by Bill Mitchell, Bible Translator
\nPublished with permission.<\/p>\n
1. EARLY YEARS<\/strong>1 It is not known at what point Thomson changed his allegiance from Presbyterianism to the nascent churches of the Haldanes, but by 1815 he was working with James Haldane in Edinburgh\u2019s Leith Walk Tabernacle and providing pastoral care for French prisoners-of-war in Edinburgh Castle. In 1817 Thomson was having his daily devotions in French, in preparation for joining Robert Haldane in Montauben. This never transpired, for reasons that are not clear.6 What did happen was that in 1818 he spent a few months in London at the Borough Road training college of the British and Foreign Schools Society (BFSS), and on the 12th July of that same year he sailed from Liverpool for Buenos Aires. The Leith Walk church financed his first year in South America.7 The next twenty-five years were to make him one of the most widely travelled British missionaries in the Americas, representing both the BFSS and the British and Foreign Bible Societies (BFBS).8<\/p>\n 2. MISSION AND EDUCATION: FORMATIVE INFLUENCES<\/strong> The intellectual climate of the Scotland of Thomson\u2019s early years had undergone profound changes due to the Scottish Enlightenment, and as a student he found himself in cities that were dynamic centres of change. New ideas, discoveries and inventions were the order of the day and involved a wide range of participants, with philosophers, doctors, law- yers, artists, religious leaders and the academic community all playing a part. Due to agricultural reforms, changes in land tenancy and use, and rural-urban migration in Scotland, as well as immigration from Ireland, these same cities also were struggling to cope with thousands of new arrivals, living in appallingly overcrowded and insanitary conditions in older neighbourhoods.<\/p>\n In the preceding decades the national Church of Scotland\u2014the Kirk\u2014 had been the domain of the \u2018moderates\u2019, but as the nineteenth century began the rise of the evangelicals heralded change. The brothers James and Robert Haldane were part of that evangelical movement. They how- ever left the Church of Scotland in the late 1790s and devoted themselves to evangelism, developing the \u2018Society for the Propagation of the Gospel at Home\u2019 and encouraging mission overseas. Their churches were initially congregational in nature, but as their views on baptism changed they broke from the Congregationalists and formed their own churches.<\/p>\n In 1809 they were involved with others in founding the Edinburgh Bible Society.<\/strong> In 1811 they joined with representatives of other denominations, most notably the Baptist leader Christopher Anderson, to begin the Edinburgh Gaelic Schools Society.12 This was a rejection of the practice of the \u2018Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge\u2019. The SSPCK had for almost a century followed official policy aimed at discouraging the use of the Gaelic language and used only English in their almost 300 Highland schools.13 For the Edinburgh Society however Gaelic was the essential medium of instruction, and the object was \u2018to teach the inhabitants to read the Holy Scriptures in their native language\u2019.14 This was the path to promoting \u2018civilization and Christian knowledge\u2019 in the Highlands and Islands. Thomas Chalmers summed up the relationship of the Bible Society and the School Society: \u2018The two Societies move in concert. Each contributes an essential element in the business of enlightening the people. The one furnishes the book of knowledge and the other furnishes the key to it<\/em>.\u201915<\/p>\n Thomson shared these views and promoted both societies. Years later he cited the success of the Gaelic schools on more than one occasion to encourage Scripture translation and the creation of schools using the indigenous languages.16 He reflects the same commitment to home and foreign mission as the Haldanes. Not only that, their enthusiasm for the revolutionary happenings in France were paralleled by Thomson\u2019s sup- port for the independence movements in South America.<\/p>\n Amidst the millennial hopes that prevailed in evangelical circles, the possibility of mission in South America was explored in journals then circulating in Edinburgh. Articles in the Edinburgh Christian Instructor spoke of the religious opportunity that was opening up there, especially for the Bible Society.17 A wider framework for understanding Central and South American peoples had been provided by William Robertson\u2019s The History of America, first published in 1777 in Edinburgh and reprinted regularly thereafter.<\/p>\n From 1808 to 1825 the influential Edinburgh Review carried extensive reviews of publications on South America. The editor, Francis Jeffrey, and regular contributors Henry Brougham18 and James Mill, held that Providence was \u2018calling a free world into being to redress the tyranny of the old\u2019. The British were to be the chosen agents of change. Mill was emphatic on this subject: \u2018The inhabitants of the new world are holding out their arms to the inhabitants of the British Isles, craving their assistance in the hour of need\u2014and offering to them, in return, the most unbounded prospects of advantage which it ever was in the power of one nation to hold out to another.<\/em>\u201919<\/p>\n 3. MONITORIAL SCHOOLS AND SPANISH AMERICA<\/strong> The method was based on the abler pupils being used as helpers to the teacher, passing on the information they had learned to other students, hence the ideas of \u2018monitors\u2019 and \u2018mutual education\u2019.