What kind of men were missionaries? What kind of masculinity did they represent, in ideology as well as in practice? Presupposing masculinity to be a cluster of cultural ideas and social practices that change over time and space, and not a stable entity with a natural, inherent meaning, Kristin Fjelde Tjelle seeks to answer such questions.

This book examines how, from the late nineteenth century through the 1920s, British policymakers, welfare providers, and working-class men struggled to accommodate men's dependence on the state within understandings of masculine citizenship.

The Gentleman's Magazine was the leading eighteenth-century periodical. By integrating the magazine's history, readers and contents this study shows how 'gentlemanliness' was reshaped to accommodate their social and political ambitions.

The Ottoman Syrians - residents of modern Syria and Lebanon - formed the first Arabic-speaking Evangelical Church in the region. This book offers a fresh narrative of the encounters of this minority Protestant community with American missionaries, Eastern churches and Muslims at the height of the Nahda, from 1860 to 1915. Drawing on rare Arabic publications, it challenges historiography that focuses on Western male actors. Instead it shows that Syrian Protestant women and men were agents of their own history who sought the salvation of Syria while adapting and challenging missionary teachings. These pioneers established a critical link between evangelical religiosity and the socio-cultural currents of the Nahda, making possible the literary and educational achievements of the American Syrian Mission and transforming Syrian society in ways that still endure today.

Men at Work explores the cultural portrayal of four essential wartime occupations: agriculture, industry, firefighting and the mercantile marine. In analysing a broad spectrum of wartime media (most notably film, radio and visual culture) it establishes a clear hierarchy of masculine roles in British culture during the Second World War.

Offering an original historical perspective on literacy work in Africa, this book examines the role of the Norwegian Lutheran mission in Madagascar and sheds light on the motivations that drove colonizing powers’ literacy work. Focusing on both colonial and independent Madagascar, Rosnes examines how literacy practices were facilitated through mission schools and the impact on the reading and writing skills to Malagasy children and youth. Analysing how literacy work influenced identity formation and power relations in the Malagasy society, the author offers new insights into the field of language and education in Africa.

In Mission Station Christianity, Ingie Hovland presents an anthropological history of the ideas and practices that evolved among Norwegian missionaries in nineteenth-century colonial Natal and Zululand (Southern Africa). She examines how their mission station spaces influenced their daily Christianity, and vice versa, drawing on the anthropology of Christianity. Words and objects, missionary bodies, problematic converts, and the utopian imagination are discussed, as well as how the Zulus made use of (and ignored) the stations. The majority of the Norwegian missionaries had become theological cheerleaders of British colonialism by the 1880s, and Ingie Hovland argues that this was made possible by the everyday patterns of Christianity they had set up and become familiar with on the mission stations since the 1850s.