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Methodists asserted themselves as an influential force in the religion, politics and economics of empire. Their role and contribution in the global expansion of the British world reflected a strong sense of duty, and of opportunity, sustained by a conviction that they were participants in a great quest to populate the globe with liberal and moral citizens, and which would also bring non-British populations into the enlightening sphere of British influence. Undoubtedly, Methodists were particularly sensitive to those respects in which the imperial project seemed morally compromised by its aggressive and often ungodly materialism. Certainly this was the case with respect to the most serious and discreditable aspect of British imperialism - the dispossession and destruction of Indigenous societies, both in Australia, where missionising was bound closely with imperialism, and in the Pacific, where Methodist mission work often predated the arrival of colonial powers until as late as the 1870s. |
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