‘Commerce and Christianity’: Providence Theory, The Missionary Movement, and the Imperialism Of Free Trade, 1842–1860

Abstract

In February 1842 a wealthy lay congregationalist named Thomas Thompson wrote to the secretaries of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society urging them to do more to interest the young and the working classes in the cause of foreign missions. Missionary advocates were needed, insisted Thompson, who couldshewto our manufacturing population that Christianity Civilization & Commerce are only synonimous terms - that the extension of the former will do more for a World recovery - the bonding of distant nations with a Love of amity & good will & do more for the employment ofhundredsof thousands, than all the Anti Corn leaguers can ever accomplish, even were they to realise all their members so fully anticipate, & we shall thus obtain the auxiliary aid of a class of countrymen, whom we have hitherto left to the worst foes of our species.