Missions, States, and European Expansion in Africa

Chima J. Korieh, Raphael Chijioke Njoku

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781135915339
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

Missions, States, and European Expansion in Africa aims to explore the ways Christianity and colonialism acted as hegemonic or counter hegemonic forces in the making of African societies. As Western interventionist forces, Christianity and colonialism were crucial in establishing and maintaining political, cultural, and economic domination. Indeed, both elements of Africa's encounter with the West played pivotal roles in shaping African societies during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This volume uses a wide range of perspectives to address the intersection between missions, evangelism, and colonial expansion across Africa. The contributors address several issues, including missionary collaboration with the colonizing effort of European powers; disagreements between missionaries and colonizing agents; the ways in which missionaries and colonial officials used language, imagery, and European epistemology to legitimize relations of inequality with Africans; and the ways in which both groups collaborated to transform African societies.

Thus, Missions, States, and European Expansion in Africa transcends the narrow boundaries that often separate the role of these two elements of European encounter to argue that missionary endeavours and official colonial actions could all be conceptualized as hegemonic institutions, in which both pursued the same civilizing mission, even if they adopted different strategies in their encounter with African societies.

Chapter One
All Things to All People: Christian Missionaries in Early Nineteenth Century South Africa

Roger B. Beck

INTRODUCTION

In his recent study of missionary activity in the Punjab, Jeffrey Cox characterizes the ubiquitous and unbridgeable divide between British Christian missionaries and Indians as an “imperial fault line.” As they ministered to, and interacted with Christians and non-Christians alike, missionaries struggled with the conflict between their “universalist Christian religious values and the imperial context of those values. One audience might describe this relationship as a conflict between faith and power, another as the relationship between universal egalitarian ideals and an exploitative imperial presence.”¹ Although the British Raj was a far different context for nineteenth century Christian missionary evangelism than southern Africa in the same period, missionaries in Africa were no less torn between a sense of universal brotherhood in Christ and their identification with an imperial overlord-ship that accepted no such equality. And, as in India, this “imperial fault line” influenced every facet of their mission.

The imperial fault line in South Africa may be found in many places and in many forms, some quite obvious and others more subtle.² Andrew Porter, for example, argues that even before they left English shores, the first London Missionary Society (LSM) missionaries to South Africa found themselves dependent on imperial assistance and sanction. The first four LMS missionaries arrived at the Cape in March 1799 on the convict transport, Hillsborough, bound for Botany Bay. Porter observes that the circumstances of their free passage to the Cape reflect in a stark but simple way “the impossibility for missionaries of escaping the embrace of government, whatever illusions they might entertain as to the likelihood or desirability of independence.” LMS missionaries were anxious to get out in the field and collusion with government provided them with a quick departure, it satisfied their thrifty use of funds, and allowed them an “expectation that they could take advantage of a government offer or facilities (however apparently ‘providential’) without risk of compromise or obligation.” These proved to be “perennially recurring features of missionary thinking and much traveled pathways to ‘political’ involvement with government.”³

This paper will focus on an imperial fault line in southern Africa that placed missionaries in the position literally of straddling a line with their feet in both camps along the colonial border. Beginning in the 1810s British colonial authorities set about to regulate commercial contacts between the various peoples living in the Transorangia region north of the Cape colony and the colony itself. In establishing these links colonial administrators called on Christian missionaries living beyond the Cape border to serve in a variety of roles as intermediaries to facilitate and advance this commerce. Since, as Jean and John Comaroff have pointed out, the first generation of LMS missionaries placed a good deal of stress on things material,⁴ this was not something viewed by them as necessarily a bad thing. However, on both sides of the imperial fault line the missionaries frequently found themselves as “the ruled among the rulers.”⁵ This was certainly the case vis-à-vis the colonial authorities. But on their mission stations beyond the Cape colonial borders as well, missionaries often lived a very tenuous existence, dependent upon the peoples among whom they resided and in many respects under their authority.

