INVASION IN WRITING London Missionary Society Missionaries, the Civilising Mission, and the Written Woxd in Early Nineteenth-Century Southern Africa

by JENNIFER COOPER

A thesis submitted to the Department of History in conforrnity with the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

Queen's University Kingston, Ontario, Canada January, 2002

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This thesis focuses on a group of British evangelical missionaries who proselytised under the auspices of the

London Missionary Society (LMS) in early nineteenth- century southern Africa. These missionaries employed the written word in a number of ways during their colonial careers . Considering their texts within the broader frameworks of the colonising, "civilising" and evangelising movements can illuminate the impact of imperial and settler expansion during this era.

Missionary texts concerning African Christian religious experiences, particularly accounts of conversion and dying, as well as missionary translation and transliteration efforts, al1 informed a new system of knowledge about the colonial "Other" that was currently being formulated in the metropole.

Such an examination of the role of the written word involves a contentious debate about how missionaries might have contributed to the eventual establishment of colonial dominance. Bearing in mind that the missionaries were dxiven primarily by spiritual motivations further complicates the issue. Their ideals of conversion, however, demanded that the convert adopt, together with a relationship with Christ, certain culturally-ascribed norms of appearance, behaviour, and consciousness. These precepts of "civilisation," which iii accompanied both colonial policy and mission agenda during this era, were intended to "uplift" Africans according to a hierarchical scale of societal progress, and argument can be made for their effectiveness in establishing control over indigenous comunities.

The teaching of literacy and the translitexating invasion of African vernaculars which the LMS missionaries undertook, nonetheless simultaneously represented acts of domination and empowerment - When missionaries researched and produced texts that they intended for the use of their African converts, they as a matter of course came to new understandings of indigenous cultures and social systems, These foms of writings evolved after some level of cultural exchange, and as such challenge the notion that European colonisers imposed their own systems of knowledge ont0 unquestioning

African "receptors." Furthes, LMS missionaries enabled and encouraged the use of vernacular Bibles, which aided

Africans in developing a Christianity, and ultimately an identity, separate from colonial enterprises. 1 am particularly grateful to my thesis supervisor, Dr. Alan Jeeves, for his skilled guidance and endless patience. His constant encouragement and support were extremely reassuring, and helped to sustain my enthusiasm for the proj ect .

1 also owe thanks to Yvonne Place in the history department at Queen's for her administrative support, and to Jeremy Martens for his insightful comments on a draft.

Without the unfailing devotion of my family 1 would not have completed this paper. Their help at intervals with moving and childcare, and their indulgence over an extended writing period is greatly appreciated.

Sophie's patience with a distracted mother and the pleasant diversions she offered deserve recognition. Especially deserving of praise is Jon, whose faith, tact, and unconditional support did not go unnoticed. To him 1 owe profound gratitude. Tablœ of Contontr

1. Introduction: Missionary "Civilising" and the Links Between Metropole and Periphery 1

2. Literature Review 28

3. LMS Missionary Writing About Religious Experiences 43

4. Literacy, Translation and Transliteration 77

5. Conclusions 109

6. Bibliography 111

7. Vita 119 Misaion- Wivilising8,and the tinku Betwœen Metropole and Petipheq

British irnperialism has often been viewed as first and forernost a builder of new foms of knowledge-the deliberate constructor O£ identities and stereotypes about non-European societies and cultures. Early nineteenth-century evangelical missionaries working in southern Africa undeniably made key contributions to this knowledge-forming process. As a result, they have often been condemned as "agents of imperialism and capitalism" acting in unity with a colonising £orce bent on the subjugation of indiyenous societies. Indeed, as John deGruchy argues, there is proof to support the claim that many missionaries did overtly support the establishment of European political and economic hegemony. However, consideration of motivations and ideological underpinnings which Lay behind their contributions to the colonial endeavour uncovers evidence that the role of missionaries within imperialism was decidedly more complex.

Recent studies have taken into account that missionaries communicated colonial authority while focussing more on imperialism as a series of related struggles for power and the political, economic, and

- -

3.W. deGruchy, "Remernberin- a Leqacy, " in desruchy, ed., The London Missionary Society in Southern Africa, 1793-1999: Historical Essays in Celebration of the LMS in Southern Africa, (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 20001, 2. cultural subtleties which shaped them. Scholars have begun to question the dominating elements of colonialisrn and highlighted the struggles apparent between but not exclusive to, Britain and its colonies, missionary societies and colonial governments, missionaries and their sponsors, and missionaries and the colonial

"other." Sorne of the most influential among these works inspect the broader undercurrents of empire in order to shed light on the intricacies of power struggles within the colonial relationship. C.A. Bayly, for instance, acknowledges that external factors played a vital role in facilitating British expansion in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, but maintains that British agents overseas supporteci and were ruled through London.

He warns scholars against neglecting the impact of

British ideological baggage on the overseas dominions. 2

H.V. Bowen argues that imperial poliry was affected by a fear of the possible negative influence that the periphery would have on the economic and social balances at the centre of Empire, given the much-publicised infighting and corruption which characterised the

3 Ronald Hyam eighteenth-century East India Company. argues for the significance of a European "intermediate

C.A. Bayly, Imperia1 Meridian: The British Empire and the World 1780-1850, (New York: Longman Znc., 1983!. H.V. Bowen, "British India, 1765-1813: The Metropolitan Context," in Marshall, ed., Oxford Hiskory of the British Empire, Vol. 11, (New York: Oxford University Press, 19981, 531. proconsulate" who afone decided the middle ground, if

any, where pressures from the periphery and policies handed dom from the metropole would converge. Lastly, and particularly relevant for purposes here, Elizabeth

Elbourne8s upcoming book details how competing factions

in Britain and in southern Aflrica furthered their

individual aims and put forward their particular conceptions of social order by using competing interpretations of Christianity. Elbourne' s analysis displays a more fluid and two-directional flow of ideas between coloniser and colonised to convincingly reveal how missionary encounters always operated within the context of colonial politics.'

This thesis will also attempt to explain some aspects of the relationship between metropole and periphery, and, like Elbourne8s study, will concentrate on the missionaries of the London Missionary Society (or

LMS), who represented a particularly strong presence in southern Africa during this era due to the political outspokenness of a handful of its members and their fame and influence in Britain. It will examine some ways in which LMS missionaries infomed the imperial enterprise, while keeping an eye to both their ideological origins

E. Elbourne, Blood Gromdi Colonialism, Missions, and the Contest for Christianity in the Cape Colony and Britain, 1799-1853, (Montreal and Kingston: McGili-Queens University Press, 2002) Note: This work is forthcornino; al1 citations are from the unpublished manuscript. and the circumstances of their encounters in southern

Africa. The bulk of the study wi11 deal specifically

with missionary writing, and wi11 examine how the

"civilising" discourse inherent within Christianising

efforts helped to justify feelings of dominance and

superiority in the minds of missionaries and other

colonisers. One purpose of this initial chapter is to

provide some background into late eighteenth- and early

nineteenth-century Britain and southern Africa, in order

to provide a basis for understanding the commonalities among LMS evangelical missionaries in their writings about their work. A second function is to probe the connection which missionaries provided in shaping the

'civilising" discourse between the continents. Later sections will show how missionary writing about African

religious experiences helped to establish difference, dependence, and control, and display how, at the same time, their systems of knowledge helped to empower

African subjects to challenge the colonial project. Background

The exportation of Christianity was by no means an endeavour recently begun, yet the numbers of privately

funded missionary societies which sprung up in Britain in the last decade of the eighteenth century are generally viewed as the leaders of a distinct trend associated with an "evangelical revival." This religious rnovement of the late eighteenth century arose out of a tumultuous period

of change - A recently united and industrialised nation, new and distinct intellectual trends, and prolonged war with France were among the many upheavals Britons had

lately undergone. A minority of Protestant nonconformists, viewed with suspicion hy the established church and a ruling class fearful of dissent, began to fervently put forth the continuing existence of a benevolent and powerful God, possibl-y in an effort to reconcile the suffering they had seen during these violent disruptions .' Goctrinally, the four elements of conversion, biblicism, activism ("the expression of the gospel in effort"), and what D.W. Bebbington terms

"crucicentrism," ("a stress on the sacrifice of Christ on the cross"), comprised the crux upon which evangelicalism hinged . British evangelicais transcended regional and denominational differences by recognising in one another the supposedly distinctive traits of "Britishness" (as will be explained below) , as well as a common commitment to the spread of the gospel, and "adhetence to 'true'

Protestantisrn-whatever that might be taken to be. "7

Enthusiasm for the movement swelled rapidly, especially among the middlo and lower classes, until

B. Hilton, The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thmqht, 1785-1065, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 17. D.W. Bebbington, Evangp_licalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s, (Boston: Unwin Hpsn Ltd., 1989), 3. E. Elbourne, Blocd Groune, 42. 'evangelicalism" came to be synonymous with proselytisation towards a goal of conversion, and thus with overseas missionary activity.9

The Baptist Missionary Society, founded in 1792, is considered the first foreign missionary society associated with the late eighteenth-century evangelical revival. The London Missionary Society was founded three years later as a working-class initiative removed from the universities, the wealthy, and the established church. Its ministexs were predominantly Scottish

Congregationalists, despite the purported interdenominational chartere3 In southern Africa, the LMS followed in the footsteps of a group of German-speaking

Moravians, who more than half a century earlier had abandoned a mission in the western Cape in the face of intense settler opposition, and then resumed their efforts in 1792. The LMS sent th2ir first rnissionaries, among them Dr. Johannes van der Kemp, a Dutch-born, middle-class former military officer and medical doctor

(1747-1811), to the Cape Colony in 1799. A number of scandals in the 1810s involving LMS missionaries in southern Africa (van der Kemp and James Read Sr., an

English carpenter who arrived at the Cape in 1800 at the age of twenty-two, included) caused the directors to

Ibid.* 47. A- Hastings, The Church in Africa 1450-1950, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 19941, 244, 246. actively recruit the Scottish Congregationalist minister

Dr. John Philip (1775-1851), and send him as a superintendent in 1819 to investigate and repair the

Society' s reputation. Another key piayer, Scotland-born gardener Robert Mof fat (1795-1883), an especially industrious rnissionary who waç to en joy considerable fame at home, arrived at Cape Town in 1817. This paper will concentrate mainly on the writings and actions of these missionaries, though they differed in outlook and religiosity and did not represent a uniformity of political purpose. Nevertheless, together they provided, through their careers and in their writing, a fine cross- section of the broader trends within the civilising discourse.

In southern Africa the LMS focussed its efforts mainly on the Khoesan peoples. The Khoesan had already had prolonged contact with Europeans at the Cape and were undergoing dxastic transformations by the nineteenth century . The Khoe (then known as "Hottentots") were pastoralists and among the first inhabitants of southern

Af rica . The San (called "Bushmen" ) were hunter-gathering peoples. The Khoesan provided important services to the srnall Dutch supply station at Cape Town, but as the numbers of European settlors increased, the Khoe, decimated in 1713, 1735, and 1767 by smallpox epidemics, lost much of their autonomy. Some groups did maintain a precarious independence by migrating or allying with other African groups living to the north and east. Many

Khoesan who remained in the western areas found themselves forced into service with white farmers, under conditions resembling slavery.'" Losses suffered during the 1799 to 1802 resistance by Khoe groups in the eastern

Cape further accelerated this spiral into servitude. As the population in the colony increased and wild game diminished, most of the San also lost their autonomy.

