This paper focuses on women and the early period of the modern missionary movement from the late eighteenth century to the 1830s, considering links between the anti-slavery campaigns and the development of overseas missions within a framework of early twenty-first century understandings of modernity. There are three sections. The first discusses women's writing in relation to anti-slavery, the second examines the shift from women's anti-slavery activism at home to broader activities at home and overseas, while the third focuses on the London-based Female Education Society and its role as an organising body for women in educational work overseas. Connecting the three sections is an understanding of women's lives in a changing world, caught up in Britain's expanding empire. The women described here were mostly from Christian families in a time when religious affiliation was in a state of flux. This paper argues that women's interest in anti-slavery became enmeshed with a desire to bring education to those who would attain freedom and was encompassed in broader understandings of liberty and enlightenment. The desire to educate expanded to include the “heathen” in many parts of the world, and this paralleled the burgeoning of modern missions.

The economist Hal Hill begins his authoritative survey of the Indonesian economy under Soeharto's “New Order” (Orde Baru) government with quotes from leading development economists, who are singularly pessimistic about the prospects for economic growth in Indonesia. A negative assessment such as that given by Swedish Nobel Prize Laureate Gunnar Myrdal is understandable as he was writing at the time of the severe economic crisis accompanying the eclipse of Sukarno's “Old Order” (Orde Lama) in the mid-1960s. More surprising is the verdict of Benjamin Higgins, known to have coined the expression “chronic dropout” for Indonesia. Higgins had spent quite a bit of time in Indonesia in the early 1950s as an advisor from the World Bank. Was his harsh verdict, akin to the oft-heard epithet “perpetual underachiever”, based on his own personal observations in the newly independent nation, or was his judgement also coloured by the near-collapse of the economy in the mid-1960s? The received dismal view of Indonesia's economic performance under Sukarno forms the logical point of departure for this article.

On Tuesday 22 January, 1963, the First Secretary of State and Minister in charge of the Central Africa Office, R.A. Butler, met with the Southern Rhodesia Cabinet in Salisbury. Butler notified the Cabinet that he was visiting the Central African Federation in order to “gauge for himself” the situation. Southern Rhodesia, he remarked, was “an issue unjustifiably pursued at the United Nations” and countering this negative international opinion “was providing the British Government with a difficult, tedious and unwanted task”.

This article explores the experiences of Western women missionaries in a faith mission and their relationships with the women and children of China in the early years of the twentieth century. In a period of twenty years of unprecedented social and political revolution missionaries were forced to reconceptualise their work against a changing discourse of Chinese womanhood. In this context, emerging models of the Chinese New Woman and the New Girl challenged older mission constructions of gender. The Chinese reformation also provided missionaries with troubling reflections on their own roles as independent young women, against debates about modern women at home, and the emerging rights of white women as newly enfranchised citizens in the new nation of Australia.

In 1923, three young single western women—Margaret Read, Iris Wingate, and Eleanor Rivett—made an adventurous summer trip riding and trekking from Kalimpong in West Bengal, right up to Sikkim. Read and Wingate, both wearing riding breeches and with hair bobbed, were somewhat more adventurous, continuing their trip to Tibet. This was a holiday from their work in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), the great cosmopolitan city of the British Raj in India. Surely these independent and mobile women were reminiscent of “the Modern Girl” that has been “singled out as a marker of ‘modernity’”. However, these women were not in the sites where “the Modern Girl” has hitherto been located, for they were working in the Christian missionary movement in India. Eleanor Rivett, an Australian and the oldest in the trio, was principal of United Missionary Girls High School (UMGHS) while Iris Wingate and Margaret Read, both British, were working with the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) in Kolkata.

Japan's opening up in the mid-1850s and the ensuing spread of Western influence caused a fundamental dislocation in the country's socio-cultural life. Values and habits were rocked to their core after centuries of isolation, and people were quite helpless for how to come to terms with this rapid influx of foreign things. Faced with abrupt and severe changes, they felt deeply disoriented and their self-awareness was considerably shaken. This soon led to differentiation in attitudes toward the Western challenge. Some insisted that people should reconstruct their identity just by adjusting to Western standards. Modernisation was the only choice in their eyes and they believed that Japan should make efforts to adopt Western ways into every aspect of the nation's life. Customs and manners had to be reexamined based on this new criteria and reformed accordingly or, if this was ever impossible, abolished. Others, however, saw in it nothing more than shameful mimicry. They believed that the nation's self-confidence would be lost if people were absorbed in Westernisation. Instead they thought that Japan's cultural backbone should build on the country's long-standing rich traditions, rather than being dazzled by the superficial affluence of Western civilisation.