Samuel Agersnap Bone

Københavns Universitet: Colonialism, Race and Power

KA-område 2: metodiske og analytiske redskaber

Cleansing Colonial India: Henry

Martyn and the ‘missionary spirit’
of early 19th century travel writing

By Samuel Agersnap Bone, University of Copenhagen

46.808 characters (19.5 pages, excl. bibliography, table of contents and footnotes)

1 Henry Martyn and his travels. Internet Archive Book Images

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Samuel Agersnap Bone
Københavns Universitet: Colonialism, Race and Power
KA-område 2: metodiske og analytiske redskaber

Contents

Introduction ..........................................................3
Historiography ......................................................4
Twin understandings of Martyn’s travel
writing: Nayar’s Imperial Sublime and Missionary
Picturesque ................................................................5
Henry Martyn, the Christian martyr: a paragon
of morality .............................................................. 10
Stereotypes of a Missionary: Martyn’s India in
terms of Said’s Orientalism and McLeod’s
Orientalist categories ............................................ 14
Conclusion .......................................................... 19
Bibliography ....................................................... 21

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 Samuel Agersnap Bone
Københavns Universitet: Colonialism, Race and Power
KA-område 2: metodiske og analytiske redskaber

Introduction
India is consigned by the world, to the irrefragable chain of Satan.. (…)
Lord, increase my zeal, that though I am but a feeble and obscure
instrument, I may struggle out my few days in great and unremitting
exertions for the demolition of paganism, and the setting up of Christ's
kingdom.2
The above words were written by Reverend Missionary Henry Martyn on
the 27th September 1805 in his journal, aboard a ship underway to Colonial
India. Martyn worked as chaplain for the East India Company between 1806
until 1811, in an effort to transform India into ‘Christ’s kingdom’. This was a
greater effort planned by the British Empire. One way in which this was
envisioned, was by sending missionaries such as Martyn to live amongst the
natives, preaching correct, Christian moral values, striving to convert as
many as possible.
This paper will contain three chapters, each focusing on separate aspects
of Martyn’s writing within respective analytical frameworks. However, I will
argue that despite incorporating fundamentally different ideas, they are all
linked and can be better understood in combination with each other.
The first chapter will focus on Martyn’s travel writing within two
‘colonial aesthetics’, the Imperial Sublime and the Missionary Picturesque.
These colonial aesthetics were coined by Pramod Nayar, and I will use these
‘aesthetics’ to show how my close-reading of Martyn may fit within larger
historical trends during the early British colonial period in India.
Secondly, I will turn my focus to the idea of Martyn as a Christian hero.
Martyn never sought glory or riches, rather the opposite; he renounced them
to serve his God more faithfully. In that sense, I will argue that there is a
sense of irony in how he became so celebrated for everything he sacrificed
and ‘the correct way of living’, when he never wanted any reward or
recognition, other than that of God. This chapter will also explore topics of
gender and marriage that I will argue are intrinsically entangled with other
ideas that defined Christian morals, such as sexuality and professionality.
Finally, the third chapter will turn to Martyn in light of one the most
prevalent and hotly discussed theories of the last 50 years: Edward Said’s
Orientalism. Nevertheless, I wish not to rely overly on Said, but also
introduce John McLeod’s ‘shape of Orientalism’ and ‘stereotypes of the
Orient and Orientals’, which I argue make Said’s ideas more tangible as
analytical framework in which to see Martyn in light of. One of Said’s main
points is that Orientalism is enforced “as an exercise of cultural strength”.3
By showcasing how negative Orientalist stereotypes about Indians were

2 Martyn 1851, p. 245

3 Said 1979, p. 40
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 Samuel Agersnap Bone
Københavns Universitet: Colonialism, Race and Power
KA-område 2: metodiske og analytiske redskaber

prevalent throughout travel writing, such as Martyn’s, I argue that the

strength of the British Empire and reversely the Indian weakness is
rhetorically emphasized in such writing.
Wrapping up, I will argue that the main arguments that I have made in
the three chapters are interconnected, and together form the colonial,
Orientalist rhetoric that are an undercurrent feature of Martyn’s travel
writing.

Historiography

In this paper, I will primarily be using secondary sources as analytical

frameworks, by which Martyn’s travel writing can be better understood. On
that note, I will be using Pramod Nayar’s ideas of colonial aesthetics: the
Missionary Picturesque and the Imperial Sublime, to better understand the
ways in which Martyn characterized the Indian landscape and its people. In
terms of the picturesque, Nayar was not the first to talk about a colonial
picturesque of sorts. Nigel Leask wrote about this ‘picturesque’ before
Nayar. One notable aspect of Leask’s picturesque lies in how the picturesque
can also work in the direction of colony to metropole. In that way, the sight
of the picturesque that is so alien to the traveler might, according to Leask,
evoke “a lachrymose nostalgia as the present landscape dissolved in
sentimental memories of home and childhood.”4 Therefore, the
overwhelming ‘dazzle’ of the picturesque also holds power in making the
traveler recall their home. The colony’s alien picturesque contrasts with the
familiar, homely metropole, emphasizing the traveler’s longing and sense of
what home means. However, their two ideas of the picturesque differ in
some ways. Nayar writes:
Leask has argued that the picturesque was ‘antithetical’ to the ‘survey’
mode and rejected details. My reading, in contrast, proposes that the survey
is constitutive of and the necessary anterior moment in the missionary
picturesque.5
In my reading of Martyn, I subscribe to Nayar’s picturesque more so than
Leask, as I believe that the survey mode, compiling and describing a vast
amount of details in Indian customs and traditions, was central to the
missionary narrative and the picturesque. I will showcase some of Martyn’s
descriptions of Indian ‘heathen’ traditions in the analysis.
Although I employ many of Said’s fundamental ideas about the Orient
and its stereotypes in Orientalism, there has nevertheless been a great deal of
criticism and discussion surrounding the book, and certain positions it takes.

