionaries and their fundraisers at home to private enterprise and the state, was negotiated in this corner of the empire. Increasingly isolated and lacking the support of the WFMS, Jones and his opponents amplified their disagreements in the press, bringing the very moral authority of the Cherrapunji mission itself into question. As Jones grew more isolated from the people and institutions that had aided, or at least tolerated his earlier efforts, he became more radical. Increasingly his advocacy for local Khasis against the depredations of Inglis alienated him from his fellow missionaries and Calcutta officialdom. If Jones’ earlier role as intermediary between church and state had given him status, his opposition to Inglis made him a threat to imperial authority.

May’s book does what its introduction promises, it produces a microhistory of Welsh missionary work in south-east India. In that sense, it offers something more rather than something new. The processes that play out in the Khasi hills will be broadly familiar to historians of empire. One of the strengths of May’s work is that it is driven by sources rather than theory. He draws from a host of missionary records, personal correspondence, and government documents. An implicit, but clear, theme in May’s work is one of the privations suffered by people like Thomas Jones. May’s treatment of missionaries is not hagiographical, but it is one that recognizes the sacrifices of missionaries to live a life of little material comfort, often accompanied by great personal tragedy. May’s work will be of interest to generalists who will find specific iterations of larger processes and to specialists interested in how the Khasi mission influenced local political and social change in north-east India.