Wallace G. Mills Hist. 316 17 Christian Missions

Christian Missions and their Impact

- there had long been a relative absence of missionary fervour and action in European Protestantism. This was especially true of much early Calvinism, although there was some enthusiasm in early New England. Earlier, Catholics had been very vigorous in the early phases of European expansion in the new world, in Africa, in India and Asia. However, this too had long since waned to very low levels. Another factor may have been that 18th C Deism was not aggressive or derogatory of other religions.

- there was very little real mission activity in Africa after the failure of the Kingdom of the Kongo; in fact in Africa, Catholic mission activity did not resume on a large scale until 2nd half of the 19th C.

- the Moravian Brethren were the first to send missionaries to South Africa in 1739. This first mission was short-lived, only 1739-43. Nevertheless, Georg Schmidt, the only member of the party who survived, had made converts before he left South Africa. When a new party of Moravian missionaries arrived in 1792 and founded a mission at Genadendal about 100 miles from Cape Town, a few of Schmidt’s converts were still around to join the mission.

- beginning in the 1790s, there was an enormous upsurge in support and enthusiasm for missions among Protestants in Europe and North America associated with the evangelical revival and postmillennialism. A host of new Protestant mission societies were created. The tide of missions spread out to various parts of the globe, but Africa was one of the foci for this tide.

- there is no denying that the impact of the missionaries on Africa has been (and continues to be) very large. However, there continues to be much debate about the nature of that impact, including the issue of how much missions and missionaries contributed to the conquest and partition of Africa in the late 19th C.

Premillennialism

1. reform of individuals by conversion and evangelism; as this takes place on a large scale and large numbers of people change their behaviour, conditions in society will improve. Thus, attempts to evangelise and convert as many people as possible is just as strong as in premillennialism.
   
2. reform of society to eliminate evils which tend to promote sin and evil (such as, drink, slavery, prostitution, etc.); this reform could, and often did, require political activism and produced a wide range of movements and actions in the 19th century. Thus, people in this tradition can be very active politically.
   
   

1. despite the assertions of some scholars, big business did not provide much support for missions; D. Livingstone made a big point of going to the Chambers of Commerce etc. in Britain to speak (even snubbing a number of churches), but the captains of industry, while cheering the claims of the benefits to trade that the promotion of Christianity would bring, gave little money to the missions. Most of the money for the missions to central and east Africa that Livingstone stimulated came from the churches and the traditional supporters of missions (there are certainly examples of successful businessmen contributing generously as individuals, but these were not the norm nor did they provide most of the funds). Most supporters of missions were from the lower middle and upper working classes, especially in the 1st half of the 19th C.
   
   
2. African trade was never very large or important compared to other areas, yet Africa always received a disproportionate share of missionaries and mission resources.
   
   - on the other hand, Latin America, which was always much more important for trade purposes than Africa, received only minor amounts of attention from the mission societies. If capitalists were really jerking the puppet strings of the mission societies and missionaries, why didn’t they direct more attention to S. America?
   
   - even more, in places like India and China, business was lukewarm and frequently even hostile to mission activity; missionaries stirred up trouble and interfered with their activities.
   
   

1. trying to change the treatment, legal status and rights of non-white people (Khoikhoi, free blacks and San) in the Cape Colony—emancipation of ‘Hottentots’ or Coloureds (see below).
   
   
2. attempting to protect the indigenous communities outside the boundaries of the Cape Colony from intrusion, disruption and destruction by whites, especially pastoralist farmers—trekboers.
   
   
3. attempting to bring the slave trades to an end.
   
   

• in West Africa, they were trying to abolish the slave trade and the traders were not happy to be put out of business.
  
• in South Africa, they clashed with the white settlers (initially, these were the Afrikaners, but after the coming of British settlers 1820, it included British settlers also).over the latter’s treatment of the indigenous peoples and with colonial officials who seemed sympathetic to or influenced by the settlers.
  
  

1. Vagrancy laws—all non-whites were presumed to have some master and those who didn’t were ‘vagrants’.
   
   - all ‘servants’ were required to have a note or a ‘pass’ from their master stating that they had permission to be absent; anyone without a pass was liable to be ‘arrested’ as a vagrant by any white person who would take them to the local veld cornet (a white farmer who served as magistrate and local official for the Company).
   
   - the apprehended person could then be charged, convicted as a vagrant and sentenced to a term of punishment; the term would then be served in the custody of the person making the arrest!
   
   - this precluded any freedom of movement for anyone not enjoying ‘white’ status.
   
