**Learning Objectives**<\/p>\n
By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:
\n– Identify Bailey’s key European colleagues and describe their contributions to the Travancore mission
\n– Understand the essential but often unacknowledged roles played by Indian assistants and converts
\n– Analyse the role of correspondence in maintaining the mission’s connection to its support base in England
\n– Describe the dynamics of family life on the mission compound
\n– Evaluate the network of relationships that sustained Bailey’s work over three decades<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
### 14.1 Joseph Fenn and Henry Baker: Fellow Missionaries<\/p>\n
Benjamin Bailey did not labour alone. Throughout his decades in Travancore, he worked alongside a small but dedicated band of fellow CMS missionaries who shared the burdens and joys of the work. Among these colleagues, two men stand out as particularly significant: Joseph Fenn and Henry Baker Jr.<\/p>\n
Joseph Fenn arrived in Travancore in 1818, two years after Bailey, and remained until his death in 1840. Fenn was, by all accounts, a man of deep spirituality and considerable linguistic talent. While Bailey focused on printing and translation, Fenn devoted himself particularly to theological education and pastoral work among the Syrian Christian community. He taught at the Old Seminary, trained catechists, and contributed to the translation of the scriptures. His early death, after more than two decades of service, was a heavy blow to the mission and a personal loss to Bailey, who had worked alongside him for twenty-two years.<\/p>\n
Fenn’s relationship with the Syrian Christians was, in some ways, more empathetic than Bailey’s. Where Bailey approached the Syrians with a printer’s practicality and an evangelical’s conviction of the need for reform, Fenn seems to have developed a deeper appreciation for Syrian spirituality and tradition. This did not mean he abandoned the reforming agenda, but he may have pursued it with greater sensitivity to Syrian sensibilities. The complementary gifts and perspectives of Bailey and Fenn strengthened the mission, allowing it to address a wider range of needs and relationships.<\/p>\n
Henry Baker Jr. arrived later, in 1838, and represented a second generation of CMS missionary in Travancore. He brought energy, new ideas, and a commitment to evangelistic outreach that extended beyond the Syrian Christian community. Baker was particularly active in establishing new mission stations in areas that had not previously been reached, expanding the geographical scope of the CMS presence in Travancore. He also played a significant role in the development of vernacular education, building on the foundations that Bailey had laid.<\/p>\n
The relationships among the missionaries were not always harmonious. Living and working in close proximity, under the constant pressures of climate, disease, and cultural stress, tensions inevitably arose. Differences of opinion about strategy, personality clashes, and the ordinary frictions of communal life all made their appearance. The missionary correspondence contains hints of these difficulties, though the conventions of missionary discourse tended to suppress open acknowledgment of conflict. Bailey, by temperament practical and somewhat reserved, seems to have navigated these relationships with a minimum of drama, focusing on the work rather than the personalities.<\/p>\n
The wives of the missionaries formed their own network of support and collaboration. Elizabeth Bailey, Mrs. Fenn, Mrs. Baker, and other missionary wives managed households, raised children, taught in schools, visited homes, and provided the domestic infrastructure without which the public work of the mission could not have functioned. Their contributions, long invisible in mission histories focused on male preachers and administrators, are increasingly recognised as essential to the missionary enterprise.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
### 14.2 Indian Assistants: The Hidden Architects of the Mission<\/p>\n
The European missionaries at Kottayam never numbered more than a handful. The work they accomplished\u2014the schools established, the books printed, the congregations nurtured\u2014would have been impossible without the Indian assistants who formed the backbone of the mission’s operations. These men and women, mostly from the Syrian Christian community or from among early converts, served as teachers, catechists, translators, language informants, and managers of mission outstations.<\/p>\n
The language informants who worked with Bailey during his early years in Travancore deserve particular recognition. Learning a new language as an adult is difficult under any circumstances; learning Malayalam, with its complex grammar and unfamiliar script, without textbooks or formal instruction, required patient assistance from native speakers. The men who sat with Bailey day after day, explaining vocabulary, correcting pronunciation, and modelling idiomatic speech, were his first and most essential teachers. Their names, for the most part, are lost to history, but their contribution to everything Bailey subsequently accomplished is incalculable.<\/p>\n
The translation assistants who worked on the Malayalam Bible formed another crucial group. These were men of education\u2014Syrian Christian scholars who knew both Malayalam and Syriac, and who understood the theological complexities of rendering biblical concepts in Indian languages. They reviewed Bailey’s drafts, suggested alternative renderings, and helped to ensure that the translation was both accurate and natural. The Malayalam Bible, though it bears Bailey’s name as translator, was in a very real sense a collaborative production, shaped by the knowledge and judgment of these unnamed Indian scholars.<\/p>\n
