In this book I have tried to offer a fresh interpretation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s global significance by contextualising the religious themes in his Pacific writing. While Stevenson’s enduring popularity transcends particular characterisations, we surely benefit from placing his Scottish Presbyterian identity within global contexts that are not normally associated with it. In a similar way, his distinctive perspectives become clearer when we engage his writing with changes in Western religious life. Identification with formal or established religion became a marker of social difference in nineteenth-century Britain. Because Stevenson was steeped in Scriptural knowledge and Presbyterian devotional practices, he exhibited a religious literacy that distinguished him from many contemporaries, especially those in the professional world of letters. He retained an interest in historical and contemporary manifestations of Christianity that went beyond the aesthetic to reflect on social and ethical questions. Shaped by the culture of the Kirk, even after he chose to separate himself from it, he remained concerned about its future and was convinced that it could exert a moral influence on Scottish society. His response to the impact of industrial modernity drew from personal religious knowledge and experiences that were significantly different to our own.

Pacific Islands societies in Stevenson’s time were also undergoing dramatic changes. Traditional structures of island life and political organisation were often replaced by hybrid forms that developed through a process of gradual accommodation to foreign ideas and institutions. Stevenson knew that the foundations of much of this change lay in the arrival of Christianity earlier in the century. The work of Western missionaries, indigenous converts, and others had transformed Pacific societies while also retaining important elements of continuity with tradition in places like Samoa. Stevenson’s analysis of the contemporary Pacific built on this historical analysis, while the core of his anthropology grew out of his denominational identity as a Protestant Christian. This meant that he was able to identify and engage with facets of the Christian Pacific cultures that the wider social changes had brought forth. He acknowledged missionaries’ role in these changes and offered a balanced assessment of their influence, explored Christianity’s impact on traditionally non-Christian societies, and amplified indigenous Christian responses to colonising pressures.