<\/strong> It had an immediate appeal through the possibility of providing mass education, with a minimum of teachers, at low cost. Bell pioneered his methodology in the 1790s while an Anglican chaplain in Madras. Lancaster, a Quaker, opened a school in Borough Road, Southwark, London in 1798. A teacher training college was added in 1801. Lancaster came to wider public attention with the publication of his Improvements in Education as it relates to the Industrious Classes of the Community in 1803.<\/p>\n An audience with George III in 1805 led to royal approval and patronage of the system. The king \u2018having fully informed himself of the nature of the System, perceived its important bearings upon the whole mass of the poor population in favour of religion and morality. It was on this occasion that the King uttered those memorable words…: \u201cIt is my wish that every poor child in my kingdom may be taught to read the Bible<\/em>\u201d.\u201920 The Borough Road School then became the \u2018Royal Free School\u2019. Lancaster had no administrative ability and in 1808 had to be rescued by a number of benefactors who formed the \u2018Society for Promoting the Lancasterian System for the Education of the Poor\u2019, with the support of evangelicals and non-conformists, including figures such as William Wilberforce. In 1814 the Society was renamed the \u2018British and Foreign School Society for the Education of the Labouring and Manufacturing Classes of Society of Every Religious Persuasion\u2019.<\/p>\n On his return to Britain Bell\u2019s system was adopted by the Church of England and from 1811 was promoted by the \u2018National Society for the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Christian Church\u2019. Two systems emerged in the country: the \u2018National Schools\u2019 of the Established Church and the \u2018British schools\u2019 supported by non-conformists.<\/p>\n Lancaster argued for the non-denominational nature of his system: The BFSS 1819 report to supporters and potential benefactors stressed this:<\/p>\n Education, conducted on these enlightened principles, while it invariably inculcates the purest morality, and the most important points of religion from the unerring standard of Divine inspiration, excludes the peculiar tenets or catechisms which divide the opinions of good men\u2014the Bible in the authorized version, without note or comment, being the only religious book taught in its schools: and thus all sects and parties may send their children to British Schools with the greatest confidence.<\/em>22<\/p>\n An acrimonious debate later developed between Bell and Lancaster. Bell maintained that Lancaster\u2019s system would raise the poor above their station, create in them unrealistic expectations and unsettle the social hierarchy. While this did not concern Lancaster, the widespread support for his educational initiatives did reflect a fear on the part of many of subversion, both as a result of the social tensions of a rapidly industrializing society, and from the \u2018excesses\u2019 of the French revolution. \u2018Useful learning\u2019 would counteract such developments. Education for the \u2018lower classes\u2019 would improve their morals and manners, enable them to read the Bible, and make them better workers in an age of commerce and industry.23 At the same time Lancaster\u2019s system did replace \u2018a pedagogy of subordination, piety, deference, and social estates with a pedagogy much more appropriate to a fluid class society organized around market relations and processes\u2019.24<\/p>\n As the school movement developed and grew, it was adopted in Scot- land not only by evangelicals like the Haldanes, but found wider support in society. In a speech to the Lancasterian Society of Glasgow in 1812, Robert Owen, of New Lanark fame, urged \u2018those who have weight and influence in the city\u2019 to support the Lancasterian system of education for the poor, \u2018until every child of that class shall find a place in one of the schools. There, in a manner peculiar to the system, they must learn the habits of obedience, order, regularity, industry and constant attention which are to them of more importance than merely learning to read, write and account.\u201925<\/p>\n The Lancasterian system not only found very important patrons in British society and politics, the Spanish American community in London also took an increasing interest. In the 1810s that community comprised diplomatic envoys, political exiles and deputies enroute to the Cortes in Cadiz, Spain. Karen Racine states that \u2018between the years 1808 and 1830, over 70 independence era leaders of the first rank lived and worked together in London\u2019.26 For a number of years the Venezuelan revolutionary Francisco de Miranda\u2019s house in Grafton Street served as a centre for them. Meetings were held with people like Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, William Wilberforce, Humphrey Davy and Joseph Lancaster. The British system of government and a wide range of organizations, including the BFSS and the BFBS, attracted the interest of many of these leaders. \u2018The Spanish Americans leaders who went on to have the greatest impact in reconstructing the institutions and cultures of their nations after independence were the same ones who actively travelled to, and solicited material support from, Great Britain over the course of nearly two decades.