Protestant missionaries and legal dynamics in the British Empire

This workshop aims to increase understanding of the legal implications of Protestant missionaries’ arrival in the colonies prior to colonial administrators as well as during the existence of the colonial state. Their earlier arrival is indicative of the impact that Protestant missionaries could have on local populations before, and continued to have after, colonialism formally took place. Resultantly, there is a gap for examining the legal basis that the missionaries relied on to provide services to the local population. This workshop seeks to bring together a diverse group of legal and historical scholars in order to shed light on the legal dynamics of Protestant missionaries in the British imperial world in the 19th and 20th centuries. By putting these missionaries in conversation with earlier case studies from the Catholic missionary world, the aim is to contribute to a broader understanding of legal actors and authority in the British colonies as well as the complex legal and social, and not merely religious, role of missions.