Descrizione

8vo. Ten works with altogether 654 pp. Later 19th century blue cloth. A coherent sammelband of ten early 19th century pamphlets representing debates surrounding the propagation of Christianity under the East India Company. - Prior to the renewal of their charter in 1813, both the East India Company and Parliament, much to the consternation of prominent evangelicals (notably including William Wilberforce), had refused to countenance missionary activity in India and forbade religious education. This move was less religiously or morally motivated than pragmatic: a policy of religious neutrality was favoured on the basis that Christian evangelism might be seen as a threat by native Indians (though many religious groups thrived in the Subcontinent, most markedly Islam and Hinduism, it is predominantly Hindu conversion that is discussed). The East India Company's interests were primarily with this world, not the next, and its priorities simple and economic. If exposed to Christianity, native Indians may have felt threatened and thus would have posed a threat to British commercial ventures. - This stance was evidently not easily swallowed by the armchair evangelists of Britain: throughout this collection of pamphlets, an anonymous early owner - one evidently contemporary to the pamphlet publication - has pencilled in a wide range of insults towards the politicians and pamphlet authors who pushed the East India Company's religious neutrality; at one point English was no longer strong enough, and the furious marginalia writer resorted to quoting in Greek. That this reader was a contemporary owner, or perhaps even the one who commissioned the binding of this collection, is evident in their final note: "still blind though several years have past [sic] since your first pamphlet" (as a matter of fact, the author in question, Scott Waring, first appears in the volume with an 1808 pamphlet, five years earlier). Meanwhile, compared to many other British and generally European colonies of the time, India under East India Company rule had relatively little Christian missionary activity, and the Company regularly allied itself with or against various Muslim and Hindu rulers. - Contemporary marginal commentary in pencil. Very minor paper repairs, a few instances of toning; in very good condition. - With the small bookplate of J. M. Strachan.