\u201927<\/p>\n In his years in the Americas, Thomson became part of this network and in the sphere of education was encouraged and supported by men like Lucas Alam\u00e1n (Mexico), Andr\u00e9s Bello (Venezuelan based in London), Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar (Andean countries), Antonio Jos\u00e9 de Irisarri (Chile), Ber- nardo Monteagudo (Peru), Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Luis Mora (Mexico), Bernardo O\u2019Higgins (Chile), Bernardino Rivadavia (Argentina), Vicente Roca- fuerte (Mexico, Ecuador) and Jos\u00e9 de San Mart\u00edn (Argentina, Peru).28 The development of public education was key to nation building in the new republics.29 For example, during his short visit to England in 1810 Bol\u00edvar visited the Borough Road School and decided to send prospective teach- ers from Venezuela to study there.30 Lancaster himself would later spend time in Venezuela.<\/p>\n Vicente Rocafuerte, while in London as a representative of the Mexican government, developed strong links with BFSS and BFBS, as he had done earlier with the American Bible Society and the (Lancasterian) \u2018New York Free School Society\u2019.31 Eugenia Rold\u00e1n sees support of BFBS by some of these leaders in terms of a \u2018liberal project aimed at reducing the power of the Catholic Church and promoting a change in the mentalities of the citizens of the new republics through a more direct and less mediated reading of the Scriptures\u2019.32 It was partly due to Rocafuerte that BFBS and BFSS formed the \u2018Society for Spanish Translations\u2019 in London to produce religious and educational works for Spanish speaking countries.33 Thomson was involved with this group during his stay in England in1825-7 and arranged for the publication of extracts from Joaquin Lorenzo Villanueva\u2019s De la Leccion de la Sagrada Escritura en Lenguas Vulgares on the benefits of reading the Bible. It was a publication he distributed in Mexico (1827-30) to promote Bible reading.34<\/p>\n 4. THOMSON IN THE AMERICAS<\/strong> When Thomson brought the system, it was hailed as the greatest and most efficient innovation in the field of pedagogy. The system was embraced by almost all the liberal leadership as being of \u2018unquestionable public utility\u2019. In 1821 the newspaper of Buenos Aires\u2019 utopian liberals recorded \u2018we have just happily seen in practice the Lancaster system, by which not only do children learn to read and write, but they also become accustomed to order\u2019.37 Thomson\u2019s time in Argentina was not confined to Buenos Aires. He travelled to Montevideo in la banda oriental to develop schools there. In 1821 he moved to Chile invited by the O\u2019Higgins government to develop schools there, and from there crossed east over the Andes to what were then the United Provinces of Argentina to set up schools in the interior.39 In 1822 he travelled to Peru40, invited by General San Mart\u00edn to implement public education there. When Simon Bolivar replaced San Mart\u00edn as the leader of the pro-independence forces, he confirmed Thomson in this position. At the same time the role of the Scriptures in Thomson\u2019s approach to education and his realisation that over half of Peru\u2019s population did not speak Spanish, led him into the translation of the New Testament into the Quechua and Aymara languages.41<\/p>\n After leaving Peru in September 1824 Thomson continued to advocate for monitorial schools, advising city authorities and governments on education42 and sending reports and recommendations to BFSS\u2014as can be seen in the Tacubaya document (see below). With the exception of Jamaica,43 he was no longer directly involved in implementing schools. In his final visit to Yucat\u00e1n in 1843-4 under the aegis of BFBS, Thom- son presented educational proposals to the leaders of the then independent state and offered help to set up the system. He gave his views \u2018in favour of the general use of the Holy Scriptures as the grand basis and directory in right religion and true morality\u2019. He stressed the importance of education for \u2018all classes of the community\u2019, including the large indigenous population: \u2018the only way which they could be successful in communicating education and all else to these people was by establishing schools among them on the plan of teaching them in their own tongue\u2019.44<\/p>\n Thomson went further: 5. THOMSON AND THE TACUBAYA DOCUMENT<\/strong> He found that a Lancasterian society had already been formed in Mexico City, by voluntary subscription. \u2018The Government gave every encouragement to this institution, and made it, in fact, its board for extending education over the country.\u201948 Shortly after arriving in Mexico City Thomson met with President Guadalupe Victoria and two of his ministers.49 The President had facilitated the activities of the Lancasterian Society. Thomson was made a member of that board and in that role presented plans for extending the system. Two years later he met with President Vicente Guerrero and formally presented to him the BFSS document he and Rocafuerte had prepared: \u2018The writer had a long interview with him to explain the system of Infant Schools.