Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 June 2014
The History of Little Henry and His Bearer (1814), an Evangelical tract, was published on the heels of the Charter Act of 1813, an act of Parliament of the United Kingdom that introduced more regulation of the East India Company and legalized missionary work in India. The act implicitly rationalized expanding British dominance, invoking the moral mission to save the heathen. Little Henry captures this zeitgeist and was received enthusiastically by a readership newly interested in additional imperial expansion as a means of bringing civilization to the colonial world (Regaignon 89).