Chapter 2 augments this framework by surveying the history of the evangelical revival, emphasizing the anxious relationship between missionaries and empire. I examine the growth of missionary societies, their conflicts with empire, and their descent into the underworld of collusion with imperialists. I highlight key moments in this history, including the Vellore Mutiny, which raised concerns about evangelism among more secular exponents of empire, and the subversive work of Johannes Van der Kemp among the Khoi in South Africa. The chapter concludes with a close examination of two brief epics composed by missionary propagandists in the 1790s, Thomas Williams and Thomas Beck. These poems reveal the early conceptual friction between evangelism and imperialism, but they also indicate the assumptions that would enable the two projects to be aligned in the nineteenth century.