THE GRIQUA AND THE NORTHERN CAPE FRONTIER

After 140 years of Dutch rule, the British occupied the Cape Colony in the late 1790s for the first time. Accompanying them were the first permanent groups of Christian missionaries, led by the London Missionary Society (LMS). These early missionaries headed out to the edges of the colony and beyond to minister to the African, Khoisan, and Griqua peoples. Other missionary societies continued to arrive throughout the nineteenth century, most of whom came from the British Isles, but there were, among others, both Protestant and Roman Catholic French, American, Swedish, German, Dutch and Norwegian missionaries also. There is no doubt that these missionaries played a critical role in effecting change among the African peoples with whom they came into contact. They made southern Africa “among the most intensively missionized parts of the world.”⁶ William Freund has written that “the expanding mission movement, which would dramatically affect the culture and society of brown and black peoples at the Cape, was perhaps the most striking new social phenomenon of the period, and the one with the greatest long-range significance.” Richard Elphick has suggested that the reorientation of thought and behavior that the missionaries demanded of the Africans “can only be called revolutionary.”⁷

In the northwestern and northeastern frontier zones the official boundary of the colony in the early nineteenth century lay well south of the Orange River, but mission stations and the settlements of former colonists of mixed descent created an open and fluid frontier much further to the north. As one moves north from the colony, the land becomes progressively dryer and harsher. The Orange River is the least navigable of all the rivers in South Africa as it is reduced to a series of pools during the dry winter months.⁸ The various peoples in Transorangia and the missionaries who settled among them depended upon irrigation for agriculture.⁹

In its initial stages in the late 1600s and early 1700s, the European expansion from Cape Town progressed east and north, following the coastal plains. Beginning roughly in the middle of the eighteenth century the two thrusts turned inland to meet by 1820 in central Transorangia. Although the original expansion had been led by white colonists north to the Orange River, into the area known as Little Namaqualand, by the 1730s the eastern advance along the Orange through Bushmanland and into Transorangia was made predominantly by the Griqua (or, as they originally called themselves, Bastaards). Unlike the eastern frontier which was “closed” by the colonial government, and subsequently occupied almost exclusively by white farmers, the northern frontier was closed by the Griqua who initially attempted to normalize relationships among the various societies in the northern frontier zone, with and without the cooperation of the Cape government.¹⁰

The Griqua were a multifarious assemblage comprised of the descendants of unions among Europeans, Khoikhoi and slaves. There were also free blacks and runaway slaves as well as individual, or groups of, Khoikhoi and other indigenous peoples displaced by white encroachment, war, famine, disease or free choice, who were assimilated into the Griqua communities. The Bastaards were of a mixed-race ancestry, but enjoyed a higher economic and social status within the colony than Africans because the white colonists considered them more “civilized.” The outward manifestations of this higher status were Christianity, literacy, Dutch as their native tongue and the possession of jobs requiring skill or responsibility. Bastaards were transport riders, day laborers, and craftsmen. They acted as overseers for white farm owners, and some were owners of small farms in their own right. They saw themselves as “swarthy Hollanders.”¹¹

The Bastaards’ special status did not protect them, however, from racial prejudice. Throughout the eighteenth century the property owners and farmers among them were pushed to the colony’s periphery and beyond by white expansion and alienation of land.¹² The desire to protect their privileges and possessions made them more vulnerable to these pressures than for the Khoisan. Initially they moved east and north, settling on farms along the fertile coastal belts. Toward the end of the eighteenth century they began to trek into the interior. Between 1800 and 1820, under the leadership of the wealthy and powerful Kok and Barends families, they occupied an area of fresh water springs in central Transorangia near the Orange River’s junction with the Vaal River. Their main settlement was at Klaarwater (Griqua Town), but they also founded villages at Danielskuil and Campbell. These latter two increased in importance after 1820 because they possessed greater agricultural potential than did Griqua Town.¹³ The Bastaard population in 1805 numbered perhaps 400 to 500.¹⁴

THE LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY IN THE NORTHERN CAPE

In 1801 the Bastaards invited the London Missionary Society (LMS) to send missionaries to live among them and William Anderson arrived at Klaarwater in that year. He and his fellow LMS missionaries induced profound changes within Bastaard society, not the least of which were the introduction of agriculture among these pastoralist peoples and the centralization of their political organization.¹⁵ As Andrew Porter observes, however, “Anderson found his influence with the local Bastaard (Griqua) leaders growing as a result of missionary marriages, colonial contacts and the development of a church. However, while attempting to nurture their independence, he also found himself under tightening controls and growing pressure from Cape Town to act, against both his instructions and personal inclination, as an agent for the colonial government.”¹⁶

In 1814, the Bastaards, with missionary prompting, changed their name to Griqua, to reflect a supposed genealogical connection to an ancestor of that name and to the Chariguriqua, a Khoikhoi community who had lived north of Cape Town. This change signaled a shift away from their traditional orientation toward the colonial and European ties of the “swarthy Hollanders” to an emphasis on indigenous ancestry and heritage.¹⁷ The Griqua by about 1815 numbered from 2,000 to 3,000, reflecting not only natural increase, but also significant additions of slave and Khoikhoi deserters from the colony, and the gradual assimilation of neighboring Khoisan.¹⁸ Klaarwater, now known as Griqua Town, was the center of the Griqua community, the center of LMS mission activity in the north, and the government agent’s post after 1822.

