Church, Settler and Empire: The Church of England and Settler Expansion in the British World, 1790-1860

How did 19th-century religions become global? In the period between 1790 and 1860 the Anglican Church was transformed from a national institution with branches in North America to a genuinely transnational organisation with an institutional presence-represented by a system of bishops, clergy, churches, and congregations-across the British Empire and beyond. The story of evangelical missionaries seeking out non-Christian converts is a familiar one, but the establishment of an institutional church for British settler congregations has tended to be overlooked. This project is the first to ask how the Church of England operated as a transnational institution in the dramatic period of expansion between 1790 and 1860. A study of how the Church responded to European migration and developed as a global institution is crucial for understanding why Anglican Churches with unique features-in terms of personnel, organisation and identity-emerged by the later 19th century. Focusing on the Church in the key colonies of settlement (New South Wales, Upper Canada, and the Cape Colony), the project analyses the communities and individuals who supported the expansion of the settler church, the organisations who staffed and funded it, and the networks linking the colonial Church with the Church in England and also Ireland and Scotland. The result will be a truly international study that explains how the Church maintained itself across geographical boundaries, and how it was possible for one contributor to the 'Colonial Church Chronicle', a mid-century Church periodical, to talk about an 'Anglican Communion' in 1850. This research will complement the rich literature which exists on the institutional Church in the British context and in individual colonies.

The project's second strand focuses on determining the importance of this institutional context in shaping the ethnic or national identity of the colonial Church. While Presbyterianism and Catholicism are seen as defining elements in Scottish and Irish identity in the colonial context, our understanding of the Anglican Church's ethnic identity is limited. Did the Church's 'established' status support Anglican claims that the Church was a 'British' or 'national' institution (even after the separation of church and state in the colonial world after 1830); or, conversely, did the diverse Anglican populations of English, Irish, Scottish, and colonial-born mean the Church's identity was multifaceted and contested? To answer these questions, the project provides the first study of the personal, financial, and institutional networks linking colonial Churches to communities in England, Scotland and Ireland. A pioneering study of the ethnic make-up of the colonial clergy, coupled with an original analysis of the Church's relationship with ethnic associations, will provide important insights into the nature of Anglican ethnic identity in the British World.

This is a project with broad appeal. As a key aim is to establish the pivotal role played by the Church in shaping imperial networks, imperial identity and diaspora, the project will demonstrate the significance of the Church for scholars working in a range of fields, including imperial, religious, migration and diaspora history. The project will also engage with users beyond the academy. A project which maps the evolution and internal workings of the Anglican Communion is particularly timely given the current discussions about Anglican unity and identity which have arisen as a result of the controversy surrounding the issue of homosexual and female bishops. The project engages with these non-academic audiences through a programme of public- and church-engagement. The symposium on the Church and Englishness will attract an audience of clerics, academics and laity. Finally, biographical data on colonial clergy-which will be made available online after the project-will be of interest to genealogists and students of imperial and emigration history.

The project's themes-the globalisation of religious institutions, Englishness and Britain's relationship with empire-are of contemporary importance and will interest a range of non-academics. Three groups have been highlighted who will benefit from this research.

First, a programme of community engagement will ensure the dissemination of findings among public users in the North East. A public lecture will be held at Newcastle's Literary & Philosophical Society in February 2013. The event, part of a forthcoming Englishness series, will enhance the profile of this independent library and cement existing partnerships with Northumbria University. The lecture will be available as a podcast. Research will also be disseminated via a public lecture at Hexham Local History Society. The lecture-which will draw connections between the local and the global by examining Hexham's contribution to the Upper Canada Church-will raise public awareness of the Church's importance in British history and the North East's place in empire. This event will also benefit my own programme of work, as the input of Hexham's genealogists and local historians will shape my research on the composition of the British communities who funded Church expansion.

Second, the research findings will be relevant for Anglicans both in Britain and across the Communion. The current tensions and divisions in the Anglican Communion feature regularly in the news, and the project, by historicising the centrifugal and centripetal forces within the Church, is of immediate relevance to debates about Anglican unity and identity. There is potential to engage policy-makers in the Church, as research which maps the evolution of the Communion and its internal operations can make a constructive contribution to the often controversial discussions about Anglicanism's future. The organisation of a series of Church-engagement events is ongoing. The offices of the archbishops of Canterbury and York have been contacted to secure their involvement for the September symposium and talks to Church groups that can be held after the project. The Church of England Newspaper and churchofengland.org have been contacted about publicising the research in features and articles.

Finally, the project's transnational nature dictates that overseas users have the opportunity to engage with the research. Dissemination activities will focus on the Canadian case study, though comparisons with the other colonies will be drawn at these events. Research on the Church's involvement in associational culture will be presented to the Kingston and Ontario Historical Societies during the September research trip. Benefits will again flow in both directions: the audience will benefit from considering the role of religious institutions in defining identities in Canada's past, while local knowledge about associational membership will inform my research. Talks to the Canadian Church History Society and Trinity College Toronto are currently being planned for May 2013. These events are a vital opportunity to engage with Anglicans overseas and will be crucial for building a network of international contacts who can collaborate in future projects which will examine the historical roots of global Anglican networks, for example the clergy database. A version of the talks will be offered as a pamphlet for distribution through present-day global Anglican networks: I plan to make this resource available through the websites of the Churches in South Africa, Canada and Australia.

The project will have long-term impact via the online database on 19th-century colonial clergy. This will be associated with, but distinct from, the online Clergy of the Church of England Database (CCEd). Clergy's prosopographical details will be of considerable interest to genealogists and local historians, both in Britain and overseas, and the database will be an invaluable tool for those researching the globalisation of 19th-century professions.