Home
Shopping cart (0 items € 0)
Go Back

The state of all missionary activity around the world ca. 1820

[GAUSSEN, Francois Samuel Robert Louis?].
Exposé de l'état actuel des missions évangéliques chez les peuples infidèles, cel qu'on le connoissoit au commencement de l'année 1820.
Genève, [back of the title-page: printing office of Guillaume Fick], 1821. 2 parts in 1 volume. 8vo. With a folding leaf (54 x 34.5 cm) containing a small coloured map of the world. Contemporary blue paper wrappers, untrimmed, preserving all deckles, and with the bolts unopened. XII, LXXXII, IV, 408, [4] pp.
€ 2,500
First and only edition of an overview of all active missions around the world in 1820. It was possibly composed under the direction of Francois Gaussen (1790-1863), an ardent supporter of Reformed theology in Switzerland, who founded a society for the promotion of missionary activities. The first part of the work functions as an extensive preface, detailing the existence and nature of the different Christian missionary societies that organise missions all around the world. The second and also main part of the work starts with a short explanation of the method used to analyse and describe the numerous missions and their posts in Africa, the Arabian peninsula, the eastern Mediterranean, Turkey, Asia (with an extensive part on the missions in India, and including the Asian islands, Ceylon, Sri Lanka and Indonesia), Australia & New Zealand, French Polynesia and the Hawaiian Islands, the Americas and Greenland. Each mission station has its own short description which mentions for example the number of members of the local church and the names of the most prominent missionaries at that station. The map is coloured according to the (main) form of Christianity practiced in the different parts of the world. The letterpress tables surrounding the map list the most important mission stations per region.
Wrappers show very slight signs of wear and are slightly foxed; a very good copy. Ferguson 814; Gabler & Sallmann, Der Pietismus im neunzehnten und zwanzigsten Jahrhundert (2000), p. 48; not in Forbes; Kroepelien; O'Reilly & Reitman; Sabin; South African Bibliography.
Order Inquire Terms of sale

Related Subjects:

Religion & devotion  >  Church History & Missions