The teachers who staffed the village schools represented the mission’s largest cadre of Indian workers. Trained at Kottayam and deployed to villages across Travancore, these men (and a smaller number of women) delivered the education that was the mission’s most tangible benefit to the local population. They worked in conditions that were often difficult\u2014isolated from colleagues, poorly paid, sometimes resented by local elites\u2014yet they persisted, motivated by a mixture of religious conviction, professional commitment, and economic necessity.<\/p>\n
The catechists and lay readers who led worship and provided pastoral care in village congregations formed yet another layer of Indian leadership. These men, often graduates of the mission schools, served as the public face of Christianity in their communities, conducting services, teaching doctrine, and representing the faith to neighbours who might be curious, indifferent, or hostile. Their work extended the reach of the mission far beyond what the few European missionaries could have achieved on their own.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
### 14.3 Prominent Converts and Their Stories<\/p>\n
The history of the CMS Travancore mission includes the stories of individual converts whose lives were transformed by their encounter with Christianity and whose subsequent work contributed significantly to the growth of the church. While a comprehensive account of these individuals is beyond the scope of this chapter, a few representative examples can illustrate the role of Indian converts in the mission’s development.<\/p>\n
Some of the earliest converts came from the Syrian Christian community\u2014men and women who, under the influence of missionary teaching, embraced an evangelical faith that emphasised personal conversion, Bible reading, and a direct relationship with God. These “reformed Syrians,” as they were sometimes called, occupied an awkward position, caught between the traditional Syrian hierarchy that viewed them with suspicion and the missionaries who welcomed their enthusiasm but sometimes struggled to fully integrate them into leadership.<\/p>\n
Other converts came from non-Christian backgrounds\u2014Hindus of various castes who, for reasons both spiritual and social, chose to embrace Christianity. Their stories are diverse. Some were drawn by the message of salvation; others by the promise of education and social advancement; many by a combination of motives that cannot be neatly separated. Conversion carried costs: ostracism from family and community, loss of inheritance and social standing, sometimes active persecution. The courage required to take this step should not be underestimated.<\/p>\n
The relationships between Bailey and individual converts were shaped by the complexities of colonial and missionary power dynamics. Bailey was, inescapably, a figure of authority\u2014a European, a missionary, an employer, a patron. His relationships with Indian Christians, however genuine the mutual affection, were structured by inequalities of power that could never be entirely transcended. Yet within these constraints, genuine friendships and partnerships developed. The letters and journals contain evidence of warm personal regard between Bailey and many of his Indian colleagues, and the longevity of some of these working relationships suggests mutual satisfaction.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
### 14.4 Correspondence with CMS and Supporters in England<\/p>\n
The physical distance between Travancore and England meant that Bailey’s connection to the CMS headquarters and to his support base was maintained almost entirely through correspondence. Letters took months to travel in each direction, creating a time lag that complicated decision-making and required missionaries to exercise considerable independent judgment.<\/p>\n
Bailey was a faithful correspondent. His letters to the CMS secretary in London, preserved in the CMS Archives at the University of Birmingham, constitute the most important primary source for his life and work. In these letters, he reported on the progress of the mission, described challenges and opportunities, requested supplies and personnel, and reflected on the spiritual significance of the work. The letters are practical, detailed, and generally measured in tone\u2014characteristics that reflect Bailey’s personality and his printer’s habits of precision and clarity.<\/p>\n
The correspondence served multiple purposes. It was, first, an accountability mechanism, enabling the CMS committee to monitor the work it was funding and to provide guidance (though the time lag meant that guidance often arrived after circumstances had changed). It was, second, a means of maintaining personal connections with supporters in England, who read excerpts from missionary letters in CMS publications and felt themselves connected to the work through their prayers and contributions. It was, third, a form of pastoral care for the missionaries themselves, providing a link to home and a space for expressing the joys and sorrows of missionary life.<\/p>\n