Parties of white set tlers raided San cornmunities , harried them £rom their hunting lands and captured their women and children as servants and herders. 12

On the northern borderlands of the colony lived the

Griqua ('Bastaards"), who comprised a community of Khoe families, runaway slaves, army deserters, and people of mixed descent. They were mostly Afrikaans-speaking traders, hunters, and herders who throughout the period under review increasingly favoured the transition f rom a nomadic to a sedentary lifestyle. Shortly after Griqua captain Cornelius Kok I converted to ~hristianity in

l0 E. Elbourne, "A Question of Identity: Evangelical Culture and Khoisan Politics in the Early Nineteenth-Century Eastern Cape," The Societies of Southern Africa in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Collected Seminar Papers No. 14, 18, (1992): 15. '' E. Elbourne and R. Ross, 'Combating Spiritual and Social Bondage: Early Missions in the Cape Colony," in Elphick and Davenport, eds., Christianity in South Africa: A Political, Social and Cultural Ffstory, (Cape Town: David Philip, 1997), 33. M. Wilson and L. Thompson, eds., The Oxford History of South Africa, Vol. 1, (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 19691, 70-1. about 1800, the LMS began work in the region. 13

Thereafter the Griqua often provided in LMS wxiting a mode1 of the triumphs of Christianity and its principal attendant, "civilisation ." LMS missionaries took credit for forming a new Christian Griqua political polity, and indeed, Christianity becamo a strong marker of identity for the group. Significantly, however, the Griqua soon attempted to remove religious control from the hands of the missionaries when they began evangelising among neighbouring groups in efforts to bring them under their political influence. 14

The LMS laboured with fewer results among the Xhosa

(then called "Caffres") , who lived to the east of the

Cape Colony. Some Xhosa entered into service with settlers, but the sexies of waxs they fought against colonists throughout the nineteenth century demonstrated not only their political autonomy and military prowess, but also the continuing vitality of their culture. In

1800, van der Kemp attempted a mission among one of the

Xhosa groups that was briefly allied with the colony. He abandoned the effort after eighteen months due to turmoil on the frontier. Van der Kemp's mission had little

l3 K. Schoeman, ed., Griqua Records: The Philippolis Captaincy, 1825-1861, Second Series No. 25, (Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 1996 for 19941, xi. l4 Elbourne and Ross, "Combating Spiritual and Social Bondage," 40. religious impact although it did make some useful contacts for the LMS, 1 S

Much ink has been spilled in an effort to explain why particular groups sought out or accepted missionaries. Andrew Porter, for example, argues that rnissionary endeavours succeeded only because of choices actively made by indigenous people when they decided that converting would ensuro them a better future. He warns of the danger of overestimating the power of a handful of missionaries and downplaying native roles. l6 Another related and widely accepted theory states that

Christianity "took root most readily among the uprooted. "17 Gxoups suffering £rom recent dispossession, loss of autonorny, and the cultural despair accompanying societal breakdown, looked for new ways to gain empowerment, or simply to survive.

The literature suggests that Africans came to mission stations for a variety of complicated political, economic, and spiritual motivations. For example, Khoe groups that had been traumatised by their encounter with

lS E. Elbourne, "Concerning Missionaries: The Case of Van der Kemp," Journal of South African Studies, Vol. 17 no. 1 (March 1991) : 157. Fifteen years after van der Kemp lcft the region, Ngqika approached two LMS missionaries recently arrived in the region, recalled van der Kemp with fondness and professed his desire to convert to Christianity. Foreign Missionary Chronicle, iJune 1836): 02. l6 A. Porter, '"Cultural Irnpeïialisrr.' and the Protestant Missionary Enterprise, 1780-1914," Journal of Imperia1 and Commonwealth History, Vol. 25 no. 3 (September 1937) : 386. l7 E. Isichei, A History of Christianity-in Africa From Antiquity to the Present, (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 19951, 100. white settlers may have been attracted to Christianity by the promise of rebirth that was associated with evangelical conversion. By the early nineteenth century, many Khoesan had experienced the loss of their land at the hands of Boer settlers moving out from the Western

Cape and more powerful comrnunities of Xhosa-speaking

Africans from the north and east. As Elizabeth Elbourne implies, the opportunity to begin again must have attracted those with histories they wished to forget. 18

Other explanations suggest that moving to a mission station represented a personal act of protest and defiance against increasing white oppression.

Christianity and the communal life of the mission station rnay have represented an escape or an improvement in living standards for some, such as slaves, women, the elderly, or those experiencing cruel treatment f rom settlers. Missions may have fulfilled a spiritual need for dispossessed Khoe, removed from the religion of their ancestors and prevented £rom participating in the devotions of their employers." One author puts forth that for Griqua captain Cornelius Kok, at least, baptism was a political move which allowed him access to the

le E. Elbourne, "Early Khoesan Uses of Mission Christianity," in Bredekamp and Ross, eds., Missions and Ckristianity in South African History, (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 19951, 87. Ibld., 76. privileges of the nearby white society. Furthemore,

certain features of Khoesan cosmology may have drawn them

to Christianity. The Khoe in particular held sorne

spiritual notions which proved compatible with

Christianity, the most significant being the beliefs in

both a powerful and "possibly benevolent" being who had powers of intervention, and in the existence of an evil deitya2' Khoe practices of personal, direct prayer to the benevolent deity, and beliefs in the spiritual implications of dreams further paralleled the

Christianity of the LMS evangelicals. Most analyses agree, however, that despite these parallels, fewer

Khoesan would have converted had their cultures not experienced the devastation wrought by a century and a half of European colonialism.

Transitions occurring on Britain's broader economic and political landscape in the first half of the nineteenth century further affected southern African societies. Under British suzerainty, the Cape Colony underwent a number of changes. After briefly replacing the Dutch East India Companyf s (VOC' s) rule in 1795,

Britain gained permanent control of the Cape Colony in

1806. The region was immediately integrated into an

Schoeman, ed., Griqua Reccrds, xi. *' Elbourne and Ross, "Combating Spiritual and Social Bondage," 33. Elbourne and Ross note, however, that the evil deity, or Gaunab, may have grown in significance "after contact with Christian ideas of Satan. " imperial economic system which was much larger than that

of the VOC, stimulating investment and agricultural prod~ction,~~and, it follows, the scrutinising eye of Britons . In the decades following the occupation, Britainfs trade with Asia greatly increased, and the volume of ships callins at the Cape rose as a direct result. 23 Due in part to this new status within a larger economic sphere, the Cape saw a remarkable growth in the population of white settlers throughout the first half of the nineteenth century .24 The British took control of colonial administration quite rapidly, assuming control that had earlier been in the hands of local Afrikaner communities. Settlers found British authority far more intrusive than that of the Dutch East India Company.

Accompanying the consolidation of British authority throughout the colony was a community of evangelical missionaries, among them those of the London Missionary

Society.

LMS Missionarias and Cultural imperialism

LMS missionaries and colonial goverment often experienced an uneasy relationship. While the two parties later came increasingly to rely one on the other,

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22 A. Du Toit, and H. Giiiomee, Afrikaner Political Thought: Analysis and Documents, Vol 1, (Ciaremont: David Philip, Publisher (Pty) Ltd., 1983), 23. 23 S. Trapido, "The Emergence of Liberalism and the Making of 'Hottentot Nationalism', 1815-1834," The Societies of Southern Africa in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Collected Seminar Papers, Vol. 17, (1990): 35. 24 DU Toit and Giliomee, Afrikaner Political Thought, Vol 1, 22. during the early nineteenth century, evangelicals abroad believed they answered to a higher calling than imperial authority. Likewise, Britain's designs on South Africa in the early nineteenth century lay mainly in protecting its route to Asia with a minimum of expense and effort, and the presence of evangelical missionaries could potentially have caused any number of complications to thwart this aim. In this era missionaries frequently critiqued state policy or called on goverment only to defend them or "remove an obstacle to evangelism which, for the time being, outstxipped other resources available to them."*' Government agreed to the intervention of missionary societies in part because:

it would ...be exceedingly difficult to find any other suitable class of agents who would be willing to go and reside amongst them (barbarous tribes), solely with a view to the imprcvement of their morals and habits. No person of competent qualifications could be induced to reside among barbarous tribes, unless stimulated either by very large pecuniary interests, or the only other adequate motive, and that by which missionaries profess to be actuated, viz. a benevolent and ardent desire to propagate the principles of the Christian ~eligion.'~

Thus, while conversion was the principal ah O£ evangelical missionaries, but not necessarily of colonial

25 A. Porter, "Religion and Empire: British Expansion in the Long Nineteenth Century, 1780-1913," Journal of Imperia1 and Commonwealth i&istory, Vol. 20 no. 3 (September 1992): 380. D. Coates, esq., Rev. John Beecham, and Rev. Wm. Ellis, Christianity the Means of Ci-xilization: Shown in the Evidence Given Before a Committee of the House of Cornons, on Aborigines, (London: R.B. Seeley and W. Burnside, L.&G. Seeley and T. Mason, 18371, 338- governments, the indoctrinations of the 'civilising mission" provided the ideological apex where imperial and evangelical aims converged. In order to carry out the work of conversion and upliftment to which they were comrnitted, al1 of the evangelical missionaries necessarily became entangled in an often conflicted relationship colonial authority.

Most missionaries also found themselves embroiled within frontier conflicts, and acted political intermediaries between the various conflicting factions.

Van der Kemp, for instance, served as a 'reluctant mediator" between the British and Gona farm-workers during the Third Frontier War. " John Philip has become notorious for his political agitations in support of increased British involvement at the Cape and the extension of certain civil rights to the Khoe, among other causes. Robert Moffat, who made well known his conviction that missionaries should avoid politics altogether, nonetheless offered up some exceptions:

No missionary ... can with any show of Scripture or reason, refuse his pacific counsel and advice, when those among whom he labours requise it, nor decline to become interpreter or translator to any foreign power, or to be the medium of hushing the din of war arising either from family interests or national daims; nor is it inconsistent with his character to become a mediator or intercessor where life is at stake,

'' Elbourne and Ross, "Combating Spiritual and Social Bondage," 36. whether arising £rom iqnorance, despotism, or revenge .28 Imperia1 and missionary ambitions both involved the

necessity of establishing "order." Missionaries thus.

sometimes unwittingly, became legal negotiators,

advocates, and enforcers of colonial policy. Through

their involvement in colonial politics they often took on

the role of cultural imperialists whose actions and

writings ultimately informed imperial conquest.

Imperialism involved s truggles for identity and

consciousness even though officially it was a battle for

landw2' It was at these junctures where cultures met and

conflicted, rather than in the accumulation of territory.

that missionaries contributed to dominating processes.

Edward Said defines culture as both "arts of description,

communication, and representation," such as language, and

"each society8s reservoir of the best that has been known and thought .''30 Missionary writing struggled to know, order, and classify African cultures, then recast them according to contemporary Western European principles of right and wrong.

Consider, for example, this anecdote written by LMS official John Campbell. In 1813, Khoe convert Cupido

Kakkerlak drove Campbell to the Bethelsdorp mission

28 R. Moffat, Missionary Labours and Scenes in Southern Africa, llt" edn., (New York: Robert Carter & Brothers, 1850), 145. 29 E. Said, Culture and Imperialism, (New York: Vintage Books, a Division of Random House, Inc., 1993), xii-xiii. 30 Ibid. station. Campbell noted that the Khoe traditionally placed stones or branches upon the graves of their

'captains" as a prevention against drowning. Campbell remarked further and with pride that en route to

Bethelsdorp, Cupido would stop, alight from the wagon, and scatter these branches and stones. 3' The missionary took heart in Cupidots symbolic rejection of his culture, and although the historian might read a number of motivations behind the actions, Campbell considered them an indication of success in the battle against idolatry and superstition-a prerequisite to "civilisation. "

Dominance here was established (to Campbell's thinking, at least) in the way in which the text suggested that

Cupido had understood the essential superiority of

Christian beliefs over those of his countrymen. The description of these events, published in Campbellts well-circulated travel memoirs, was offered to its readership as an exa?.rtiple of Christian and 'civilising" triumphs within a British colony.