4 Leask 2002, p. 175

5 Nayar 2008, p. 98
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 Samuel Agersnap Bone
Københavns Universitet: Colonialism, Race and Power
KA-område 2: metodiske og analytiske redskaber

One such critic is James Clifford, who in a response to Orientalism

emphasizes that: “(…) Said’s refusal to appeal to any authentic and especially
traditional oriental realities against the false stereotypes of Orientalism is
exemplary6.” Although I do not agree with Clifford’s view that these
Orientalist stereotypes, which I will be examining closer in my analysis, are
necessarily false, some of them are perhaps not as prevalent today as they
once were. However, in the case of this paper, I am rather employing
Orientalism as a tool of analysis for looking back in time, at 19th century
India. Furthermore, Clifford’s criticism of Said also points out that Said
writes from the standpoint of the Oriental, and yet he is a “’Palestinian
nationalist’, who was educated in Egypt and the United States and “deeply
imbued with European humanities (…) turning to European poets for his
expression of essential values and to French philosophy for his analytical
tools.”7 Thereby, Clifford criticizes Said for writing from the perspective of
the Oriental when his ideas are supposedly rather Foucauldian and
European.8 I do not necessarily subscribe to Clifford’s criticism (and it is not
really relevant for the writing of this paper in isolation), but it is helpful to be
aware of some of the critical discourse surrounding Orientalism. Although
lauded by many, Orientalism is not seen as a universal truth. And on that
note, one of the reasons Orientalism remains so relevant and hotly discussed,
is due to the disputes and controversies surrounding some of its positions.
Ann Laura Stoler and Frederick Cooper have remarked on how other
historians have looked at colonies as “laboratories of modernity, where
missionaries, educators and doctors could carry out experiments in social
engineering, without confronting the popular rigidities of European society
at home.”9 The idea that Martyn’s missionary work was essentially a form of
social engineering is a fascinating one. For the British Empire, conversion of
the Indians to Christianity was a must, and was even seen as somewhat
charitable in their eyes. Missionaries such as Martyn were convinced that
they were saving India, and thereby they did not stop to think that some of
their ways in which they attempted to convert Indians were coercive and
manipulative at best, and at worst, even a case of social engineering.

Twin understandings of Martyn’s travel writing: Nayar’s

Imperial Sublime and Missionary Picturesque

6 Clifford 1988, p. 273

7 Clifford 1998, p. 275
8 Clifford 1988, p. 265
9 Cooper and Stoler 1997, p. 5

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 Samuel Agersnap Bone
Københavns Universitet: Colonialism, Race and Power
KA-område 2: metodiske og analytiske redskaber

This chapter will explore how Martyn’s travel writing can be read through
two theories by scholar Pramod Nayar, the Imperial Sublime and the
Missionary Picturesque, which explain tendencies that pervaded 19th century
English travel writing. With Nayar’s framework, I will look to exemplify how
a close-reading of a single missionary’s journals and letters can point towards
larger historical trends, and argue that that the travel writing of this period
perhaps is not always as individualistic and personal as the genre may
generally suggest. To briefly introduce the Imperial Sublime and the
Missionary Picturesque before getting more hands-on and in-depth with
them, the terms are part of what Nayar deems ‘colonizing aesthetics’. These
aesthetics are, according to Nayar, part of a vocabulary that enables “the
English traveler to cast India in ways that call for particular kinds of colonial
or imperial response”.10 It should be emphasized that travel writing such as
Martyn’s was not simply a journal to be kept for self-reflection. Travel
narratives were at the time, a literary phenomenon:
In the colonial travel narrative, the descriptive vocabulary not only
facilitated an immediate rhetorical control over Indian space, but also
functioned as a ground-clearing device for an avowedly colonial discourse of
the later years of British occupation of India. Aesthetics is here a colonial
‘project’.11
Hence, I will argue in this essay that the sort of travel writing of the 19th
century that Martyn exemplifies is far from just being the memoirs of an
innocent traveler. Rather, the dual understandings of the Imperial Sublime
and Missionary Picturesque together configure a rather distinct, descriptive
vocabulary that casts India as a ruined place, in that way distinguishing it as a
polar opposite from a flourishing Britain in every way.12 Where Britain is
modern, India is primitive. Where Britain is rational and scientific, India is
irrational. Where Britain is moderate and measured, India is a place of pure
excess and unfiltered desire13. Nayar remarks on colonial aesthetics that
“these are not mutually exclusive moments in the aesthetics of colonial
writing.”14 In that way, aesthetics may overlap, and multiple may be
prevalent at a given time. This seems to be the case in the writing of Henry
Martyn, as I argue that the Imperial Sublime and Missionary Picturesque are
twin features of his writing, as they both appear prominently throughout his
journals and letters.
Nayar defines the Imperial Sublime as being dominant between 1750-
1820, and the Missionary Picturesque between 1790-186015. In that way, it

10 Nayar 2008, p. 1
11 Nayar 2008, p. 2-3
12 Nayar 2012, p. 64
13 Nayar 2012, p. 61
14 Nayar 2012, p. 6
15 As is clear from the chapter titles of Nayar 2008.

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 Samuel Agersnap Bone
Københavns Universitet: Colonialism, Race and Power
KA-område 2: metodiske og analytiske redskaber

