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 In early April 1867. the first western Protestant missionaries to work in northern Siam1 arrived in Chiang Mai, Siam, the chief city of the region. The Rev. Daniel and Sophia McGilvary were American Presbyterians. Until that time no westerners had lived permanently in Chiang Mai, and, indeed, the western world knew very little about the northern Siam. The Siamese government itself claimed only nominal suzerainty over its northern territories, and the world events of the nineteenth century had left northern Siam largely untouched. The arrival of the McGilvarys, therefore, marked a significant event in the history of northern Siam. Profound political and social changes followed.
The McGilvarys and the Presbyterian missionaries who followed them contributed to that change. They introduced western medicine, education, ideas, and technologies into the region. They allied themselves with the growing political power of the Siamese government and helped to increase that power. Their preaching and promotion of an alien religion weakened traditional structures and values. In short, the American Presbyterian missionaries introduced the western world Into northern Siam.
Yet, the significance of the American Presbyterian missionaries as agents of social change has left historians with a puzzle. The missionaries went to northern Siam for the single purpose of propagating their Protestant Christian faith. Nothing else mattered to them nearly so much as the Christianization of northern Siam. While they changed northern Thai society In many areas, however, a series of historical studies suggests that what these missionaries actually did contributed little to attaining their stated goal.
Maen Pongudom's study of the methods the Presbyterian missionaries used to spread their religious message in nineteenth-century Siam, for example, shows that their words, ideas, and methods failed to communicate meaningfully in Thai culture. Maen argues that communication strategies like those of the early Christian apologists could have succeeded in Siam. But the American Protestant missionaries failed to use such strategies. Alex Smith's study of missionary evangelism argues that the missionaries failed to convert large numbers of Siamese to Christianity because their activities failed to promote the growth and strength of the churches they established. They did not, that
Thailand is referred to by its official nineteenth-century name "Siam."
This thesis uses the term "westernization" rather than "modernization." Missionary social change involved the transfer of western ideas, Institutions, methods, or technologies. "Westernization" is a more precise and avoids the sometimes highly charged debate over the meaning of "modernization.’ See The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, s.v. "westernize." See also Peter N. Steams. "Modernization and Social History Some Suggestions, and a Muted Cheer." Journal of Social History 14(Winter 1Q80): 189-210; Raymond Grew. "More on Modernization." Journal of Social History 14(Winter I960): 179-88: and Joseph R. Gusfleld. "Tradition and Modernity: Misplaced Polarities in the Study of Social Changer American Journal of Sociology 72( January 1967): 351-62
Daniel McGilvary, A Half Century Among the Siamese and the Lao. (New York: Revolt 1912). 78-9: and Daniel McGilvary to Arthur Mltchell. August 23. 1884, vol. 4. Records of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A.. Presbyterian Historical Society. Philadelphia.
Maen Pongudom. "Apologetic and Missionary Proclamation: Exemplified by American Presbyterian Missionaries to Thailand (1828-1978). Early Church Apologists: Justin Martyr. Clement of Alexandria and Origen. and the Venerable Buddhadasa Bhikku. A Thai Buddhist Monk-Apologist1' (Ph.D. diss.. University of Otago, 1979).
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is, establish a strong indigenous base for spreading their message. My own research indicates that the Presbyterian mission In northern Siam devoted so much attention to medical and educational work it distracted Itself from its evangelistic mission. That mission expended most of Its energy and resources In activities that failed to promote the conversion of large numbers of northern Thai.
The puzzle Is this: why did the missionaries In northern Siam not do what they came to do, namely, convert the people to Christianity? Why did they, instead, go off on what appears in retrospect to have been an evangelistically unproductive tangent? Since that "tangent" Introduced significant social change Into northern Siam. The apparent contradiction between missionary goals and activities provides a key to understanding the form and content of nineteenth-century westernization In that region.
In a vague, general way, the records of the Presbyterian missionaries In northern Siam point to a solution to the puzzle missionary activity In northern Siam propounded. Those records show that the missionaries clothed themselves in a rigidly prejudicial attitude about northern Thai culture and religion that prevented northern Thai values from influencing the missionaries in return. External circumstances and events in northern Siam did not force the missionaries to act In certain ways. It would seem, then, quite possible that they brought the puzzle of their activities with them and that Its origins lay In the sociocultural heritage of the missionaries themselves.
It is the thesis of this study that the westernizing activities of the Presbyterian missionaries in northern Siam grew out of their nineteenth-century American sociocultural heritage. Ideas reveal the consciousness of people and play a significant part in shaping human events because of the powerful influence they have over people's beliefs and actions. In short, meaningful human activity grows out of Ideas. It follows that the riddles of missionary activity In northern Siam could have their sources and their solutions in the cognitive consciousness of nineteenth-century American evangelical culture.
