Le role des femmes dans l'evangelisation protestante de Tahiti et des iles "adjacentes"
2011, French Historical Studies volume 34 n° 1, p. 57-86
The accounts of the eighteenth-century explorers have forged the Tahitian myth by describing the great sexual freedom... more The accounts of the eighteenth-century explorers have forged the Tahitian myth by describing the great sexual freedom enjoyed by Polynesians. While these explorers were inclined to praise it, the Protestant missionaries strongly disapproved it. This article firstly examines how the British Protestant missionaries from the London Missionary Society (1797-1863) and then the French missionaries from the Société des missions évangéliques de Paris have contributed to the elaboration of new sexual norms, which are exemplified in the marriage obligation. In a second part, the article looks at the missionary literature in order to shed light on the active role played by both Western and Polynesian women in the evangelization of Tahiti and its “adjacent islands”. It shows how this women dynamism sometimes worried the Western male missionaries who, as part of their “civilizing mission”, aimed to maintain the gender and racial hierarchies.