makes sense that Martyn’s writing features characteristics of both colonizing

aesthetics, as he wrote about India in the years 1806-1811. The India seen
through the colonizing aesthetic of the Imperial Sublime is a landscape
characterized by threat. It is a theoretical oxymoron in that it is
simultaneously defined by its desolation as well as its excess. The civilized,
human aspect of the landscape is empty and ruined, yet it contrasts with the
nature, which is overflowing and excessive in the eyes of the traveler,
signifying a wild threat.16 The lack of ‘civilization’ and innate ‘emptiness’ may
be eerie for the English traveler, who might be used to a different, Western
kind of civilization: bustling, chaotic cities of trade and progress. Here, a
different type of chaos rules, as nature is opulent and overwhelming. Yet the
land is contrastingly uninhabited and thereby strange to the traveler, who in
early 19th century colonial rule has not truly explored what lies behind the
mirage of the exotic jungles and woods – whether it is a wild place that can
be tamed or whether it may resist the colonizer. When Martyn first arrives in
India he is seemingly underwhelmed by the ‘emptiness’ of culture and
people:
I thought to have seen whole fleets of ships, vast numbers of natives on
the shores, and appearances of cultivation, but there was nothing of the sort.
A village indeed was seen running in an easterly direction from the shore
into the interior, consisting, we heard, of no less than houses; but there
seemed to be nothing doing. Five or six miserable people only were seen
cutting down the jungle for firewood.17
This excerpt demonstrates Martyn’s shock upon arriving. In the village,
he rather derogatorily acknowledges that nothing of ‘cultivation’ seems to
appear. Of note, he only registers the ‘miserable’ people collecting firewood.
The India of the Imperial Sublime has a supposed lack of culture, a ruin and
desolation that may only be reshaped, and crucially, saved by the English
colonial power18. By characterizing the landscape with these tropes of
ruination and yet natural potential, the colonial power is given added agency
and justification to guide the space and its people to their true, ‘untapped’
power and potential.
Whereas Martyn notes the cultural barrenness and lack of sophistication
of the Indian people, he does in contrast note that the nature is
overwhelming – hence showcasing two main features of the Imperial
Sublime. “As we walked through the dark wood, which everywhere covers
the country, the cymbals and drums struck up, and never did sounds go
through my heart with such horror in my life”19. In this quote, we witness a
rather terrified Martyn. He notes that the wood ‘covers the entire country’,

16 Nayar 2012, p. 65
17 Maryn 1837, p. 327
18 Nayar 2008, p. 72
19 Martyn 1851, p. 332

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 Samuel Agersnap Bone
Københavns Universitet: Colonialism, Race and Power
KA-område 2: metodiske og analytiske redskaber

displaying how travelers who wrote with the aesthetic of the Imperial
Sublime might describe Indian nature as endless, swallowing up the
unassuming traveler. Alongside the seemingly infinite wood that Martyn
describes, the ‘drums and cymbals’ strike fear into Martyn’s heart. The sheer
foreignness of the situation is overwhelming for Martyn, who finds himself
surrounded by hostile nature and loud, foreign sounds that confuse and
threaten him. Once again, the Imperial Sublime contains vocabulary that
characterizes the Indian culture and people as uncultured and uncivilized,
generally just as lacking of substance. This characterization also helps
configure an understanding of a frail Indian civilization with little culture or
technology, which the colonizer may easily assert dominance over.
Contrastingly, the unknown, dangerous landscape exists as the real threat to
the colonizer, who must properly cultivate and disarm any natural threat to
properly control the colony.
The Missionary Picturesque, which according to Nayar appeared after the
Imperial Sublime, is in many ways symbolic of an India that had now been
subjected to colonial influence for a good while. On this colonial aesthetic,
Nayar remarks that:
The Indian landscape, in all its ‘Providential’ variety, beauty and wild
fertility, might have been threatening and unsafe at one point. But now, with
the moral influence of the European, it has been made safe.20
Although, as shown above, the account of Martyn contains many
instances of the Imperial Sublime, it also simultaneously contains many
typical traits of the Missionary Picturesque. The Missionary Picturesque
appears after the Sublime, where more time has passed for the colonial power
to assert their influence; thereby the colony has been made more ‘secure’.
This allows the landscape’s natural beauty to be appreciated, as it does not
threaten to harm the traveler and colonial power to the same degree, as they
have now taken it as a dominion, and thereby the first steps towards total
control the land. Of course, in the case of Martyn, we do not witness the
development from Sublime to Picturesque directly – my point is that his
account is written at a time where both aesthetics were prevalent, they
overlap.
However, what is crucial in Nayar’s Picturesque is the idea that the
landscape has been reformed since the Sublime, by the colonizer’s effort. “The
picturesque aims primarily to ‘improve’ and ‘alter’ nature (…) a rhetorical
transformation of primitive, wild, variegated India through British
intervention”21. Much of the threat that characterized the Imperial Sublime
has been eliminated by the time of the Missionary Picturesque. However,

20 Nayar 2008, p. 94
21 Nayar 2008, p. 96
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 Samuel Agersnap Bone
Københavns Universitet: Colonialism, Race and Power
KA-område 2: metodiske og analytiske redskaber

much was still to be improved. Even though much of the natural threat was
removed, heretical ideas still reigned supreme in Indian culture. The rhetoric
of the Missionary Picturesque suggests that that there is great potential
beneath the pagan wilds, a ‘soul’ beneath the exterior, which must be
revealed and fully realized by Christianity ‘cleansing’ the heretical22. Having
partially tamed and conquered nature, the Missionary Picturesque turns
towards the Indian religion, culture and its people as focus points that must
be controlled. And to change the people’s religion from pagan multiplicity,
to the singular, morally correct Christianity, missionaries were needed. Henry
Martyn is an example of the utterly devoted missionary who lives among the
natives to teach them the Christian way, and eventually totally transform
them. The bigger crowds of Indians that Martyn could be around, the better,
as he would then have a larger group available to preach the gospel to, and
attempt to convert to good Christians23. The Missionary Picturesque requires
hard, ‘georgic’ missionary labor24 should India ever reach sufficient
transform to the ‘Christian garden’25 that the missionary wants it to become,
with all the ‘correct’ moral values that accompany it.
The Indian ‘pagan’ religions were seen as fragmented and detailed with
countless rituals and strange customs, which were seen as nonsensical by the
traveler or missionary. Thus, the goal of the missionary was to strive towards
creating a Concordia discors26, that is, a harmonious whole out of the originally
chaotic, discordant elements – in this case the heretical India. In contrast to
these discordant, varied Indian rituals, Christianity represented a single
‘grand truth’27, something that served a larger, more structured purpose in
the eyes of the colonizers. Martyn is utterly disgusted and awestruck by
some of the rituals and customs he encounters: “(…) some of the people
prostrated themselves, striking the ground twice with their foreheads; this
excited more horror in me than I can well express.”28 The Indian rituals that
Martyn witnesses here are exceedingly physical and performative in nature;
with violence and explicitness at the center of them, which thereby elicit
reactions of horror and shock from him.
When Martyn first reaches South-east Asia in 1806, specifically when they
sail past the island of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) before reaching India, we
witness two main tropes of the Missionary Picturesque:
The smell from the land was exceedingly fragrant, and I felt my senses
quite soothed by it; I sat on the poop following a long train of pleasing

