Incorporating Religion Into the Mainstream of South African History

Elizabeth Elbourne. Blood Ground: Colonialism, Missions, and the Contest for Christianity in the Cape Colony and Britain, 1799-1852. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2002. xi + 499 pp. $80.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-7735-2229-9. Reviewed by Natasha Erlank Published on H-SAfrica (November, 2005) Elizabeth Elbourne's Blood Ground is a mas‐ canon.[1] The closest comparison, though, in terful, well-researched, and incredibly detailed terms of its genre, is probably to Jean and John account of Christian missions and the indigenous Comaroffs' Of Revelation and Revolution, vol.1, appropriation of Christianity, in the context of Christianity, Colonialism and Consciousness, white colonial and Khoekhoe ("Hottentot," though Elbourne's approach to mission history, as Khoikhoi, and Khoisan) relations in the Cape Elbourne herself discusses, differs from that of Colony from the late eighteenth century until the Comaroffs.[2] roughly 1853. Throughout the book Elbourne pays In the introduction (the book has ten chap‐ careful attention to metropolitan colonial cur‐ ters, not including the introduction and conclu‐ rents, Dutch and British colonial politics at the sion) Elbourne begins to look at some of the issues Cape, London Missionary Society (LMS) and sta‐ connected with writing about missions and Chris‐ tion politics, and the way in which Khoekhoe in‐ tianity in South African history. According to her, digenous people attempted to maintain an inde‐ part of the book's raison d'etre is "to incorporate pendent existence in the face of these competing the study of religion more thoroughly into the forces. A continual theme is the indigenous appro‐ mainstream of cultural, social and political histo‐ priation of Christianity by the Khoekhoe and the ry" (p.17). Here Elbourne is engaging with a litera‐ subsequent contest between the Khoekhoe and ture on the impact of Christianity and missions white colonialists over the uses and meaning of partially set in motion by the Comaroffs' work, Christianity. which itself was the product of a renewed interest The rough contours of Elbourne's work will in the history of missions in the late 1980s and be known to many readers, since it joins an exten‐ early 1990s (Blood Ground is largely based on El‐ sive historiography of the nineteenth-century bourne's 1992 doctoral thesis). Prominent in this Eastern Cape, South Africa. It is a ftting addition work was a desire to theorize the nature of in‐ to a very readable and well-researched regional digenous agency in Christianity (how much did H-Net Reviews conversion reflect a choice shorn of material con‐ mission events in British debates about colonial‐ siderations) and to understand the ambiguous ism and abolition. role of the missionary as colonial agent. The intro‐ Elbourne's analysis of the Khoekhoe en‐ duction sets out Elbourne's understanding of counter with Christianity traces its origins from these issues and lays the ground for the rest of the the eighteenth century (as a result of itinerant volume. black evangelism), through their growing associa‐ In the frst chapter Elbourne provides a back‐ tion with mission stations and their initial, par‐ ground to nineteenth-century British and Scottish tially successful attempts to integrate themselves Protestantism and evangelical belief. Here she into a colonial economy and lifestyle, to their fnal looks at the establishment of the frst mission so‐ disillusionment with missionaries and the colony cieties and the precarious association of these through their participation in the Eighth Frontier nonconformist societies with middle-class re‐ war alongside the Xhosa forces. This account is in‐ spectability. terwoven with accounts of the immense violence In her second chapter Elbourne provides the done to the Khoekhoe as a result of white settle‐ local context for the rest of the book. This chapter ment and, in chapter 4, Elbourne discusses the includes a brief discussion of Khoekhoe history, as need to take violence seriously. She quotes from well as a biography of J. T. van der Kemp, the an 1808 missionary description of the treatment founder of the frst LMS/Khoekhoe mission station accorded a young Khoekhoe woman by a white at Bethelsdorp. Van der Kemp's calling to mission‐ farmer: "She had been fogged to pieces with a ary work reflects what Elbourne refers to as ten‐ sambok or whip made of the skin of a rhinoceros dency of early missionaries to propagate a "more or seacow and then a vast quantity of salt rubbed potentially socially egalitarian message" (p.101) into the wounds" (p.158). than their successors, an issue discussed in later In the context of this kind of treatment, grow‐ chapters and which constitutes a second theme of ing impoverishment, and lack of land, a kind of the book. Khoekhoe or pan-"Hottentot" nationalism devel‐ The rest of the book concerns events on the oped, based on a sense of group identity which Eastern Cape frontier. These include the initially drew heavily on Christianity and the Khoekhoe uprising of 1799-1802; the establish‐ Bible--and later, on the notion of common land, or ment of mission stations; Khoekhoe uses of mis‐ blood ground--as sources of authority. While El‐ sion Christianity; Eastern Cape mission influence bourne qualifies her use of the term "nationalism" in Britain in the 1820s and 1830s; "Hottentot" lib‐ later on in the volume (according to her, national‐ eration under a liberalization of legislation in ism as it applies in the 1830s refers more to an 1828; the establishment of the Kat River Settle‐ ethnic group than to the cultural nationalism of ment (a frontier area given over to the Khoekhoe) late-nineteenth-century Europe, p. 359), she might in 1829; hardening white settler opposition to the have gone further in her theorization of the na‐ missions during the late 1830s and 1840s; and f‐ ture of Khoekhoe nationalism.