Empires of Religion

A new and exciting collection of studies that breaks new ground in the history of religion and imperialism. This is the first study to provide a 'four nations' approach to the history of religious settlement in the British Empire including important new accounts of Irish and Scottish missionary and colonial churches, as well as the way in which religion served to focus metropolitan imperial identity back home and abroad. It includes perspectives from around the British world including the settler societies of Greater Britain -- Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the Cape Colony -- as well as the more distant and contested colonies in Madagascar and Botswana. Proper attention is paid to Britain's religious diverse traditions, including Irish Catholicism, low and high church Anglicanism, Presbyterianism and Congregationalism. Including many useful introductions to topics such as religious conflict in Ireland, the history of slavery, foreign missions, the influence of the United States on foreign mission work in Canada, and the slow transformation of colonial to national churches, for students of imperialism, gender studies, race relations and religious history, this book makes essential reading.