22 Nayar 2008, p. 96
23 Martyn 1851, p. 348
24 Nayar 2008, p. 110
25 Nayar 2008, p. 112
26 Nayar 2008, p. 128
27 Nayar 2008, p. 128
28 Martyn 1851, p. 340

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 Samuel Agersnap Bone
Københavns Universitet: Colonialism, Race and Power
KA-område 2: metodiske og analytiske redskaber

thoughts, about the blissful period when the native Cingalese should rear
temples to Jesus, in their cinnamon groves.29
Firstly, we see here how Martyn is instantly invigorated by no more than
the sight and smell of the land. However, that instant pleasure that he feels is
accompanied by his urge to transform it, to cleanse the land of their pagan
practices. Martyn invokes a rather beautiful, romantic image to the Christian,
European reader of his travel writing: a beautiful cinnamon grove with
‘temples to Jesus’. In this dream that Martyn has about his ideal India, we
witness how the missionary with the rhetoric of the Missionary Picturesque
initially relishes in India’s wild beauty. Despite this, Martyn crucially wishes
to transform it, as it in spite of its natural beauty is a wretched, heretical
place.
The vocabulary and rhetoric of the Imperial Sublime and the Missionary
Picturesque are vast, and they have been explained more thoroughly by
Pramod Nayar. However, I set out not to summarize Nayar, but to
exemplify how a close-reading of Martyn shows the rhetoric of the Imperial
Sublime and the Missionary Picturesque entangle, intertwine and together
create a coherent rhetoric that calls for imperial and colonial action. The
vivid descriptions of the heretical customs and threatening landscapes alike,
are penetrative to the English reader of this travel writing, as they in their
rhetoric both explain the need for and partially justify the colonial
dominance over India.

Henry Martyn, the Christian martyr: a paragon of

morality

In this chapter, I will turn my focus to the idea of Henry Martyn as the
ideal Christian who made many sacrifices such as celibacy, leaving his home
country and giving up the possibility of a love life. All of this in order to
serve his God through his missionary duties by converting Indians to
Christianity. After a long, tumultuous journey from Portsmouth in July
1805,30 and around the Cape of Good Hope31, Henry Martyn from Truro,
Cornwall32, finally arrived in India in May 180633. Along the way, Martyn
expresses intense distress about the length of the journey and other
tribulations that he endures aboard the ship such as death, sickness and
longing for England. However, Martyn was an evangelical missionary, and
his passion, to performing that duty was ultimate:

29Martyn 1851, p. 322-323

30Martyn 1851, p. 212
31 Martyn 1851, p. 291
32 Useless authors note: coincidentally the hometown of my father and where my grandparents live. I did not

know this prior to deciding to write about Henry Martyn.

33 Martyn 1851, p. 326

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 Samuel Agersnap Bone
Københavns Universitet: Colonialism, Race and Power
KA-område 2: metodiske og analytiske redskaber

I endeavored to realize my future life as a missionary, to ask whether I

could be satisfied in resigning forever all pleasing society, to roam about a
desert, looking for people to preach to , and to wait Upon them , patiently
enduring their scorn and ill treatment . My heart did not at all shrink from it ,
but on the contrary, improved and embraced it34
Martyn’s relief was therefore considerable upon first reaching India,
finally being able to preach to the native Indians. Something that further
illustrates Martyn’s uncompromised devotion to his mission is that he left
behind the love of his life, Lydia, in England. Henry Martyn was heavily
considering marriage to Lydia before leaving for India, but elected not to:
“He (Mr. Cecil, an acquaintance of Martyn, ed.) said I should be acting like a
madman, if I went out unmarried. A wife would supply by her comfort and
counsel the entire want of society, and also be a preservation both to
character and passions amidst such scenes (…) But yet voluntary celibacy
seems so much more noble and glorious.”35 In this quote we witness Martyn
ignore the advice from a friend who encourages him to marry. Even though
having a companion in India would be a massive boon for Martyn’s comfort
in the colony, he decides against it. However, it was not a choice that came
lightly. Martyn’s mind seems largely discordant on the topic of Lydia – he
clearly loves her, and yet he feels guilty and shameful about that. On June 7th
1805, Martyn wrote: “How miserable did life appear, without the hope of
Lydia.”36 Nonetheless, just over two weeks later, on June 23rd, he wrote that:
“(…) I found it refreshing to devote myself to Christ’s service. The world
and worldly things, even Lydia, appeared all indifferent.”37 It seems like there
is some sort of cognitive dissonance going on in Martyn’s mind that causes
him immense distress, which he describes in detail throughout his journals
and letters. He really does seem to love Lydia, but his wish to devote himself
totally to God causes him to suppress those desires and deprioritize them.
He makes the decision to not marry her and go to India alone, even if she
could not join him. This noble sacrifice of what he sees as his true love is
part of a rhetoric that constructs Martyn as a martyr of sorts, renouncing
earthly goods and companionship out of dedication to his grander, noble
cause of converting Indians to Christianity.
However, Martyn’s relationship to Lydia did not end completely with his
voyage to India. In India, Martyn, again, finds himself yearning deeply for
Lydia:
My affections seemed to be growing more strong towards Lydia than I
could wish, as I fear my judgment will no longer remain unbiassed. The