[3] Given what is an nally, the Kat River Rebellion (which was part of ambiguous body of evidence for the existence of one of a series of frontier wars) from 1850 to such nationalism--the Kat River Khoekhoe were 1853. only partially literate in English, and more often than not written about by other people--the mat‐ Throughout this discussion, Elbourne devotes ter needs a more concentrated argument (the ma‐ attention to Khoekhoe politics and religion, white terial on nationalism is dispersed among a num‐ mission politics, and the place of South African ber of chapters). 2 H-Net Reviews With respect to her second theme, Elbourne 1830s as a crucible of racism, inaugurating a criti‐ traces the politics of the LMS in South Africa, com‐ cal shift in white attitudes toward black South paring the approach of the early missionaries, Africans. She links this growing colonial racism to which focused less on the Khoekhoe acquisition of parallel developments elsewhere in the British civilization and more on the acquisition of the empire, such as India. "Word," with that of those who came later. Van However, racial categorization was not solely der Kemp and James Read Senior's support for a product of skin color, labor, and land concerns, Khoekhoe aspirations continued under the super‐ but also of contests over the ownership and pos‐ intendence of Dr. John Philip after 1819. Not all session of Christianity. Christianity, which many LMS missionaries, though, supported the views of Khoekhoe professed loudly and vocally including these men. Between 1817 and the 1850s, some during the Kat River Rebellion, signified posses‐ LMS missionaries, including Robert Moffat, began sion of status and respectability. This was espe‐ to oppose the views of this earlier group, moving cially important in a colony where civilization into closer relationships with the colonial admin‐ had been predicated (theoretically) on conversion istration and white settlers, who desired more rather than skin color. Once visible conversion control over Khoekhoe land and labor. became commonplace, struggles over who prac‐ In chapters 6 and 7 in particular, Elbourne ticed Christianity and who could dispense the raises a third theme, which concerns metropoli‐ sacraments, as well as who could read, assumed tan politics, including ideas about poor law re‐ utmost importance. Khoekhoe evangelists who form, abolitionist sentiment, and the Cape. In clamored for ordination were claiming for them‐ Britain, support for the Khoekhoe cause served as selves rights that most white clergy felt were de‐ a test case for the need for abolition in the British pendent on civilization--i.e., race. In part, the in‐ Empire. These chapters are especially important ternal mission conflict of the 1830s was about for laying bare the workings of nineteenth-centu‐ what authority might be accorded Khoekhoe min‐ ry British imperialism, some of which were re‐ isters. Khoekhoe converts were themselves con‐ markably inefficient and ill-informed. vinced of the power which accrued to them by Underlying these themes is the idea of con‐ virtue of their status, an issue aside from faith. All flict, not only between blacks and whites, but also of this made for frontier conflict at a number of over a moral universe predicated on the uses and levels, illustrating clearly Elbourne's point about control of Christianity. By the 1830s, in the wake the need to take religion seriously. of several wars and a growing land and labor It is a pity then, that Elbourne's call, as ex‐ hunger, white settlers in the Cape (and some mis‐ pressed in this book, is not likely to be taken any sionaries themselves) were no longer convinced further. Despite the status of some of Elbourne's by missionary rhetoric about the "reclaimability" earlier work (the citation of which is de rigueur in of Khoekhoe who converted to Christianity. works on colonialism and missions), the moment Whereas previously some space had existed in for this book has passed.[4] The elapse between white imaginations for a civilized "Hottentot" na‐ preparation of the original work and current pub‐ tion (where "civilized" meant clothed, Christian‐ lication has meant that, certainly in South Africa ized, and willing to work for very little pay), the itself, other developments have pushed questions Khoekhoe were now seen increasingly in terms of religion to the historical margins.

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