Early Capitalism in Colonial Missions: Moravian Household Economies in the Global Eighteenth Century

Christina Petterson’s Early Capitalism in Colonial Missions is a welcome addition to the growing corpus of scholarship on the global Moravian Church. In the case of Petterson’s work, she offers what could be considered a companion to Katherine Carté Engel’s Religion and Profit: Moravians in Early America. Yet Petterson’s analysis goes beyond Engel’s work focused on the community in Bethlehem and introduces us to the economic developments that occur in the Danish West Indies and Greenland. She claims Bethlehem’s “restructure is understood as part of a general restructure of the whole Unity in line with the ideological changes after Zinzendorf’s death” (52). To the degree that this is true, the work both in St. Thomas and Greenland reflects this broader restructuring of Moravian economic organization, and the layout of her chapters follows this argumentation.Petterson’s introduction and first chapter function as methodological and historical introductions to her analysis. In the introduction she lays out economic conceptions guiding her study and notes that her approach, while recognizing a relationship between theology and economy, is “a-religious” (12). From this starting point, Petterson hopes to offer critical analysis that takes into account both the institutions under consideration and the historical processes that oftentimes remain in the background. Her first chapter serves as an introduction to eighteenth-century Moravians, taking into account their views on the individual, community, and mission.The following two chapters account for the economic organization of Bethlehem. While tracing out Bethlehem’s transition from Hausgemeine (house community) to Ortsgemeine (congregational settlement) and the development of the General Economy, she also introduces her readers to the important distinction of “inner and outer things” of which “[t]he inner things are connected with community organization, spiritual matters, congregational practice, liturgy, mission (soul work), while the outer things relate to business and enterprise” (41). This economic distinction will serve as an interpretive model through the rest of her analysis, which becomes immediately apparent in her discussion of New Herrnhut and Bethel in St. Thomas.Petterson takes up the case of St. Thomas in order to analyze how such economic developments oftentimes associated with Bethlehem developed in other Moravian contexts. Regarding the mission work in St. Thomas, where slavery defined regional economies, the missionaries found themselves adapting to (and adopting) the practice of slave holding, and the “distinction—between ‘inner’ and ‘outer’—grew ever sharper, as the Moravian economic organization was reshaped according to the structures of an emerging capitalist system” (109). Not only does Petterson helpfully use manuscript materials to contextualize the issues surrounding slavery in the context of the Danish West Indies, but she draws in the historical circumstances of the Moravian plantation Bethel, which was purchased in 1763 and sold in 1797. Petterson’s insight into the accumulation and selling of slaves in connection to Bethel allows her to conclude, among other points, that, “the production of an external, objective and deeply exploitive economic sphere supporting an otherwise moral, edifying, humanist cause is capitalism in a nutshell” (128).The Moravian mission to Greenland offers Petterson an opportunity to address the challenges Moravians faced in light of colonial control of Greenland. She shows that while the economic constrictions faced by those in Greenland limited their economic development, these same constrictions compelled them to place a greater focus on mission. “In other words, the ‘outer’ sphere or Oeconomie could not be developed; the result was a singular concern with the ‘inner’ sphere” (170). Nevertheless, the continued existence of the community in Greenland was supported by the prosperous Moravian plantations of the Danish West Indies.Petterson concludes her study by returning to her methodological roots found in the introduction and addressing the writings of Max Weber in light of her analysis and the work of Werner Sombart. By doing so, she adds to an important discussion regarding religion and economy, but at the same time she evidences one of the limits she places upon her work. Petterson’s commitment to specific nineteenth-century economic approaches—and later interpretations of those approaches—confines her study and constrains its comprehensiveness. Although there are moments when Petterson’s analysis pushes beyond these constraints, the limitations on interpretative variations regarding specific historical circumstances is felt.Alongside this, Petterson’s narrative, which is built upon the “inner” and “outer” distinction made by Moravian leaders and communities, would benefit from a more robust discussion of the theological origins of such a distinction. Although Petterson addresses “missionary ideals” in her introduction, she does not draw on the Pietist-Moravian theological traditions to consider why such an inner/outer distinction, with all of its theological significance, was possible within these mission-oriented communities. Had she taken this aspect into account, she would have also offered a further reason for the ways in which Moravians understood and ordered their economic lives in light of the global commitment to missions.Petterson’s Early Capitalism in Colonial Missions is both thorough in its scholarship and thoughtfully reserved in the scope of those communities addressed. For this reason, among others, it is a welcome addition to current scholarship on the global work of Moravian communities. Academics will especially appreciate Petterson’s incorporation of, and insight from, extensive work with archival material and correspondence, which she uses to address how Moravian communities encountered developing economic structures in Bethlehem, the Danish West Indies, and Greenland.