Missionary Societies
While some of the global reach of Dissenting traditions is due to the vagaries of migration from Britain in the early modern period, much of it is also the result of the deliberate propagation of the faith in which the Missionary Societies, formed between the French Revolution and the early nineteenth century, were key. Older scholarship tended to celebrate evangelical Dissent as being central to this movement. More recent exploration has shown that unlike earlier Pietist and Anglican missionary activity, the Baptist Missionary Society (1792) and London Missionary Society (1795) had a global reach, rather than being limited to strong national/colonial networks. Given the independence from state control of these new societies, they were also entirely reliant on philanthropic giving to finance their activities.