The "Civilising" Mission

By the nineteenth century, Britons considered themselves to be a distinct, special, and superior race, set apart by a shared Protestantism (especially versus Catholic

'' J. Campbell, An Account of Travels into the Interior of Southern Africa, in the Years 1797 and 1798, (New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 19681, 82. France), and unified by a shared imperial enterprise. 3 2

The English, Scots and Welsh had more or less merged into one community by the late eighteenth century, although the regions still experienced reverberations caused by the union. Together they comprised a culture that was

"British," and it was this shared and "civilised" culture which made them a race in their own eyes. Given the remaining divisions within the nation, Britons chose to define their new collective identity according to who and what they were not, and Empire, as well as Catholic

France, played key roles in this. 33 After the losses incurred in 1783, the overseas empire offered a welcorne distraction, and the otherwise diverse and divided

English, Scots, and Welsh could feel united "in dominion over, and in distinction from, the millions of colonial subjects beyond their own bo~ndaries."~~

Establishing difference among societies in such a manner depended on an entrenched hierarchical way of thinking, and the Britain of this era was a strongly hierarchical society. 3' Rigid class structures both reflected and created outlooks that categorised peoples according to social background, education, and moral and

32 T.R. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Rai, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 19941, 3. 33 L. Colley, "Britishnesç and Otherness: An Argument," Journal of British Studies, Vol. 31, (1992): 315. 34 Ibid., 324. -a- 35~.Hyam, -a- and Expansion, 2nd edn., (Basingstoke: The Macmillan Press Ltd., l993), 76, monetary wealth. Evangelicals, although the majority originated £rom within the lower and middle classes and aspired to move upward, themselves had no qualms against the premises of an unequal society. Many agreed with the

Malthusian assumption that social inequalities kept in check man' s natural tendencies towards idleness .36 High morals , self-improvement and education pxovided the keys to upward social mobility in their mincis. Even the most radical did not aspire to a society built on true equality . Evangelical missionaries interpreted the apparently contradictory Enlightenment claim of the universality of human nature to mean that al1 humans possessed the same potential. For example, Philip did not envision Africans aspiring to European class status at the Cape within his own lifetime, but rather pictured equality occurring unfathomably far in the future, if at all. Philip suggested that should the Khoe be permitted to own land, as he himself believed they should, there would be:

no sudden alteration in the landed property of the country... Under the most favourable circumstances the great body of the Hottentots cannot be in any other condition than that of labourers for centuries to come...In free countries you may see individuals rising from humble conditions to possess property; and you may find among our nobility individuals whose

36 Hilton, The Age of Atonement, 74. great-grandfathers were mechanics; but such instances are extremely rare. 3 7

Philip was evidently mindful of settler fears of drastic upheavals in existing land distributions. While he undoubtedly wished to assuage these fears, such justifications of difference in turn informed the

"civilising" discourse, which emerged in the 1760s primarily due to the works of Adam Smith.

Smith cast nations and races on a hierarchical, universal scale,38 claiming that societies moved through stages of moral development through hard work and industrial endeavour.39 Stages ranked from a "low" of nomadism to "highJOurbanised industrial civilisation such as was maturing in Britain at this time, The ideals of a

"civilised" society simultaneously stemmed from and intersected with broad Protestant evangelical ideals of respectability, industry, and morality. These ideals happened to be in lockstep with British economic and political interests-a sedentary, industrious, law-abiding and Christian society would expand and reinforce British markets and prevent political sedition. Therefore, efforts to "improveBO according to the doctrines of

3 7 J. Philip, Researches in South Africa; Illustrating the Civil, Moral, and Reliqious Condition of the Native Tribes, Vol. 1, (London: James Duncan, 1828), 379-380. 3e D. Chakrabarty, "The DifferenceDeferra1 of a Colonial Modernity, " in Cooper and Stoler, eds., Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, (Los Angeles: University of California Press, l997), 375. 39 Bayly, Imperia1 Meridian, 7. 'civilisation" concentrated on groups who represented a real or perceived danger to these establishments-

generally the 'heathen, " whose conversion and

"civilisation" would possibly contain this "threat."

As a result, missionary writing couched difference in a language of fear and suspicion familiar to themselves and to their audiences. Britons of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, for instance, particularly feared groups they deemed idle or jacobinist- The rhetoric which missionaries used in their writings of Africans mirrored that which they employed when dealing with a British lower class perceived as idle and seditious. A fundamental distaste among Protestants for idleness had its roots in the

Refomation rejection of the privileged, contemplative life of a clergyman.4 c! An idle lifestyle became synonymous with sinfulness, which was later reinforced by

Enlightenment proclamations about the individual' s obligation to himself and to society to be industrious.4 1

Missionary text demonstrated the imposition of this ideological framework upon African societies, significant even if it existed only in writing.

The equation of lower class Britons with Africans indicated an initial step towards establishing cultural

40 J.M. Coetzee, White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988), 19-20. 41 Ibid., 21. dominance . Informing Britons of commalities between Africans and a familiar group at home founded a basis

from which to similarly ascertain differences. The missionary who temporarily replaced Philip during an

absence reported that the mission Khoe "appeared to us

fully on an equality, in point of civilization, with a great portion of the labouring class in our own country .0042 John Campbell similarly compared the Khoe to the English peasantry." From here, already assured of the necessity of "uplifting" the idle poor, readers could make the ideological leap and consider themselves obligated to likewise "civilise" Africans, among whom they had already determined to proselytise. "Civilising" actions among the Khoe at the missions of Theopolis and

Bethelsdorp strongly paralleled wishes to impose outward symbols of respectability among the British poor.

Missionary writing fixated on clothing and cleanliness among southern Africans and pursued these, along with cultivation and the building of permanent, square buildings along straight streets, as energetically, if not more so, than the reports of propagation of the

Gospel. These outward manifestations of "civilisation"

42 Missionary Registez, (January 1826) : 34. 43 J. Campbell, Travels in South Africa, Undertaken at the Request of the Missionary Society, 3'üedn. (London: !3lack, Parry, and Co., 1815., reprinted in Cape Town: C. Struik (Pty) Ltd., 19741, 65. thus became an intrinsic part of a parce1 inseparable

from mission Christianity.

Missionaxy civilising efforts in southern Africa

also reflected deeply rooted fears stemming £rom the

emergence of revolutionary France. The French

Revolution, driving home a blow first dealt by the loss

of the American colonies in 1783, threatened even that

remaining part of the empire under British control, and

Napoleon's forces in Egypt raised fears about the

security of the East India Company's eastern dominions. 4 4

One periodical in 1808 expressed feelings of deep insecurity and suspicion: 'the French threaten our existence in India by open force, and by every species of intrigue with the native powers."" On the religious front, Britons believed that "infidelity" in France had directly led to a lack of social cohesion. The pulpits of Britain expounded the view that "irreligion and atheism removed moral restraints and opened the gates to the bloody spirit of anarchy and barbari~rn."~~Popular conception held that if al1 sense of religious obligation were destroyed, government could rely only on compulsion, and that when people began to conceive of a state utterly

44 Bayly, Imperia1 Meridian, 115, 103. 45 Edinburqh Review, (April 1808) : 172. 46 R. Hole, Pulpits, Politics and Public Order in Enqland, 1760-1832, - -- - (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 151-2. separate from religion, they systematically turned into savages .4 7 Evangelical text and actions, both at home and abroad, therefore betrayed a profound fear of nominal and non-Christians and their potentially seditious powers.

Like the idle poor, the "Christian Heathen" (and the groups were not seen to be mutually exclusive) in Britain became targets of a relatively intense evangelising and "civilising" pro j ect . As Robert Moffat wrote, 'If we look at home-a land of light-shall we not find individuals whose ignorance would equal that either of

Hottentot or Bechuana? Have not our noble band of home missionaries brought to light instances of the grossest darkne~s?"~~Missionaries who preferred to proselytise overseas, however, justified their actions by claiming that Britons already had the means at their disposa1 to live a Christian life. They largely felt that "natural" heathens were innocent and uncorrupt, and therefore more deserving of evangelising efforts.

Missionaries were nevertheless extremely wary of reproducing abroad a predicament which instilled such fear in the hearts of "respectable" Britons at home. The editor of the widely circulated Edinburgh Review urged the abandonment of conversion in India altogether,

"1bid. 48 Mof fat, Missionary Labours and Scenes, 185. because past conversions had produced only indiff erent

Chri~tians.~' In 1840 James Read Sr. expressed concern that a colleague had baptised those who were not truly converted. 50 Further, John Barrowfs travel account, pubiished in the early nineteenth century, exposed the existence of a decidedlg "uncivilised" population of

Dutch descent, whom he portrayed as unchristian, lazy, ignorant, and gluttonous Europeans who were neither

'useful" to Cape society nor provided a good example for non-European colonial subjects.51 In order to prevent the proliferation of nominal and therefore 'uncivilised"

Christians, most LMS missionaries made certain that converts had received a spiritual calling in line with current evangelical ideals.

Conclusions

To provide both summary and launching point for further discussions, the iollowing missionary accounts of the words of Africans involve a number of issues here discussed, and remind us of the importance of uncovering

Af rican agency in the colonial conversation. One missionary reported the words of Jan Tsatshu, a Xhosa convert and evangeliser, who claimed that his countrymen

49 Edinbuxgh Review, (1808) : 171-178. 50 B. Le Cordeur and C. Saunders, The Kitchinqman Papers: Missionary Letters and Journals, 1817-1848 from the Brenthuxst Collection Johannesburg, (Johannesburg: The Brenthurst Press (Pty) Ltd., 19761, 214. 3. Barrow, An Account of Travels into the interior of Southern Africa, in the Years 1797 and 1798, (New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1968) . wondered, "Why do not they (the missionaries) preach to their own countrymen, and convert them fir~t?"'~ An entirely new discourse is represented here: Tsatshu questioned the hypocrisy of overseas evangelising, engaging in criticism against the missionary and his colleagues, and with the colonial project. Meanwhile, the author had power of selection and representation over

Tsatshu by reproducing his words in writing, and appropriated the conversation to attack the European nominal Christians whom he believed undermined missionary work.

Moffat betrayed his impatience with unchris tian settlers in his reproduction for LMS directors of the words of a Motswana, Khosilintse, who referred to the

Dutch settlers as "white ~ushmen"~~and dernanded: "Are we only to obey the word of God because we are black? Are white people not to obey the word of Gad, because they are white? We know much of what the word of God teaches, but we are not allowed time to think about our souls while the Boers are seeking to kill us."54 Here both

Moffat and Khosilintse critique government failure to curtail the behaviour of unruly settlers. Particularly poignant is Khosilintse' s equation of Boers with a group

52 Report from the Select Cornmittee on Aborigines (British Settlements) , with the Minutes of Evidence, Appendices and Tndex, British Parliamentary Papers, (1836), Vol. VI1 (5381, 73. 33 R. Moffat, The Matabele Zournals of Robert Moffat 1829-1860, Vol. 1, J.P.R. Wallis, ed., (London: Chatto & Windus, l94S), 379. 54~bid.,378 thought of as "savage" and "uncivilised"-demonstrating

his entrance into colonial discourse and an invocation of

the hierarchy of "civiIisation." For his part, Moffat

used the words to inspire the colonial government to

eliminate an obstacle in his path.

