Emotion, Mission, Architecture: Building Hospitals in Persia and British India, 1865-1914

Missionary medicine flourished during the period of high European imperialism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and was considered the best and surest method to overcome the distrust of and gain access to the indigenous population in the so-called Muslim World. Through studying the medical activities and infrastructures of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in Persia and north-western British India, and building upon existing works on missionaries in the Middle East and British India, this book examines the practice of obtaining trust. A synthesis of Christian mission history, architectural history, emotions history and history of medicine and empire, Emotion, Mission, Architecture raises broader historical questions about the process of mobilising and regulating emotions in the Christian missionary contexts – contributing in turn to discussions on hybridity, missionary and local encounters, women’s agency and the interactions between mission and empire.