Since January two students have been working at the Centre for Research Collections at the Main Library of the University of Edinburgh cataloguing the rich archives of the Regions Beyond Missionary Union (RBMU). Alice Fagan and Savannah Weiler are looking at the records of the RBMU in Latin America, especially in Peru and Argentina. They are working under the leadership and supervision of Kirsty Stewart, Scottish and University Collections archivist responsible for the Centre for the Study of World Christianity (CSWC) archives. The bulk of the material they are cataloguing consists of monthly magazines, annual reports, news bulletins, correspondence, minute books, reports, and photographs, in both printed and manuscript form. Funds for this project have been provided by the CSWC and the University, and their work will enhance the visibility of the archival collections and provide crucial information for future digitisation work.

The first impetus behind the RBMU was Henry Grattan Guinness (1835-1910), an Irish revivalist preacher and evangelist and grandson of Arthur Guinness, founder of the brewing empire. In 1873 Henry founded the East London Training Institute for Home and Foreign Missions, taking inspiration from faith missions like James Hudson Taylor’s China Inland Mission. The institute charged no fees from students and was to be run by faith alone, which lent a revivalist impetus to its endeavours but also generated its own financial troubles. The Regions Beyond magazine, created in 1878, publicised the actions and challenges of the Institute and gave news of missionaries around the world. Several evangelistic ventures sparked from the RBMU’s founders, students, and associates, such as the Livingstone Inland Mission and the Congo Balolo Mission that operated in Central Africa. In 1897 the Institute also took responsibility for the support of a group of students working in Peru and Argentina. Because of internal disagreements about the organisation of the mission and financial difficulties, these missions were handed over to the newly founded Evangelical Union of South America in 1911. Over the first decades of the twentieth century missionaries trained by the RBMU established new missionary centres in South America, such as the Peru Inland Mission, and were able to support themselves through educational and medical work.

In the next few months, the students will publish some of their interesting archival findings in this blog. The posts illuminate the actions, ordeals, and challenges of missionaries, the intimate relationship they developed with the populations of Peru and Argentina, the medical and educational ventures undertaken, their idiosyncratic views on mission and civilisation, amongst other things. Alice Fagan is a third-year student in the School of History, Classics, and Archaeology. She is broadly interested in social history and material culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as museum and gender studies. In the past Alice took the course ‘History of Christianity as a World Religion’ in the School of Divinity, and now, looking at the RBMU records and the medical and educational actions of missionaries, is expanding her knowledge on the worldwide iterations of Christian religion. Savannah Weiler is a fourth-year student in the Fine Art programme at the Edinburgh College of Art. She has interests in art practice, photography, and old photographic techniques, as well as archival and translation work. Savannah is interested in the photographic records of the RBMU and missionary action in the 1960s and 70s, a period of intense historical transformations as well as political and social polarisation. Their blogs highlight the richness of the CSWC archival collections and the usefulness of missionary sources as tools of historical interpretation.