While an examination of LMS missionary text must

take into account the centrality of the ideological

baggage they carried, it is important to remember that missionaries were often the first Europeans on the

colonial Erontier. As such, through writing they shaped

an entirely new system of knowledge which informed

readers at home of the essential 'difference" between

societies perceived as "uncivilised" and a British

society itself in the process of constructing a cornmon identity . The link which missionaries represented in power struggles between cultures in conflict was one of cultural imperialists working within a broader religious and colonial context. How and how far they succeeded in establishing difference and dominance will be the focus

for further chapters, which will consider missionary accounts of African conversion and deathbed stories, and missionary translation and transliteration enterprises. Literaturm Review

The twentieth century has seen London Missionary Society

(LMS) missionary personnel, texts, and policies invoked many times to account for contemporary historical turbulence. The presence of these missionaries in South

African historical debate is significant and deserving of discussion. This chapter will outline some of the major trends in historical writing of mission Christianity in early nineteenth-century southern Africa. It will concentrate mainly on works dealing with the LMS missionary participation in the colonising process.

Bef ore delving into these debates, however, mention must be made of a substantial branch of literature written specifically in praise of the rnissionaries. The two-volume History of the London Missionary Society, published shortly after the societyfs first centenary, for example, celebrates the LMS missionaries as national heroes and pioneers, emphasising their piety and selfless cornitment to the propagation of the Gospel and the

1 Such hagiographie "elevation" of A£ ricans . interpretations have appeared at intervals throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Important in sustaining the genre were the many missionary biographies

l R. Lovett, The History of the London Missionary Society 1795-1895, Vol. 1, (London: Henry Frowde, 1999). like that penned by Robert and Mary Moffat's son in praise of his parents.' *

In the late twentieth century, two biographies written by scholars attempted to reassess the lives and careers of van der Kemp and Philip respectively but came

"dangerously close to hagiography .'83 Ido Enklaar's Life and Work of Dr. J. Th. Van der Kemp and Andrew Ross's John

Philip both provided vital and interesting biographie information while failing to engage convincingly with historical debate. Reviewers have been disappointed by the uncritical approach of these much-anticipated works, bringing the authors to task, for example, for divorcing their protagonists from a broader imperial context . Yet, as with earlier missionary biographies, these well- researched books continue to provide important and often- cited resources.

While most missionary biographies and hagiography have been seemingly immune to changing trends in historical interpretation, critical writing on the LMS

J.S. Moffat, The Lives of Robert and Mary Moffat, (London: Fisher Unwin, 1885). Elbourne, "Concerning Missionaries, " 154. Ido Enklaar, Life and Work of Dr. J.TH. Van der Kemp 1747-1811: Missionary Pioneer and Protagonist of Racial Equality in South Africa, (Cape Town: A.A.Balkerna, 1988) and A. Ross, John Philip (1775-1851): Missions, Race and Politics in South Africa, (Aberdeen: Aberdeen Universitv- Press, 1986 ). More recent and less substantial, though still falling within this trend is S. de Gruchy, "The Alleged Political Conservatism of Rcbert Moffat," in deGruchy, ed., The London Missionary Society in Southern Africa, 1799-1999, 17-36. ' G. Cuthbertson, "Van der Kemp and Philip: The Missionary Debate Revisited," Missionalia, Vol. -17 no. 2 (&ust 1989): 77-94. and E. Elbourne, "Concerning Missionaries," 153-164. has produced a more analytical body of work that may be

loosely divided into several chronological stages. An overview of the historiography might appropriately begin with a discussion of the influential settler historian

George McCall Theal, who, in the late nineteenth century, published an eleven-volume history of southern Africa.

In order to prove that South Africa had suffered at the hands of a selfish and negligent empire, Theal sought to portray Boer settlers as innocent victims of British colonialism. He therefore disputed LMS rnissionary allegations of Boer inhumanity towards Africans. Philip he portrayed as an intelligent though stubborn and single-minded missionary with a dangerous amount of political sway, who "said, and wrote, and did much that al1 who are regardful of truth must pronounce decidedly wrong ."6

George Cory reiterated Theal8s sentiments in the early twentieth century. He sought to prove that the white inhabitants of southern Africa had been oppressed alongside blacks by an invasive imperial Britain. Like

Theal, Cory felt warmly towards the Boers of the eastern

Cape, but his main interest lay in celebrating what he saw as the pioneering spirit of the 1820 settlers from

G. McCall Theal, History of South Africa Since 1795: The Cape Colony From 1795 to 1828, The Yulu Wars of Devastation and the Formation of New Bantu Co.nmunities, Vol. V, facsimile reproduction, (Cape Town: C, Struik, l964), 505. Britain. Cory condemned LMS missionary political involvement, especially aspects of their activism which operated in opposition to white settler interests. Coxy found it 'difficult to acquit hLm [Philip] of being in a large measure responsible, though indirectly, for the wars, race hatred and other political troubles which, it is to be hoped, ended with the Act of Union in 1910."'

So great was the influence of the settler school, that for the first half of the twentieth century, scholars spent most of their efforts in reinforcing, refuting, or presenting alternatives to the histories of

Theal and Cory . The LM3 missionaxies iigured prominently in these debates and provided the backdrop against which scholars struggled to make sense of nineteenth-century

British and settler conflicts, and the roots of twentieth-century segregationist policies.

Writing in an era of renewed cultural conflict and growing A£ rikanerdom, liberal historian William Miller

Macmillan used the vast collection of Philip's papers to research his two books The Cape Coloured Question (1927) and Bantu, Boer and Briton (1929). The volumes outlined goverrunent injustice towards the Khoesan and Xhosa peoples, and its xepeated refusal to heed the advice of

' G. Cory, The Rise of South Africa: A History of the Origin of South African Colonisation and of its Developent Towards the East from the Earliest Times t~ 1857, Vol. II, (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1913), 411. activists such as John Philip. Macmillan made no secret

of his motivations for writing, and, paralleling Philip's

words in order to voice his opposition to racialist goverment, attempted to point out the failure of

settlers and administrative bodies to "take just account of the economic needs and human interests of the native population. A few years later, J.S. Marais focussed on issues in the history of race in South Africa and also looked to the records of the LMS missionaries to make his points. He objected to the growing marginalisation of

Khoesan and mixed race peoples in 1930s South Africa. To plead for the inclusion of these groups in white society,

Marais, like Macmillan, painted Philip and van der Kemp as heroes who challenged what the author saw as a pattern of longstanding injustice visited by the Af rikaners upon

African and mixed race peoples. 9

In the 1950s, South African history began to focus less on struggles between British and Afrikaner and started to consider whites as joint agents working to establish control over blacks. 'O The rapid growth of the working class during World War II and the urban expansion which accompanied it sparked, in some ways, the solidification of a collective black identity in South

W.M. Macmillan, Bantu, Boer, and Briton: The Making of the South African Native Problem, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), ix-x. ' J.S. Marais, The Cape Coloured People 1652-1937, (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1939!, 202. Africa, especially united in resistance against the rule of an increasingly oppressive Nationalist Party. In turn, these events left their mark on the history of the

LMS missionaries. Written under the pseudonym 'Nosipho

Ma jeke," Dora Taylorfs 1952 publication entitled The Role of the Missionaries in Conquest is generally held as the first significant work to consider the missionaries as

"agents of conquest" and oppression, rather than as champions of the oppressed " Taylor saw Philip, van der

Kemp, Read, and Moffat as active imperialists working as an "advance guard of colonialism. "" Colonialism, she believed, represented the root of South Airicars current troubles,

A body of literature in the 1970s and 1980s addressed and expanded upon issues first brought to light in Taylorfs Role of Missionaries. Martin Legassick, for instance, denied that apartheidfs origins could be found within nineteenth-century frontier conflicts, and rather claimed that racialism was a product of imported twentieth century industrial capitalism. His beliefs equated racial hostility with class antagonism, so he strove to locate early nineteenth-century racial violence

'O K. Smith, The Changing Past: Trends in South African Historical nriting, (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1988), 156-7. C. Saunders, "Looking Eack: 170 Years of Historical Writing on the LMS in South Africa," in deGruchy, ed. The London Missionary Society in Southern Africa, 1799-1989, 10. see also Smith, The Changing Past, 158-9. l2 Smith, The Changinq Past, 10. within a master and servant labour relationship.13 A

number of scholars interested in the economics of the

hperial relationship examined, among other issues, the

roles of Philip and the LMS in the passing of Ordinance

50 in 1828, which granted Khoe and Free People of Colour

legal equality with whites. l4 Susan Newton-King suggested that Philiprs urgings for Khoe equality stemmed in part from a sensitivity to the acute labour shortage in the

Colony that occurred as a result of the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, even while he felt genuinely outraged by their suffering. Newton-King claimed that this legislation marked an attempt to increase the labour supply available to colonists to alleviate the crisis caused in part by the abolition of the slave trade."

The transition to political democracy in South

Africa in the late 1980s and early 1990s, together with changes in international intellectual currents, have sparked yet more divergent and distinguishable trends in the assessment of the early nineteenth-century LMS missionaries. Recent works tend to concentrate less on the political roles of the missionaries, and rather try

l3 M. Legassick, "The Frontier Tradition in South Af rican Historiography," in Marks and Atmore, eds., Economy and Society in Pre-Industrial South Africa, (London: Longman, 1380). "~eefor example A. Atmore and S. Marks, 'The Imperia1 Factor in South Africa: Towards a Reassessment," Journal of Imperia1 and Commonwealth History, Vol, 3 no, 1 (October 1974): 105-139. S. Newton-King, "The Labour Market of the Cape Colony 1807-1828," in Economy and Society in Pre-Industrial South Africa, in S. Marks and A. Atmore, eds., (London: Longmin Group Ltd., 1980), 171-207. to problematise the various cultural and social implications of their presence in the colony. Renewed interest in missionary pro jects has inspired scholars to reexamine sources with an eye to the missionsf roles in brokexing cultural and social negotiations between ethnic and racial groups on many levels.

In 1991 the anthropologists Jean Comaroff and John

Cornaroff published the first volume of their seminal Of

Revela tion and Revol u tion, which outlined aspects of missionary cultural imperialism and the "colonization of consciousness and the consciousness of col~nization"~~in

South Africa, particularly among the Southern Tswana.

Taking as their base that al1 cultural signifiers introduced by missionaries played roles in the contest for power, the Comaroffs made thorough work of the importance of signs of civilisation, and the ways in which missionaries, intentionally or not, prepared the ground for European political dominance.

The work of the Comaroffs has been highiy praised, especially for its subtle and innovative methods of uncovering A£rican participation in the contest for power, It has, however, met with criticism for assuming a secular definition of culture while using primarily mission sources to uncover cultural history, A volume of essays edited by Richard Elphick and Rodney Davenport sought to address this gap in the literature concerning the "pervasive influence of Christianity in South African life ." Whereas the Comaroffs considered Christianity as one subsection of a larger cultural package xelayed from coloniser to colonised, Efphick and Davenport claimed that missionaries themselves identified with Christianity first and with their culture second. It follows, they argued, that researchers should bear in mind the pervasive religiosity which motivated mission, and be wary of portraying missionaries as mere imperial henchmen . Christianity in South Africa attempted to connect dif ferent eras, societies, and denominations in a broader narrative describing Christianityfs central role in South African history £rom first contacts to the present, addressing issues such as how Christianity shaped the language used in contests for power from first contacts. 17

Similarly, a recent collection published in celebration of the bicentenary of LMS arrivals in southern Africa has also stressed the importance of

l6 J. Comaroff and J. Cornaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism, and Cons~iousnessin South Africa, Vol. 1, (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991), xi, 17 Elphick and Davenport, eds,, Christianity in South Africa. Elphick also contributed to another collection of essays, edited by Henry Bredekamp and Robert Ross, which considered historical figures as religious people in a cross-denominational examination of nineteenth- century Christian missions, See H. Bredekamp and R. Ross, eds., religion and spirituality in missionary encounters. This volume strove to highlight "the place of Christianity in the social history of southern ~frica"" by holding central missionary religious aims. Two particularly insightful essays by Helen Ludlow and Natasha Erlank, respectively, probed to some degree the role of women in

LMS work, including the role of LMS women in education, and the relationship between Jane and John Philip.19

One mandate of the bicentennial publication was to include a discussion of the African appropriation of

Christian concepts, which represents another branch of the same historiographical trend. 2O Traditionally, research on the Independent Church movement located the first African usages of mission Christianity in the late nineteenth century, during struggles against economic marginalisation and segregation. 21 Independence itsel f proved a contentious issue, as different meanings were construed for the term. Some consider independence to have occurred when Africans assumed leadership of a

Missions and Christianity in South African History, (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1995). '' J.W. deGruchy, "Remembering a Legacy," in deGruchy, ed., The London Missionary Society in Southern Africa 1799-1999, 2. l9 See Ludlow, "Working at the Heart: The London Missionary Society in Cape Town, 1819-1844," 99-119, and Erlank, "Jane and John Philip: Partnership, Usefulness and Sexuality in the Service of God," 82-98, in de Gruchy, ed., The Londcn Missionary Society in Southern Africa 1799-1999, 271 See for example J. L. Comaroff and J. Comaroff, 'Cultivation, Christianity & Colonialism: Towards a New African Genesis," in de Gruchy, ed., The London Missionary Society in Southern Africa, 55-81. church, though they might have remained doctrinally

indistinguishable £rom the institution from which they split. Others deem independence to have begun when

Af ricans began to truly incorporate Chris tianity into their own belief systems, or vice versa. Researchers have recently attempted to pin the beginning of African appropriation of Christian concepts to an earlier era.

