| Summary/Abstract |
In 1810, American evangelicals formed the first American foreign mission organization, and began the work of deciding where their missionaries ought to go. Motivated by a global vision of the biblical call to preach to “all the world,” American missionaries were constrained in where they could actually go by political, economic, and cultural factors. This paper explores the ways that American missionaries selected and prioritized particular locations over others as a way of thinking about how Americans mapped the world in the era of the early republic. Central to this process was the construction of a “hierarchy of heathenism” that allowed missionaries to combine practical concerns with assumptions about culture and race to determine where they might be most effective.
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