   
2. Debt bondage—employees would be given goods (food or alcohol) and when the period of service came to an end, the employer would declare that the employee owed money and would have to enter another contract of service. ‘Contracts’ were verbal, but in any dispute, only the testimony of the ‘Christian’ had much weight.
   
   
3. Apprenticeship of children—the rationale was that this was compensation to the farmer for the expense of feeding and rearing the children of his servants. This ‘apprenticeship’ might be extended until about age 25. This tied down the parents too as they would be reluctant to leave their children.
   
   

• all contracts had to be registered with the local magistrate and the terms written down—to avoid employers changing the terms unilaterally and after the fact;
  
  
• limitations were placed on what could be in the contracts: limits on what could be claimed as debt (e.g., liquor was excluded ) and these items had to be spelled out in the contract;
  
  
• limited the ‘apprenticeship’ of children and young people to 10 years;
  
  
• reduced abuses under the ‘vagrancy’ laws.
  
  

• it stated very specifically that there should be no differential legislation; i.e., that ‘Hottentots and other free persons of colour’ shall not be subject to any law to which whites were not also subject.
  
  
• it also specifically forbad vagrancy laws or other restrictions on movement.
  
  
• this was the foundation for the tradition of non-racialism or what is called the ‘Cape liberal tradition’. With only a few exceptions (e.g., some later liquor laws forbad sales to Africans), laws in the Cape did not differentiate or discriminate on the basis of ‘colour’ or ‘race’.
  
  - however, it should be noted that sometimes ways were found to accomplish the same objectives as differential legislation. (one of the best examples was the franchise qualifications when representative government was introduced in 1853. The property and income qualifications made absolutely no mention of colour or race; the qualifications were low enough to admit most white men [although not all] but high enough to exclude most [although not all] non-whites. Later, in the 1880s and 90s when Africans began to become voters in larger numbers, the rules were tightened and the bar was raised!).
  
  
• it also reaffirmed equality before the law.
  
  Note: This did not mean total equality (that did not exist in Britain and in so far as the poor have a more difficult time and cannot afford to pursue all legal rights, it does not exist here either). Obviously, knowledge and wealth give some great advantage in the courts over those who lack either or both.
  
  - as well, when the jury system was introduced, only whites sat on juries; this produced some blatantly unjust verdicts. Eventually, the jury system was abolished for all inter-racial cases.
  
  

1. Knights in shining armour
   
   - not only were they bringing the gospel and ‘civilisation’, but they were also defenders of the weak and the oppressed.
   
   - missionaries strove to improve the economic well-being of Africans; thus, they introduced plows and other equipment as well as crops as means to provide greater income and standards of living.
   
   - they introduced literacy and African languages were reduced to written form for the 1st time.
   
   - they introduced western education and made science and technology, as well as political ideas, available to Africans.
   
   - this view frequently has had a hagiographical dimension; i.e., the missionaries as super saints, completely selfless and with few flaws.
   
   
2. Do-gooder and meddler
   
   - often in this view, they are seen as at least naive (“They do not realise that Africans are savages and need to be treated and controlled with a firm hand.”)
   
   - however, in S. Africa, the white settlers (especially the Dutch or Afrikaans-speaking) viewed them as malicious and evil; these last argued that God had intended that blacks should be servants of the whites and that it was impious and wicked to interfere with the divinely decreed order; even worse was any talk or attempt to implement equality.
   
   
3. Arrogant, insensitive, culture-bound disrupter of traditional society
   
   - an early version of this was put forward in the 19th C, especially by white settlers; these latter often expressed a preference for the ‘raw native’ as opposed to the ‘school native’.
   
   - the latter was uppity and had ideas above his station; also, he knew the laws and could defend his rights better than an uneducated, traditional African.
   
   - this was really just a variant of the missionary as meddler.
   
   - however, in the 20th C, this view has been developed by social scientists.
   
   - missionaries, it is argued, attacked many social customs as well as religious beliefs; the result was a good deal of disruption.
   
   - often too, the replacements for traditional customs and social relations were not as effective and did not relate to other aspects of African culture and society.
   
   - the encouragement of a market economy and trade with Europeans (clothes and manufactured goods) exposed Africans to the fluctuations and vagaries of international commodity markets and increased vulnerability [this implicitly assumes that the old subsistence economy was more ‘secure’; however, the old subsistence economy had serious drawbacks too].
   
   - also, this involvement in trade and international markets created dependencies and thus weakened the ability to resist; [On the other hand, some Africans used trade to acquire guns which could be used to strengthen resistance].
   
