Article

The London Missionary Society: a written record of missionaries and printing presses in the Straits Settlements 1815–1847

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

The London Missionary Society: a written record of missionaries and printing presses in the Straits Settlements 1815–1847

Leona O’Sullivan’s 1984 article in the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society provides a comprehensive written record of the London Missionary Society’s missionary personnel and printing operations across the three Straits Settlements—Malacca, Singapore, and Penang—between 1815 and 1847. Drawing extensively on the LMS archives at SOAS London, O’Sullivan demonstrates that the Society’s presses introduced mass communication and vernacular literacy to Peninsular Malaysia, making its missionaries among the most active pioneers of social change in the region irrespective of their conversion aims (p. 97).

Summary

The Malacca station, planned by Robert Morrison and established by William Milne in 1815, became the LMS’s primary printing centre in the Peninsula. Morrison, the first Protestant missionary to China, had long desired a press positioned at a port astride trade routes where books could be distributed by ship into China and surrounding countries. Milne arrived on 21 May 1815 and within three months had opened a school and produced the first hundred copies of the Chinese Monthly Magazine (p. 62). The press employed both wood-block and metal type, with the latter introduced through approximately 9,000 types sent from the EIC’s printer in China and later expanded to about 10,000 by Walter Medhurst (p. 64). By 1818 the station had two presses and a full complement of equipment, and by 1820 it had produced some 140,000 Chinese items against only about 20,500 Malay ones, reflecting the station’s strong China bias (pp. 66, 70). The death of Milne in June 1822 marked a turning point: the Chinese Monthly Magazine and The Indo-Chinese Gleaner ceased publication, and the press never regained its former vigour, though Morrison’s completion of the first Chinese Bible printed in Southeast Asia in 1823 remained its most significant achievement (p. 67).

The Singapore mission, initiated by Claudius Henry Thomsen in 1822, became entangled with the colonial administration from its earliest days. Thomsen arrived with a small portable press from Malacca and began printing for Raffles by January 1823, producing regulations and public documents in English and Malay (pp. 74–75). The arrival of three presses from Calcutta in April 1823, purchased by Samuel Milton, triggered a dispute over their allocation between the LMS mission and the newly constituted Singapore Institution, which Raffles and Morrison sought to control (pp. 77–78). Thomsen eventually built his own extensive printing works, jointly owned with the Anglican chaplain Rev. R. Burn, and produced Malay, Buginese, and Siamese publications until his departure for England in 1834 (pp. 79–80). The press was subsequently sold to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, a transaction that surprised the LMS directors who had assumed ownership (p. 80).

The Penang station, established in 1819, did not acquire a printing press until 1832, when Thomsen sent a small wooden press to Thomas Beighton. Beighton’s output was dominated by Malay tracts of increasing polemical intensity, particularly those comparing Christianity unfavourably with Islam, which provoked a formal deputation of Malay leaders to Governor Bonham in 1839 (pp. 90–92). His translation of Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress into Malay, begun in 1841, represented the apex of his tracterian career but was interrupted by his death in 1844 (pp. 94–95). The First Chinese War (1839–1842) and the opening of additional Chinese ports precipitated the LMS’s withdrawal from the Peninsula: missionaries transferred to China, presses were shipped to Hong Kong, and by 1846 only the residual operations of Keasberry and the Stronach brothers remained in Singapore (pp. 95–96).

Key Findings

  • The Malacca press produced the first Chinese Bible published in Southeast Asia (Shin t’een shing shoo, 1823), the second such Bible printed anywhere after the Baptist edition at Serampore, using metal types (p. 67).
  • The Indo-Chinese Gleaner (May 1817–April 1822) was the first completely Western periodical published in Peninsular Malaysia, encompassing literature, history, local customs, and mission reports alongside Christian content (pp. 66–67).
  • Production figures reveal a pronounced China bias: in 1819 the press produced approximately 54,000 Chinese items against only about 19,000 Malay ones, a ratio that persisted until Malay printing virtually ceased at Malacca in 1826 (p. 70).
  • Beighton’s one-sheet tract Pengajaran (1837), composed on the occasion of a local sayyid’s execution for murder, was distributed “as fast as the printer could strike them off,” with seven thousand copies eventually printed, and the King of Aceh reportedly pasted a large sheet version in a conspicuous place as a warning to his people (pp. 91–93).
  • The LMS’s total output, including Medhurst’s Batavia publications, exceeded eight million pages by 1836, distributed through a network of ships’ captains, junk masters, and missionaries who boarded vessels bound for destinations as far as America, St. Helena, Tibet, Japan, and the Moluccas (pp. 96–97).
  • The First Chinese War directly caused the LMS’s withdrawal from the Peninsula, as China agents shut down their stations and transferred presses and personnel to Hong Kong; the Malacca press was shipped to Legge in 1846, and the Penang iron press was given to Keasberry in Singapore (pp. 95–96).

Conclusion

O’Sullivan’s definitive historical takeaway is that the LMS’s significance extends well beyond its failed conversion efforts. By introducing the printing press, promoting vernacular literacy in Malay, Chinese, Buginese, and Siamese, and attacking the social barriers that withheld the written word from ordinary people in the kampung and street, the missionaries became “among the most active pioneers of social change in Malaysia and Singapore, irrespective of their aim to convert” (p. 97). The methods of distribution—handing books to sailors and junk masters with no feedback or follow-up—render any assessment of direct religious impact impossible, but the structural transformation of communication in the region was irreversible.

Context

  • The article draws primarily on the Archives of the Council for World Mission (incorporating the LMS), deposited at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, particularly the “Incoming letters” filed under the “Ultra-Ganges” division for the Straits Settlements (p. 98).
  • The LMS’s printing operations were embedded within the colonial administrative framework: the EIC supplied the first European press to China, Raffles actively sought presses for Singapore’s government printing, and the Singapore Institution’s trustees formally acquired Milton’s presses in 1823, illustrating the entanglement of missionary and colonial interests (pp. 64, 77–78).

References