Janet Hodgsonfs in-depth examination of the Xhosa

Ntsikana's Christian hymns, for instance, showed that

Ntsikana (c. 1780-1821), by "interpreting Christianity within the traditional framework... was able to fulfil the spiritual needs of those of his countrymen who were moving between two cultures and who otherwise would have been left in a spiritual vacuum. "22

Similarly, Elizabeth Elbourne has contextualised cross-cultural and cross-spiritual borrowing within a framework of power struggle. Relying heavily on LMS records and correspondence, she exkned Khoesan

'' See for example B. Sundkler, Bantu Prophets in South Africa, Znd eh., (New York: Oxford University press for the International African Institute, 1961) '' J. Hodgson, Ntsikana's 'Great Hynn, : A Xhosa Expression of Christianity in the Early lgth Century Eastern Cape, Communications No. 4, (Cape Town: Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, 1980j , 81. In another of Hodgson8 s publications she periodised her argument, claùning the existence of three distinct eras of spiritual contest, beginning with an early era of contact characterised by mutual borrowing of sacred symbols. She outlined a second era, one where whites claimed exclusive ownership to these symbols, and a third, from about 1860 ta 1910, where Africans recovered their own symbcls and integrated them with Christianity. See 'A Battle for Sacred Pcwex: Christian Beginnings among the Xhosa," in Elphick and Davenport, ecls., Christianity in South Africa, 68-88 motivations behind cooperation with Christian mission an oft-cited article. She claims:

It is... essential to analyse the ways in which the religion of British rnissionaries was forged by economic circumstances and mythologies, and how British missionaries, for the most part arrogantly, sought to transmit their own beliefs about the ideal society to their African converts. On the other hand, it is not helpful simply to reduce the messiness of Christianity to an oversimplified view of the messiness of capitalism, and to assume that people interacting with Christianity were resisting or succumbing to capitalism. The assumption cuts off discussion of complicated local politics, as well as being a curiously flat way to look at religi~n.'~

Elbourne's approach was often at odds to balance regional and imperial politics. Mindful of the influence of

European missionary ideological baggage, she believes in the key role played by intrusive imperial policy, but privileges above al1 the role of local agency in the mission relationship. Within this context she uncovered

African voice within LMS missionary reports, striving t0 recognise instances of religious and political merging in the contest for power.

Others have also taken up ideas of spiritual and cultural fusion, along the lines of Hodgson's and

Elbournefs analyses, as they attempted to tease out the intricacies of colonial interactions with indigenous polities. Some, however, emphasised European missionary, rather than Af rican, responsibility for the "Africanirationff of ~hristianit~.24 The realities that missionaries encountered everyday, Steven Kaplan argued, forced them to make individual spontaneous decisions about the kind of Christianity they would impart, and often this necessary adaptation included introducing

"African concepts into the body of 'normative'

Christianity," or adding a Christian slant to existing

African religious practices. 25 Similarly, Lamin Sanneh wrote of the major consequences that followed the translation of the Gospels into African vernaculars, a process set in motion mainly by missionaries, and its role in 'genuine cultural e~change."~~

The written word has received mention in social studies of power within colonial southern Africa such as those by Elbourne and the Comaroffs. Rarely, however, has the symbol of the written word in the imperial and evangelical relationship between cultures in Africa been the sole subject for an extensive work. Although Paul

Landau's research deals with a later era, his Realm of the Word demonstrates an especial sensitivity to exchanges and nuances of language in his construction of

23 E. Elbourne, "Early Khoesan Uses of Mission Christianity," 90. 24 S. Kaplan, "The Africanization of Missionary Christianity: History and Typology," in Kaplan, ed. Indigenous Responses to Western Christianity, (New York: New York University Press, 1995), 10. " Ibid., 21, 9-23. 26 L. Sanneh, Translatinq the Message: The Misisonary Impact on Culture, (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, l989), 203. a socio-political history of mission Christianity in

Botswana. 2 7

Remaining chapters will draw primarily from the ideological issues raised in the last decade of historical research, concentrating broadly on the role of the LMS in power struggles intrinsic to the colonial situation and specifically on the role of the written word in the LMS missionary experience. The main purpose will be to discern contributions, if any, missionary writing made to colonial knowledge. Confronted daily with realities both of imperial intrusion and local politics, not to mention xeal physical hardship and often fruitless labours, it seems missionaries must have been driven by profound convictions in the essential rewards of Christianity. This assumption is supported by the fact that the missionaries themselves claimed their motivations lay solely in spreading the Gospel.

Nonetheless, and perhaps most importantly, they did not work within a cultural vacuum, but were participants in a culture which was cuxrently setting the groundwork for establishing political, economic, and social control in southern Africa.

When examining missionary writing it is important to keep in sight the LMS missionaxies' underlying

27 P. Landau, The Realm of the Word: Lanquage, Gender, and Christianity in a Southern African Kingdom, (Portsmouth, NH: spirituality. A critical reading of their texts to identify the cultural and ideological signifiers that infom them will provide tools with which to interpret them. It is equally necessary in this endeavour to keep continuously in view the overarching question of whether missionaries helped empire to establish dominance in southern Africa.

Heinemann, 1995), xvii. LMS Missionazy Writing About Raligious ~r=aœncœs "The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us." (John 1~14)

An examination of the written word within the colonial relationship proves especially rich. There existed many incarnations and implications of the word (and the Word) among missionaries in South Africa. Literary theorist Henry Louis Gates, Jr., claims that post-Enlightenment Western Europeans viewed writing as the "visible sign of reason."' Missionary efforts to elevate South Africans according to Enlightenment principles of civilisation included helping them to become literate, especially for the purpose of reading the Scriptures. Literacy occupied a rung upon the ladder of civilisation and therefore held place of honour among missionary goals for their converts. Yet teaching Africans to read gave them the tools with which to interpret and negotiate power, while drawing them into reliance upon a system of communication operated on European tens. To the minds of the Europeans at least, writing represented an effective fom of domination. There appears, therefore, a schism between established missionary aims to "elevate" South Africans and a goal, more often associated with the actions of less evangelically-minded colonisers such as administrative, merchant, and military agents, to dominate

l H. L.Gates, Jr., "Editorf s Introduction: Writing 'Racef and the Difference it Makes, " Critical Inquiry, Vol. 12, (Autumn 1985) : 8. them. Of particular interest here is that the evangelical missionaries of the London Missionary Society (LMS), as imperial figures with a foot in each continent, embodied the inherent paradox of the civilising enterprise. Missionaries built new systems of knowledge which informed and aided British imperial interests, yet these new constructions also made accessible to Africans avenues through which to enter the contest for power and negotiate terms of control. Missionaries stand as complex, fascinating figures within the ambiguity of the colonising process. For the historian, reconciling missionaries' paramount religiosity with their contributions to imperialism makes for a

challenging task. How do we measure the degree, if any, to which missionary literature contributed to the subjugation of the colonised, however pure and well-meaning the intent behind its production? To answer this question, we must probe the complex notions of dominance and hegemony within the colonial situation. Let us consider hegemony, as per Jean and John Comaroff, as a successful "colonization of

consciousness"2 and the imposition of 'a particular way of seeing and beingM3 upon a colonised group. Hegemony

represents a stage wherein the colonised accept the structures and forms of coloniser systems of knowledge and attempt to negotiate their position within these systems, relegating their indigenous classifications, for the most part, to the past. In the hegemonic phase, there exists limited ideological resistance to colonisation and a fairly thorough incorporation into the colonisers' economy, society, and politics, but not necessarily into their cultureO4 Dominance, therefore, as a precursor to hegemony, represents the beginning of this incorporation, where native (and to some degree, alien) ideologies undergo reconstruction, and power and meaning between the groups are under construction.5 A framework borrowed from Abdul JanMohamed helps to further illuminate the fluctuation of power on the colonial frontier in this era. During the stage of colonisation preceding hegemony, when dif ference is being def ined and

control is in contest, indigenous populations experience subjugation by the colonisers to some degree, but "colonialist discursive practices, particularly its literature, are not very useful in controlling the conquered group.. .the native is not subjugated, nor does his culture disintegrate, simply because a European characterises both as savage? Colonialist literature during this phase,

J and J,L. Comaroff, \'Th- Colonization of Consciousness in South Africa," Economy and Society, Vol. 18, no, 3 (August 1989): 267-296. 3 , Of Revelation and Revolution, Vol 1, 4. Ibid., 21, J. and J. L. Comaroff, "The Colonization of Consciousness." 6~.R. JanMohamed, "The Economy of Manichean Allegory: The Function of Racial Difference in Colonialist Literature," Critical Inquiry, Vol. 12, (Autumn 1985): 62. therefore, serves more of a purpose for the colonisers, who are at this point constructing knowledge of a "different" society which they will use, according to JanMohamed, in a later hegemonic phase. This earlier stage nevertheless sees the colonised internalising some aspects of the colonising society before its metamorphosis into the hegemonic,7 with the successful conversions to Christianity as cases in point. With this in mind, written accounts of conversion and dying provide textured areas of discussion within which to explore the colonial contest for power. They offer insight into the truly religious ambitions of most evangelical missionaries and shed light ont0 their roles as agents of imperialism. While underscoring the importance of the link which the LMS rnissionaries represented between the societies of coloniser and colonised, exploring stories of conversion and dying highlights the nature of the missionary personae of evangeliser and coloniser. Conversion was, after all, the missionariesr principal aimf8 so when we take into consideration contemporary evangelical ideals of conversion and the "beautiful death, "' accounts of these central religious experiences also highlight aspects of the

Ibid., 62. Saunders, "Lookinu Back," 14. Vicente ~afael,contract incg Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in Taqalog Society under Early Spanish Rule, (Ithaca, NY: Corne11 University Press, 1988) . ideological baggage which the LMS carried with them to South Africa by virtue of being Western European evangelicals. For much the same reason, missionary translations offer useful points for examination. The act of committing oral languages to paper can in itself be viewed as a form of cultural imperialism, whereby Europeans adapted indigenous knowledge systems into their own established structures. LMS rnissionary translations of the Bible into southern African vernaculars served many purposes: again, the urge to "civilise" cornes into play, now together with beliefs in the power and mystique of the written word, and the spoken and written Word. In this case, missionaries produced translations ostensibly for the benefit of their potential converts and wrote less for audiences in Europe, though we can, for instance, interpret their "mastering" of these languages in the first place to resemble an act of domination. Whether or not the European capture of

indigenous languages in the written form and the subsequent translations of the Scriptures into them represented effective forms of control over the colonised is a matter of some debate. Historians have levelled the charge that British imperialism, quite single-mindedly, wished simply to control and confine African societies and establish difference. LMS missionary texts can also be read so as to align the evangelicals with this imperial aim. At the same time, however, rnissionary texts demonstrate that these evangelicals helped Africans to form a new identity under colonialism, an identity which would eventually undermine British control. To examine the written word through missionary writings 1s to attempt to make sense of the complex relations between the religious and the social, economic, and political, al1 within the imperial arena. As the history of empire is forever bound to the history of the metropole, it proves useful to first examine missionaries and their writings in their formative environment.