   - frequently, mission activity brought splits and divisions in traditional society; this may often have weakened African societies both politically and militarily and thus indirectly have assisted the conquest.
   
   - in short, the missionaries have been charged with assisting conquest, at the very least indirectly and unintentionally, but some have argued even intentionally and consciously. This last was argued strongly in The Role of the Missionaries in Conquest from a Marxist view by some Coloured students in Cape Town just after 1945.
   
   [Different ‘schools’ of historical interpretation have evolved in depicting and understanding South African history. The evaluations of missionaries have been starkly different.]
   
   

What role(s) did the missionaries play in the conquest and scramble for Africa?

- as can be seen from the sharply contrasting views of the missionaries, there is a good deal of debate about this topic. Achieving a balanced assessment requires some effort.

1. lack of converts: Xhosa converts had been relatively few; some missionaries worked for years and had only a handful of converts to show for it.
   
   - Africans had often shown a great deal of initial interest as they were always interested in new religious ideas; they would attend services and debate theological issues extensively. Africans were often very good at that as some missionaries acknowledged.
   
   - however, as they got more information on what the missionaries were demanding, especially the abandonment of so many customs and culture (including lobola, polygyny, and circumcision) as well as urging them to stay neutral (and thus abandon their chiefs and ‘nation’) in the wars, most Xhosa rejected it, saying as one missionary reported, “We are well as we are.”
   
   - also, many missionaries were disappointed in the quality (as well as the quantity) of many converts. Where missionaries had been given substantial amounts of land for their stations, the missionary had the powers of a headman in allocating land. In the increasingly over-crowded situation in the eastern Cape, it was clear that some Africans coming to the mission station were attracted by the land, not necessarily by Christianity. As well, outcasts from Xhosa society tended to gravitate to the stations. Some were people who got into trouble (including people who were ‘odd’ or different and who might have been accused of witchcraft); others were people with severe physical problems and without family to look after them.
   
   
2. disruption and destruction of their work by the recurrent wars: not only were buildings destroyed (a military measure because white troops tended to use them as fortifications) but converts were killed or scattered; sometimes, the wars caused converts to renounce Christianity:
   
   
   • the demands of loyalty to their people were too much and missionary attempts to urge them to stay neutral brought rejection of Christianity;
     
   • they felt that the British, who were Christians and who were killing and destroying the Xhosa, did not seem to follow the Christian ideal of not making war.)
     
     
3. a feeling that chiefs and the political systems needed to be destroyed before conversion and change could take place. J. C. Warner, a Methodist missionary who later became a government agent, expressed it this way in the 1850s:
   
   
   “And above all, as they have so resolutely and so perseveringly refused to give to the Gospel even an attentive hearing; it seems to me that the way on which they themselves are so obstinately bent is the one which God will make use of to bring about this desirable object; and that the sword must first—not exterminate [sic] them, but—break them up as tribes, and destroy their political existence; after which, when thus set free from the shackles by which they are bound, civilisation and Christianity will no doubt make rapid progress among them.”
   
   

   - nor can this feeling be attributed to nationalist feelings. American and Norwegian missionaries in Natal came to advocate a similar position regarding the annexation and dismantling of the Zulu Kingdom after the 1840s.
   
   - missionary efforts to get African lands annexed could also be protective; French missionaries in Basotholand assisted Moshoeshoe in his attempts to get annexed by Britain to protect them from the Boers. Later, in the 1880s, missionaries in Bechuanaland were doing the same thing.
   
   - moreover, missionaries were active in trying to resist confiscations of land from Africans and in turn granting or selling that land to whites. Without missionaries and their direct and indirect influence, Africans would have ended with even less land than they did.
   
   

Were missionaries a factor in stimulating the desire for acquiring empires in Africa?

1. undoubtedly, missionary literature stimulated interest in Africa; the condemnation of African customs and political systems helped to promote the conclusion that conquest would be beneficial and contributed greatly to the negative stereotypes and image of Africans. Thus, it contributed to the racism which tended to put Africans at or near the bottom in the racist hierarchy that was adopted in the late 19th C; much of this was unintended, but the results were significant.

2. missionaries were used by governments and politicians, sometimes in spite of themselves and without their active cooperation.


- however, there were other, more important factors behind the drive for empire:

• the incredible technological superiority which westerners acquired in the 19th C had a drive of its own— “power corrupts”
  
• there were economic interests and motives, even if frequently exaggerated.
  
• even more important, there were ideological and emotional forces such as, nationalism, racism, and the frantic drive to remain in the club of “great or world powers.”
  
  

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