34 Martyn 1851, p. 175.

35 Martyn 1851, p. 201
36 Martyn 1851, p. 203
37 Martyn 1851 p. 207

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 Samuel Agersnap Bone
Københavns Universitet: Colonialism, Race and Power
KA-område 2: metodiske og analytiske redskaber

subject is constantly on my mind, and imagination heightens the advantages

to be obtained from her presence.38
Martyn is generally not very explicit in terms of these desires that he
desperately attempts to suppress, but one might not be mistaken for
believing that Martyn is craving Lydia physically in this quote, perhaps even
sexually. It was generally difficult for missionaries to ever talk about sexuality
in their writings. As Rhonda Anne Semple writes: “More often, matters
having to do with sexuality remained a matter of unspoken taboo – despite
the fact that sexual behaviour played a central role in Christian morality and
sexuality in defining personal and professional worth”.39 Taboo aside,
English missionaries also just simply lacked the vocabulary at the time to
accurately talk about gender and sex, aside from the very limited ways and
gender roles that they were accustomed to.40
Furthermore, it is possible that other factors in the Indian environment
might be contributing to his struggles: “The agreeable female society I meet
with in India is very dangerous to me, by producing a softness of mind and
indisposition to solitude and bold exertion.”41 His longing for Lydia then,
seems not just a fleeting thought, but a hint towards the fact that he might
seriously be struggling with his celibacy and loneliness. Lydia aside, this
trope of the ‘threatening, seductive’ Indian woman is common within
Orientalism, as well as being one of the tropes contributing to what Pramod
Nayar dubs the ‘sentimental exotic’, a construction of tropical, Colonial
India in the 1760-1830 period.42 There are many facets within this discourse,
but a crucial aspect lies in how the woman of the sentimental exotic elicits
strong emotion, whether it be danger, mystique or seduction.43 This is clearly
evident in Martyn’s experiences with the ‘agreeable female society’. He may
lust for Lydia, but he also fears for his own self-control due to the women
around him producing this ‘softness of mind’. Thereby we witness the
Christian hero Martyn in an internal debacle: he asks Lydia to join him once
again “(…) I at last sit down to request you to come out to me to India.”44
Thereby, Martyn betrays his own original plan of leaving Lydia behind, to
become this ideal Christian missionary, theoretically enforced in the role by
his celibacy. Yet this seductive environment, in combination with a more
general longing for Lydia clearly affects Martyn, and he gives in to his
longing for her.
The missionary rhetoric changed considerably throughout the 19th
century. Martyn’s account remains amongst the first travel writing from 19th

38 Martyn 1851 p. 343

39 Semple 2017, p. 203
40 Semple 2017, p. 203
41 Martyn 1851 p. 352
42 Nayar 2012, p. 62
43 Nayar 2012, p. 69
44 Martyn 1851, p. 346

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 Samuel Agersnap Bone
Københavns Universitet: Colonialism, Race and Power
KA-område 2: metodiske og analytiske redskaber

century India, but later on in the century, the field increasingly came to be
dominated by women, in tandem with social developments in Britain.45
While female accounts do not speak directly towards Martyn’s rhetoric and
writing, it is interesting to discuss the differences, as it may emphasize
certain aspects of Martyn’s writing – and the difference between male and
female missionary writing. While Martyn’s account is interesting to the focus
for this paper, through the lens of Colonialism, I must admit, there is not a
lot of fun to be had in Martyn’s writing. His writing is extremely repetitive,
and inherently professional, never straying far from his missionary ideals.
Semple has emphasized this contrast as such: “When a male missionary talks
about his bicycle, it was as a form of transport. For women, the bicycle
represented freedom and fun46”. In that sense, male missionary writing
tended to exclusively include descriptions of preaching, and moral lessons or
even, as Martyn may testify to, lots of personal conflict about their own
morality: “I was plagued with the workings of an evil, selfish, dissipated,
discontented heart”47 (…) “Rose and prayed under the overwhelming
influence Of corruption.”48 Indeed, missionaries were not shy to admit to
their own faults, and Martyn’s account exemplifies constant striving to be a
perfect servant of God, always remaining intensely self-critical. Female
missionaries throughout the 19th century would often subscribe to a similar
rhetoric, but they were nonetheless also capable of describing light-hearted
thoughts and activities that might be regarded as superfluous to the mission
and serving God.
“Martyn is a good scholar, but not much of an orator”.49 This is an
acquaintance’s observation of Martyn, which he, for whatever reason,
decided to include in his journal, despite it being a rather negative
characteristic for a preacher to have. It is rather puzzling that this mediocrity
as an orator would be emphasized, given that this was going to be
paramount to his success in India, preaching to the masses. However, this
quote does reveal one other aspect of Martyn – his proficiency as a scholar.
In a similar vein, Mary Gibson has described how Martyn was a devoted
student of travel writing as well as the biographies of other missionaries;
specifically the works of William Carey in India and David Brainerd’s work
detailing conversion of native Indians in North America.50 However, unlike
other missionaries such as Carey, who were dissenters and came from
humble, poor upbringings, Martyn was far from that. He had a
comparatively wealthy upbringing. He went to good schools, culminating in
his enrolment at St. John’s College in Cambridge, where he was taught by

45 Semple 2017, p. 190-191

46 Semple 2017, p. 227
47 Martyn 1851, p. 55
48 Martyn 1851, p. 115.
49 Martyn 1851, p. 256
50 Gibson 1999, 423

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Københavns Universitet: Colonialism, Race and Power
KA-område 2: metodiske og analytiske redskaber

cleric Charles Simeon, who Mary Gibson remarks as having “an

extraordinary impact on Anglican evangelicalism in England”.51 Gibson also
notes how Martyn lost his father, looking up to Simeon as a spiritual father
of sorts.52 It is interesting to note Simeon’s impact on Martyn, as he played a
role in passing on his own values to Martyn, and those values later came to
define Martyn’s legacy as a Christian icon in Britain.
One such value was that of self-denial.53 Central to Martyn’s rhetoric is
the idea of noblesse oblige, the idea that being born of nobility means that you
must set a good example, and represent a certain moral code to those born
into lesser ranks. Martyn was born wealthy, with a predefined advantage to
most Englishmen. Yet he chooses to discard his nobility by becoming not
only a man of the church, but a missionary who is in the dirt amongst all the
commoners and poor folk, in an effort to better them via his preaching.
Alongside his voluntary celibacy, the traits of self-denial and discarded
nobility were key components in cementing Martyn as a paragon of
Christian values, which was a crucial facet of what made his travel writing
popular. In the end, these values as all contribute towards creating Martyn’s
image of a Christian martyr who sacrificed his nobility, riches and pleasures
of the flesh to pursue his mission.