Bailey also corresponded with individual supporters, with fellow missionaries in other parts of India, and with family members in England. These letters, where they survive, provide glimpses of his personal life and relationships that are less visible in his official correspondence. They reveal a man who missed his homeland, who grieved the deaths of children and colleagues, who took pleasure in the beauty of the Kerala landscape, and who maintained a quiet but deep affection for those he had left behind.<\/p>\n
The CMS in London used missionary correspondence to build support for the work. Extracts from Bailey’s letters were published in the *Church Missionary Record* and other periodicals, allowing British readers to follow the progress of the Travancore mission and to feel personally invested in its success. Bailey was aware of this audience and wrote with an eye to publication, shaping his narratives to inspire and encourage supporters while maintaining the factual accuracy that his printer’s conscience demanded.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
### 14.5 Connections with Colonial Officials<\/p>\n
The relationship between the CMS missionaries and the British colonial administration was complex and evolved over time. Colonel John Munro, the Resident who had invited the CMS to Travancore, was a strong supporter of the mission, and his patronage was crucial to its early establishment. Subsequent Residents varied in their enthusiasm for missionary work, reflecting both personal inclinations and shifts in Company policy.<\/p>\n
Bailey’s interactions with colonial officials were generally cordial but not intimate. He was not a political figure; his focus was on the press, the schools, and the church, not on the corridors of power. He maintained good relations with the Resident and other officials, recognising that their goodwill was essential to the mission’s security and freedom of operation. But he did not seek to become a player in colonial politics, and his letters contain relatively little commentary on political matters.<\/p>\n
The mission benefited from its association with British power in numerous ways. The Resident’s influence protected the mission from interference by local authorities who might have been hostile. British prestige gave the missionaries a status that opened doors. The infrastructure of empire\u2014the postal system, the transportation networks, the commercial supply chains\u2014enabled the mission’s operations. Yet the missionaries were also aware that too close an identification with colonial power could compromise their spiritual credibility, and they sought to maintain a measure of independence from the political establishment.<\/p>\n
The relationship between mission and empire has been a central theme in postcolonial scholarship, with some historians arguing that missionaries were essentially agents of cultural imperialism whose religious message served to legitimate colonial domination. This critique has considerable force, and it would be na\u00efve to deny that missionaries benefited from and contributed to the colonial system. Yet the relationship was more complex than simple complicity. Missionaries sometimes challenged colonial policies, advocated for Indian interests, and created institutions\u2014schools, presses, churches\u2014that outlasted the colonial regime and served Indian purposes that the colonisers had not intended.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
### 14.6 Family Life: Elizabeth Bailey and Children<\/p>\n
At the centre of Bailey’s personal world was his family. Elizabeth Bailey, his wife of more than fifty years, shared every aspect of his missionary life\u2014the physical hardships, the emotional strains, the joys and disappointments of the work. Her contribution to the mission, though less visible in the historical record than her husband’s, was substantial and deserves recognition.<\/p>\n
Elizabeth managed the mission household, which was no small task in 19th century Kerala. The household included not only the Bailey family but often also visitors, colleagues, and Indian staff. Food had to be procured and prepared, clothing made and maintained, health needs attended to, children educated and cared for. These domestic responsibilities, which in England would have been shared among a larger staff or extended family, fell heavily on the missionary wife, whose labour made possible her husband’s public work.<\/p>\n
Beyond the household, Elizabeth was involved in educational and pastoral work among women. She visited homes, taught in girls’ schools, provided basic medical care, and offered counsel and support to women in the community. In a society where gender segregation limited male missionaries’ access to women, the work of missionary wives was essential to the mission’s outreach to the female half of the population. Elizabeth and the other missionary wives created spaces where Indian women could learn, ask questions, and receive care in a culturally appropriate setting.<\/p>\n
The Baileys’ children grew up in the unique environment of the mission compound. They learned Malayalam alongside English, moved comfortably between the European and Indian worlds, and formed relationships with Indian children that crossed the racial and cultural boundaries that structured colonial society. The experience of missionary children was complex: they belonged fully to neither world, yet they were bridges between them, possessing linguistic and cultural competencies that their parents struggled to acquire.<\/p>\n