While separating themselves geographically from the Cape authorities, the Griqua nevertheless sought to maintain and even strengthen certain ties with the colony. This paradox explains why the Griqua invited missionaries to settle among them almost immediately after their arrival at Griqua Town. The missionaries brought with them Christianity, the symbol of civilization and status within the colony. They also served as representatives to the colonial government and presented to the Cape Town authorities Griqua wishes as they perceived them in matters of commerce and frontier politics.¹⁹ The tensions created by Griqua efforts to remain politically independent, however, while maintaining certain economic and social ties with the colony were a hindrance to the development of a truly stable, trusting and reciprocal relationship between the Griqua and the British authorities. It also placed the missionaries in an uncomfortable middle position where they were answerable to both sides but unable to please either.²⁰

As Legassick has noted, the missionaries remained deeply dependent “on their attachments to the colony, logistically, culturally and personally,” and the government frequently took advantage of this dependency to control the missionaries and their mission station residents.

Thus sanctions could effectively be imposed on them by the colonial authorities and through them on the Bastaards. Indeed, the missionaries were quick to make use of the authority thus bestowed upon them by the colonial authorities. People who refused to help build a mission-house were threatened with government retribution; potential dissidents were warned that leaving the station would mean loss of their guns and of access to the colony. Missionaries distributed powder to ensure the loyalty of those at the settlement and to encourage the adherence of new members. They negotiated with groups hostile to the settlement, allocated and redistributed land and water resources, adjudicated disputes, and punished crimes.²¹

MISSIONARIES AND TRADE ON THE NORTHERN CAPE FRONTIER

Between 1800 and 1814 mission Griqua had access to guns, powder, and ammunition and to the colonial market at Cape Town through passes issued to them by the missionaries at Griqua Town. Those Griqua not attached to the mission traded illegally with the Boers and itinerant traders who met them along the colonial border. These illegal activities angered the mission Griqua. First, by illegally obtaining supplies of weapons from colonists, the non-mission station Griqua were able to maintain a strong position politically and militarily relative to the Griqua at Griqua Town and to the other Transorangian societies. Second, the illegal trade discouraged those Griqua who were loyal to the missionaries because they saw no advantage to obeying the regulations and rules laid down by them and, de facto, by the colonial government who had no legitimate power over them. Third, it disturbed the price and supply structure for goods traded along the northern frontier and often left the mission Griqua with inadequate supplies of goods for which they were forced to pay exorbitant prices.²² In 1814 some of the mission Griqua at Griqua Town openly rebelled and returned to their pre-1800 pra...

Table of contents

• AFRICAN STUDIES
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter One All Things to All People: Christian Missionaries in Early Nineteenth Century South Africa
• Chapter Two The CMS Niger Mission, Extra-Territorial Forces of Change, and the Expansion of British Influence in the Niger Delta during the Nineteenth Century
• Chapter Three Catholicism, Protestantism, and Imperial Claims in Kabaka’s Buganda, 1860–19071
• Chapter Four Threatening Gestures, Immoral Bodies: The Intersection of Church, State, and Kongo Performance in the Belgian Congo
• Chapter Five To Hang a Ladder in the Air: Talking about African Education in Edinburgh in 1910
• Chapter Six Mission, Colonialism, and the Supplanting of African Religious and Medical Practices
• Chapter Seven Conflict and Compromise: Christian Missions and New Formations in Colonial Nigeria
• Chapter Eight West Indian Church in West Africa: The Pongas Mission among the Susus and Its Portrayal of Blackness, 1851–1935
• Chapter Nine Collaborative Landscape: Missions, States, and Their Subjects in the Making of Northeastern Tanzania’s Terrain, 1870–1914
• Chapter Ten Anglo-American and European Missionary Encounters in Southern Sudan, 1898-Present
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Contributors
• Index