Revisiting Christian missionaries in colonial Malaya and Singapore: blurring the boundaries between empire, mission and development

Abstract

This article takes two exemplars of Christian missionaries in early colonial Singapore, Penang and Melaka—the London Missionary Society (LMS) (from 1815) and the Infant Jesus Sisters (IJS) (from 1854)—to examine the complex entanglements of missionaries and empire. I argue that they had a wider impact than evangelism and can be usefully conceptualized as faith-based development organizations. The LMS operated the first printing presses in the region and whilst its purpose was evangelical, its translations, technical innovations and printing activities extended its impact. The IJS established schools for girls, an orphanage and a women’s refuge, operating as a faith-based organization focused on the education of girls, reduction in child mortality and the empowerment of women. By viewing these early missionaries within a broader context and through the lens of development, their roles as nascent development organizations become more visible.

Summary

Sandra Hudd challenges the dominant historiographical framing of Christian missionaries in colonial Southeast Asia as either willing enablers of empire or culturally insensitive imperialists. Drawing on the work of scholars such as Norman Etherington, Anna Johnston and Philip Fountain, she argues that the relationship between missions and empire was far more complex than a simple complicity narrative allows, and that missionaries can be usefully reconceptualized within the field of humanitarian development. The article examines two exemplars in the Straits Settlements: the London Missionary Society (LMS), present from 1815 to the mid-1840s, and the Infant Jesus Sisters (IJS), a French Catholic teaching order that arrived in Singapore in 1854.

The core argument is that both bodies, though primarily evangelical in intent, produced societal impacts that extend well beyond conversion. The LMS’s central activity—translating and printing Christian texts in Chinese, Malay and Bugis—effectively introduced a print culture to the region, training local printers and producing newspapers, dictionaries and vernacular literature that shaped intellectual life independently of their religious purpose. The IJS, meanwhile, established schools for girls, an orphanage and a women’s refuge, operating in ways that map directly onto contemporary development goals: reducing child mortality, educating girls, improving health outcomes and empowering women. Hudd draws on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as an analytical lens to make these contributions visible.

The article is informed by a range of primary sources including LMS mission reports, the Hikayat Abdullah, newspaper reports from the Straits Times and Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, government education inspection records, and convent archives. Hudd’s own prior monograph on the CHIJ convent site (2016) and her 2016 National Library Singapore Fellowship on early printing provide the archival foundation for much of the analysis.

Key Findings

• By the end of 1820, the LMS presses in Melaka had produced 140,000 books and periodicals in Chinese and over 20,000 items in Malay; the Chinese translation of the Bible completed by Morrison and Milne was published in Melaka in 1823, the first such translation published in the region and only the second published anywhere (pp. 25–26).
• The IJS orphanage in Singapore took in sixteen abandoned children on its first day; numbers grew to 93 by 1861 and 200 by 1892, with most girls leaving with at least a primary education and vocational skills (pp. 30–31).
• The convent’s women’s refuge housed 60 women in 1870 and 200 in 1872, many of whom had been brought from China for the brothels or sold as domestic workers (p. 32).
• The LMS Mission Press in Singapore printed Raffles’ first proclamations in January 1823 and produced the Singapore Chronicle (1824–30), the island’s first newspaper; Benjamin Keasberry’s lithographic printing in Jawi has been described by Ian Proudfoot as having “an impact comparable to that of Gutenberg’s typography in the West” (pp. 27–29).
• The Convent school was officially classified as a ‘government-aided school’ after an 1881 inspection and achieved Grade 1 status under the 1899 grading system; by the late 1920s the curriculum included algebra, geometry, science, shorthand, typing and book-keeping (p. 35).
• The Chinese merchant Cheang Hong Lim donated $3,000—one-tenth of the total cost—towards the new school building that opened in 1892, an event attended by the Governor, the Sultan of Johore and the consuls of six European nations (p. 34).

Conclusion

Hudd’s definitive takeaway is that both the LMS and the IJS can be productively understood as early faith-based development organizations, even if they did not conceptualize their work in those terms. The IJS fits this model most neatly, delivering services that correspond to modern development goals while simultaneously pursuing conversion. The LMS’s contribution is less direct but equally significant: by introducing the printing press and vernacular publishing to the Straits Settlements, they created the material infrastructure for a literate public sphere that, through Benedict Anderson’s logic of “imagined communities,” helped lay the groundwork for shared regional consciousness. Hudd is careful not to excuse the darker dimensions of empire—missionaries were committed to conversion and to what they considered the spread of civilization—but she insists that their legacy as forerunners of humanitarian development deserves recognition alongside their entanglement with colonial power.

Context

• The article draws on LMS mission reports, the Hikayat Abdullah, Straits Settlements government education records, contemporary Singaporean newspapers, and convent institutional archives, building on Hudd’s 2016 monograph and her 2016 National Library Singapore Fellowship research on early printing.
• Historiographically, the piece contributes to the growing literature that moves beyond the binary of missionaries-as-imperialists versus missionaries-as-benevolent-agents, positioning faith-based organizations within development theory and responding directly to Philip Fountain’s call for “thick description” of the entanglement of proselytizing and development.

References