STH: Special Collections

The Church Missionary Society Archive from the University of Birmingham Library. Microform.  Marlborough, Wiltshire: Adam Matthew Publications.

The Church Missionary Society (CMS) was founded in 1799 as an independent voluntary society within the Church of England, whose aim was to send missionaries to “the continent of Africa and other parts of the heathen world”.  CMS missionaries spread the gospel not only through evangelistic work but through education and medical care, by providing schools for children, colleges for adults, training in industry for men, and in crafts and household skills for women and medical training for those who worked in the hospitals and dispensaries.

Guide to the Microfilm:

Contents:

• Section I: East Asian Missions – Journals
  • Part 4-9. Church of England Zenana Missionary Society, 1880-1957 (146 reels)
• Section II: Missions to Women
  Women missionaries played a crucial role in the activities of the CMS and their records appear throughout the CMS Archive.  This section concentrates on Missions to Women, both educational and evangelical.
  • Part 1: Society for Promoting Female Education in China, India and the East (or Female Educational Society), 1834-1899  (10 reels)
    The FES archive consists of Minutes, Finance and General Papers, Annual Reports and a Name Index.
  • Part 2: India’s Women and China’s Daughters, 1880-1939 and
    Looking East at India’s Women and China’s Daughters, 1940-1957 (19 reels)
    This illustrated magazine of the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society includes information on India’s women and their lives as well as a record of CMS work, shedding much light on the interaction between the local women and the missionaries.
  • Part 3: Homes of the East, 1910-1948 (including Torchbearer from 1914). Informative articles on and letters from missionaries in China, India, Singapore and Ceylon; Daybreak, 1889, 1893-94 and 1906-1909
    Begun in 1885 as a magazine for the young people of the CEZMS schools, who joined the Daybreak Workers’ Union, it contains articles on missionaries, schools and work in India, China and Ceylon; The Indian Female Evangelist, 1872-1880. (6 reels)
  • Part 4. The Indian female evangelist and successors, 1881-1956 (covering The Indian female evangelist, 1881-1893, The Zenana: or, woman’s work in India, 1893-1935, The Zenana; women’s work in India and Pakistan, 1936-1956) from Interserve, London (10 reels)
  • Part 5. Minutes of the Zenana, Medical and Bible Mission, 1865-1937, and the Annual reports of the Indian Female Normal School and Instruction Society, 1863-1879, from Interserve, London (13 reels)
• Section III: Central Records
  • Annotated Register of the CMS Missionaries, including History of the CMS by Eugene Stock, and the Catalogues to the Overseas Archive, CEZMS and FES Archives (10 reels)
• Section IV: Africa Missions
  The first CMS mission was to Sierra Leone, a colony established by Britain for freed slaves.  Samuel Crowther, the first African Anglican bishop, was largely educated in a CMS school and played a vital role in the missions to Sierra Leone and Nigeria.
  • Part 1.   West Africa (Sierra Leone), 1803-1883 (27 reels)
  • Part 2.   West Africa (Sierra Leone), 1884-1934 (19 reels)
  • Part 3.   Nigeria-Yoruba, 1844-1934 (17 reels)
  • Part 4.   Nigeria-Yoruba, 1845-1880 (17 reels)
  • Part 5.   West Africa (Sierra Leone), 1821-1880 (17 reels)
  • Part 6.   East Africa (Niger & Nigeria), 1858-1880 (12 reels)
  • Part 7.   South Africa (Sudan, Northern Sudan, Upper Nile Mission), 1905-1949 (21 reels)
  • Part 8.   Nigeria-Yoruba, 1880-1934 (23 reels)
  • Part 9.   Nigeria-Yoruba, 1880-1934 (23 reels)
  • Part 10. Nigeria-Niger, 1881-1934 (36 reels)
  • Part 11. Nigeria-Niger, 1880-1934, and Nigeria-Northern Nigeria, 1900-1934 (20 reels)
  • Part 12. West Africa (Sierra Leone), 1881-1934 (26 reels)
  • Part 13. West Africa (Sierra Leone), 1935-1949 and Nigeria missions, 1935-1949 (32 reels)
  • Part 14. Egypt mission, 1889-1949 (17 reels)
  • Part 15. Egypt mission (14 reels)
  • Part 16. South Africa, Kenya and Nyanza missions, 1836-1888 (15 reels)
• Section V: Missions to the Americas
  • Part 1. West Indies, 1819-1861 (20 reels)
  • Part 2. North West Canada, 1821-1880 (30 reels)
  • Part 3. North West Canada, 1881-1930 (33 reels)

These files are now available online.

Access the CMS Database online: 

library.bu.edu/cms

We continue to hold the Microfilm collections as well, but encourage those with BU passwords to use the online searchable database.