The Baileys, like many missionary families, knew the pain of burying children in Indian soil. Infant and child mortality was high in the 19th century, and the tropical environment posed particular health risks to European children. The archival record contains poignant references to the deaths of Bailey children, and these losses must have shaped the family’s experience in ways that official correspondence only hints at. The faith that sustained the Baileys in their work was also tested by these sorrows, and the resilience with which they continued their labours testifies to the depth of their conviction.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
### The Web of Relationships<\/p>\n
The network of relationships that sustained Benjamin Bailey’s work\u2014European colleagues, Indian assistants, converts, correspondents, colonial officials, family members\u2014formed a complex web that extended from Kottayam to London and back. Bailey was the central node in this network, but he was not its sole creator or controller. Each relationship involved reciprocity, negotiation, and mutual influence. The mission was not simply something Bailey did to or for others; it was something he did with others, in a context that none of them fully controlled.<\/p>\n
Understanding this network is essential to understanding Bailey’s achievements. The printing press did not run itself; it required the labour of compositors, pressmen, and binders who were trained and supervised by Bailey but who brought their own skills and commitment to the work. The schools did not teach themselves; they required teachers who were prepared to work in difficult conditions for modest pay. The Bible did not translate itself; it required Indian scholars who understood both the biblical languages and the nuances of Malayalam. Bailey’s name may appear on the title pages, but the works themselves were products of a community.<\/p>\n
The collaborative nature of the mission enterprise does not diminish Bailey’s contribution; rather, it situates that contribution in its proper context. Bailey was a remarkable figure\u2014a skilled printer, a dedicated linguist, a patient educator, a faithful pastor. But he was able to accomplish what he did because he was surrounded by a network of people who shared his goals and contributed their own gifts to the common work. The story of the Travancore mission is, ultimately, the story of that network and what it was able to achieve together.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
**Key Takeaways**<\/p>\n
– Bailey’s key European colleagues, particularly Joseph Fenn and Henry Baker Jr., brought complementary gifts that strengthened the mission’s work.
\n– Indian assistants\u2014language informants, translators, teachers, catechists\u2014were essential to every aspect of the mission’s operations, though their contributions are often less visible in the historical record.
\n– Converts from Syrian Christian and non-Christian backgrounds played important roles in the growth of the church, often at significant personal cost.
\n– Correspondence with the CMS in London maintained accountability, built support, and provided a vital link to home.
\n– The relationship between the mission and colonial officials was complex, involving both support and tension.
\n– Family life, centred on Elizabeth Bailey and their children, provided the domestic foundation for Bailey’s public work.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
**Discussion Questions**<\/p>\n
1. Why have the contributions of Indian assistants been less visible in mission histories than those of European missionaries? How might historians recover these hidden voices?
\n2. Consider the role of missionary wives like Elizabeth Bailey. How did gender shape the experience and contributions of women in the missionary enterprise?
\n3. What were the advantages and disadvantages of the CMS’s reliance on correspondence for oversight and support of distant missions?
\n4. How should we understand the relationship between missionaries and colonial power? Were missionaries essentially agents of empire, or did their relationship with colonialism require more nuanced analysis?<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
**Primary Source: Bailey on the Death of Joseph Fenn (1840)**<\/p>\n
*”It is with a heavy heart that I communicate the intelligence of the death of our dear brother, the Rev. Joseph Fenn, who departed this life on the 15th instant after a short illness. He had laboured in this mission for twenty-two years, and his loss is irreparable. He was a man of deep piety, sound judgment, and unwearied diligence. The Syrian Church has lost a true friend, and we who remain have lost a beloved colleague. Yet we sorrow not as those without hope, for we know that he rests from his labours and that his works do follow him.”*<\/p>\n
*(CMS Archives, C I1\/M11, Bailey to Secretary, 25 March 1840. Spelling and punctuation modernised.)*<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
**Further Reading**<\/p>\n
Cox, Jeffrey. (2008). *The British Missionary Enterprise Since 1700*. Routledge. (For the broader context of missionary organisation, support networks, and the role of correspondence.)<\/p>\n
Haggis, Jane. (1998). *White Women and Colonialism: Towards a Feminist Analysis of Missionary Discourse*. Gender, Place and Culture, 5(1), 53-71. (For critical perspectives on the role of missionary wives.)<\/p>\n
Stanley, Brian. (2001). *The History of the Baptist Missionary Society, 1792-1992*. T&T Clark. (Though focused on the BMS, provides comparative context for understanding missionary networks and home support.)<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
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