Publisher's Synopsis
Many books have been written about British voyages of discovery and British colonial rule. There have also been studies of how the British perceived the religions of the peoples that they encountered during the periods of British imperial expansion. This text studies British understandings of - and attitudes toward - the religions practised in the sites of British colonial expansion and governance from the perspective of colonial discourse analysis. The work examines the complicity of colonialist discourses with the discourses of religion. It investigates the ways in which the construction of "religion" by the British functioned within a variety of colonialist discourses, and how it might continue to function as a colonialist discourse in contemporary contexts.;Author Craig Phillips reveals the ways in which European (particularly British) explorers, merchants, traders, missionaries, and adventurers interpreted the religions, customs, and manners of the people that they colonized and/or encountered, and how European identities and ideas about the nature and scope of "religion" were projected onto non European peoples. The study is a look at the many definitions of religion, its use