Stereotypes of a Missionary: Martyn’s India in terms of

Said’s Orientalism and McLeod’s Orientalist categories

Colonial India has been much discussed in terms of how depictions of it

often contained Orientalist tropes. An obvious aspect of how the colony can
be understood through Said is in the inherent power dichotomy between the
colony and colonizer. At the time of early 19th century, the British Empire,
i.e., the West, had begun their show of strength: military and technological
superiority, which was part of what lead to the West eventually controlling
most of the Earth’s surface by the 20th century.54 This power dichotomy was
notable and translated into Orientalist tropes being prevalent in travel
literature, such as Martyn’s account. As Said himself has noted, when using
Orientalism as an analytical framework, the goal is usually to polarize the
distinction, the Orient becomes more Oriental, and the West becomes more
Western – dealing in extremes.55 So what does that entail? In Martyn’s work,
his rhetoric about India is not exclusively negative in nature, as the examples
I have presented in this essay might otherwise suggest. When he tries to

51 Gibson 1999, p. 422

52 Gibson 1999, p. 422
53 Gibson 1999, p. 422-423
54 Said 1979, p. 45
55 Said 1979, p. 46

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Københavns Universitet: Colonialism, Race and Power
KA-område 2: metodiske og analytiske redskaber

persuade Lydia to make the voyage and live there in India with him, he does
initially speak quite positively of the place:
The voyage is very agreeable , and with the people and country of India, I
think you will be much pleased . The climate is very fine (…). The natives
are the most harmless and timid creatures I ever met with . The whole
country is the land of plenty and peace.56
However, even shrouded amongst otherwise positive language, this quote
by Martyn contains Orientalist stereotypes. Postcolonial scholar John
McLeod, drawing on Said, has outlined categories for typical Orientalist
stereotypes. One such stereotype is “Orientalism makes assumptions about
people”.57 Martyn ascribes to this stereotype here, framing an entire
population as ‘harmless and timid creatures’, presenting them as weak and
thereby inferior to the superior Brit, who may according to this rhetoric,
assert dominance over the Indian. Naturally, Martyn may not purposefully
be using this vocabulary to frame Indians in a certain way, it may simply be
his unfiltered experience. Regardless, assigning these generalized stereotypes
to Indians is part of a colonialist vocabulary that constructs an uneven
power dichotomy between the colonized and the colonizers. In the
following paragraphs I will be discussing some of these stereotypes as well as
some Oriental structures, which McLeod terms argues “shape
Orientalism”.58 In that way, themes of Martyn’s writing will be explored
alongside simultaneously exemplifying how missionary travel writing at this
time may carry traits of Orientalism.
According to McLeod, one of the main Orientalist structures, which also
features in Martyn’s writing, is the idea that the Orient is a timeless place.59
According to this idea, the Orient is pictured as a place which is frozen in
time, and immune to progress and evolution. Thereby, the traveler that goes
to the Orient is arguably not simply moving spatially, but also temporally.60
This is another way in which a quote I included earlier can be approached:
“(…) I thought to have seen whole fleets of ships , vast numbers of natives
on the shores , and appearances of cultivation , but there was nothing of the
sort. (…) there seemed to be no thing doing.”61 I argued previously that this
quote exemplifies the supposed ruin and lack of culture, which startles
Martyn. However, it highlights even more than that: whereas Europe is
advanced, and has progressed past this stage in civilization and culture, India
is in Martyn’s rhetoric stuck in the past, frozen. Thereby Martyn, almost,
figuratively travels back in time, to a past, ancient place where no effort

56 Martyn 1851, p. 348

57 McLeod 2010, p. 53
58 McLeod 2010, p. 49
59 McLeod 2010, p. 52
60 McLeod 2010, p. 52
61 Martyn 1851, p. 327

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Københavns Universitet: Colonialism, Race and Power
KA-område 2: metodiske og analytiske redskaber

seems to be made by the stagnant natives to change what the colonizer sees
as a rather tragic status quo. By being figuratively frozen in time, the Orient
is also made out to be lacking in knowledge. The British Empire, the
Occident; believes that they are the global seat of knowledge, and therefore
by uncovering the lack of knowledge in the Orient, they are put in a position
of power, enabling them to lecture and exert power onto the feeble, frail
Orient. As McLeod points out, Orientalism constructs binary oppositions:
the Occidental West is everything the Oriental East is not.62 However, while
the Oriental is frozen in time, they are not entirely beyond saving. Upon
witnessing a converted Indian, Martyn is invigorated and expresses surprise:
To see a native Indian, an earnest advocate for Jesus, how precious! (..)
An Indian sermon about Jesus Christ was like music on my ear, and I felt
inflamed to begin my work: these poor people possess more intelligence and
feeling than I thought.63
In that way, Christianity, and crucially the West’s influence, is what the
Indians need to further explore this discovered ‘intelligence and feeling’,
which Martyn describes that they have. Furthermore, it also makes clear that
what Martyn defines as intelligent is fundamentally attached to believing in
Christianity. For him, not being Christian is related to lacking intelligence.
Two other stereotypes of the Orient that I believe accompany each other
well, and are relevant to Martyn’s rhetoric, are that of how “the Orient
makes assumptions about gender” and how the “Orient is feminine”64. The
female that Martyn encounters in India is “dangerous” to him, producing a
“softness of mind”65. And while Martyn often longs for his love Lydia, he
seems to find resisting her an easier task, than in the case of the “agreeable
female society”.
What very, very little desire have I for marriage, except when I recollect
that Lydia will, I hope be such a one, that I may live as independent as if
single! Wrote sermon, and enjoyed much comfort in the blessed God. Oh
how preferable is a taste of spiritual things, to every other enjoyment in the
world!”66
Martyn here describes how a marriage with Lydia will almost be like
living ‘as independent as if single’, he does not fear to be tempted by her or
exposed to this ‘softness of mind’ in the same way. In that way, the
dangerous, sexual, Oriental female stands in stark contrast to the good,
Christian, amicable Lydia, who at times seems more like a close friend to
Martyn, rather than a passionate lover. According to McLeod, Western and

