A History of Christianity in Malaysia by John Roxborogh (review)

John Roxborogh is a New Zealand Presbyterian minister, and church historian, who spent almost a decade on the faculty of Seremban’s Seminari Theoloji Malaysia. Although his A History of Christianity is concise and accessible, it represents a meticulously referenced account of the personalities and processes through which Malaysia’s Christian communities came into being. It is a balanced account. All chapters deal with developments in both West and East Malaysia. With the exception of the opening chapter—which begins with Portuguese presence in Melaka (before the Protestant Reformation)—this is a thoroughly ecumenical history. His familiarity with both mission and church archives permitted Roxborogh to profile the legacies of both (mostly) European missionaries, and Asian evangelists and leaders. These are critical biographical sketches, rather than hagiographies. For example, an ‘eccentric pioneer’, Rev Francis Thomas McDougall who reached Kuching in 1848, is described as ‘physically robust, from a military family, an experienced sailor, [and] medically trained’. He was ‘colourful in his language, confident in medicine and surgery and decisive in crises requiring a military response, but it would be fair to say he lacked tact and discretion and was known for having little interest in the formalities of clerical dress’ (pp. 21–2). All the epochs in the establishment and consolidation of Christian communities in present-day Malaysia and Singapore (before 1965) are framed within their wider historical and geopolitical context. Both newcomers and experienced Malaysia-watchers will appreciate the attention to the processes that impacted—both positively and negatively—the wide spectrum described. For instance, the sizable Methodist community in Sibu is described as one of the ‘great migration stories of Christian mission’. This began following the founding of a Foochow church in Singapore in 1897 where a Methodist entrepreneur from Fujian received permission from Charles Brooke, in 1900, to relocate Foochow rice farmers to Sibu. Following the arrival of over 1,000 immigrants, the Methodist bishop (then based in Singapore) involved himself through personal visits and the appointment of local preachers. In 1907 Brooke appointed the Rev. James Hoover from Penang as the ‘Protector of the Foochows’ (p. 70).

Roxborogh divides his short book into two parts. Part One consists of two chapters, the first of which, ‘Churches and Missions’, deals with Portuguese, Dutch, and British influences before the 1874 Pangkor Treaty. The author’s attention to the range of Eurasian communities during this period is one of the ways he (convincingly) argues that Christian communities possess not only a long history, but also an Asian face (see pp. 7–17). The content of Chapter 2 (‘Migrants and Missionaries’) covers the period between 1874 and World War II. Although a range of missionary societies had long operated in the Straits Settlements, these expanded their operations as the British expanded their project of colonial capitalism. As is well known, this required migrant labour that the British recruited from India and China. More than Western missionary activism, it was this development that had the most dramatic impact on the cultural geography of Christianity in Malaysia. An observation made more than once (without being laboured) is that some personalities with European names came from families with significant or secondary connections to the region. For instance, Benjamin Peach Keasberry (1811–75), the well-known missionary associated with the London Missionary Society, was born in India. His English parents educated him in Mauritius and Madras, but he also spent some of his childhood in Java while his father worked for Raffles (p. 20). William Howell was born in Sarawak; his father was English but his mother was a Malay from Melaka (p. 48). Michael Jacques, who led the De La Salle Brothers, was born in Kuching to an English teacher and a Hakka mother from Sambas. His Catholic baptism came about after the Anglicans refused to regularize his parents’ relationship (p. 49). In addition to details about the range of Western-led initiatives, Roxborogh considers...