\u201950<\/p>\n The document both congratulates the newly independent nations and offers help in implementing public education on the Lancasterian model as they forged their new identity and character. At the same time it reveals the philosophy and ethos that underpinned the BFSS. Education\u2014\u2018civil, moral and religious\u2019\u2014was the sine qua non. It would break the chains of the \u2018cruellest of tyrants\u2019: ignorance. Independence had been won, it promised progress, and was due to the workings of Providence (\u2018that Supreme Power who orders everything regarding humanity and the universe\u2019). The provision of education for all was the \u2018sacred duty\u2019 of leaders (\u2018may your goal not be a limited education, nor the education of just a few, instead achieve for everyone the best you can\u2019). Knowledge and liberty would go hand-in-hand and lead to \u2018enlightenment and happiness\u2019. The new states were congratulated on their actions abolishing slavery. Their interests \u2018were not personal interests, but rather the noble cause of true freedom\u2019. Something that Thomson sadly noted elsewhere was not true in the nation to the north of them.51<\/p>\n The signatories, who had \u2018complete confidence\u2019 in their friend Mr Thomson, pointed to another network of which Thomson was a part,52 and to the overlapping interests of School Society, Bible Society and \u2018civilization\u2019. The similarities between this document, the document signed by O\u2019Higgins inaugurating the Chilean schools,53 and the preamble to the Peruvian decree on public education,54 suggest Thomson had a role in drafting all three. 6. \u201c\u2026.THY KINGDOM COME\u2019<\/strong> We are in the midst of political commotions here at present, and have been so for some time past. The Lord, however, is the security of his people, he is the Governor among the nations, and all these changes will, I trust, lead to the promoting of his kingdom. Let us join in the prayer, \u2018Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth, as it is done in heaven<\/em>\u2019.57<\/p>\n The Venezuelan \u00e9migr\u00e9, Andr\u00e9s Bello, then living in London, spoke of Thomson\u2019s \u2018simplicity and modesty\u2019 and recognised his contribution: \u2018the caring Christian spirit that characterises this distinguished philanthropist, his activity and truly apostolic zeal in promoting the work of the London society,58 are known from one end of South America to another. It is impossible to speak highly enough of him.\u201959 By contrast the British diplomat in Caracas, Sir Robert Ker Porter, was quite disdainful of him. He saw him as \u2018a Spiritual bagman travelling for the Bible Society… it has been such as Monse\u00f1or Thompson that have so frequently and of late aided in the present growing, restless and ruinous state of our Island colonies\u2019.60<\/p>\n Sixty years later the Chilean historian Domingo Amun\u00e1tegui was also deeply sceptical of Thomson, convinced a Protestant agenda was hidden behind his educational work. On the one hand he saw him as a latter- day Don Quixote, yet he also valued his political and social commentary which revealed \u2018a wise, discerning mind\u2026 In a word, when he\u2019s not talking about the Bible and ways to make it known, his observations are penetrating.\u201961<\/p>\n In recent years both BFSS and BFBS have been the focuses of renewed research interest. Thomson has been interpreted in different ways. Karen Racine concludes that Thomson\u2014the BFBS agent-evangelist-entrepreneur\u2014and other Bible Society agents \u2018…were not just disseminating religious texts, they were selling a wholesale shift in culture. There were many Spanish Americans who were anxious to buy it.\u201962<\/p>\n A network analysis of the school system in South America during Thomson\u2019s years there looks more deeply at the effectiveness of Thomson\u2019s initiatives. In the fluidity of communication between the different \u2018nodes\u2019 and \u2018hubs\u2019 of educational initiatives, Thomson is identified as an important \u2018hub\u2019 in the network and the \u2018most connected actor\u2019. Thomson received crucial support from the political leaders in power, but in that turbulent period change was the only constant. Those who adopted the monitorial system were \u2018clearly intertwined with the dominant political sphere, but once their parties were out of the political scene Thomson\u2019s position was weakened\u2019.63<\/p>\n Thomson\u2019s departure from Peru in September 1824 is a clear indication of this and may have contributed to changes in his own approach to become that of an advocate and strategist for the monitorial system. On leaving he officially became a BFBS agent. At the same time the Tacubaya document and his work in Mexico (1827-1830), Jamaica (1834-1837) and in Yucat\u00e1n (1843-1844) show his ongoing commitment to public education. For him it was taking place in a larger framework, that of another kingdom that was coming.<\/p>\n He had seen what he called the \u2018singular interposition of Providence on behalf of the cause of liberty\u2019. For him the \u2018old tyranny and oppression\u2019 was ending, and a new day was dawning. In the battles for independence from Spain \u2018it was neither easy nor proper to remain indifferent as to the issue of the struggle\u2019. For Thomson \u2018the day of God\u2019s merciful visitation had come\u201964 and for him the development of public education, with the Bible at its heart, was central to the task of nation-building and civilization.<\/p>\n NOTES:<\/strong><\/p>\n 1 Paper first presented at the \u2018Missions and Education\u2019 conference of the Yale- Edinburgh Group on the History of the Missionary Movement and World Christianity, June 30 \u2013 July 2, 2011, Yale Divinity School, New Haven, CT. by Bill Mitchell, Bible Translator Published with permission. 