The Shadow of Empire: Christian Missions, Colonial Policy, and Democracy in Postcolonial Societies
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THE SHADOW OF EMPIRE: CHRISTIAN MISSIONS, COLONIAL POLICY, AND DEMOCRACY IN POSTCOLONIAL SOCIETIES by Robert D. Woodberry A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of doctor of philosophy in the Department of Sociology. Chapel Hill 2004 Approved by ____________________________________ Co-Advisor: Professor Kenneth A. Bollen ____________________________________ Co-Advisor: Professor Christian S. Smith ____________________________________ Reader: Professor Barbara Entwisle ____________________________________ Reader: Professor Guang Guo ____________________________________ Reader: Assistant Professor Ted Mouw © 2004 Robert D. Woodberry ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT ROBERT D. WOODBERRY: The Shadow of Empire: Christian Missions, Colonial Policy, and Democracy in Postcolonial Societies. (under the direction of Kenneth A. Bollen and Christian S. Smith) Cross-national empirical research consistently suggests that, on average, former British colonies are both more democratic and have more stable democratic transitions. I argue that former British colonies are distinct not because Great Britain was a democracy – so were France and Belgium during the late 19th and early 20th century. Nor were the British more altruistic. However, British colonial elites were more divided and thus more constrained. In particular, religious groups were more independent from state control in British colonies than in historically-Catholic colonies (i.e., colonies of France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, and Italy). Initially the British restricted missions in their colonies, but Evangelical Protestants forced the British to allow religious liberty in 1813. Protestants were not able to win religious liberty in most other European colonizers during the entire period of colonization. Protestant missionaries were central to expanding formal education in the colonies because they wanted people to read the Bible in their own language. Governments wanted a small educated elite that they could control. Other religious groups invested in mass vernacular education primarily when competing with Protestants. Missionaries also constrained colonial abuses when they were independent from state control (i.e., chose their own leaders and raised their own funds). If colonial exploitation was iii extreme, it angered indigenous people against the West and made mission work difficult. Thus missionaries had incentive to fight abuses. Other colonial elites had no incentive to expose their abuses, and indigenous people had little power in the colonizing state. This left missionaries in a unique bridging position. Non-state missionaries also fostered institutions outside state control, institutions that nationalist leaders later used to challenge British colonization and birth political parties. Statistical analysis confirms the centrality of missions in expanding education and fostering democracy. Controlling for Protestant missions removes the association between democracy and British colonization, other “Protestant” colonization, percent European, percent Muslim, being an island nation, and being a landlocked nation. Other controls (such as current GDP, and current education enrollments) do not remove the strong positive association between Protestant missions and democracy. iv To my parents Dudley and Roberta Woodberry. Thanks for your love and support through all these years. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my advisors Ken Bollen and Chris Smith for their support and encouragement during my long career at UNC-CH, Barbara Entwisle for inspiring me to be methodologically rigorous, Guang Guo for his help and friendship, and Ted Mouw for reading my work carefully. Thanks to Stafanie Knauer for managing the data project so dedicatedly for so long. Thanks to Meg Griffin, Lara Landgraf, Corrie White, Nadia and Danielle Rhodes, Jessamine and Francesca Hyatt, Nate Massey, Jesse Cleary, Annmarie McCaig, Jessica Tucker, Jonas Strike, Daniel Farrow, Mark Lindsey, Miwa Hattori, Audrey Werner, Virginia LaMothe, Suki Lehmann-Becker, and all the others who helped me on this massive data project. I could not have done it alone. Thanks also for all those who read and commented on my dissertation. Thanks to Susan Spanith, Mark Amstutz, Jim Bradley, Lynn Spillman, Andrew Walls, and the other great teachers and professors I have had who inspired my love of learning and my desire to walk in their footsteps. Thanks to Mike Welch for supporting me during a difficult time in my academic career. Thanks to Andrew Walls, Lamin Sanneh, Kenneth Scott Latourette, Geoffrey Oddie, Jonathan Bonk, Wilbert Shenk, Grant Wacker, Andrew