Missionary Medicine and Sarawak Malay Proselytisation (1848–1866): The Unfulfilled Mission
Main Article Content
Abstract
This article discusses the introduction of the Anglican medical mission in 19th- century Sarawak. Missionary medicine was part of the constellation of Western rationality brought to the Malay Archipelago through colonialism. However, far from being a purely scientific enterprise, missionary medicine became a theological tool for the fulfilment of religious duty expected of the spiritually imbued practitioner engaged by the evangelical society. It was believed that in healing the soul through the body, a conversion could follow. In addition to spiritual conversion, medicine was ideologised as civilisational superior to the indigenous form, therefore should be imposed as a means of civilising the native subjects. To explore the effect of theological medicine on Sarawak Malay, the letters of Bishop Francis Thomas McDougall (1817–1886) became the primary source-material in illuminating the early phase of missionary medicine in Sarawak. The reference to letters as historical evidence was unique as personal correspondence often replete with sentiments. By utilising the history of emotion approach, the sentiment was historicised as a product of the precariousness of life in a colonial situation. It was found that the practice of medicine had been frustrated by the excessive imagination of impending violence, causing the subtle attempt at Malay proselytisation to cease. In the end, missionary medicine had a short lifespan and limited effect on the religious and health belief among Sarawak Malay. To them, Christianity and its medicine were uninspiring and ineffectual.
Article Details
![Creative Commons License](http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/4.0/88x31.png)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
References
Brown, T., ed. 2007a. First steps of the Borneo missionaries. The Colonial Church Chronicle and Missionary Journal 2(19): 251–256. Project Canterbury: Anglicanism in Sarawak/Borneo. First published in 1849. http://anglicanhistory.org/asia/sarawak/first_steps1849.html
________2007b. Borneo church mission. The Colonial Church Chronicle and Missionary Journal 4: 68–72. Project Canterbury: Anglicanism in Sarawak/Borneo. First published in 1850. http://anglicanhistory.org/asia/sarawak/church_mission1850.html
Bruce, C. 1904. Introductory addresses at the opening of the medical schools: London School of Tropical Medicine. British Medical Journal 2(2285): 1005–1008.
Buchanan, C. 1811. Two discourses peached before the University of Cambridge on commencement Sunday July 1, 1810 and a sermon peached before the society for Missions to Africa and the East at their tenth anniversary June 12, 1810. London: G. Sidney.
Bunyon, C.J. 1889. Memoirs of Francis Thomas McDougall, sometime Bishop of Labuan and Sarawak and of Harriette his wife. London: Longmans, Green & co.
Fathurahman, O. 2017. Medical manuscript and Islam in the Malay world: Aceh and Mindanao. In Malay medical manuscripts, eds. Mohd Affendi Mohd Shafri and Intan Azura Shahdan, 19–33. Kuala Lumpur: Akademi Jawi Malaysia.
Green, A and Troup, K. 2016. The houses of history: A critical reader in history and theory. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Haggis, J. and Allen, M. 2008. Imperial emotions: Affective communities of mission in British Protestant women’s missionary publications c1880–1920. Journal of Social History 41(3): 691–716. https://doi.org/10.1353/jsh.2008.0047
Hardiman, D. 2006. Introduction. In Healing bodies, saving souls: Medical missions in Asia and Africa, ed. D. Hardiman, 5–57. London: Brill.
Harun Mat Piah. 2017. Kitab Tibb Melayu: The tradition and its scope. In Malay medical manuscripts, eds. Mohd Affendi Mohd Shafri and Intan Azura Shahdan, 1–18. Kuala Lumpur: Akademi Jawi Malaysia.
Jennings, M. 2008. Healing of bodies, salvation of souls: Missionary medicine in colonial Tanganyika, 1870s–1939. Journal of Religion in Africa 38(1): 27–56. https://doi.org/10.1163/157006608X262700
Jensz, F. and Acke, H. 2013. The form and function of nineteenth-century missionary periodicals. Church History 82(2): 368–373. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009640713000036
Jewson, N.D. 1976. The disappearance of the sick-man from medical cosmology, 1770– 1870. Sociology 10(2): 225–244. https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyp180
Johnson, H.S.B. 1906. Upper Rejang April report. In Sarawak Gazette, 5 June. Sarawak: Government Printing Office.
McDougall, H. 1992. Sketches of our life at Sarawak. Singapore: Oxford University Press.
Mohd Affendi Mohd Shafri. 2017. The medicinal river of Acheh. In Malay medical manuscripts, eds. Mohd Affendi Mohd Shafri and Intan Azura Shahdan, 73–88. Kuala Lumpur: Akademi Jawi Malaysia.
Nagy, P. 2019. History of emotions. In Debating new approaches to history, eds. M. Tamm and P. Burke, 189–201. Great Britain: Bloomsbury.
Porter, A. 2004. Religion versus empire? British Protestant missionaries and overseas expansion, 1700–1914. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Reid, K. and Paisley, F. 2017. Introduction. In Sources and methods in histories of colonialism: Approaching the imperial archive, eds. K. Reid and F.
Paisley, 1–10. London: Routledge. Saint, M. 1992. Twenty years in Sarawak 1848–68. A flourish for the Bishop and Brooke’s friend Grant. Kuala Lumpur: S. Abdul Majeed & Co.
Shah, M.H. 2007. Historicising rationality: The transmission of rationality and science to the Malay states under British rule. Asian Journal of Social Science, 35(2): 216– 241. https://doi.org/10.1163/156853107X203441
Shankar, S. 2006. The social dimensions of Christian leprosy work among Muslims: American missionaries and young patients in colonial Northern Nigeria, 1920–40. In Healing bodies, saving souls, ed. D. Hardiman, 281–305. London: Brill.
Smith, S. and Watson, J. 2001. Reading autobiography: Interpreting life narratives. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
St John, S. 1994. The life of Sir James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak: From his personal papers and correspondence. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press.
Stanley, B. 1990. The Bible and the flag: Protestant missions and British imperialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Leicester: Apollos.
Stoler, A.L. 2009. Along the archival grain: Epistemic anxieties and colonial common sense. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Taylor, B. 1983. The Anglican church of Borneo 1848–1962. Sussex: New Horizon.
Templer, J.C. 1853. The private letters of Sir James Brooke, K.C.B. Rajah of Sarawak narrating the events of his life from 1838 to the present time: Volume 1. London: Richard Bentley
Wilks, L. 2011. Missionary medicine and the “separatist tradition”: An analysis of the missionary encounter with leprosy in late nineteenth-century India. Social Scientist 39(5/6): 48–66. https://doi.org/10.2307/41289407