1812

The year 1812 is a turning point in the book’s account of missionary work in India: American missionaries were ordered out of the country, but their displacement redirected the mission to Burma, where it reportedly prospered. The episode makes political obstruction part of the author’s larger argument that Divine Providence could turn attempts to bar the Gospel into means of its further spread.

The Missionaries in Calcutta

Ann Judson’s diary is cited as evidence that the East India Company strongly opposed missionary activity. In 1812, Adoniram Judson and Newel had been in Calcutta for about ten days when they were summoned there and informed that the government required them to leave India and return to America. The book stresses the narrowness of the permission missionaries had been given: they could not settle and preach freely, and the authorities were unwilling even to allow a delay in carrying out the order.

Expulsion and Redirection

The order became more forceful. The government required the missionaries to be put aboard a Company vessel bound for England, while a petty officer accompanied Hill and Judson to their residence and asked them not to leave without permission. The account portrays this surveillance and compulsory departure as the treatment of men who had travelled from America to preach salvation in India. Yet the expulsion did not end the mission: the American missionaries were sent to Burma, where the work, in the author’s account, subsequently succeeded and continued with marked prosperity. The immediate result of the authorities’ refusal was therefore a change of destination rather than the extinguishing of the effort.

The Book’s Providential Interpretation

The episode serves as a concrete instance of the book’s recurring claim that apparent obstacles can be incorporated into a larger providential course. The government’s effort to keep missionaries from India instead brought them to Burma, where their mission could proceed. This interpretation does not deny the coercive character of the order; it makes the coercion itself part of the reversal the author emphasizes.

The Following Year

The book sets the restrictions of 1812 against the change that followed in 1813. During the renewal of the East India Company’s charter, advocates including Wilberforce, Smith, Thornton, and Fuller worked to secure toleration for missionary efforts. The account also describes a subsequent change in feeling among government officers and European residents in India, who became more willing to support such work. In this chronology, 1812 records the forceful exclusion of missionaries, while the next year marks a formal opening for missionary activity in India.