Audience and exclusion at the margins of imperial history

Abstract

This paper identifies several master narratives that govern discussions of religion in modern history, including celebratory, balance-sheet, and Saidian approaches to imperial history, secularization theory, and the male, clerical, celebratory history of missionaries. Except for missionary history, these master narratives marginalize the religious point of view, and with it individuals and audiences who share a variety of religious opinions. The celebratory history of missions ignores or evades the anti-imperialist critique of Western religious expansion, and conceals the predominantly female character of the missionary movement. The paper concludes with the author's attempt to develop a point of view for a study of Western missionary work in Punjab, one that takes the anti-imperialist critique into account without dismissing the religious convictions of missionary men and women, and South Asian Christians.

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