Christian Circulations: Global Christianity and the Local Church in Penang and Singapore 1819-2000 by Jean DeBernardi (review)

Abstract

ironies and farce that render our colonial past tender, and therefore open to more flexible and complex readings, rather than forceful. It is this imaginative treatment of historical sources and subjecting them to a conversation on pressing issues of our present day on the legacies of colonialism, that Empires of Vices persuades us of the historiographical and theoretical insights that in depth archival work can still reward us with. If anything, the book compelling demonstrates that global imperial history is not a story that necessarily needs to begin in the colonial metropole. Yet, telling a story of change that emerges from systemic idiosyncrasies can only be achieved if we begin to recognise how important the interpretive dimension of a historian’s craft is to any critical engagement with the colonial past.