1. EARLY YEARS1 James Thomson2 was born on 1 Sep 1788 in Parish of Kirkmabreck, Ferrytown-on-Cree, Kirkcudbrightshire, in south-west Scotland, the hird child of William Thomson and Janet Burnett. His father was … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12072,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[927],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sbch.cl\/sitio\/wp-content\/archivos\/bill-mitchell-bible.jpg?fit=803%2C803&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pInKk-2Pi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sbch.cl\/sitio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sbch.cl\/sitio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sbch.cl\/sitio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sbch.cl\/sitio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sbch.cl\/sitio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sbch.cl\/sitio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sbch.cl\/sitio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sbch.cl\/sitio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sbch.cl\/sitio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sbch.cl\/sitio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nJames Thomson2 was born on 1 Sep 1788 in Parish of Kirkmabreck, Ferrytown-on-Cree, Kirkcudbrightshire, in south-west Scotland, the hird child of William Thomson and Janet Burnett. His father was the dominie and session clerk of the parish church. Apart from mentioning books he read as a boy, Thomson himself makes little reference to his early education, but given his home situation a link between Bible and education would have been very clear. In 1807 he began medical studies in Edinburgh, but after two years left these for theological studies3 in the University of Glasgow.4 Although he was later to work with James and Robert Haldane, it does not appear that he studied in their seminary in Edinburgh. The Haldanes closed it in December 1808 when they judged the Divinity faculties in Edinburgh and Glasgow to have become more acceptable to their own theological position.5<\/p>\n
\nParish schools were part of the legacy of the Reformation in Scotland. John Knox\u2019s 1560 First Book of Discipline set out plans for a school in every parish. That did not happen immediately, but by 1700 most par- ishes in the Lowlands had a school, with the Bible, the catechism, Latin, and French being taught, and with the addition of logic, rhetoric and \u2018the tongues\u20199 in some larger towns.10 Above all, parish school education was designed to enable children to read the Bible for themselves\u2014initially the Geneva Bible and later the \u2018Authorized Version\u2019 (but not a Bible in Scots or, at that time, in Gaelic!11).<\/p>\n
\nThe monitorial system of education, developed by Joseph Lancaster<\/strong> (1778-1838) and Andrew Bell (1753-1832) at the turn of the nineteenth century, was arguably the first global model for elementary schooling of the modern period. Within very few years the method had been adopted by a variety of schools around the world. While the specific purposes of its promoters varied, there is no doubt that the spread of the monitorial system coincided with the expansion of the ideal of universal education, and was seen by many as the best way of achieving that purpose and of nation-building in the newly-founded republics.<\/p>\n
\nThe school is not established to promote the Religious Principles of any particular sect; but, setting aside all party distinctions, its object is to instruct Youth in useful Learning, in the leading and uncontroverted principles of Christianity, and to train them in the practice of moral habits, conducive to their future welfare, as virtuous men and useful members of society<\/em>.21<\/p>\n
\nThomson arrived in Argentina in 1818, a mere eight years after the \u2018May revolution\u2019 in Buenos Aires marked the beginning of Argentine independence. Under the leadership of Bernardo O\u2019Higgins, Chile had won its independence in 1818, while in Peru full independence would not come until 9 December 1824.
\nIn the emergent apparatus of state and government, relations between citizen and state were generated by a common objective\u2014the reestablishment of law and order after a period of social and political turbulence that began with that May revolution in 1810. It was a time of change from traditional authoritarian ideals of subjects loyal to the Crown, to a progressive ideal of the participatory citizen. The Enlightenment had paved the way for this change, and education was seen as the medium by which to \u2018inspire in children the habit of order, the sentiments of honour, love of truth, the search for justice [and] respect for their peers\u2019.35 Mark Szuchman comments on the Lancasterian system: \u2018To the enlightened it carried the legitimacy born of its English origins; to the rational, it offered scientific design; to the liberal and anticlerical, it became positively identified with secularism; and to the authorities, always short of money, it promised economy\u2019.36<\/p>\n
\nThomson found that the lesson materials then used in schools \u2018were not calculated to promote the objects which took him to those quarters.\u2019 They lacked what for him was the essential component\u2014the Scriptures\u2014 therefore \u2018he set to work and extracted passages from the Old Testament, and from the New, such as he thought the most adapted for the instruction of children in the truths and the virtues of the Christian religion\u2019. These were presented to the Government and \u2018an order was given to have them printed at the Government printing-office, at the public expense, and that forthwith they should be introduced into the schools\u2019. He noted with gratitude the liberality shown by \u2018a Roman Catholic Government and community towards a Protestant and a foreigner\u2019.38 Wherever he went Thomson linked his interest in schools with his interest in distribution of the Scriptures, although he was not officially a BFBS agent until late in 1824.<\/p>\n