While this study is an exercise in "intellectual history." It focuses not ideas in and of themselves but, rather, on how those ideas Influenced activities of the Presbyterian missionaries in northern Siam. It seeks to understand why the missionaries built schools and hospitals, opened a press, and utilized various technologies at the expense of their
Alex G. Smith. Siamese Gold: A History of Church Growth In Thailand (Bangkok: Kanok Bannasan. 1982).
Herbert R. Swanson. Khrischak Muana Nua: A Study In Northern Thai Church History (Bangkok: Chuan Press. 1984).
"Evangelicalism" refers to the American Protestant movement that arose out of revivalism and emphasized personal conversion experiences and the proselytlzation of the "unconverted." While It may be more precise to refer to the "evangelical sub-culture." committed evangelicals often experienced evangelicalism as a total culture. See Charles I. Foster, .An Errand of Mercy: The Evangelical United Front 1790-1837 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1960). viii. cf. 39: and G. Gordon Brown, "Missions and Cultural Diffusion." American Journal of Sociology 5(November 1944): 214-19.
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stated goal. The purpose here is to examine how the missionaries thought about themselves, their religion, and their work in order to understand why they acted as they did.
As the following chapters describe, missionary thought encompassed a number of interrelated concepts that formed a coherent, complex worldview. At the core of that world view rested the idea of dualism, a deceptively simple concept that taught that all of reality was divided Into two distinct, incompatible spheres. The missionaries believed that they represented the sphere of Truth while northern Thai culture and religion stood within the sphere of Evil. The dualism of the Laos Mission originated In its nineteenth-century conservative evangelical heritage. and the bulk of this thesis traces the lines of that heritage from the United States to northern Siam.
The evangelical ideas of conversion and revivalism gave substance to evangelical dualism by teaching evangelicals how to deal with anyone who did not think or act like they did. Conservative evangelicals interpreted their dualism to mean that they must convert non-evangelicals to their piety. Revivalism provided one means for achieving those conversions. The language and methods of Scottish Enlightenment philosophy and nineteenth-century American Presbyterian theology further refined the dualism of the Laos Mission so that it did, in fact, appear to them to be entirely sensible and logical.
The Ideas of conversion and revivalism and the philosophical systems of Scottish philosophy and Presbyterian theology interacted with each other and with dualism through yet another set of ideas that included millennialism, progress, America as the Chosen Nation, and providence. These concepts encompassed all of time within the categories of dualism, provided conservative evangelicals with a philosophy of history. gave religious meaning to political structures, and equipped evangelical Americans with a supreme confidence in the tightness of their beliefs.
Each of these ideas presupposed and gave meaning to the rest. Millennialism. the expectation of the Second Coming of Christ, promoted a belief in progress. Evangelicals linked the idea of progress, in turn, to the working of providence in human affairs. They then. in another turn, equated providence and progress with the place of their nation In world affairs. They believed that through the leading of providence American would progressively usher in the Millennium of God's reign on earth.
And each of these Ideas propelled conservative American evangelicals to action. They believed that they must act to speed the coming of the Millennium. They could do so partly by converting infidels, savages, and heathens through revivalistic efforts and partly by engaging in moral and social reform movements that would allow them to exercise control over society for the good of society. Evangelical control of society, so conservative evangelicals reasoned, would protect the moral fiber of the nation, make it worthy of its status as the New Israel, and promote the perfection of society that must
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come to attain the Millennium.
Conservative evangelicals lived out this whole set of dualistic ideas In a complimentary set of activities that it evolved over decades of trying to convert the world to Protestant Christianity. It used education and a variety of technological changes to spread the Protestant message and plant it firmly in the minds of its own children and the many non-evangelical groups found in the United States and around the world. Conservative evangelicals expected that education would help reform the nation by teaching all Americans "the knowledge of the Lord" needed for America to achieve the Millennium. The advance of American technology reinforced nineteenth-century evangelical belief In the progressive perfection of American society provided, of course, that evangelical Protestantism remained the dominant creed of the nation.
Chapters One and Two set the stage for arguing the thesis of this study. Chapters Three through Seven then gather in the various strands of the evangelical worldview and show how each strand contributed to the world view and activities of the Laos Mission. The weight of these descriptions of the origins of missionary activity leads to the conclusion that the Laos Mission took its dualistic worldview to northern Siam, defined northern Thai culture and religion as heathen, and framed Its activities as the means to conquer that heathenism.
A number of individuals have contributed a great deal to the research and writing of this thesis. I would like to particularly thank Dr. Fred Nicklason for his helpful advice and for guiding me through the process of bringing everything together. The staff at the Presbyterian Historical Society provided Important and timely reference assistance. The people at St. John United Methodist-Presbyterian Church in Columbia, Maryland, where I served as Interim Pastor during the writing of the thesis, deserve rich thanks for their support and encouragement. Thanks, finally, goes to Nee. This would never have been written apart from her love.
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