Calcutta

Calcutta appears as a temporary foothold for American missionaries in British India and as the site of their abrupt removal in 1812. The episode gives the city a double significance: government officials used it to enforce restrictions on missionary work, while the account interprets the expulsion from Calcutta as a providential redirection to Burma.

The Missionaries’ Stay

Messrs. Judson and Newel had been in Calcutta for about ten days when they were summoned and informed that they must leave India and return to America. The government was offended by the missionaries’ presence, apparently suspecting that they intended to remain in Bengal. Their stay was therefore not treated as an ordinary visit: the authorities demanded their immediate departure.

Surveillance and Expulsion

The order was made more forceful when the government directed that the missionaries be sent aboard an East India Company vessel bound for England. A petty officer accompanied Messrs. Hill and Judson to their residence and instructed them not to leave without permission. The account presents this supervision as a striking display of official hostility toward men who had come from America to preach in India, and locates that confrontation in Calcutta.

A Point of Redirection

The missionaries’ removal did not end their work. The narrative says that they were sent to Burma, where their mission succeeded and continued with what it describes as signal prosperity. Calcutta thus marks both a barrier and a turning point: the attempt to exclude the missionaries from India redirected their activity elsewhere.

Later Change in Policy

The account contrasts the 1812 expulsion with the change that followed the East India Company charter’s renewal in 1813. Parliamentary alterations secured toleration for missionary efforts in the Company’s eastern possessions, and the narrative reports that government officers and European residents in India later became more willing to support such work. This broader reversal gives Calcutta’s episode its place in a larger account of restrictions being lifted, though the evidence does not describe a specific later missionary event in the city itself.