\nBesides giving education to the Indians, I urged the duty of doing them justice in seeing that they had their due rights, and more were not oppressed by the large proprietors. I mentioned how much injustice was done to the Indians in Mexico; and concluded by saying that if care were not taken by their superiors to see them enjoy justice and fairness, that God himself would interpose for them, and that in the event of this they would find that the account would cost them more to settle it than now.<\/em>45<\/p>\n
\nThomson first went to Mexico in 1827 as an agent of BFBS, but had agreed with BFBS that he could initiate translation of the Bible into Mexican languages and pursue BFSS interests as opportunity presented itself. In fact, as well as transporting 48 cases of Bibles to Mexico, he also carried an important BFSS document which he and Vicente Rocafuerte had prepared,46 to be presented to the delegates of the second Pan-American Conference47 to be held that year in Tacubaya, Mexico. The conference did not, in fact, take place, but that did not deter Thomson.<\/p>\n
\nThey were to take comfort from the fact that the system was \u2018low cost\u2019. Moreover, they stated that \u2018the habits of obedience and order that children acquire in these schools will prove very important for your new states\u2019.<\/p>\n
\nThomson\u2019s role in the drafting and presentation of the Tacubaya document confirms the conclusion that Eugenia Rold\u00e1n draws from his earlier work in South America (1818-1825) \u2014he saw the monitorial method in Spanish America as a \u2018tool for the expansion of universal education\u2019,55 as opposed to being only for the instruction of the children of the poor\u2014 \u2018the Labouring and Manufacturing Classes of Society\u2019, as it was in Britain. The way in which the monitorial method was appropriated and contextualised in Spanish America \u2018associated it to ideas of nation-building and the formation of citizenship\u2019 in a way that was not true elsewhere.56 Might it also have been for Thomson the implementation of the insights of the Scottish Reformation and of Knox\u2019s vision of \u2018a school in every parish\u2019?<\/p>\n
\nThroughout his years in Spanish America, Thomson lived through wars, turmoil and social upheavals. In an early letter to BFBS from Buenos Aires he noted:<\/p>\n
\n2 Known as Diego Thomson in Latin America. For Thomson\u2019s letters, see.
\n3 Thomson\u2019s Union Liturgy, published in 1837 but written during his travels in the previous ten years, and his Family and Individual Prayers, published in 1840 but written during his 1837 visit to Cuba, show remarkable theological and biblical acumen, as does his work on textual criticism, for example, on the sources of the Complutensian Polyglot Bible.
\n4 Girvan C. McKay, \u2018Growth and Eclipse of Presbyterian Missionary Out- reach in Argentina\u2019 (Lic.Th. thesis., Instituto Superior Evang\u00e9lico de Estudios Teol\u00f3gicos, Buenos Aires, 1973), p. 21.
\n5 Alexander Haldane, Memoirs of the Lives of Robert Haldane of Airthrey, and of his brother James Alexander Haldane (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1852), p. 330.
\n6 In a letter to BFBS from Montauban (29 August 1848) Thomson states: \u2018[Hal- dane] found however difficulties which hindered what he had in view, and the plan was given up\u2019. It may also have been that Henry Drummond\u2019s arrival in Montauben at that time may have made Thomson\u2019s help unnecessary.
\n7 James Thomson. \u2018South America – VII\u2019, Evangelical Christendom, I (1847), 389.
\n8 Argentina (1818-1820), Chile (1821-22), Peru (1822-24), Ecuador (1824),
\nColombia (1825), Mexico (1827-1830), Canada (1831), Venezuela, Demerara, and the Caribbean countries (1832-38), Canada (1838-1842), Mexico and Yucatan (1842-44).
\n9 Greek and Hebrew.
\n10 James K. Cameron, The First Book of Discipline (Edinburgh: St. Andrew Press, 1972), pp. 130-4.
\n11 \u2018Only a few events in the history of Scots language, literature and culture have been as much discussed as a non-event \u2014 the failure of the Reformation to produce a Bible in Scots\u2019. Graham Tulloch, A History of the Scots Bible (Aber- deen: Aberdeen University Press, 1989), p. 1.
\n12 Also the Glasgow Gaelic Schools Society (1812) and the Inverness Gaelic Schools Society (1818).
\n13 Margaret Connell Szasz, Scottish Highlanders and Native Americans: Indig- enous Education in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World ( Norman: Univer- sity of Oklahoma Press, 2007), pp. 98-9.
\n14 Murdo Macaulay, Aspects of the Religious History of Lewis to the Disruption of 1843 (Stornoway: privately printed, 1980). The Scottish Gaelic New Testa- ment was published in 1766 and the Old Testament in 1807.
\n15 Thomas Chalmers, The Influence of the Bible Societies on the Temporal Neces- sities of the Poor (Cupar: R. Tullis, 1814), p. 12. By the \u2018key\u2019, Chalmers meant literacy.
\n16 James Thomson, Tour in Yucatan: Together with brief notices of travels in Buenos Ayres, Chile, Ecuador, N. Granada, Venezuela, Mexico, all the West Indian Islands, the United States, Canada, N. Brunswick and Nova Scotia (Unpublished ms., Bible Society Collection, Cambridge University Library),
\np. 9.
\n17 E.g. the issue of May 1811.
