In God’s Empire: French Missionaries and the Modern World edited by Owen White and J. P. Daughton (review)

Missionaries, alongside a broad range of administrative, economic, and pedagogic mechanisms, played an integral role in a complex network deployed with the objective of expanding the influence of France in a truly global framework. Drawing on an impressive range of archival sources, augmented by maps, photographs, and postcards, In God’s Empire excavates the long history of French missionary activity around the world. At the same time, attention is also accorded to evidence on the ground, where ‘one easily finds reminders that French religion radiated outward’ (p. 4). The book’s originality lies in its attempt at redressing the imbalance in scholarly research by emphasizing that, although ‘missionaries represented a key aspect of France’s engagement with and influence over the modern world’, this has ‘scarcely been reflected in most historical accounts of modern France and its empire’ (p. 4). By exploring the ‘global impact of French Christian evangelization’ (p. 5) and privileging an ambitious comparative structure, In God’s Empire reveals how, ‘[a]t the end of empire, the religious legacy of the missions proved far more durable than the secular influences of either France or Britain’ (p. 282). The book’s Introduction, Afterword, and twelve chapters bring together in one comprehensive volume the research of historians who, collectively, attest the remarkable diversity of religious experiences associated with French missionary activity, in terms of geopolitical alignments and colonial and post-colonial contexts, thereby strengthening interdisciplinary connections and methodological approaches that in turn stand to have a productive impact on future scholarly investigation. The resulting analysis enhances our understanding of the French civilizing mission and, accordingly, highlights ‘the significance and complexity of the role missionaries played in shaping France’s interaction with the modern world’ (p. 6). We thus learn of the motivation that informed missionary activity, of the competition between Catholics and Protestants, of varying degrees of engagement with the indigenous population, and about the pioneering work of women. Also considered is the sometimes fraught relationship and ‘unstable balance of power between French administrators, missionaries, and local leaders’ (p. 152), and how such a tenuous interaction would ultimately bolster nationalist consciousness and pave the way for decolonization and independence in colonial settings. Criticism was recorded during the interwar years under the French mandate rule of Syria and Lebanon, and in Cameroon demobilized army chaplains and priests ‘became vocal critics of government social and labor policy and thus threatened to undermine what was perceived to be French destiny’ (p. 234). These transitions occurred in a context of ‘increased awareness of empire [that] generated important debates about the need for colonial reform’ (p. 234) while also drawing attention to the challenges associated with ‘creating an indigenous Catholic Church directed and manned by African personnel’ (p. 258). Notwithstanding the impressive range of research, In God’s Empire provides the kind of contextualization that is often sorely lacking in contemporary public debates in both France and the European Union on the subject of religion.