SPG and Southeast Asia

Catalogue record

Notes

The CLS series contains 162 volumes of copies of letters sent during the period from 1833 to 1931 from the London offices of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG), an Anglican missionary organisation founded by royal charter in 1701. The CLR series comprises in total 223 volumes of copies of letters received for the period 1833-1928. In both series, the letters are arranged in volumes geographically by diocese, with occasional changes reflecting developments in the diocesan structure. At first the volumes includes copies of all the letters, though at an unspecified later date the practice was amended, such that only the more important items were kept, either transcribed by hand or by pasting in cyclostyle copies.
The volumes contained in this collection reflect the activities of the SPG in Southeast Asia, which formed part of the Anglican church's then province of Asia. Although an Anglican presence existed in the region from the late 18th century, with the appointment of chaplain to the East India Company's settlement in Penang, the SPG correspondence in these volumes does not begin until 1846, some two years before the arrival in Borneo of a group of missionaries at the invitation of James Brooke, the EIC's governor in Sarawak. At the head of these missionaries was Francis Thomas McDougall, later to become Anglican bishop of Labuan in 1855. The following year, in 1856, the SPG appointed Sarah Coombes to act as its first single woman missionary. Like McDougall, she was sent to Borneo, and items relating to her work as a schoolteacher are included in the early correspondence.
The Borneo Church Mission covers not only the longest period, but is the largest in terms of volumes, including items relating to Singapore and other parts of the EIC's Straits Settlements. In the early 20th century the correspondence with Singapore appears in separate volumes.
The Rangoon volumes begin thirty years later in 1878, and cover the period building up to the third Anglo-Burmese war (1885-1886), as well as more than forty years that followed it, when Burma (Myanmar) became a province of British India. As in the American colonies during the 18th century, the SPG's activities initially centred on the cure of souls of Anglicans in the colonial government and economy of the country, including members of the Anglo-Burmese and Anglo-Indian communities. To this was added the running of mission schools.
The late and limited nature of the SPG's mission to Siam (Thailand) is contained in one slim volume in each series (CLR/95 and CLS/74), both focusing on the first quarter of the 20th century.
Reel 1
CLR/72 - 1848-1859 - Borneo (Vol. 1)
CLR/73 - 1859-1893 - Borneo (Vol. 2)
Reel 2
CLR/74 - 1893-1908 - Borneo (Vol. 3)
CLR/75 - 1908-1912 - Borneo (Vol. 4)
Reel 3
CLR/76 - 1912-1916 - Borneo (Vol. 5)
CLR/77 - 1916-1923 - Borneo (Vol. 6)
Reel 4
CLR/78 - 1923-1928 - Borneo (Vol. 7)
CLS/54 - 1846-1902 - Borneo & Singapore (Vol. 1)
Reel 5
CLS/55 - 1902-1910 - Borneo & Singapore (Vol. 2)
CLS/56 - 1910-1912 - Borneo (Vol. 3)
CLS/57 - 1912-1917 - Borneo (Labuan) (Vol. 4)
Reel 6
CLS/58 - 1917-1924 - Borneo (Vol. 5)
CLS/59 - 1924-1928 - Borneo (Vol. 6)
CLR/95 - 1901-1927 - Siam (Vol. 1)
CLS/74 - 1906-1927 - Siam (Vol. 1)
Reel 7
CLR/96 - 1909-1923 - Singapore (Vol. 1)
CLR/97 - 1923-1927 - Singapore (Vol. 2)
CLS/75 - 1910-1921 - Singapore (Vol. 1)
CLS/76 - 1921-1928 - Singapore (Vol. 2)
Reel 8
CLR/65 - 1878-1885 - Rangoon (vol. 1)
CLR/66 - 1886-1898 - Rangoon (vol. 2)
CLR/67 - 1898-1905 - Rangoon (vol. 3)
Reel 9
CLR/68 - 1906-1913 - Rangoon (vol. 4)
CLR/69 - 1913-1925 - Rangoon (vol. 5)
CLR/70 - 1925-1928 - Rangoon (vol. 6)
Reel 10
CLS/47 - 1884-1908 - Rangoon (vol. 1)
CLS/48 - 1908-1914 - Rangoon (vol. 2)
Reel 11
CLS/49 - 1914-1923 - Rangoon (vol. 3)
CLS/50 - 1923-1928 - Rangoon (vol. 4)