Missionaries and the Māori Language in Nineteenth‐Century New Zealand: A Mixed Inheritance

The historiography dealing with New Zealand's colonial period (1814 – c.1900) underwent a substantial revision during the second half of the twentieth century. In particular, the role and activities of the missionaries in the country during the colonial era was subject renewed scrutiny, which served as a much‐needed antidote to the largely uncritical depiction of these proselytisers in earlier histories. However, this revisionism sometimes took a reductionist approach to the work of the missionaries, and in the process, overlooked some of their accomplishments in a colonial environment that was at best unsympathetic and often hostile towards the Māori culture and language. Since then, a more nuanced and considered historiography has emerged – one which also incorporates the histories of imperial missionary activity in the realms of literacy and indigenous languages in other parts of the world into New Zealand's experience. This work examines the seminal role that Protestant missionaries and their parent churches played in the colonial era in converting Māori into a written language, in spreading the use of literacy within Māori society, with consideration given to the role of Māori agency in this process, and the challenges in policy and practice that the Protestant missionaries had in this period.     

Reverend James Macdonald Auld and the disintegration of traditional leadership in Xhosaland

This article examines the missionary assault on traditionalism and traditional leadership. It also analyses the origins of Columba Mission. The article sets out to unearth the role of missionaries in the colonial assault on traditionalism, using James Macdonald Auld (2 April 1848–5 December 1932) as a case study. It describes the operation of the Columba Mission from its small beginnings in Kentani (Centane today) in 1878 until the annexation of Gcalekaland by the Cape Colony in 1885. The Cape forces reopened Gatyana (Willowvale) to the colonial authorities following the acceptance of an amnesty. Many of the amaGcaleka remained in Xhorha (Elliotdale), including King Sarhili himself. King Sarhili’s vicissitudes at the hands of the colonial government are used as a scaffolding to see Columba in historical perspective. This article puts the spotlight on King Sarhili and James Macdonald Auld, the Presbyterian missionary at Columba, as a vehicle to explore the reorganisation of Centane. The article also broadens its base of sources by drawing on oral history with intent to add materially to our knowledge about the missions at that often opaque moment in Eastern Cape history. In attempting to examine the relations between the traditional leaders, the colonial governing authorities and the missionaries, this article shows the colonial conflict as an ongoing encounter between the missionaries and the heirs of Phalo, i.e. the amaGcaleka and the amaNgqika     

Translating the Word: Dialogism and Debate in Two Gikuyu Dictionaries

Much of the literature on missionaries and translation in colonial Africa has tended to view missionary or colonial authored texts (Bibles, dictionaries, and grammars in particular) as instruments through which foreign ways of thinking were imposed upon unsuspecting Africans. In a detailed comparison of two Gikuyu dictionaries—one authored by an Anglican missionary and the other by a Presbyterian missionary some ten years later—this article locates significant contradictions in meanings, particularly in words associated with religion and authority. By situating these contradictions within the social history of early twentieth-century Gikuyuland, the author is able to demonstrate that these contradictions are not "mistakes"; rather, such inconsistencies evidence the complex ontological and political debates provoked out of early evangelistic activity. For the author, who draws theoretical insight from Homi Bhabha and M. M. Bakhtin, mission texts like dictionaries are fundamentally dialogical, the product of sustained and contentious conversations between missionaries and African interlocutors. Thus, they not only shaped Gikuyu life, as earlier scholarship contended, but were profoundly shaped bycontemporary Gikuyu debates over religion, power, and authority.     

Sexual Misconduct and Church Power on Scottish Mission Stations in Xhosaland,South Africa,in the 1840s

Tensions over the control of improper sexuality were a key concern of African converts and Scottish missionaries in Xhosaland, South Africa, in the first part of the nineteenth century. Missionary preoccupations with sexual behaviour meant that sexual acts became key sites for the negotiation of status and identity. Reading the case of Jan Beck, which is represented in unusually rich detail in the mission archive, allows us to see how converts used European understandings of sexual morality to gain access to mission resources as well as to exclude other converts from them. In the process, male converts were mediating between Xhosa and missionary evangelical sexual mores and identities. Their ability to do so reveals both the power of local figures to influence colonial outcomes, and the relative fragility of missionary authority in these contexts.     