Porter, Dana Robert, William Hutchinson, Brian Stanley, Joel Carpenter, and others who blazed the train in the academic study of missions history and allowing my work to be possible. Thanks to Harlan Beach, Charles Fahs, James Dennis, Jens Vahl, and others who compiled missions data so diligently and made my work possible decades later. Thanks to James Todd, Geevarughese George, Chris Noble, Pete Hynes, Thomas and Miyoung Wang, Doug Gallagher, Mike Owen, Steve Vaisey, Jay Case, Hellen Griffen, Mark Regnerus, Hank Tarlton, Ginger Strickland, Elizabeth Keim, Buke and Steve Cheek, Karl Umble, Jiexia Zhai, and my friends at Focus and CHBC for all your prayers, support, and friendship during this long process. Thanks to my parents, grandparents, and great grandparents whose work and dedication inspired this work. You are all in my heart. I gratefully acknowledge funding from the Louisville Institute General Grant, Lilly Endowment; Society for the Scientific Study of Religion Research Grant; Constant H. Jacquet Award, Religious Research Association; Fichter Research Grant, Association for the Sociology of Religion; Smith Graduate Research Grant, UNC-CH; Latane Interdisciplinary Research Grant, UNC-CH; and the NSF Dissertation Improvement Grant. Without this funding I could not have completed this research. Thanks also to Nancy Ammerman, Rod Stark, and Bill Swatos for going the extra mile to help get me some of this funding. A.M.D.G. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF TABLES …………………………………………………………………………xv Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………1 Traditional Explanations for the British Colonial Effect……………………...3 British Democracy………………………………………...............…..3 Indirect Rule…………………………………………………………...5 Common Law Legal Tradition………………………………………...6 Factor Endowments……………………………………...…................7 “British Culture”………………………………………...…………….9 Overview of My Argument: The Consequences of Religious Liberty………11 Formal Education in the Colonies………………………...………….12 Limiting Colonial Abuses……………………………..……………..13 Expanding Civil Society……………………………..………………14 Caveats…………………………………………………..…………………...15 Summary………………………………………………….………………….20 2 CHURCH-STATE RELATIONS AND THE FLOW OF MISSIONARIES….........23 Religious Monopolies in Historically-Catholic European Colonizers……….24 Religious Liberty in British Colonies……………………..…………………30 vii Chapter Page Government Regulations and the Flow of Missionaries………..……………31 Directly Blocking Protestant Missionaries…………….…………….32 Diverting Protestant Missionaries with Regulations………................33 3 PROTESTANT MISSIONS AND THE EXPANSION OF COLONIAL EDUCATION…………………………………………………………36 Elite Interests and the Development of Formal Education in the Colonies….36 Colonial Governments……………………………………………….37 Business Elites……………………………………………………….40 Settlers………………………………………………………………..40 Missionaries……………………………………...…………………..40 Religious Competition………………………...……………………..43 Impact of Missions on British Education Policy………...…………………..44 Missions and the Quality and Content of Education………...………………46 Between Country Differences in Education………………...……………….49 Within Country Differences in Education…………...………………………49 Statistical Tests of Mission’s Impact…………………………...……………55 How Missionary Education may have Influenced Post-Colonial Democracy……………………...…………………………….63 1) Economic Development………………………...………...............65 2) Expanding the Size of the Elite and the Middle Class...………….66 3) Increasing Exposure to Democratic and Egalitarian Ideals……….68 4) Increasing State Capacity and the Stability of Decolonization…...74 Conclusion……………………………………………...……………………75 viii Chapter Page 4 NON-STATE MISSIONARIES AND THE MODERATION OF COLONIAL ABUSES………...……………………………………….....................76 Fractured Colonial Domination in British Colonies…………………………79 Caveats……………………………………………………………….81 Missionary Exposure to Abuses…………………………...………………...83 Missionary Motivation to Fight Abuses……………………...….…………..85 Missionary Power to Fight Abuses……………………………...…...............88 Missionaries and the Transformation of British Colonialism………………..92 Comparison of British and Other European Colonizers………..…………..102 1) The End of Slavery……………………..………………………..103 2) The Moderation of Forced Labor……………………..…………108 3) Reducing the Violence of Decolonization…………..…...............110 4) Speeding the Devolution of Power to Indigenous Institutions…..112 The Rise of Civil Society and Decolonization in India…….116 Missions and the Rise of Civil Society outside India…........121 How Moderating Colonial Abuses and Expanding Civil Society Fostered Post-Colonial Democracy………………………………………...125 1) Economic Development……………….………...………………126 2) Minimizing Revolutions…………………………………………126 3) Providing Models for Governance………………………………127 4) Reducing Distinctions Between Elites and Non-elites…………..128 5)