Prelude to Empire

MISSIONARIES IN AFRICA IN THE 19TH CENTURY

Early Missionary Activity

 In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries Catholic

missionaries were sent to Africa to convert a number of African
rulers .
 This action was politically motivated for it was hoped that the
converted rulers would become useful allies of the Portuguese.
Conflict With Authority

 Once African rulers realized the strong political motivation behind

the missionary presence most missionaries were expelled.
 This was largely because the missionaries and their converts
offered a challenge to the established political and religious
authority.
African Interest in European
Contact
 African rulers who were interested in contact with Europeans
wanted to engage in trade.
 However, such rulers did not want new ideas that threatened to
undermine the traditional religious basis of authority.
The Oba

 Portuguese missionaries made attempts to convert the Oba

(modern day Benin) in the early sixteenth century.
 The European version of Christianity left little lasting impression
among the Oba beyond the adoption of the cross as a symbol
within Benin artwork.
Congo

 In 1506, the missionaries had success in the Congo when a

Christian convert became King.
 However, with the growth of the slave trade the Portuguese gave
up treating the King of the Congo as a fellow-Christian Monarch.
 Foreign missionaries became alienated from the communities
they were supposed to serve, and Christianity became absorbed
in traditional Congo culture.
Ethiopia

 In Ethiopia during the 1540’s, foreign Jesuit missionaries had little

success in converting Ethiopian Christians to the Roman Catholic
version of the faith.
 By the mid-seventeenth century, the Jesuits were expelled for
political interference.
The Mutapa State

 In the Mutapa state (modern Zimbabwe), Portuguese Catholic

missionaries tried in the 1560’s to convert the Munhumutapa and
his court.
 The Portuguese goal was to control the kingdom and the region’s
gold trade.
 As elsewhere, their activities provoked a political and religious
reaction and in this case the missionaries were either expelled or
killed.
19th Century Missionary Success

 By the late eighteenth century it was clear that European

Christianity had made no impact on the people of sub-Saharan
Africa, as a vehicle for religious and cultural change.
 Attempts in the early nineteenth century however, though
initially slow to take effect, proved to be both far reaching and
permanent.
Evangelical Christianity

 Evangelical Christianity had risen out of a desire to bring moral

and spiritual salvation to the oppressed working class of the new
industrial cities of Europe and north America.
 The Evangelical movement contained a strong missionary
purpose. It was the duty of every devout Christian to spread the
faith to the wider “heathen world.”
 European Christians did not recognize the spiritual beliefs and
practices of non-Muslim Africans. African spiritual practices and
rituals were dismissed by Europeans as superstition.
 Thus, Africa was seen as a fruitful field for Christian missions.
 In addition to Christianity, missionaries proselytized their culture
and values as well.
 For example Christian missionaries of the 19th century often
insisted that African converts adopt European clothing.
 Nineteenth century Christian missionaries preached a strict
puritanical moral code.
 Often nineteenth century Christian missionaries opposed things
such as dancing and non-religious singing.
 This meant condemnation of the essential fabric of African
society.
 Also, anything that contained an element of non-Christian ritual
such as initiation ceremonies was condemned by missionaries.
 Christianity did offer a sense of spiritual salvation to those who
for one reason or another had lost faith in the security and
comforts of traditional African beliefs.
Leading European Missionary
Societies
 During the course of the nineteenth century, a large number of
European Christian societies sent their missionaries to Africa
including:
 Anglican Church Missionary Society (CMS)
 Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society
 London Missionary Society (LMS).
CMS
Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society
LMS
LMS
Other European Missions to Africa

 Protestant missions also came from France, Germany, Holland,

and the United States.
 French Catholic Missions followed later in the century.
Recaptured and Sent to Sierra
Leone
 Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther (1806-1891), was an enslaved
Yoruba from south-western Nigeria.
 Ajayi was on a Portuguese slave ship that was stopped off Lagos
in 1821 by a British Anti-Slavery Sqadron that transported him to
Sierra Leone.
 Ajayi converted to Christianity and became a CMS missionary.
 He took the name Samuel Crowther after a CMS benefactor.
 Crowther was a founding member of the CMS mission to southern
Nigeria in 1845.
 Crowther was consecrated bishop of the Niger Mission in 1864.
 Crowther published numerous influential books in English and
translated the Bible into Yoruba.
 One of the early and successful areas of missionary work in Africa
was in Sierra Leone.
 Sierra Leone was a British colony with two distinct advantages:
1. British “Anti-Slavery Squadrons” would bring recaptured and
dislocated Africans to Sierra Leone. Such individuals were torn
violently from the security of traditional African cultural
practices and religious beliefs.
 From this position they were more receptive to the teachings of
European missionaries.
2. European missionaries found themselves cut
off from much of the African interior by barriers of language,
culture, and tropical disease. Sierra Leone presented the ideal
training ground for teaching Africans to be the missionaries who
would carry the Christian message into the heart of tropical Africa.
 Samuel Ajayi Crowther was perhaps the most important at this
capacity.
Southern Africa