Missionaries, Empire, and the word/Word

Literacy in Britain increased at a rate almost proportionate to the expansion of the British Empire, most notably among the ranks of the upper working classes. As a handloom weaver, John Philip's father belonged to this class and he was an active, if secular, reader. Thus, Philip had available to him in bis youth works by Bacon, Swift, Johnson and Newton. 'O Literacy rates rose along with an idealised post-Enlightenment trend of spending time in personal, profound reflection inspired by the written word. The renewed importance attached to literacy, represented by the proliferation of Sunday Schools and literacy lessons among

'O Ross, John Philip (lïiS-l8Sl), 55. the 'evangelical" working classes in Britain,ll went hand in hand with this new sense of the "reflective, inner-directed self. The written word helped to forge a new evangelical identity. Although daily newspapers, grammars and dictionaries began to flow from the presses and had impact in their own right, religious works "formed easily the bulk of what every British printing press was producing in this period. "13 The printing press brought together a far-flung community of like-minded individuals, linked by their belief in the atonement of Christ on the cross for their sins and the conviction that they could be spiritually reborn at any point in their lives through combined intense introspection and divine grace. Religious communities no longer depended solely upon the unit of the parish congregation, but could be comprised of individuals who were physically far apart and connected through religious periodical publications who would publish their letters, anecdotes, and sermons. Perhaps for the first tirne, one did not have to correspond with the religious elite in order to be familiar with and participate in current spiritual and theological debates.

'' Elbourne, Blood Ground, 74-75. l' l' J.L. Comaroff, "Images of Empire, Contests of Conscience: Models of Colonial Domination in South ~frica,"in Cooper and Stoler, eds., Tensions of Empire, 170. IJL. Colley, Bxitons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992), 41. The spread of the printing press also meant that more people could own copies of the Scriptures. This development encouraged the move from communal worship to a more persona1 relationship with the Word than had hitherto been possible, l4 Evangelicals believed that within the Bible lay al1 the truths and al1 information necessary to transform a sinner into a child of Christ, and a literate individual seeking divine truths could enter into a direct relationship with his Saviour. People could find salvation on their own, as the Bible absorbed some of the mystique which had traditionally surrounded the religious leader of the congregation. In turn, religious ranks opened to include the less educated missionary, whose knowledge of the Scriptures and persona1 experiences alone qualified him to lead others to Christ. This un-gentrified clergyman often devoted himself to teaching literacy, in order that others might find Christ through the written word. Within Empire, missionaries worked to rapidly produce literate native converts who would prove faster, more cost-efficient mediums through which to expand Christianity than did missionaries from Europe. It follows that the written word itself sparked a trend towards a more private conversion experience-one that frequently involved vigorous persona1 introspection while

- - - -- l4 A.F. Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in hearing or reading the Gospels . Paradoxically, however, along with this new ernphasis on a more private, introspective religiosity came a profusion of published conversion accounts. One was to experience conversion alone, then share the experience in writing. This in turn tied the individual to the broader religious community. The results were nurnerous re-dramatisations of individual conversions recounted in the many popular religious periodicals of the era, Most conversion accounts loosely followed a predictable chain of events, which stemmed from an idealised notion of a personal, sudden and dramatic transformation. According to this ideal, after conversion the individual undertook to live according to the prescribed noms of a converted Christian's life-noms which involved a recurring cycle of sin, guilt, absolution and gratitude. ALso, a belief in inherent human sinfulness pervaded evangelical views of conversion, Evangelicals held that: because human beings are estranged from God by their sinfulness, there is nothing they can do by thernselves to win salvation. Al1 human actions, even good works, are tainted by sin, and so there is no possibility of gaining merit in the sight of God, Hence salvation has to be received, not achieved, Jesus Christ has to be trusted as Saviour .15

the Transmission of Faith, (Maryknoll, N.Y. : Orbis Books, 1996), 41. '' Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 6. Although waiting for salvation may have effectively left doubters believing it was unnecessary to lead a moral life,

a principle of 'justification by faith" led evangelicals to

reply that gratitude should sustain morality. l6 Missionary accounts of African conversions reflected these current ideologies of sin and gratitude and otherwise bore a strong resemblance to the ideal European conversion account. European conversion accounts retold episodes from a sinful past, recounted recognition of guilt and feeling of shame for this past, then described an emotional surrendering experience and communication with the Holy Spirit, and promised the beginning of a spiritually correct life. Evangelicals believed that anyone could be converted, even those who already considered themselves deeply religious, such as the rninister below. This minister 'on the continent" tells of his dxamatic conversion in a 1797 issue of Evangelical Magazine. He writes of his rescue by divine providence after a travelling accident, and a subsequent fire in which al1 his books perished except for his Bible. He recalled his moment of reckoning:

When 1 arose, 1 addressed Our Saviour thus: 'O Lord Jesus, have mercy on me in my misery. Thou knowest how I have in these last days most earnestly implored thee to give me a full assurance of pardon and acceptance, and to pacify my fainting heart... Give me this day a word from thy mouth, whereby my heart may be especially comforted, and by which 1 may be assured of the l6 Ibid. full pardon of al1 my sins. ' ...1 then took up the New Testament, and opened on that passage, Mark, viii. 2. '1 have compassion on the multitude,' &c. Opposite to which was verse 23. 'And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him, if fie saw aught?' On reading these instances of our Lord's condescension and grace, my heart was quite broken, tears streamed from my eyes; ... 1 took our Saviour at his word. '1 have compassion. ' ...Thus 1 obtained a full assurance in my heart of my redemption through his blood and death, which from that day forward, 1 never lost. -.. While reading the Bible 1 was often filled with amazement to Eind its truths verified in me, and founded in reality. 17

The formula typified by the ministerfs account generally pivoted upon a direct plea to Christ. The convert always received an answer, often in the form of an inner dialogue between the sou1 and the divine spirit. Frequently the convert then turned to the Bible, and had the entire experience confirmed by the "Truths" he or she found therein. Late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century evangelical conversion accounts tended to orbit around an increased trend towards literacy on a couple of levels- persona1 interaction with the written Word frequently reinforced the convert' s experience in the account, and the account itself depended upon a wide literate audience for circulation.

Overseas, missionary writings about their converts'

Christian experiences both reproduced the evangelical conversion formula and helped to shape a new literary category. While literacy rates increased towards the end of the eighteenth century, travel accounts and 'popular geography" became widely published and circulated. l8 Like missionary publications, travel literature informed a wide British readership of Britainrs operations overseas, and offered descriptions both vivid and scientific of their overseas dominions and the inhabitants of these regions. Both travel and misisonary accounts were written for popular consumption, and were held in common by their influence in establishing stereotypes about lands and peoples abroad. Travel writing often first inspired individual evangelicals to venture overseas, and then later provided frames of reference against which they could compare the societies arnong whom they worked. Especially popular were Captain James Cookrs accounts of his three voyages to the South Seas between 1768 and 1780." William Carey, the shoemaker and evangelical missionary to India who is praised with initiating the formation of the Baptist Missionary Society in 1792, was himself deeply affected by the travel writing he had read. By al1 accounts, Carey voraciously consumed

Evanaelical Maaazine. (17971 : 285-286, Elbourne, Blood Ground, 75. "B. Stanley, The Bible and the Flag: Protestant Missions and British Imperialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries, (Leicester: APOLLOS Inter-Varsity Press, 1990), 58. both the Life of Columbus and Captain Cook' s Voyages, and

found inspiration from an uncle who had been to Canada

during the French and British wars. 21 Cook's Voyages also

excited and inspired J. J. Kicherer, one of the f irst London Missionary Society missionaries to southern Africa. 22 Thomas Haweis, a founder of the LMS, became obsessed with the idea of sending a mission to the South Seas after reading Cookfs accounts .23 John Barrow published the first comprehensive English- language geographic and demographic survey of the Cape Colony after his travels there in 1797 and 1798. His official status as an advisor to a landdrost of Graaff- Reinet lent credibilty to his volumes. Barrow's work helped to convince Britain that the Cape was a vital British holding (economically and strategically) and that it therefore necessitated the 3ttention of the British civilising mission's full fleet.24 His views on race relations within the colony together with his advice for its government informed many a British reader. By 1834, a reviewer of missionary Stephen Kay's travel account of South Africa considered Barrowfs book to be a "well-known work on

'O~rn. Carey, An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to use Meam for the Conversion of the Heathens, facsimile reprint, (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 18921, viii-ix. 'Is. Pearce Carey, Wiliam Carey, D. D., Fellow of Linnaean Society, (New York: George H. Doran Co., 10241, 5-6. 22 ~van~elicalMagazine, ( 1804 ) : 6. 23 Elbourne, Blood Ground, 75. 24 M. Streak, The Afrikaner as Viewed by the English 1795-1854, (Cape Town: C. Struik (Pty) Ltd., l974), 6-7. Southern Africa." Earlier South African travel and missionary accounts-such as those of Barrow, John Philip, John Campbell and Robert Moffat-provided further references against which the reviewer compared Kayrs publication. 25

This suggests that travel and missionary accounts

constituted a fairly large genre significant enough to elicit comparison and debate. Missionaries became important channels through which Britain received information of its overseas dominions. LMS missionary Robert Mof fatrs Scottish working-class childhood included winter fireside readings of missionary publications, especially accounts of the Moravians in

Greenland and the East Indies. 26 Missionaries were often among the first colonisers to experience first-hand the languages and cultures of the colonised, even if one of their goals was to alter them. Missionaries themselves were often informed by travel accounts, and in turn their own copious reports, diaries, and letters contributed to the genre which helped to perf orrn an "intellectual ~on~uest"~' of the imperial territories. European writing about other cultures had a

'normalizing effect," as Mary Louise Pratt argues in a study of Barrow*s Account of Travels. Pratt considers normalising

'"dinburqh Review, (January 1834) : 363-387. 26 J.S. Moffat, The Lives of Robert and Mary Moffat, 4. to be a process of classifying and codifying cultural difference with the purpose of fixing the Other "in a timeless present. " This mediated the "shock of contactwz8 by establishing norms of behaviour for encountered societies and offsetting them against the accepted behaviours of the colonising culture. On the imperial frontier, Pratt argues, even European norms were in flux, and this fixing of Other societies according to European systems of classifications also worked to define the societies of the selves.29 Therefore, writing established dominance in the coloniser's rnind by setting up the self/Other dichotomy and exoticising the Other's culture. What Pratt terms "rnanners-and-customs descriptions" of indigenous peoples provide the best example for this process, as missionary and travel writings included descriptions of indigenous peoples with the day-to-day narrative, More often than not, Pratt argues, this rendered

the Other a mere part of the landscape.30 The writer, she continues, used a casual and detached tone, indicating he did not consider himself a participant in the scene he described.

