& Wingfield (eds) & Wingfield Knowles Jacobs, Trophies, Relics and Trophies, Curios? The British Missionary movement, which began in earnest in the early Trophies, Relics and Curios? Relics and Trophies, Relics and 19th century, was one of the most extraordinary movements of the last two centuries, radically transforming the lives of people in large parts of the globe, including in Europe itself. By exploring a range of artefacts, photographs and archival documents that Curios? have survived, or emerged from, these transformations, this volume sheds an oblique light on the histories of British Missionaries in Africa and the Pacific, and the ways in which their work is remembered in different parts of the Missionary Heritage from world today. Africa and the Pacific Short contributions describing the histories of particular items, accompanied by rich visual imagery, showcase the extraordinary l items that were caught up in histories of conversion, and are still controversial for many today. By focusing on the varied forms of missionary heritage, this volume aims to question the often used categories of trophies, relics or curios, and highlight the complexity involved in the missionary encounter. This volume is the result of a research networking project bringing together specialists of missionary collections, i.e. artefacts, photographs or archival documents. These specialists are academics of various disciplines, museum curators and indigenous stakeholders who aim to show to a wide audience what missionary heritage constitutes and how varied it is. The heritage in focus is based in museums, archives, churches and archaeological sites in Britain, the Pacific and Africa. With contributions by Ben Burt of the British Museum, Sagale Buadromo of the Fiji Museum, Ghanaian artist, art historian and curator Atta Kwami, Jack Thompson of the University of Edinburgh, Steven Hooper of the Sainsbury Research Unit, Joshua Bell of the Smithsonian Institute, Samoan artist Greg Semu and many more. ISBNSidestone 978-90-8890-271-0 Press Sidestone edited by ISBN: 978-90-8890-271-0 Karen Jacobs Chantal Knowles & Chris Wingfield 9 789088 902710 This is an Open Access publication. Visit our website for more OA publication, to read any of our books for free online, or to buy them in print or PDF. www.sidestone.com Check out some of our latest publications: Trophies, Relics and Curios? Sidestone Press Trophies, Relics and Curios? Missionary Heritage from Africa and the Pacific edited by Karen Jacobs Chantal Knowles & Chris Wingfield © 2015 the authors Published by Sidestone Press, Leiden www.sidestone.com ISBN 978-90-8890-271-0 Lay-out & cover design: Sidestone Press Photograph cover: Tolai Mask, New Britain, collected by Rev. George Brown. h. 76 cm, accession number Oc1986,03.1. Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum. This publication is an outcome of the networking research project Who Cares? The material heritage of British missions in Africa and the Pacific, and its future. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (grant number AH/J008494/1), the project was led by Dr Karen Jacobs, Sainsbury Research Unit, University of East Anglia, and Dr Chris Wingfield, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, with Chantal Knowles of the National Museums Scotland as a project partner alongside the Museum Ethnographers Group. Contents Introduction 9 Karen Jacobs and Chris Wingfield Part One - Trophies? 23 Giraffe, South Africa 25 Chris Wingfield The Family Idols of Pomare, Tahiti, French Polynesia 29 Maia Nuku Female Statuette, Tonga 37 Andrew Mills Illustration of an Exhibition and Sale at the Wesleyan Centenary 45 Hall, United Kingdom Steven Hooper “Livingstone’s Loom”, Malawi 51 Sarah Worden Bird Specimen, Papua New Guinea 57 Joshua A. Bell Slit drum, Vanuatu 63 Chantal Knowles Sorcerer’s kit, Papua New Guinea 67 Tabitha Cadbury Brass Necklet, Uganda 75 Rachel Hand A Bird of the Net, Solomon Islands 79 Ben Burt Interview 87 François Wadra and Julie Adams Part Two - Relics? 93 David Livingstone’s Magic Lantern, United Kingdom 95 T. Jack Thompson Wood image, Fiji 99 Steven Hooper Thomas Baker’s Shoes, Fiji 103 Sagale Buadromo and Katrina Talei Igglesden Bishop Patteson relics, Solomon Islands 111 Ben Wate Mask, New Britain, Papua New Guinea 115 Jill Hasell “African Church”, Botswana 119 Paul Lane Ship’s bell, United Kingdom 127 Chris Wingfield A green dress, Vanuatu 131 Carol E. Mayer Interview 139 Greg Semu and Jacqueline Charles-Rault Part Three - Curios? 