 Another region in which missionaries had success was southern

Africa.
 As in Sierra Leone, southern Africa had a large number of
dislocated people, particularly the Khoisan.
 Thus, among the Khoisan, freed slaves and mixed raced peoples
missionary groups such as the LMS had success.
 Though successful among the dislocated peoples of southern
Africa, missionaries had little success among the rulers of
independent southern Africa.
 As in earlier cases, Christianity was viewed as a threat to the
religious basis of their political authority.
 Apart from places such as southern Africa and Sierra Leone, it
was clear by the third quarter of the nineteenth century that the
Christian mission was making slow progress.
 Less than one percent of non-Muslim Africans (outside of
Ethiopia) had been converted to Christianity by the early 1880’s.
 Due to the lack of initial success that European missionaries
experienced, they turned more to their European governments
for assistance.
 As a result, Christian Missionaries became an essential ingredient
of the increasingly assertive European presence which was a
forerunner of imperial control.
 In a number of cases, Christian missionaries played a significant
role in promoting and shaping European colonialism.
European Governments use of
Missionaries
 When missionaries appealed to their home governments for
various degrees of assistance, such as when there was local
political conflict that threatened the safety of the mission,
European governments responded to these appeals usually due
to their own wider strategic or commercial interest.
German Example

 German missionaries in Namibia appealed to their home

government for “protection” in the early 1880’s during a
territorial war between Nama and Herero.
 Germany declared a protectorate over South West Africa in 1884.
The primary motive was to safeguard commercial interest rather
than missionary interest.
 The long term presence of German missionaries in the interior
provided some degree of public justification for German interest
in the region.
British Example

 Christian missionary Rev. Helm deliberately mistranslated a

document for the Ndebele king, Lobengula, in order to cheat him
into signing away his territory to a group of South African
commercial speculators.
King Lobengula
Second British Example

 After years of unsuccessful mission effort in Zimbabwe the LMS

missionaries openly advocated the overthrow of the ‘pagan’ king
as the only way to achieve a Christian breakthrough.
 This ultimately led to the severe exploitation of the region by the
British South African Company.
Third British Example

 In Buganda Christian missionaries faced the insecurity of

threatened civil war.
 Ironically, this war was promoted by recent Christian converts
seeking to assert political control .
 Money that the CMS raised was used to pay for the cost of
maintaining a British military force in the country from 1890-
1891.
 The region of Buganda was already a ‘sphere of British influence
through agreement with other European powers.
 With lack of military back up the future of the territory was
uncertain.
 The CMS action helped to pave the way for the formal declaration
of the British Protectorate of Uganda in 1894.
European
“Explorers” in
Africa
James Bruce

 In 1768 Scottish nobleman James Bruce set off on a journey to

Ethiopia to search for the source of the Blue Nile.
 Bruce learned about the splendors of Ethiopia and in particular its
royal court.
 Bruce’s revelations did not match the prejudiced European view
of Africa as disorganized societies.
James Bruce
African Association

 In 1788 a group of wealthy and influential Englishmen formed the

African Association.
 Their objective was to send an expedition to visit Timbuktu and
to investigate the course of the river Niger.
 For Europeans to profit from the development of “legitimate”
commerce with Africa, a wider knowledge of the continent was
needed.
 Despite centuries of coastal trading contact, Europeans were still
remarkably ignorant of Africa, its peoples and their history.
Objectives of the Explorers

 Between 1788 and 1877 an enormous number of European

explorers set out into the heart of Africa in an attempt to learn
more about the continent. Particularly:
 Knowledge of the river systems (for transport)
 Knowledge of the sources of Raw materials.
 Knowledge of population centers (for markets)
Explorers or Tourist?

 Every European explorer was dependent on African hospitality

and travelled with the aid of African guides and servants.
 The constitution of the African Association allowed for information
gathered to be kept secret.
 One of the African Associations first explorers was Mungo Park.
Mungo Park

 Park described the intention of his journey as:

“rendering the geography of Africa more familiar to my countrymen,
and …opening to their ambition and industry new sources of wealth,
and new channels of commerce”
(Travels into the Interior of Africa, first published London, 1799)
 Park visited the Niger River twice (1795-1797 and 1805-1806),
though he died in his attempt to follow the course of the river to
the sea.
Mungo Park
Rene Caille

 Caille became the first European to return with a first-hand

account of Timbuktu.
 Ironically Caille was disbelieved because his description of
Timbuktu fail to live up to Europe’s golden expectations.
 Contrast with Bruce.
Rene Caille
Lander Brothers

 In 1830 the Lander brothers finally traced the Niger to its mouth
by sailng downstream from the inland town of Bussa.
 European merchants thought that a navigable waterway into the
heart of west African interior was found.
 However due to Malaria the route was not useful for two decades.
 In the early 1850’s it was discovered that doses of quinine
provided reasonable protection from malarial fever.
 Thus exploration of Africa quickly gained pace after this point.
Value of Rivers

 The rivers of Africa were viewed by European as the primary

trading arteries to and from the heart of the continent.
 Rivers would serve as the highways through which Europeans
could open the continent to trade and exploitation.
Burton and Speke

 In 1857 Richard Burton led an official expedition in search of the

source of the Nile.
 Hannington Speke was a companion of Burton who diverted and
located Lake Nyanza which he renamed Lake Victoria.
 Both Burton and Speke traced the source of the Nile to Lake
Nyanza/Victoria.
 David Livingston traversed the continent from Zambezi to the
west coast at Luanda and back again to the east coast of
Quelimane.
 Livingston devoted much of his life to the exploration of the lake
and river systems of south-central Africa.
Heinrich Barth

 German Heinrich Barth explored the major trade routes of the

Sahara.
 Barth detailed five volumes describing his travels.
 Barth was partly sponsored by a group of British Merchants. On
the British behalf Barth sought from the sultan of Sokoto a letter
guaranteeing security for British merchants and their property.
 The Sultan agreed to the request.