| Book Review | Environmental History, 12.2

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| Book Review | Environmental History, 12.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Nature and the Godly Empire: Science and Evangelical Mission in the Pacific, 1795–1850. By Sujit Sivasundaram. Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, and São Paulo: Cambridge University Press, 2005. xi + 244 pp. Includes illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. Cloth $80.00.

This imperfectly realized but significant book takes a sympathetic look at the role of religion in the conversion of the residents of islands in the Pacific Ocean —ranging from Tahiti to Hawaii, and various other parts of the Polynesian archipelago. Sivasundaram examines the tactics used by the missionaries of the London Missionary Society in effecting those conversions. The gist of his argument is that is that those missionaries were men of science (we assume them to be men, anyway; little is said of the role of women in missionary families or of gender issues generally), and specifically, that they used this status to popularize and legitimize their missionary efforts back home by use of scientific diagrams, metaphors, and other forms of communication as a means of convincing secular and religious groups of the validity of their work. Along the way, their own identities were shaped by these appeals to, and use of, scientific argument and example.

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