American missionaries played an important role in the introduction of modern western science into nineteenth-century Siam, especially during the first stages of that process. It is a story that remains to be told in an organized, scholarly fashion, and when it is told the introductory chapter will necessarily deal with the relationship of science to religion in the United States in the nineteenth century. The reason why the missionaries played the role they did was
because they were committed to their religious faith. Unlike today, science and the Bible were then widely understood as two books each revealing God in their own way. These two revelations were believed to reinforce each other; they were not at odds. The early generations of Protestant missionaries brought this understanding with them and sought to teach it to "the Thai," from such royal figures as King Mongkut right down to local people including their own converts. Daniel McGilvary, one of the two towering figures of Protestant missions in Siam (along with Dr. Dan Beach Bradley, his father-in-law) repeatedly used scientific instruction as a weapon in his evangelistic arsenal.
Daniel Walker Howe provides an excellent overview of the American historical context in which the Protestant missionaries operated in his Pulitzer Prize winning book,
What Hath God Wrought: the Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (Oxford, 2007). Howe understands the importance of religion, particularly evangelical Protestantism, to the age that he writes about and devotes considerable attention to, among other things, revivalism and the relationship of science to religion. For those who are interested in the historical context of the first generations of Protestant missionaries, this is an excellent introduction. It is well-written and impressively researched. If and when that book on the missionary role in the introduction of western science in Siam is told,
What Hath God Wrought should certainly appear in its citations and bibliography. And let the people say, "Amen."