\n18 Robertson\u2019s grand-nephew.
\n19 James Mill, \u2018Gutierrez Molina\u2019s Account of Chili\u2019, Edinburgh Review 14 (1809), 336.
\n20 \u2018BFSS Annual Report\u2019, Edinburgh Christian Instructor, XVIII.III (1819), 212. On 16 January 1823, Thomson, Francisco Navarrete, and Camilo Vergara presented a proposal to the Peruvian Congress to establish schools in Lima\u2019s San L\u00e1zaro parish where one third of the city\u2019s population then lived. In this Thomson cited George III\u2019s support for the school system and of chil- dren being able to read the Bible as evidence that nations then thought to be important had adopted the method. See Tom\u00e1s J. Gutierrez S\u00e1nchez, \u2018Diego Thomson en el Per\u00fa: el factor protestante en los inicios de la Rep\u00fablica, 1822- 1824\u2019, in Ecos del Bicentenario: El protestantismo y las nuevas rep\u00fablicas lati- noamericanos, ed. by Carlos Mondrag\u00f3n (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Kairos, 2011), p. 159 = \u2018James Thomson in Peru: Protestant Influence in the Begin- ning of the Republic, 1822-1824\u2019, Journal of Latin American Theology 6 (2011), 131-57; see p. 147.
\n21 Joseph Lancaster, Education as it respects the Industrious Classes of the Com- munity, 3rd edn. (New York: Collins and Perkins, 1803), p. 27.
\n22 \u2018BFSS Annual Report\u2019, Edinburgh Christian Instructor, XVIII.III (1819), 211.
\n23 Eugenia Rold\u00e1n, The British Book Trade and Spanish American Independ- ence: Education and Knowledge Transmission in Transcontinental Perspective (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2003), p. 84.
\n24 David Hogan. \u2018The Market Revolution and Disciplinary Power: Joseph Lan- caster and the Psychology of the Early Classroom System\u2019, History of Educa- tion Quarterly 29 (1989), 405.
\n25 David Hamilton, \u2018Robert Owen and Education: A Reassessment\u2019, in Scot- tish Culture and Scottish Education 1800-1980, ed. by Walter M. Humes and Hamish M. Paterson (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, 1983), p. 9. Owen later broke with the monitorial system. He wanted an education system to develop character, not inculcate piety.
\n26 Karen Racine, \u2018\u201cThis England and This Now\u201d: British Cultural and Intellec- tual Influence in the Spanish American Independence Era\u2019, Hispanic Ameri- can Historical Review 90 (2010), 423.
\n27 Ibid., p. 433.
\n28 It is significant that almost all of them were freemasons. To date I have found nothing to indicate that Thomson himself was a mason.
\n29 The Preamble to the Peruvian Congress decree of 6 July 1822 creating the public school system with Thomson as director begins: \u2018Without education, there is, properly speaking, no society; men may indeed live together without it, but they cannot know the extent of the duties and rights which bind them to one another, and it is in the knowledge of these duties and rights that the wellbeing of society exists.\u2019 Cited by Thomson in his letter to BFSS, 12 July 1822.
\n30 Karen Racine. \u2018Sim\u00f3n Bolivar, Englishman: Elite responsibility and Social Reform in Spanish American Independence,\u2019 in Sim\u00f3n Bolivar: Essays on the Life and Legacy of the Liberator, ed. by David Bushnell and Lester D. Langley (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008), p. 58.
\n31 See his Lecciones para las Escuelas de Primeras Letras sacadas de las Sagradas Escrituras siguiendo el texto literal de la Traducci\u00f3n del Padre Sc\u00edo, sin notas ni comentarios (New York: A. Paul, 1822). In the Dedicatoria\u2014\u2018A la Juventud Americana\u2019\u2014he recommends the development of Lancasterian schools and asks: \u2018\u00bfQu\u00e9 mejor libro puede haber para la instrucci\u00f3n de la juventud que la Biblia, que el sagrado c\u00f3digo de la moral evang\u00e9lica?\u2019
\n32 Rold\u00e1n, op.cit., pp. 51-2.
\n33 Jaime E. Rodr\u00edguez, The Emergence of Spanish America: Vicente Rocafuerte and Spanish Americanism 1808-1832 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), pp. 181-3. The aims of this Society are set out in Missionary Reg- ister, Vol 13, July 1825, 307-9.
\n34 James Thomson, Spain, Its Position and Evangelization (London: Partridge and Oakey, 1853), p. 13.
\n35 El Censor, 24 April 1817.
\n36 Mark Szuchman, Order, Family, and Community in Buenos Aires 1810-1860
\n(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), p. 155.
\n37 El Argos de Buenos Ayres, 25 August 1821.
\n38 James Thomson, \u2018South America – IV\u2019, Evangelical Christendom, I (1847), 287.