" P.J. Marshall and G. Williams, The Great Map of Mankind: Perceptions of New Worlds in the Age of Enlightenment, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, l982), 123, 155. 28 M. L. Pratt, "Scratches on the Face of the Country; or, What Mr. Barrow Saw in the Land of the Bushmen," Critical Inquiry, Vol. 12, (Autumn 1985): 120-121. 29 Ibid., 121. 30 Ibid., 122. Scientific and unemotional manners-and-customs descriptions found in travel and missionary writing appear at a tangent to the extremely ernotional conversion account. However, combining the two styles in accessible language, as missionaries frequently did, provided an irresistible blend of the authoritative and the "exotic" which may have been what rendered missionary writings so widely read. Difference established through travel and missionary accounts thus potentially had dramatic impact in Britain, as, conversely, did the inherent reinforcement of noms.

Power and the Gospda Evangelical religion during the era in question placed special emphasis on conversion and held the Bible in particularly high regard. 31 Consider, for example, this

opening passage from John Bunyanfs The Pilgrim's Progress, a story widely read by eighteenth-century British

evangelicals.3 2

1 drearned, and behold 1 saw a Man clothed wzth Raggs standing in a certain place, with his face from his own House, a Book in his hand, and a great burden upon his Back. 1 looked, and saw him open the Book, and Read therein; and as he read, he wept and trembled: and not being able longer to contain, he brake out with a lamentable cry; saying, what shall I do?33

3' Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 3. 32 Elbourne, Blood Ground, 176. 33 John ~un$an, Grace ~bokdin~to the Chief of Sinners and The Pilgrimfs Progress from this World to That Which is to Corne, R. Sharrock, ed., (Torontc: Oxford University Press, 1966), 186. Evangelicals were often as familiar with The Pilgrim's

Progress as they were with their Bibles, and frequently, it

was the second book, after the Bible, which they translated and printed into indigenous vernaculars. In southern

Af rica, for instance, The Pilgrim's Progress appeared in seTswana in 1848, in Xhosa in 1867, in Southern Sotho in

1872, and in Zulu in 1895. 34 Note how the character above experiences a sudden and dramatic conversion upon reading the Bible. This commonly occurred in evangelical experience. Those wishing to spread the Word hoped that the Bible would act as an influential missionary, believing as they did in the incorruptibility of its message when engaged with directly, in whatever form or translation. Indeed, missionaries often measured their success by the number of Bibles they had distributed. Philip boasted of the high demand for Bibles in the colony and wrote of his chance encounter with a Khoe man who had been taught to read at a missionary institution and who was in possession of a "thumbed and very much tattered" New Testament. He further wrote of a grieving mother who upon receiving a Bible exclaimed ', This is the book we wanted! "35 The power of the Bible to elicit conversion was a common theme running throughout European conversion

34 J. Opland, "The Drumbeat of the Cross: Christianity and Literature," in Elphick and Davenport, eds., Christianity in South Africa, 304. 35 Missionary Register, (March 1824): 142-143. accounts . For example, in 1838 a criminal and former "vagrant" incarcerated in Beverley, England, was converted

when he read his Bible in his prison cell. He wrote that

reading a single passage moved him. After a period of self-

reflection and feeling shame for his former life, he

conversed with Jesus and soon felt that Christ had responded

and forgiven him his sins. 36 ~hhe convert then wrote of his

devotion thereafter to leading others to salvation. In the

African context, Philip told of a farmer converted after

happening upon one passage of the Bible. This farmer and

his brother had been leading a life of sin (they were heavy

drinkers and leaders of neighbourhood revelries) when the

brother found religion. One day, when the farmer hoped to

entice his brother away from his Bible, a verse caught bis

eye and 'his countenance instantly changed-he became pale-he

confessed the cause of his agitation-entreated his brother's

forgiveness-and has, ever since that day, given the most

satisfactory evidence of being the subject of a saving

change. "37

The sameness of European conversion accounts was likely

due to the saturation of the genre in Britain which led to missionary expectations that they should feel and act

36 J. Bassett, The Life of a Vaqrant; or, the Testirnony of an Outcast to the Value and Truth of the Gospel, St" edn., (London: Joseph B. Cooke, l856), 49-51. 37 Missionary Register, (June 1834): 260-261. according to prescribed noms. 38 There appears to be no record of Philip experiencing a sudden conversion, but rather he from a young age actively participated in missionary meetings, to later corne dramatically under the influence of the Haldanes, founders of Scottish

Congregationalism,39 Van der Kemp, however, experienced a conversion worthy of the admiration of al1 Protestant evangelicals. Having struggled with his spirituality for many years, van der Kemp underwent an especially dramatic conversion in 1791 after he witnessed the drowning of his wife and daughter during a family sailing expedition on the

Meuse. 'O The day after the funeral, van der Kemp attended a communion service where he confessed his willingness to surxender his wife and child to God, In true evangelical fashion, a miraculous reply came not from God but from Jesus of Nazareth. After cornmunicating with Jesus, the future missionary realised that his original interpretation of the

Gospel had been incorrect." Gospel "Truths" began to reveal themselves to him, and he became convinced of the redemption of the sinner through faith in "God's undeserved mercy in The day after van der Kempfs conversion, he fell upon his farnily Bible, and "henceforth... respected the Holy Scriptures as the eternal and

38 Elbourne, Blood Ground, 177. 39 Macmillan, The Cape Colour Question, 98. 40 Enklaar, Life and Work of Er. J.Th.Van der Kemp 1747-1811, 27-32- 41 Evangelical Magazine, (1803) : 397. lasting Word of God, the only source of knowledge, a gift of

priceless value, handed to him by the writer ~imself."~~ While missionary writings of their own and other European conversion experiences often included one or both of the two elements of interaction with Christ and the Bible-sparked conversion, their writings of indigenous conversion experiences were subtly different. Comrnonly, missionary writings denied African converts direct interaction with Christ and instead placed the missionary in an interpreting, intermediary role. Granted, as "heathens" Africans did not otherwise have initial access to the Word. Yet missionary writings continuously portrayed Africans seeking out the missionaries for interpretation, and rarely admitted the existence of an African' s subsequent personal relationship with Christ, as was necessary to the European evangelicai conversion. LMS missionary S. J. Freeman wrote of a Xhosa man who had heard a missionary speak of "the wrath to corne" and later sought out the missionary for guidance. The man received a sermon for his pains, to which he replied, "'Sir, 1 am old and stupid; tell me again.'" Freeman continued the account: "And, being told again, the tears rolled down the sable cheek of this man of noble and

42 Enklaar, Life and Work of Dr. J.Th. Van der Kemp, 30. 43 Ibid. athletic frame, and he confessed his astonishment at the love of God and the compassion of the Sa~iour."~' While in missionary writings the missionary led potential converts to Christ and then stood between them, regulating the relationship, both European and African conversions held in common powerful underlying elements of guilt and submission. Conversion represented submission for Europeans and Af ricans alike. However, for Europeans the process was an intensely private experience, and in accounts of African conversion, privacy was not permitted, as the missionary invaded the experience first by witnessing it, and then by writing about it. Hence, missionaries' individual personalities may also be uncovered beneath the formulaic writings. Historians often applaud van der Kemp's reluctance to undermine African cultures and consider him, along with James Read, Sr., to have been perhaps the least imperially- minded LMS missionary of the nineteenth century. Cupido Kakkerlakfs conversion account, written by van der Kemp, noted Cupidofs previous life of sin, and his instinctive realisation that "his conduct would prove the destruction of his soul." After hearing a sermon delivered by another missionary concerning Jesus* ability to Save sinners, Cupidofs sudden conversion reiterated the evangelical ideal.

44 Missionary Register, (October 1851) : 413. He "cried out to himself, 'That is what 1 want, that is what

1 want!'" and later became a faithful labourer at the

Bethelsdorp mission station.45 Van der Kemp's account echoed European conversion accounts with its elements of guilt, submission and a changed life, and an interrnediary (the missionary as Messenger) appeared in the account but was by no means the central player. In comparison, historians consider the "dour ~cot"~~ Robert Moffat to have been more representative of nineteenth-century missionaries. One of Moffat's conversion accounts recalled a grandrnother who represented to him al1 that was "wicked" and superstitious about indigenous Africa. His frustration at her apparent immunity to the messages of the Gospel and his expressions of annoyance that younger women revered her suggest that Moffat felt his own position challenged by the grandmother's social status al the mission. Mof fat explained how the woman was forced one day to hear a sermon, which initiated the conversion process in her. Within a few days, she came to Moffat exclaiming "'My sins, my sins!'" With his guidance, after a few weeks she (her name is not on record) surrendered and became a believer .4 7

45 as quoted in Lovett, The History of the London Missionary Society, Vol. 1, 504. 46 B. Gndkler and C. Steed, A History of the Church in Africa, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 344. 47 Moffat, ~issionar~~aboursana Scenes, 375-376. In both reports, the missionary laid claim to the conversion by exposing the experience in writing for European audiences, so in this sense, both van der Kemp and Moffat gained the upper hand. While van der Kemp allotted to Cupido control of his own conversion with guidance from a missionary, Moffat seemingly took al1 credit for the grandmotherfs change. The two accounts also served to underscore the missionaries' dual roles. They sought to, and succeeded in, claiming souls for Christendom, which proved their religious intent, yet they also dominated the experience by writing about it, and established otherness by incorporating differences against which to offset the ideal European conversion. Mof fat's writing, especially, highlights his opinions of the distinctions between coloniser and colonised, and also whom he considered his audience. As with travel accounts, the intended audience for al1 missionary publications was at home in Britain. Indeed, the texts looked to Britain for affirmation, for as James Read wrote from London, "In Africa we appear as half-devils; here people treat us as half-an gel^."^' Missionary publications served both to assure readers of missionary successes as well as humbly prove that missions had yet much work ahead of them. An air of self-promotion permeates the writings,

48 le Cordeur and Saunders, eds., The Kitchingma.9 Papers, 163. which indicates that missionaries used these writings to attain some degree of personal acknowledgement and recognition, The difference in tone between van der Kemp's and Moffat's accounts may lie, therefore, in their social aspirations. Van der Kemp, as a well-bred doctor and former army officer, was perhaps the only missionary of the era to lose social status by venturing overseas, whereas Moffat, born into a working-class family and possessed of little forma1 education, gained fame and improved status at home by working among the "heathen" abroad and producing copious writings about his experiences for his contemporaries to admire. Without denying the pious motivations of missionaries overseas, one must also take into account that they relied upon continued moral and financial support from home. It therefore rernained in their best interests to display small successes and hint at a potential glorious victory for Christendom should they be able to continue their work. In fact, at times published missionary writings quite openly campaigned for pecuniary support, as two letters from van der Kemp in the same issue of Evangelical Magazine will attest. 4 9 Further, Philip's account of the farmersf conversion above appears as an addendum to an article

j ustifying the expense of gratis distribution of English

4 9 Evanqelical Magazine, (1802): 288-290. language Bibles, In order to garner support for the missionary effort, it was vital to establish and maintain a wide readership of missionary accounts. Missionary writings therefore often contained anecdotes which followed certain accepted formulae calculated to please the readers'

sensibilities , Missionaries were likely well aware of this element of their reports. In a persona1 letter home, Moffat's daughter-in-law named the LMS Chronicle a 'Penny Trumpet" and wrote "There is so much bosh written and printed, so much that is calculated to mislead mind~."~' Moffat's son, John Smith Moffat, claimed, "One is so tempted to write for effect. 1 fear, judging from personal observation, that five sixths of the in teresting narratives in missionary periodicals are mere romances. "51 While there may be evidence to suggest that missionaries acted independently, certainly they wrote to please a large audience and therefore at least sometimes succunbed to sensationalist, self-promoting writing. Predictably, therefore, accounts of African religious experiences echoed their European counterparts. Missionaries reproduced the experiences on terms to which their audience could relate, and, along with their ~ocieties

'O J.P.R. Wallis, ed., The Matabele Mission: A Selection from the Correspondence of John and Emily Moffat David Livingstone and Others 1858-1878, (London: Chatts and Windus, 1945), 118-119 '' Ibid., 151. 1 was led to this and the reference above by Dachs's article in M.F.C. Bourdillon, ed., Christianity South of the Zambezi, Vol. II, (Gwtlo: Mambo Press, 1977). at home, were anxious to present an image of the ideal convert. For instance, in November 1803, three Khoe converts attended a meeting of the Missionary Society in

London with J. J. Kicherer, The Evangelical Magazine weproduced the minutes of the meeting and related the exchange of a question and answer session. Although the exact words of the converts lie, interestingly enough, buried beneath the interpretiny skills of Kicherer, his own limited knowledge of English, (he may have interpreted from

Dutch to English, or from Khoe to Dutch to English), the pen of the minute-taker, and the editor of the magazine, it is still possible to draw some cautious conclusions.

