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Review Article Volume 11 Issue 1
The influence of British Protestantism in early post-independence new Granada: diplomacy, commerce, and unintended religious transformation
Robert Ojeda Pérez, Matilda Sidel
Received: January 17, 2026 | Published: March 17, 2026
Citation: Pérezs RO, Sidel M. The influence of British Protestantism in early post-independence new Granada: diplomacy, commerce, and unintended religious transformation. J His Arch & Anthropol Sci. 2026;11(1):47-50. DOI: 10.15406/jhaas.2026.11.00339
Abstract
While the participation of the British and Irish Legions in the Neogranadian War of Independence has been widely documented, the religious consequences of British involvement remain underexplored. This article examines how British Protestantism— introduced through foreign soldiers, Bible societies, and the Lancasterian educational system—became embedded in early republican New Granada. Drawing on newspapers, official treaties, constitutional texts, and missionary correspondence, the study reads sources against the grain to identify how religious change emerged as an unintended by-product of diplomatic and commercial reform. Moving beyond missionary-centered narratives, the article argues that Protestant growth was facilitated less by coordinated evangelization than by trade agreements, educational modernization, and shifting church–state relations. By situating Protestant expansion within debates on secularization, informal empire, and nation formation, the study demonstrates that early Colombian religious pluralization was structurally linked to state-building processes rather than doctrinal conversion alone.
Keywords: religious toleration, Colombia, Protestantism, secularization, nation-building, informal empire
©2026 Pérezs, et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and build upon your work non-commercially.