scale mission in the little Danish settlement of Tranquebar on the Coromandel Coast of south-east India. He employed two German pastors, Bartholomew Ziegenbald and Henry Plutschau, who based their work methodically on a number of assumptions which became standard. The mission church must be associated with a mission school (and later a hospital or clinic). The gospels (and preferably the whole of the Bible) must be translated. Missionaries must possess an accurate knowledge of the native mentality and language. Conversions must be made of individuals not of groups. And native missionaries and ministers must be trained as rapidly as possible. The last two of these principles raised controversy of a type which had already puzzled the Jesuits. The earliest Christians had made individual conversions. partly because they had no state power behind them. In the Dark Ages, missionaries had worked through kings and tribal leaders; the Germans and Slavs had become Christians in entire social units, sometimes indeed at the point of the sword. Both methods had worked. In India, it could be argued that only personal conversion enabled the adult neophyte to understand the true meaning of the Christian message and the privileges and responsibilities he was receiving. On the other hand, he thereby became detached from his social group ~ hence the practice of transplanting converts and bringing them together in new settlements, a method used, with variations, by Catholics and Protestants alike, all over the world. Others argued that it was much better to work on a whole community, and bring them over together when the moment was ripe, without damaging the social structure. Christianity then became fully integrated with the native way of life. But against this it was urged that the whole object of Christianity was to change the way of life. As a new religion, or cult, it necessarily involved the adoption of new cultural and social norms. his was the meaning of Paul's expression, becoming ‘a new man’. Polygamy was a case in point. Enforcing Christian monogamy meant a huge and unwelcome change in the social structure. But this was unavoidable unless it was seriously proposed that Christianity should accept polygamy. If polygamy, why not cannibalism? The argument remained unresolved throughout the period - that is up to the end of the nineteenth century - when collective conversions were a possibility, at least in some areas. It was the same with the debate over a native clergy. As in the Catholic missions, the Protestants became divided, and usually in the same way. The home and secular authorities, and the hierarchies, were less anxious to train and promote natives than the men on the spot. Native clergy were regarded as incompatible with colonial rule; or with doctrinal orthodoxy. Some of the actual missionaries were much more ready to try experiments. One of the earliest Baptists in India, William Carey, wrote in 1805 that his chief object was 'the forming of our native brethren to usefulness, fostering every kind of genius, and cherishing every gift and grace in them; in this respect we can scarcely be too lavish in our attention to their improvement. It is only by means of native preachers we can hope for the universal spread of the Gospel through this immense Continent.’ Again, one of the Protestant pioneers in East Africa, Lewis Krapf, from the Basel seminary, who worked for the Christian Missionary Society in the 1830s, thought the training of black clergy would bring about a qualitative change. ‘When the color of a man's skin no longer excludes him from the office of an evangelist, the traffic in Slaves will have had its knell. A black bishop and a black clergy of the Protestant church may ere long become a necessity to the civilization of Africa.’ But then he was against colonialism too: ‘Banish the thought that Europe must spread her protecting wings over East Africa, if missionary work is to prosper in that land of outer darkness. Europe would, no doubt, remove much that is mischievous and obstructive out of the way of missionary work, but she would probably set in its way aS many, and perhaps still greater checks.’ Examples of similar views could be produced from all the missionary territories. The missions themselves were divided. Those, like Carey and Krapf, who identified themselves with the natives and gave high priority to creating an independent clergy and Church, included most of the ablest and most sensitive of the missionaries, but constituted only a minority of the workers in the field. Most of those who lived among the natives, both in India and Africa, were more struck by their ignorance than by 12]