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Show their lowest ebb--the Kirtland economy was collapsing, open warfare had broken out in the Missouri settlements, and few new members were being attracted to the Church--Joseph Smith dispatched his most trusted followers to England to open a British Mission. 13 The Mormon Gospel was well received in Britain, particularly among the already urban and industrialized populations around London, in the West Midlands, in Lancastershire, and in South Wales; by 1890 nearly 55,000 British Saints had converted and emigrated to Zion. 14 Beginning in the early 1840s and peaking in the mid 1850s, the arrival of these British converts sustained the Church through its two major rebuilding periods which followed the expulsions from Missouri (1838) and Illinois (1845). The Mormons experienced similiar results following the opening of a mission in the Scandinavian countries in 1850. Denmark, Norway, and Sweden contributed some 23,000 immigrants to Utah after 1853, an influx of people and craft skills which allowed church leaders to implement successfully a policy of expansion i~ the Great Basin country during the 1850s and 1860s. 15 Mormonism prospered and grew at the expense of its distinctively New England character. The push factors behind the massive emigration of foreign Saints to the Mormon Zion in the United States are undeniable; there were real reasons for these people to leave their homes and relatives behind for the prospects of a new life in America. Economic uncertainty has been determined as a major factor behind the outbursts of religious enthusiasm which accompanied the Great Awakenings in the United States during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries . 16 Similarly, it is impossible to ignore the industrial blight of England's cities 17 or the disruption of agricultural life following the ''land 37 |