‘Meddling with Politics’: The Political Role of Foreign Missions in the Early Nineteenth Century

The proper character of the relationship between missionaries and politics shaped one of the most contentious debates within the first century of the modern missionary movement. While the leadership of the missionary societies repeatedly insisted upon the separation between the work of the gospel and politics, missionaries in the field frequently found it difficult to remove themselves from political controversies. John Philip and James Read served with the London Missionary Society in the Cape Colony for most of the first half of the 19th century. Their persistent defence of the interests of the colonial Khoi made them controversial figures in the debates over the social, political and economic structures of the Cape Colony. Missionaries like Read and Philip, rarely described their activities as ‘political’, and certainly did not conceive of their work as in any way related to the patronage‐ridden political system of the early 19th century. Nonetheless, in their promotion of the ideas of religious and civil equality, and in their effective use of public opinion to shape government and public perception of colonial policy, their actions reflected many of the important changes taking place in contemporary British politics. Dissenting political activity focused on the issues of the defence of religious liberty, the struggle to secure their own civil equality, and the debate over the proper relationship between church and state. These issues also played a crucial role in colonial politics throughout the period. This essay will illustrate the important role of the foreign missionary movement in this process. Examining the work of Philip and Read enables us to identify the ways that issues of domestic politics helped to shape the political debates emerging in Britain's expanding empire.     

George Weekes: Rogue Missionary to New England Indians, 1731–1755

During the mid‐1700s, an uneducated layman named George Weekes began preaching to Native Americans in the town of Harwich, Massachusetts. Weekes’ missionary activity triggered a passionate response from Nathaniel Stone, the local minister, and inaugurated a debate regarding ministerial qualifications within the community. Scholars who study English missionary activity in colonial New England tend to focus upon the careers of trained clergy, such as John Eliot or Josiah Cotton. Other individuals, who possessed questionable moral character and little education, also preached to New England Indians, however. In this instance, the career of George Weekes, a rogue missionary, reveals that contact with Native Americans could shape ecclesiastical life in colonial Massachusetts. It also suggests that Native Americans encountered popular, as well as elite, English religious culture when they interacted with English missionaries in early New England.     

Land reform in South Africa and the colonial present

This paper develops Derek Gregory's concept of the ‘colonial present’ by demonstrating how the colonial present in rural South Africa in general and around land reform in particular has conditioned land reform outcomes. My development of the concept departs from Gregory's in two key respects. I argue first that, by viewing it in relation to the geopolitics of capitalism, it can be applied to places beyond the immediate influence of US military power; and, second, that social forces which might begin to undermine the colonial present should be examined. My empirical materials draw upon primary research on the emergence of government-sponsored partnerships between restitution beneficiaries and agribusinesses in northern Limpopo. I use the materials to argue that partnerships have emerged given white farmers’ near-monopoly on skills and the persistent power of traditional leaders, two features of South Africa's colonial past whose importance today is suggestive of a colonial present.     

A Vision of an Anglican Imperialism: The Annual Sermons of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts 1701–1714

This article examines the first two decades of the oldest continuing Anglican missionary society, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, founded in 1710. It argues that, contrary to the prevailing historiography of the British missionary movement, this early eighteenth‐century society was genuinely evangelistic and marks the real beginning of that movement. The society also marks the beginning of a formal, institutional engagement by the Church of England with the British Empire. In the Society's annual anniversary sermons, and influenced by the reports sent by its ordained missionaries in North America, the Church of England's metropolitan leadership in England constructed an Anglican discourse of empire. In this discourse the Church of England began to fashion the identities of colonial populations of Indigenous peoples, white colonists, and Black slaves through a theological Enlightenment understanding.     

