CULTURAL ENCOUNTERS IN INDIA

The Local Co-workers of Tranquebar Mission, 18th to 19th Centuries

Heike Liebau

German Writings on India and South Asia

This Series brings together a body of work from Germany on India and South Asia. These books will reflect the social sciences and literature, made available to the English speaking world often for the first time

This is the second book in this Series and has been awarded for excellence in scholarship.

Cultural Encounters in India : The Local Co-workers of Tranquebar Mission, 18th to 19th Centuries is an English translation of an award winning German book. It is now available for the first time to the English speaking world.

The history of social and religious encounter  in 18^th century South  India is narrated through fascinating biographies and day to day lives of  Indian workers who worked in the first organised Protestant mission enterprise in India, the Tranquebar  Mission (1706-1845). The Mission was originally initiated by the Danish King Friedrich IV, but sustained by religious authorities and mission organisations and supporters  in Germany and Britain.

The book challenges the notion that Christianity in colonial India was basically imposed from the outside. It also questions the approaches to mission history concentrating exclusively on European  mission societies. Liebau  maintains that the social  history of 18^th  century South India cannot be understood  without considering the contributions of the local converts and mission co-workers who  played an important  role from the very beginning in the context of  Tranquebar  Mission.

CONTENTS

1. Introduction
2. History of the Tranquebar Mission
3. Formation and Development of the Group of National Workers
4. Between Obedience and Individual Responsibility
5. Kinship Relation within the Group of National Workers

Heike Liebau is Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Modern Oriental Studies (Berlin).

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556pp | 215x140 mm | Hardback

Tentative Pub price: 750

ISBN 978-81-87358-72-5

Tentative pub date: Jan 2013