Was the spread of the gospel by the 19th-century missions an act of cultural arrogance? The German historian Karolin Wetjen and the Indian historian Mukesh Kumar present their research on the Leipzig and Basel missions and look at the historical interdependencies of colonialism, religion, culture and claims to dominance. To what extent was the contact between missionaries and the local population an encounter at eye level, to what extent determined by a (supposed) cultural gap?