Claiming Their Own Space: Australian Women Missionaries in Korea, 1891–1900

The first group of Australian women missionaries arrived in Korea in 1891, representing the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria. Their pioneering work was soon hindered by tensions that arose between themselves and a male cleric authority in the field. The article investigates this dispute, which lasted for several years and eventually entangled not only the individual Australian missionaries but also their home organisations as well as North American missionaries. It argues that Australian women missionaries’ involvement in this public dispute is a rare but significant example of a paradox in the foreign missionary enterprise, which imposed patriarchal order and at the same time established conditions that helped women enter the public space and even challenge the male-centred gender order. The article goes on to identify some distinctive characteristics of the Australian women’s missionary work.     

“The Holy Rollers Are Invading Our Territory”: Southern Baptist Missionaries and the Early Years of Pentecostalism in Brazil

Beginning with the often overlooked fact that the establishment of one of the largest Pentecostal churches in the world, Brazil's Assembléia de Deus (Assembly of God), was not the result of missionary activity by the U.S.‐based Assemblies of God, this paper makes creative use of Southern Baptist missionary sources to examine the first twenty‐five years of Pentecostalism in Brazil. Considering not only what the first Pentecostal missionaries did but also what they did not do, it suggests the following reasons for the extraordinary growth of the emergent movement: early Pentecostals had neither the funds nor the theological need to focus on education; their personal class affiliations did not incline them to privilege efforts to evangelise the upper classes; there was no strong female Pentecostal missionary presence; and the Pentecostals were able to “poach” from the Baptists' “flock.” The paper concludes that greater attention needs to be paid to the specific historical circumstances of Pentecostal growth in Brazil, especially during the decade of the 1930s.     

The Soul of the Luba: W.F.P. Burton,Missionary Ethnography and Belgian Colonial Science

This article examines the motivations, institutions and processes involved in colonial knowledge formation through a study of the missionary William Burton. It considers Burton’s work on the Luba of Katanga in relation to the practices of Belgian colonial science and Anglo‐Saxon social anthropology. The essay discusses why missionaries engaged in ethnographic research when they were so intent on changing the customs and beliefs they described and why Burton in particular did not get the recognition he deserved as an authority on his subject. The article charts Burton’s shifting attitude toward the Luba, showing how he moved from an aggressive intrusive mode of research to a position of greater sympathy as he came to consider their cultural riches through study of language, proverb and folklore. Consideration of the second phase of Burton’s research opens up discussion of the missionary origins of the disciplines of African theology and African religious studies.     

History in Prehistory: The Oral Traditions of the Rarotongan Land Court Records

The records of the early 20th century Rarotongan land courts are an invaluable source of ethnohistoric information regarding pre-contact land tenure, social and political relations, and historical processes affecting tenure and relations. They are analysed here from the point of view of contextualising the archaeological record of the island. Pre-contact Rarotongan society is shown to have been fluid and flexible, although one notable trend is the gradual aggrandisement of ariki power. This trend continues into the missionary and early colonial periods, where political unity and ariki hegemony become established. European intervention was a single, though defining, episode in a long history. Although it transformed the political order, Rarotonga remained resolutely Rarotongan.     

Local Intermediaries? The Missionising and Governing of Colonial Subjects in South Dutch New Guinea, 1920–42

This paper will show that the colonial project in south Dutch New Guinea was a joint project in which evangelisation, education, ‘civilisation’ and ‘pacification’ were taken up by the Dutch Catholic mission in close collusion with the colonial government. This was also a project in which a few Dutch missionaries deployed many goeroes (teachers) from elsewhere in the Dutch East Indies. These goeroes had an important position assigned to them by the Catholic mission and colonial government in the development of the Papuans and the area. This colonial structure utilised by both Dutch colonial administrators and missionaries has been labelled in the literature as a system of ‘dual colonialism’. Drawing on records held in missionary and colonial archives, the paper explores this dual colonial structure by analysing the roles of Catholic goeroes from the Kei and Tanimbar islands. This is done by taking Felix Driver’s concept of local intermediaries as the point of departure. While this concept makes visible the key role of goeroes, it is not without its issues, which will also be explored.     

