Emotions in early mission encounters in colonial Greenland and Australia

• Main Author: McLisky, Claire Louise
• Other Authors: McLisky, Claire, Midena, Daniel, Vallgårda, Karen
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: Palgrave Macmillan 2015
• Subjects: /dk/atira/pure/core/keywords/FacultyOfHumanities; Faculty of Humanities; mission history; comparative history; Følelseshistorie; Greenland; history; Australian history; Hans Egede
• Online Access: https://curis.ku.dk/portal/da/publications/emotions-in-early-mission-encounters-in-colonial-greenland-and-australia(ec7f919e-8bbc-462f-a770-72c5616ef60c).html

This chapter uses the concept of affective circuits to analyse the emotional dynamics of Christian mission in two eighteenth-century colonial contexts: Greenland (1721-1736) and Australia (1788-1791). McLisky argues that the first missionaries in each setting—the Lutheran minister Hans Egede and the Anglican chaplain Richard Johnson—aimed to encourage the transfer of particular ‘positive’ emotions between themselves, their indigenous converts and prospective converts, and missionary supporters ‘at home’ in Denmark and England. They did this in the hope that successful emotional transfers would set up affective circuits which would intensify these ‘positive’ emotions in all parties, thereby stimulating support for the mission and strengthening the faith of all involved. Diverse colonial contexts, however, meant that their attempts to foster such circuits had very different outcomes.