| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Koji Kawashima. Missionaries and a Hindu State: Travancore 1858–1936. New York: Oxford University Press. 1998. Pp. x, 252. $26.00.

Today, the "Kerala model of development" is a fairly well-known term referring to the state with India's best social statistics (female literacy, infant mortality, etc), achieved with below-average economic growth. The princely states of Travancore occupied the southern half of today's Kerala, and what happened in Travancore from 1800 until its merger into the new Kerala state in 1956 is important for an understanding of how desirable developmental outcomes happen. Koji Kawashima's diligent work contributes both to such understanding and to debates about modern Kerala's history. 1

The book touches on a number of themes: "Hindu kingship," the relationship between the British India and the princely states, and the role of Christian missionaries in effecting social change. Kawashima argues that previous accounts of Protestant missionary activity in Travancore have not fully appreciated the changing relationship between the missionaries and the government of the Hindu maharaja. Such accounts, he contends, have emphasized an adversarial relationship in which the missionaries are invariably depicted as challenging the state on behalf of their lower-caste converts' civil rights. According to Kawashima, however, the missionaries and the Hindu state needed each other, and until the 1930s there was more cooperation than conflict. . . .

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