"I Love to Stand Before a Map of the World": Missionary Intelligence and Geographic Knowledge

Missionary geographic enthusiasm was a vital component of nineteenth-century missionaries’ attempts to inform the American Protestant public about the world, its people, and their supposed need for evangelism. Starting in the late 1820s, missionary leaders of Monthly Prayer Concerts turned to maps and other geographic information as a key part of the “missionary intelligence” they shared with American audiences. Maps served several purposes in missionary intelligence: to educate and entertain, to make the far away and distant feel near, and to help American Protestants take a livelier interest in the world around them. Ministers sought to harness the power of visual aids and compelling narrative to turn public educational lectures into tools for the advance of foreign missions in the world at large. But these efforts to educate Americans about the world brought missionary conceptions of the hierarchies of world religions, cultures, and race into American geographic understandings.