Bachmann, E. Theodore

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BOOK REVIEWS 443Missionaries and Education in Bengal 1793-1837. By M. A. LAIRD. Oxford:Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press, 1972. xiv + 300 pp. $18.75.Amid the pressures to adapt education in today's India to the needs of thenew nation, a study like Laird's offers a welcome opportunity for perspective.By implication this carefully researched narrative of missionaries and educationalbeginnings in Bengal—including Calcutta—in the late eighteenth and early nine-teenth centuries reveals something about the situation also in our own time.Based on the author's London University dissertation (1968), Laird's accounthas the merit of relating developments in England and Scotland to those in India,and thus of providing us with valuable synoptic insights into the interplay of re-ligion—Christianity and Hinduism—and education. We learn how Protestantmissionaries from England and Scotland, including the famed Alexander Duff,plus some German (mainly Lutherans) in Church Missionary Society employ, actupon the conviction held by their supporting societies that Western educationunder the leading of God is a preparatio evangelica for an eventual conversion ofthe "Hindoos."Seen in retrospect, the approach was inclusive. In contrast to Indian schoolsencouraged by the British Government the mission schools in this period had abroader curriculum, developed Bengali as a vehicle for Western learning, pre-pared and published textbooks, promoted elementary education in the vernacular,undertook experimentation, fostered intercultural exchange between India andBritain in educational methods and provided educators of usually high quality.Weakest was the mission schools' teacher training program and the developmentof Bengali leadership in education. Yet in those decades—marked by the Na-polenic era and by Britain's advancement of empire—there stirred in India'smiddle classes a strong incentive to learn English and to be occupationally onthe rise.Were one to fault Laird's work, it would be largely on what is omitted or,positively, on what is needed to complete the perspective. This specialized topic,in my opinion, requires more frequent and fuller references to its context. Theaccent falls on education in Britain and India as well as on religion, but informativeasides on political, economic or social aspects of the larger scene would give strengthto the main subject. This would include, for example, a clearer picture of theBritish East India Company's policy against missionaries; the role of DanishSerampore (adjacent to Calcutta) in providing a crucially important start forBritish missionaries in education; the role of German missionary-teachers onthe Church Missionary Society staff as evidence of an international Protestantismin a preecumenical era and so forth.Finally, although the event occurred one year after the terminal date of Laird'streatment, would not the interplay between government-sponsored and missionaryschools as it led to the inauguration of a national system of education (1838) havedeserved more notice? The activities of Thomas Babington Macaulay (see JohnClive's recent biography, New York: Knopf, 1973), compressed into the years1834 to 1838, gave anglicists the favored position and helped to set the courseof Indian education for generations. Would this have wrapped up Laird's accountbetter than does its present abrupt ending?In any case, Laird has rendered a timely service. He encourages further re-search in a subject integral to a new intercontinental and globally-aware historyas well as to the work of the churches on six continents.Lutheran World Federation, E. THEODORE BACHMANNGeneva, Switzerlandavailable at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.2307/3164433Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University of Basel Library, on 10 Jul 2017 at 16:38:45, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use,

Book Review: Missionaries and Education in Bengal 1793-1837: Missionaries and Education in Bengal 1793-1837. By LairdM. A.. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press, 1972. xiv + 300 pp. $18.75

Book Review: Missionaries and Education in Bengal 1793-1837: Missionaries and Education in Bengal 1793-1837. By LairdM. A.. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press, 1972. xiv + 300 pp. $18.75

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