UC Davis

“Imperialist Missionaries” investigates New England missionization through ananalytical lens merging Critical Ethnic studies, Native American studies, Filipino American studies, Atlantic world history, and colonial New England history. I argue that New England missionization was governed by a transatlantic cohort of colonizers who prioritized English rather than Indian interests. Missionization was colonialism, and it existed to assimilate and weaken Indians, aid or provide an excuse for conquest, and to support colonizers’ arguments that they deserved monetary support. Thanks to Edward Winslow, the London-based Cromwellian Corporation began managing New England missionization in 1649. Members of the Corporation participated in colonizing projects across the English Atlantic world and applied that ideology to missionization. The Corporation worked with the United Colonies of New England (UCNE) to convert Indians, and they applied their own destructive colonial vision to missionization.

Chapter one reveals New England missionization’s connection to England’s colonizationof Ireland, which featured several Corporation members. Chapter two compares Daniel Gookin’s missionary ideology in New England to Vincent Gookin Jr.’s colonization strategy in Ireland, showing how they informed each other. Chapter three details how, during the interregnum, the Corporation, UCNE, and missionaries like Eliot created a system that marginalized Indians in New England. Chapter four traces the Restoration’s impact on the Corporation, while revealing how the UCNE used missionization to fuel its expansion as a colony, both territorially and economically. Chapter five examines missionization on the eve of King Philip’s War, arguing that the conflict was partially the result of New England breaking from the Corporation to pursue a more aggressive form of missionization no longer regulated by England.