CMS Periodicals as a Teaching and Research Resource for World History

The Church Mission Society [CMS] was founded in London on April 12, 1799. Anglican-affiliated, the CMS was positioned under the authority of the bishops of the Church of England and endorsed the Anglican liturgy. But from the start, it was a movement comprised primarily of evangelical lay persons, both Anglican and otherwise. Most of its early leaders were influenced by the Clapham Sect (1790–1830), a social reform movement emanating from within the Church of England. The well-known English politician and social reform advocate William Wilburforce (1759-1833) was one of the key founders and first vice-president of the CMS.

The three-fold mission of the CMS was the eradication of slavery and the slave trade, social reform at home and global evangelism. The original name of the CMS, the Society for Missions to Africa and the East, reflected the group’s emphasis on ending slavery and missionary work. The CMS and Clapham Sect, along with Wilburforce himself, are generally given much credit for passage of the Slave Trade Act in 1807, ending the African slave trade, and the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833, ending the practice within the British Empire. The overseas mission work of the CMS began in 1804 with the sending of two missionaries to Sierra Leone. From this beginning and presently, the CMS has been engaged in mission work in nearly every corner of the globe, from Sub-Saharan and North Africa, the Middle East, South America, India, China, Japan, New Zealand and numerous places in between. With its far-flung involvement around the world over its two-hundred year history, the CMS produced a voluminous written record, much of which has been made digitally available through this resource.