Educational Conquest: Schools as a Sphere of Politics in French Mandate Syria, 1936-1946

This article deals with the significance of the school as aspace for colonial and diplomatic power struggles in the FrenchMandate territories of Syria and Lebanon between 1936 and 1945.Often underestimated in their importance to colonial and internationalaffairs, schools were an integral part of France’s precariouspolitical administration in the Levant. Although fiercely anti-clericalat home, the French government relied extensively on long-establishedCatholic missionary schools to entrench its control. These schoolsemerged as a space for conflict, both symbolically and physically,as a result of their association with France’s policyof promoting non-Sunni communities at the expense of the regionalSunni majority. Within the context of these policies, Frenchschools became a symbol of privilege for francophile Christianelites and of oppression for Muslim or pan-Arab groups disaffectedwith the regime. The discussion here addresses the role of schoolsas a focus for conflict and cooperation among French officialsand educators working in the Levant, as a forum for Franco-Syriancolonial interaction and as an object of international diplomaticdispute as Syria gained its independence.     

‘Science in the Hands of Love’: British Evangelical Missionaries and Colonial Development in Africa,c. 1940–60

During the era of colonial development, the Church Missionary Society (CMS) and the London Missionary Society (LMS) revitalised their work by taking advantage of the 1940 Colonial Development and Welfare Act to uplift British Africa. These evangelical organisations did not simply appropriate governmental ideas of development, but formulated their own concepts based on the incarnational theology of the ‘whole man’ with body and soul. In implementing their developmental policies, these evangelicals promoted Christ's example of a ‘servant’ to guide missionary conduct as they encountered increased African criticism of colonialism following the Second World War. Both organisations shifted to focusing more closely on souls rather than bodies when African independence movements strengthened during the mid and late 1950s in hopes that Christian ideology would steer Africans towards Christian democracies. By 1960, the CMS and LMS stressed their relationship within the ecumenical Church in their efforts to emancipate themselves from their colonial ties. Through examining missionary discourse on colonial development, this article reveals not only the complexity of development discourse, but also the various ways in which evangelical missionary organisations sought relevance within the context of the Cold War, the rise of the welfare and expert state, and decolonisation.     

Land as fictitious commodity: the continuing evolution of women's land rights in Uganda

In sub-Saharan Africa, colonial influences have altered traditional practices as a way to manage that which Polanyi labeled as ‘fictitious commodities’ of land, labor, and money. Land has now become a highly marketable commodity and an intrinsic part of the global economy. Over the past century, Uganda's land rights have evolved from communal rights to that of male-dominated, individual ownership practices that have excluded women. Despite constitutional provisions, which confer title of both a deceased husband's property rights and equal rights to property within a marriage to a wife, postcolonial patriarchal tradition prevails. This article examines historical changes in land rights in Uganda and discusses the impact of shifts in land rights from communal ownership to individual tenure, altering power structures and attempting to create marketable land title. The Ugandan women's movement's opposition to policies and implementation of laws that exclude women has been unable to facilitate the required changes in unbiased access to land rights, despite apparent victories in revisions to the letter of the law. Situated within contemporary interpretations of tradition and pressures of market demand, this article shows that women's access to landownership and use are restricted by misinterpretation of traditional law and a lack of enforcement of contemporary legal rights. To illustrate the impact of a lack of access to land, this article examines an empirical case study of widowed subsistence farmers in southern Uganda. Women in Uganda continue to lose ground, quite literally, decreasing the possibility of gender equity in terms of land.     

