Gareth Atkins's aim in Converting Britannia is to “make the self-evident but often forgotten point that the Fathers of the Victorians were Hanoverians: that while they were fleet-footed in their willingness to adopt the pressure-group techniques and mass-subscription voluntarism that would later become the standard model for philanthropic organisation, they also had a shrewd appreciation of existing levers of power and how one might gain access to them” (3). He does this through an extensively researched network analysis that connects work on imperial transcolonialism with a deep exploration of British Evangelicalism. Creating a Christian nation was the objective, and Hanoverian Evangelicals were happy to use both grassroots campaigns and the cultivation of power to achieve that end. Its “strength lay in its purchase on the great power-broking institutions of metropolitan and imperial Britain” (25), argues Atkins. Evangelicals were “masterly manipulators of an older set of tools” (247). At the same time, though, imperial Britain shaped and defined the nature of that Evangelicalism also—a point made less clearly, but no less persuasively, throughout.

Atkins begins the book—roughly two parts—with an examination of Evangelical political and social patronage before pivoting toward an exploration of Evangelical networks in Empire, through Sierra Leone, the Royal Navy, and the East India Company. Given the distrust of “enthusiasm” within the Church of England in the late eighteenth century, it was necessary for Evangelicals to create networks of patronage, word-of-mouth and even aristocratic support. Such initially local and personal networks gained a form of national coordination, meanwhile, through the creation of missionary societies which coalesced and consolidated Evangelical community. “With growing influence in the capital and the provinces, a web of local clerical groups and the national framework provided by the C[hurch] M[issionary] S[ociety], Evangelicals were coming to see themselves as a national movement.” (62).

Meanwhile, Evangelicalism's imbrication with commerce connected religion, the City of London and Westminster in ways that would later come to fruition through Evangelical connections with both the Sierra Leone Company and the East India Company (chapters 4 and 6). Evangelical and commercial networks were often coterminous not only because Evangelicalism itself was increasingly popular, but also because “in a high-risk, high-profit world, membership of a nexus that combined kinship and shared beliefs conferred advantages” (86). Meanwhile, business success brought moral seriousness to high attention. Piety was fashionable, but also protean, and thus at times unstable. Networks of influence remained at the heart of Evangelical success and philanthropic organization. Indeed, the proliferation of charitable associations and improving societies also consolidated, refined, and defined these networks. “Activism” was world-building, and bridged the gaps between different social pockets of Evangelical excitement. From mercantile beginnings came social and political success—and with it ever greater titled and even Royal patronage by the 1810s and 1820s.

Thus, “Evangelicals in the 1820s knew well that the position they enjoyed was beyond the fondest imaginings of their forebears” (141). The increasing popularity of Evangelicalism certainly had its detractors, who often guarded the gates of authority, but momentum from the laity, organization afforded through national and local philanthropic societies, and the lobbying and leverage of key influential churchmen ultimately paid off. The Empire, meanwhile, provided both a milieu for evangelical effort and perhaps even more importantly causes for action around which Evangelicalism could coalesce. Sierra Leone was one such proving ground for Evangelical influence over metropolitan government and policy. Success there was to be “measured in the forging of an Evangelical empire” (146). The traction of the project lay not in Sierra Leone itself (which enjoyed a mixed history, to say the least), but in “the support of Victorian governments for humanitarian and missionary endeavours, and perhaps above all in the purchase of anti-slavery as a ‘hegemonic ideology’” (147). As such, Evangelicals became increasingly embroiled in colonial policy and expansion. At the same time, their articulation of a divinely ordained Empire for the purposes of moral good became dogmatic in the self-image of British imperialism.

One of the key institutions of that “pious Empire” was the navy, that “potent embodiment of Britishness on which Evangelicals were eager to put their stamp” (180). This too worked to enforce and promulgate providentialism—“the idea that having won the [Napoleonic] war Britain now had a global destiny to fulfil was a powerful one” (205). Piety was not uncontested in the navy, but by the 1820s it was collaborating with missionaries and ministers, while the latter increasingly turned their philanthropic efforts towards seamen. The navy, like the colony of Sierra Leone before it, needed to be molded into an instrument of a Christian and civilizing empire. In working to define and dictate the terms of that “moral Empire,” meanwhile, Evangelicals could not ignore India. While the importance of missionary activity to the later history of the East India Company is well known, the role of Evangelical networks in influencing policy and appointments is less well-trodden territory, despite the fact, as Atkins argues, that Evangelicals “wanted to seize the narratives surrounding the nation's largest company” (208). Meanwhile, key Evangelical influencers were adept at utilizing their carefully refined networks of patronage over East India Company policy. As such, “Evangelical causes became also national causes in global contexts” (232). By the 1830s and 1840s Evangelicalism's rise to prominence in late Georgian and early Victorian imperial Britain was complete.

This is an extremely well-written and deeply researched book that is also a pleasure to read. Atkins balances the archival depth and breadth of his source materials with a light touch and a quiet command of the relevant historiography. His contribution is an important one, and I think he could have made more of it. While I do not necessarily agree with his assertions of originality in tracing the links between Evangelicalism, Empire, and society in this period (see the work of Susan Thorne, Alison Twells, and Catherine Hall), what Atkins does show is the way that Empire provided a point of coherence for what was a disparate and diffused religious and political movement. The notion that Evangelicalism could not have successfully coalesced without the imperial context runs beneath this book, and thus contributes significantly to those works that assert the Empire's foundational importance to British society, culture and national identity. “Evangelical strength in metropolitan institutions rested, to some extent, on their connections overseas” (144). While Atkins could have drawn out this point more determinedly, it is nonetheless clear, and the fine lines with which he draws that picture are persuasive. As such, this is an important book made moreover enjoyable through its energetic writing, comprehensive research and compelling organization. Definitely recommended reading!