On April 6, 1830, the same day The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was formally organized, Joseph Smith received a revelation that “a record [shall be] kept among you” (Doctrine and Covenants 21:1). Since then, through the calling of John Whitmer and subsequent expansions and developments, the church developed the Church History Department.1 Because the department headquarters are in North America, international scholars of the Latter-day Saint faith tradition grapple with the legacy of its centralized nature. With few exceptions, the department in the twentieth and twenty-first century consistently drew upon North Americans to write the global history due to the fact there is a critical mass of historians and publishers at church headquarters. Church records from across the globe were removed from their country of origin and preserved in the Utah area. Without the luxury of being able to regularly travel to the Church History Library,...
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