62 McLeod 2010, p. 49
63 Martyn 1851, p. 344
64 McLeod 2010, p. 53-54
65 Martyn 1851, p. 352
66 Martyn 1851, p. 352-353

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Københavns Universitet: Colonialism, Race and Power
KA-område 2: metodiske og analytiske redskaber

Christian standards at the time expect the female to be passive, moral and
chaste, whereas the Oriental female is constructed as the polar, binary
opposite and thereby signifying a threat to the missionary.67 The Indian
female represents sexuality and threat to Martyn, whereas Lydia represents
the correct, amicable Christian female.
Furthermore, the Orient is presented as feminine especially in how the
male is presented. Again, the Indian male, in Martyn’s account stands as a
binary opposite to the ideal Western, Christian man. Whereas the Western
male might be presented as strong, active and courageous68, the Oriental
male that Martyn encounters is often described as frail, feeble and passive,
values that are also often attributed to women at the time. Examples of this
feminizing rhetoric are prevalent throughout: “(…) feeble Indian69”; “(…)
timid natives of Hindoostan.”70 However, I would argue that there is
another, more crucial way in which the Orient is feminized than simply the
male. Rather, the entire East is pinpointed as feminine, in contrast to the
rather masculine West, setting up the East to be dominated, figuratively
penetrated by the West.71 The East invokes passions in the traveler, who by
the moment of arrival is aroused, enticed and tempted by the East, which in
the eyes of the traveler is almost calling for action, by invoking such intense
feelings in the traveler. Even the landscape affects the senses directly, I recall
the moment of Martyn’s arrival: “The smell from the land was exceedingly
fragrant, and I felt my senses quite soothed by it”.72 The dual features of
feminine, passive natives and a desirable, idyllic nature with potential for
transformation into this “Christian Garden”73, attracts the traveler and
subjects the land to easy, colonial domination in its gendered passivity.
In many ways, British missionary activity in colonial India built on trying
to pass on many of the moral and Christian values that were perceived to
have made Britain such a great colonial power. However, there was
definitely some ambiguity in the nature of this process. While the missionary
effort can in some ways be seen as an effort to reproduce English culture in
the colony, the Orientalist rhetoric of the colonial exotic in contrast often
sought to distinguish India as much as possible from Britain, by positioning
the country and its people as inherently inferior – culturally and
physiologically.74 The missionary effort is partially seen in Martyn’s
vocabulary, and can in part be understood via Homi Bhabha’s ‘Colonial
Mimicry’: “

67 McLeod 2010, p. 53-54

68 McLeod 2010, p. 54
69 Martyn 1851, p. 455
70 Martyn 1851, p. 448
71 McLeod 2010, p. 54
72 Martyn 1851, p. 322
73 Nayar 2012, p. 5-6
74 Nayar 2012, p. 97

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Københavns Universitet: Colonialism, Race and Power
KA-område 2: metodiske og analytiske redskaber

(…) the desire for a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of a

difference that is almost the same, but not quite (…) Mimicry is, thus the
sign of a double articulation; a complex strategy of reform, regulation and
discipline, which ‘appropriates’ the Other as it visualizes power. Mimicry is
also the sign of the inappropriate.75
Throughout this essay, I have attempted to show this duality, the ‘double
articulation’ where Martyn attempts to make the Other an uncanny
reflection of the metropole via his missioning, but simultaneously he depicts
the Other, the Orient as inappropriate and heathen. Rhetorically, India’s
‘colonial mimicry’ of the British Empire fails in the eyes of the traveler, as
they cannot move past seeing the Orient as a degenerate, binary opposite to
the ‘correct’ West. Therefore, despite Martyn’s dreams to “rear temples to
Jesus76”, and “preach to the ignorant heathen77,” it is hard for him to ever
equate India with the England he knows, as he fundamentally sees the place
as exactly that, a heathen country. His time in India is ultimately demotivating
to him - he never quite feels at home, remarking that every man he meets is:
“(…) an enemy; being an enemy to God (…) England appears almost a
heaven upon earth.”78 Towards the end of his time ministering in India,
Martyn expresses great frustration with his results in India: “Four years have
I been in the ministry; and I am not sure that I have been the means of
converting four souls from the errors of their ways”.79 Dejected, he asks
himself: “why is that?”80 A part of the reason can perhaps, speculatively, be
attributed to his aforementioned ‘mediocre’ skills as an orator.81 More
importantly though, the bigger reason perhaps just lies in how Martyn does
not seem India for what it is. Why should Indians let themselves be
converted? Martyn throughout his journal always looks at India with the
gaze of the metropole and colonizer, always comparing India to Christian
Britain. He fails to see beyond his own preconceived notions that the natives
and the country must be converted. Every experience he has in India is seen
through this biased lens, and when he does not achieve in creating this ideal
‘Christian Garden’, he is ultimately disappointed.
Although Martyn’s descriptions of the Indians may be influenced by
colonial rhetoric, it’s also important to note that his writing to a degree also
simply reflects general racial thought in the early 19th century. Robert
Knapman writes: “Biology or nature was the creation of God and, therefore,
physical form fulfilled the will of God. The next logical step in thinking was
that the physical differences between peoples expressed God’s will in some

75 Bhabra 2001, p. 415

76 Martyn 1851, p. 322-323
77 Martyn 1851, p. 90
78 Martyn 1851, p. 369
79 Martyn 1851, p. 403
80 Martyn 1851, p. 403
81 Martyn 1851, p. 256