145 Moffat’s model house, South Africa 147 Catherine Elliott Weinberg Wooden doll, Fiji 153 Karen Jacobs Drum, Torres Strait, Australia 161 Anita Herle Chess Piece, Botswana 167 Ceri Ashley Communion Tokens, Vanuatu 171 Eve Haddow Photograph, Democratic Republic of Congo 175 Jocelyne Dudding “Bowl”, Solomon Islands 181 Nick Stanley Parade knife, Democratic Republic of Congo 187 Johanna Zetterstrom-Sharp Interview 191 Atta Kwami and Chris Wingfield References 197 Notes on Contributors 209 Index 215 Introduction Karen Jacobs and Chris Wingfield Over the past two centuries, a majority of the people living in and around the Pacific Ocean and across the landmass of sub-Saharan Africa have become adherents of Christianity, in its various forms. Whatever one thinks about the desirability of this change, its significance, in global historical terms, is staggering. While there has been a recent profusion of independent and Pentecostal churches in these parts of the world, which have been the subject of a great deal of scholarly attention (eg. Anderson 2013; Miller, Sargeant and Flory 2013), it is undeniable that the roots of many African and Pacific churches lie in the protestant missionary movement which developed in Britain at the end of the eighteenth century, and took advantage of the opportunities offered by an expanding empire (Cox 2008). By concentrating on a range of artefacts, material things made by humans, which have survived from the British Protestant missionary movement over the last two centuries, this book attempts to cast light on the multiple historical events and exchanges which together made up this movement. At one level, the artefacts, whether museum collections, memorials or historic churches, themselves constitute missionary heritage – they have been inherited from a past to which missionary endeavour contributed considerably. At another level, however, heritage is less about the things themselves, and more about how we deal with them and negotiate their significance in the present. Through focussing on a diverse range of artefacts, this book aims to draw out these questions of significance, and explore the different ways in which artefacts with origins in the missionary past may be important for different communities in the present. These groups include contemporary Christians in Africa and the Pacific, people from these parts of the world living in Europe, but also Europeans themselves. While mission histories loom large in shaping both landscapes and identities in much of sub-Saharan Africa and the Pacific, where the architectural remains of early missions are frequently recognised as significant heritage sites, they are more easily forgotten in Europe. In Britain, apart from a small number of memorials and blue plaques on buildings associated with famous British missionaries (most notably Figure 1. View inside the main room of the London Missionary Society (LMS) museum, printed in the Illustrated London News, 1843. Note the model Tswana house to the left of the giraffe, shot in 1813 by LMS missionary John Campbell’s party in the Northern Cape. The model house features in Elliott’s chapter, the giraffe in Wingfield’s chapter.Illustrated London News, 20 May 1843, page 342. Courtesy of Chris Wingfield. introduction 9 David Livingstone), the most significant material reminders of overseas missionary activity are collections of portable material, brought and sent back to Britain by missionaries. Many are kept today in small and large museums across the British Isles. It is fair to say that in many cases their connection to the British missionary movement is often unknown and largely unacknowledged. In larger collections, such as those of the British Museum or the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, many of these artefacts are presented primarily as ethnographic specimens, examples of things made in Africa or the Pacific, without significant acknowledgement of the complex histories of religious conversion and encounter from which they originate. Reassessing the significance of these objects in the light of these histories, however, means considering a period before the category of ethnographic object was in widespread use (see Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1991). The terms more usually applied to such artefacts when they arrived in Britain were those used in the title of this book: trophies, relics and curios. One example of this usage comes from a pamphlet produced in 1908 to introduce The Orient in London, the largest missionary exhibition ever organised by the London Missionary Society (LMS), at London’s Agricultural Hall, at the time one of the largest exhibition spaces in the world: Innumerable courts are furnished with curios and trophies, with treasures rich and rare, telling here of a martyr missionary’s last bold venture, there of an intrepid explorer’s plunge into some land where white men’s feet had never trod, and on every side objects illustrating the emergence by barbarous nations from the habits and customs of darkness into the splendours of a civilisation