Spiritual Borderlands at the Edge of Empire

Tracing the work of William Carpenter Bompas (1834-1906), this book explores the "spiritual borderlands" of the British-Canadian North.

Between the Alaska Purchase (1867) and the Klondike Gold Rush (1896–1898), the vast subarctic region stretching from today’s Northwest Territories to the central Alaskan interior was fundamentally transformed. As the United States and British-Canadian governments expanded their reach, trappers, traders, and miners transformed the region, and the rhythms of Indigenous life changed within a generation. In this context, Bishop William Carpenter Bompas (1834-1906) and his wife and partner, Charlotte Selina Bompas (1830-1917) introduced Christianity and established missions in the rugged northern environment. Central to this book is the concept of the spiritual borderlands: a liminal space where Indigenous spirituality, Protestant theology, and imperial ambition collided—but were also negotiated. Christopher Petrakos draws on rich archival and literary sources from Great Britain, the US, and Canada to trace the Bompases' careers against the titanic changes brought about by nineteenth-century North American expansion. But this book is much more than a biography. William's work is situated in the context of the intellectual battles of a civilizational and spiritual crisis brought about by Darwinian evolutionary biology and the biblical approaches of the Higher Critics. Petrakos also situates Charlotte’s intellectual career as a novelist, social critic, and incisive analyst of Indigenous women's lives on a rapidly changing frontier in the context of nineteenth-century women’s writing. What emerges is a landmark study of northern missionary activity, imperial expansion, and Indigenous religious transformation at the edge of empire.