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 Samuel Agersnap Bone
Københavns Universitet: Colonialism, Race and Power
KA-område 2: metodiske og analytiske redskaber

way.”82 While it may be true that Martyn looked down upon the Indians due
to physical characteristics such as being frail, feeble and ‘exotic’, Martyn’s
views were also just typical of the time. 19th century racial thought still
adhered to the idea that culture and biology were intrinsically inseparable83.
The Indian was believed to be weak because God willed it that way, and
thereby it can also perhaps be inferred that God willed that the West and
Englishmen would be superior, and were meant to assist the lesser Oriental,
in whatever form that ‘assistance’ may assume.
Many fundamental ideas about missionary work also originated from the
Bible. In King James version of the Bible, Genesis 1:26-28 it is written as
follows: “God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the
earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over
the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the
earth.”84 In that way, it can be inferred that Martyn and the British Empire
did not as per Christianity believe that they were doing much wrong, they
were doing what the Bible and God willed by trying to subdue, colonize the
land and convert the Indians. Said has said:
My contention is that Orientalism is fundamentally a political doctrine
willed over the Orient because the Orient was weaker than the West, which
elided the Orient’s difference with its weakness.85
Ultimately, the stereotypes that pervaded depictions of the Oriental,
witnessed amongst many genres such as travel writing, were part of a
colonial vocabulary that used this ‘difference’ as justification for military
dominance and violence. The exploitation colony86 that the British Empire
formed in India was built upon a paternalistic relationship with the Empire
masking their violent imperialism with ‘moral’ missionary work as a caring
guise.

Conclusion
In many ways, Henry Martyn was the stereotypical Anglican missionary at
the time of the early 19th century. But he was also more than that, he was
revered in Britain as an ‘ideal’ Christian, a morally righteous man who
sacrificed earthly temptations to pursue his mission. Although he leaves
India dissatisfied, he inspired many English missionaries back home to
follow his lead. Jurgen Osterhammel has defined the final, fifth step of the
British Empire’s establishment of colonial structures in India as “intervening

82 Knapman 2016, p. 99
83 Knapman 2016, p. 99
84 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%201%3A26-
28&version=KJV&fbclid=IwAR2zgwsAXrMjz7kgUiFFownTigNliGFTlSF_v4Q4wtcjlEZPocvxF51I72Q
85 Said 1979, p. 204
86 Osterhammel 1997, p. 10-11

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Københavns Universitet: Colonialism, Race and Power
KA-område 2: metodiske og analytiske redskaber

in the indigenous society for purposes of social and humanitarian reform.87”

Osterhammel accredits this fifth stage of social reform as being reached by
the British Empire in India by 1830.88 Although Henry Martyn passed away
in 1812, only a year after he left India, he played a part in the British
Empire’s effort to socially reform India. If not through direct conversion,
then for the influence he had upon other Christians and the example he
set.89
When I started reading Martyn, I expected his writing to be more
innocuous, for whatever reason. However, I discovered how his rhetorical,
dual depictions of the Imperial Sublime and the Missionary Picturesque,
exemplify how travel writing may contain loaded, colonial vocabulary that
can justify and encourage subjugating the Other. Travel writing was
exceedingly important for the imagination of the colony in the metropole.
Especially in the early 19th century, comprehensive descriptions of India
were scarce, and therefore depictions such as Martyn’s were influential in
determining how India was to be imagined.
For Martyn and many other missionaries, India was a place of immense
threat. It represented exotic sexual allure, a forbidden and dormant lust that
many holy men had repressed for long, and were not used to be so directly
confronted with. However, as the stereotypes of Orientalism and colonial
aesthetics suggest, that was not all that the Orient threatened with. It was a
place that also threatened with its nature, which at the time was yet
unmapped, wild and seemingly boundless. The temporal and spatial aspects
of India also threatened the European traveler. India is pictured in Martyn’s
journals as a place that is lacking in substance and civilization, frozen in time
and ruined, thereby calling for imperial intervention and, ultimately,
salvation. Spatially, it is a place that signifies threat simply through the
distance it has from the metropole, away from the bounds of European
knowledge and comfort.
Although Said’s Orientalism is perhaps the oldest theoretical text I have
included in this essay, it remains immensely valuable and hotly discussed for
good reasons. Many of the stereotypes that McLeod outlined from
Orientalism yet persist today. Although many of the stereotypes such as the
timelessness and distance have been reduced, partially due to globalization,
some stereotypes such as the exotic Oriental still persist. The spirit of the
Missionary Picturesque and the Imperial Sublime pervades Martyn’s writing,
as well as classic characteristics of Orientalism: “Here is heathenism staring
the stranger in the face on his arrival off the land. The scene presented
another specimen of that tremendous gloom, with which the devil has over-

87 Osterhammel 1997, p. 33
88 Osterhammel 1997, p. 33
89 Gibson 1999, p. 421

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Københavns Universitet: Colonialism, Race and Power
KA-område 2: metodiske og analytiske redskaber

spread the land.”90 At the time of Martyn’s arrival in 1806, India was a place
of mystery and immense danger, which required taming and transforming, to
ultimately become the Christian Garden that missionaries dreamt of.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Martyn, Henry. Journals and Letters of the Rev. Henry Martyn, B.D.: Late Fellow of
St. John's College, Cambridge, and Chaplain to the Honourable East India
Company. New York: M.W. Dodd, 1851.

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Cooper, Frederick and Ann Laura Stoler. “Between Metropole and

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44-79. Manchester : Manchester University Press, 2010.

90 Martyn 1851, p. 326

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Københavns Universitet: Colonialism, Race and Power
KA-område 2: metodiske og analytiske redskaber

Nayar, Pramod. “The imperial sublime, 1750–1820”. In English Writing

and India, 1600–1920: Colonizing aesthetics, 63-93. Routledge. 2008

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Website

King James version of the Bible (digital version):

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%201%3A2
6-
28&version=KJV&fbclid=IwAR2zgwsAXrMjz7kgUiFFownTigNliG
FTlSF_v4Q4wtcjlEZPocvxF51I72Q

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