\n39 His visit to Mendoza at that time came through an invitation from the Edin- burgh surgeon and botanist John Gillies–one indication of Thomson\u2019s links with the \u201cScottish diaspora\u201d in Spanish America.
\n40 Thomson\u2019s work in Chile drew the appreciative comment from another Brit- ish expatriate: \u2018Yesterday a very interesting person sailed from hence for Lima, Mr. Thompson, one of those men whom real Christian philanthropy has led across the ocean and across the Andes to diffuse the benefits of educa- tion among his fellow-creatures. He had spent some time in Santiago, where, under the patronage of the supreme director, he has established a school of mutual instruction on the plan of Lancaster. He has been in Valparaiso some time superintending the formation of a similar school\u2026Mr. Thompson has been solemnly declared a free citizen of Chile by the government.\u2019 (Mar\u00eda Graham, Journal of a Residence in Chile, during the year 1822, and a Voyage from Chile to Brazil in 1823. London: John Murray, 1824; p.157).
\n41 See Bill Mitchell. 1990. \u2018James Thomson and Bible Translation in Andean Languages\u2019, Bible Translator 41.3: 341-5.
\n42 In Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico, the Caribbean, Canada and Yucat\u00e1n.
\n43 The clamant educational needs in Jamaica moved the Thomsons deeply. Although he was a \u201cfull-time\u201d BFBS agent at the time, he did get involved in the West Indian School Society setting up schools in Spanish Town (Letter to BFBS, 27 November 1834). For a three-month period in 1836 he left BFBS employ to work for the Mico educational trust (Letter to BFBS, 22 February 1836).
\n44 James Thomson. Tour in Yucatan: Together with brief notices of travels in Buenos Ayres, Chile, Ecuador, N. Granada, Venezuela, Mexico, all the West Indian Islands, the United States, Canada, N. Brunswick and Nova Scotia (Unpublished ms. Bible Society Collection, Cambridge University Library), p. 86.
\n45 Ibid.
\n46 See Appendix.
\n47 The first such conference\u2014the Congress of Panama\u2014was organized by Simon Bolivar and took place in Panama City in 1826 from 22 June to 15 July.
\n48 Thomson, op.cit., p. 288.
\n49 Letter to BFBS, 23 May 1827.
\n50 James Thomson, \u2018South America – VI\u2019, Evangelical Christendom, I (1847), 350.
\n51 Nor was it true in British colonies!
\n52 Thomson elsewhere writes of them as the \u2018great and the good\u2019 of British soci- ety.
\n53 Thomson\u2019s letter from Santiago to BFSS, 30 January 1822.
\n54 See note 9 above.
\n55 Eugenia Rold\u00e1n, \u2018Export as Import: James Thomson\u2019s Civilising Mission in South America, 1818-1825\u2019, in Importing Modernity in Postcolonial State For- mation: The Appropriation of Political, Educational, and Cultural Models in Nineteenth-Century Latin America, ed. by Eugenia Rold\u00e1n Vera and Marcelo Caruso (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2007), p. 259.
\n56 Roldan\u2019s groundbreaking study of the translation into Spanish and contex- tualisation to Spanish America of monitorial school educational materials underlines what she refers to as the \u2018peculiar appropriation\u2019 of the monitorial system in the Americas. See The British Book Trade and Spanish American Independence: Education and Knowledge Transmission in Transcontinental Perspective.
\n57 5 June 1820.
\n58 i.e. BFSS.
\n59 Andr\u00e9s Bello, \u2018Informe XXI de la Sociedad de escuelas brit\u00e1nicas y extran- jeras a la junta general celebrada en Londres el 15 de Mayo de 1826\u2019, El Reper- torio Americano II (1827), 58-59.
\n60 Walter Dupouy (ed.), Sir Robert Ker Porter\u2019s Caracas Diary 1825-1842: A Brit- ish Diplomat in a Newborn Nation (Caracas: Editorial Arte, 1966), LVIII, 18 June 1832. Ker\u2019s reference to the \u2018Island colonies\u2019 may be an allusion to Thomson\u2019s friend, the Baptist missionary William Knibb and the 1831 \u2018Bap- tist revolt\u2019 in Jamaica.
\n61 Domingo Amun\u00e1tegui Solar, El Sistema de Lancaster en Chile y en otros pa\u00edses Sudamericanos (Santiago: Imprenta Cervantes, 1895), p. 43.
\n62 Karen Racine. \u2018Commercial Christianity: The British and Foreign Bible Soci- ety\u2019s Interest in Spanish America, 1805\u20131830\u2019, Bulletin of Latin American Research 27 (2008), 98.
\n63 Eugenia Rold\u00e1n and Thomas Schupp, \u2018Network Analysis in Comparative Social Sciences\u2019, Comparative Education 42 (2006), 421.
\n64 Letter to BFBS from Lima, 15 July 1824.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"