‘To unite their strength with ours’

The history of evangelical activity in northern Aotearoa/New Zealand in the early‐19th century is deeply marked by the presence of missionaries. Positioned in an auxiliary role, missionary women as wives and mothers were incorporated into the work of the mission station which primarily involved responsibility for domestic and familial tasks. In the period 1827–45, there were three distinct phases of women's contribution to the public work of the Paihia mission. In the first phase, educated middle‐class women established and taught in the Native Girls' school and English Girls' school. In the second phase and in response to the growing demands of the mission community, unmarried daughters of resident missionaries were recruited as pupil assistants. For three of these girls in particular, this work provided a form of apprenticeship as they were subsequently appointed and registered as missionaries. By the early 1830s, the recruitment of women missionaries entered its third phase when the CMS sent a number of single women from England. This paper reports on the three phases of women's involvement in missionary endeavours and ways in which this increasing level of involvement helped in the development of mission work as a professional occupation for women.     

‘The Gospel of Health’: American Missionaries and the Transformation of Ottoman/Turkish Women's Bodies, 1890–1932

This article explores an overlooked aspect of American missionary modernisation efforts in the late Ottoman Empire: the attempted transformation of women's bodies. By the late nineteenth century, American missionary women and Ottoman government officials both viewed Ottoman women's bodies as a visible reflection of the empire's weaknesses, yet also as central to its survival and revival. The transformation of women's bodies from ‘uncontrolled’ to ‘robust’, they believed, was a prerequisite for a modern society. Through a close reading of missionary reports, correspondences and student memoirs, this study traces the development of physical education, hygiene and recreational sports at the missionary‐run American College for Girls (ACG) in Istanbul. Over time, the female teachers at the ACG partnered and collaborated with male Ottoman/Turkish government officials to implement these courses at girls’ schools across the region. While the government endorsed physical education as key to national progress and regeneration, the ACG educators framed it as a mode of international, feminist self‐empowerment. In reality, the missionaries continued to assert their own Western superiority and advance Orientalist notions through the education courses. By highlighting the shifts in women's body ideals, curricular development and nationalist rhetoric, I argue that women's bodies must be studied as a crucial site of missionary and republican reform.     

Scotland,Atlantic slavery and the Scottish National Party: From colonised to coloniser in the political imagination

Over the last three decades, a major shift has taken place in Scottish nationalist understandings of Scotland's colonial past. During the second half of the twentieth century, independence supporters viewed Scotland's relationship with England in colonial terms. Since the Scottish Parliament was established in 1999, nationalists have increasingly recognised Scots' role in Atlantic slavery. This paper explores this change within the Scottish National Party (SNP) using archival sources, published material and Scottish Parliamentary records. It demonstrates that a maturing historiography has drawn attention to Scotland's slavery past. History has become politically relevant in transatlantic deliberations over racial injustice, which have grown in intensity since the international Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. SNP ministers and parliamentarians have responded to this context by incorporating addressing Scotland's role in Atlantic slavery within a case for independence that is styled as progressive and contrasts with the more recalcitrant attitudes, which predominate at UK level.     

Missionaries and Cannibals in Nineteenth‐century Fiji

This article examines the controversies concerning both customary cannibalism and missionary ethnography. Focusing on Fiji, it supports the conclusions of Marshall Sahlins about both issues, demonstrating that the attempts of William Arens, Gananath Obeyesekere and others to debunk “cannibal talk” are flawed in several ways. The eyewitness testimony of numerous missionaries and non‐missionaries in Fiji from the 1830s to the 1870s provides an extensive evidentiary basis for examining both controversies. Some of the testimony comes from indigenous witnesses, moreover, including Thakombau, who became known—or notorious—to Europeans as “the King of the Cannibals”. The article briefly recounts Thakombau's role in the processes of conversion and colonization. Two key texts that are closely analyzed as examples of missionary ethnography are Reverend Joseph Waterhouse's The King and People of Fiji and Reverend Thomas Williams's Fiji and the Fijians.