The comrnittee posed very leading questions to the converts, who replied, through Kicherer, with the desired responses:

Q. Did you first seek Christ; or Did he seek you? A. O! 1 should never have sought him, if he had not sought me.-Q. Do you love the Lord Jesus Christ? A. Oh yes, 1 do! But not half enough: 1 want to love him much more. -Q. 1s sin hateful to you? A. Yes; 1 hate it in rny heart; and yet, for al1 that, 1 do sin every day...Q. Are you thankful to the Missionary Society for sending Missionaries to your country? A. 1 am desirous to thank God for inclining them to do it; and 1 would thank them too, but 1 know not how to do it, for want of words.-Q. Do you think that Christ will correct his children when they offend him; or will he cast them quite away? A. He will correct them; but not throw them away. He who loved me from al1 eternity, knew before how bad 1 should be; but that did not hinder him from loving me; and it is now impossible he should cease to love me. 52

-- 52 Evangelical Magazine, (1803): 546 It is difficult to believe that the converts had so obligingly adopted European evangelical concepts of sin, gratitude, and love, and then prornptly delivered them back to their inquiring benefactors. Because of the perfect responses, Kicherer appears as a suspicious interpreter, perhaps unfairly. More importantly, after the various interpreting and editing processes, the LMS had constructed their own advertisement from the convertsr public appearances.

In ber examination of the converts' experiences in

London, Elizabeth Elbourne demonstrates that the converts were indeed embroiled within the ambiguity of colonial efforts but strives to prove that we can uncover evidence of individual agency beneath the loaded text. We can detect struggles, she claims, between Kicherer and the Society, between Kicherer and "his" congreqation, between the LMS and the broader public, and between al1 of the above within the imperial arena. Elbourne points out that Kicherer insisted on bringing the converts to London, perhaps to Save his failing reputation, overriding the pleas of the Society who could il1 afford the trip. 53 Once the group arrived, however, the Society did not hesitate to place the Khoekhoe

53 Elbourne, Blood Ground, 211-212. Elbourne notes that the LMS had considerable troubles at this time, including "travel problems during the Napoleonic Wars, the recent loss of the expensive missionary ship, the Duff, and the closure of the Otaheite (or Tahitian) mission in the South Seas." p. 212. on grand display as both public spectacles and valid

converts .54 Elbourne convincingly outlines the contest for Christianity within the encounter, offering proof that the LMS, Kicherer, and the three converts al1 struggled in their own ways to gain prestige from the event. 55 One of the overarching themes of Elbourners upcoming work is that power struggles between Khoekhoe and missionaries in southern Africa were profoundly affected by the politics of colonialism. During the time in which the early LMS missionaries operated, Elbourne argues, the ranks of the dispossessed (the Khoekhoe, mixed-raced peoples, and slaves) proved more amenable to the Message than those, such as the Sak River San or the Xhosa, who had maintained their independence,56 This suggests that Christianity represented a means through which to gain power, a desirable commodity at least for those who had very little. Elbourne offers that at times rural settlers were willing to accept "nonwhite ministers and preachers in the absence of white," to suggest that Christianity on the frontier represented elevated status and real power. 57 Further, the signs and meanings of colonialism and Christianity were al1 embroiled in ambiguity, especially over the "simultaneous flexibility and necessity of ethnic boundaries in a 'white1 society

'' Ibid.g 217. '' Ibid., 210-219. 56 Ibid.g 208. 57 Ibid. 197. dependent on 'nonwhite' labour."58 Missionary writings reflected these ambiguities, evidenced for example by Kichererrs conflicting claims that the three Khoekhoe converts had both "worked in their youth in conditions akin to slavery" and that his mission was "'among wild

Hottentots... a place where no Christians, no farmers, no Dutchmen live; only wild waste land, where wild people live in the holes like beasts. '"'' Writings of religious experiences provide abundant examples of such ambiguities: pervading missionary motives shine through the texts, as do struggles to define meaning and relationships within Christianity, al1 within the colonising venture. Missionary reproductions of Af rican ref igious experiences thus demonstrate their tenacious ties to their home audiences. Deathbed stories, like conversion accounts, invaded a persona1 event and served the function of promoting overseas missionary work at home. Recounting the dying experience enabled missionaries to feel they had taken control of a culturally-charged event, and the rnissionaries' ability to prove that Christians not only did not fear, but even welcomed death, displayed for them the apparent superiority of Christian belief systems. The report of

converted Khoe Andries Stoffles's demise, for example, claimed that he remained 'calm and resigned" in his final

Ibid., 196. hours. 60 Missionary accounts of African deaths often followed a formula which included welcoming death, cautioning sinners, and final words indicating complete submission. By appearing in a deathbed anecdote, the convert served both as example and warning to the unconverted "heathen, " which shows that missionaries were anxious to enlist the heLp of the dying convert in conveying the Message to the very last. The convert never shed his race, however, no rnatter how "civilised," he had become, and was furthemore prevented £rom forgetting past immoral actions. Van der Kemp's final utterance is on record as

"Light, Philip's dying words forrn an eloquent philosophising on theological matters,62 and an expiring Dutch minister at the Cape exclaimed, "Triumph! Triumph!

Triumph! Blessed be God, 1 have overcome through the blood of the Lamb ! Hallelu j ah ! Halleluj ah ! all le lu jah ! "63 but missionary writings portrayed indigenous converts using their last breaths to preach to and warn "heathen" family and friends to lead a 'moral" life. Moffat claimed to witness the death of a convert, who was 'looking for the coming of the Lord Jesus," and called her "unbelieving daughters" to her side in order that "they may see a

- - '' Ibid., 215. 6"oreign Missionary Chronicle, (October, 1838) : 291. 61 Lovett, The History of the London Missionary Society, Vol. 1, 515. 62 Missionary Register, (July 1852): 289. 63 Campbell, Travels in South Africa, 12. Christian die. fr64 Another entreated her spouse and friends, "Weep for your sins, weep for your souls, With me al1 is el11 am going home, 1 am going to heaven, that happy place. "65 The quiet and thoughtful (or exuberantly joyful, as with the Dutch minister) death of a converted Christian stood in opposition to the pain of a dying heathen who held no assurance of a future state. In the same vein, one contemporary contributor to a rnissionary periodical contrasted the grace of Christ's dying words with the selfish and pain-riddled agonising of the two "malefactors" with whom he died,6 6 Missionaries and their readers at home especially valued the symbolism of the converted African leader's final submission, Just as colonising agents attempted to attach to African leaders al1 the trappings of traditional European royalty, missionaries assumed these 'chiefs" held similar control over their subjects' spirituality. The warnings against irnmorality uttered by a dying African Christian leader therefore represented a coup for the Christianising mission, as long as the leader instructed his people to turn their souls over to Christ, or the missionaries, or Christ through the rnissionaries. Again, the convert died honourably and confident of a desirable life after death,

64 Moffat, Missionary Labours and Scenes, 86. 65 1. Schapera, ed. Apprenticeship at Kuruman: Being the Journals and Letters of Robert and Mary Moffat 1820-1828, (London: Chatto & Windus, 1951), 213. but missionary authors reminded readers of the sins the

convert carried to the grave, and assumed he had the ability

to transfer his powers of leadership over to the missionaries.

Some of Philip's writings demonstrated this formula.

Africaner was of Khoe and European extraction and was

considered a chief with considerable influence among a large

community of bandits. Philip's report of his passing

indicated Africaner's shame for his uncivilised past and a welcoming of death: "'We are not,' said the leader, 'what we once were, savages, but men professing to be taught according to the gospel.,My former life is stained with blood, but Jesus Christ hath pardoned me, and 1 am going to heaven." Africaner's final sentence contained a warning and a reference to a past immoral life: "O beware of falling into the same evils into which 1 have led you frequently: but seek God, and he will be found of you, to direct yo~."~~

One fading chief burst into tears and thanked God for sending missionaries to visit him. His dying words Philip recounted as "by the light of faith, I see Jesus standing at the right hand of God, ready to receive my soul." 68 Another dying convert, this time a Xhosa considered a "chief" by the Europeans, spent his last vestiges of energy missionising his own people and pleading with them to ernbrace

66 Evanqelical Maqazine, (1797) : 188-192. Christianity and welcorne the missionaries. Philip records

his final sentence: "Corne, Lord Jesus, corne quickly; 1 commit my sou1 into thy hands; it is thine, for thou has

redeemed it by thy blood. t"69 Missionary accounts of African conversion and dying, therefore, contained a complex message for themselves and for the readers at home. Notably, the author took comrnand of the event by producing a textual invasion of a pivotal, persona1 transformation. His self-styled role as a "casual, detached observer" lent to the emotional experience a calculating, scientific tone, which in turn gave the account an aura of authority. These accounts were consciously shaped to conform to accepted evangelical noms already in circulation at home. That influence suggests that the missionary felt compelled to satisfy both his own and his audience's notions of how these events should unfold. The approach typically placed the missionary between the convert and the Deity in conversion accounts, and used deathbed accounts to portray the grateful convert warning al1 of heathendom. Such a focus served to establish difference while reinforcing the noms of the author's culture. As one historian aptly writes, "The importance of writing hence revolves around its double function of representing voice (and with it, thought) and regulating the diversity of

67 Philip, Researches, Vol. II, 224. voices . In this phase of colonisation, however , constructing dominance through writing about religious

experiences likely had little effect on the colonised societies but did indeed succeed in reinforcing religious noms of the missionaries* culture and establishing a paradigm of difference.

Missionary Registex, (July 1837) : 316. 15' Philip, Researches, Vol. II, 186-187. Rafael, Contracting Colonialism, 43. Litmracy, Translation and Tran8litœxation

While an examination of missionary writings about African

religious experiences helps to define the relationship

between the evangelical missionary overseas and the

imperial enterprise, it offers limited insight into the

relationship between missionaries and converts in

southern Africa. Missionary writings of the fruits of their Christianising efforts highlight the arnbiguities between imperial "epistemological invasionfJ1 and collective and individual evangelical missionary aims.

These texts demonstrate a direct conversation between periphery and rnetropole, where missionaries used their own ideological frameworks and informed colonial knowledge of Africans. Incidences of cultural exchange are deeply buried, and if the texts aided in the establishment of colonial dominance, it existed in the minds of the author and audience only: writing about

African religious experiences for audiences in Europe likely had little impact on Africans themselves.

Other missionary writings, such as translations, and missionary acts, such as encouraging indigenous African evangelising and teaching literacy, further illuminate missionary multiple roles of coloniser and Christianiser and provide evidence of the resulting struggle for

B. Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 21. Christianity. This chapter will deal with the written

word produced by missionaries in, and mainly for use in,

Africa- Here evidence of colonial contest lies closer to

the surface.

Spreading the Word

Teaching African converts to evangelise served the double purpose of aiding imperial aims to establish order and sending a sincere Christian message, with the added result of eliminating the expense of future missionary salaries. Philip expressed his hope that African teachers would take over positions in infant schools from

European teachers-simply for the reason that he believed the Society could hire twenty or thirty native teachers for the price of one European teacher and furthemore

Save passage money and, later, pensions for widows and orphans. Missionaries and vther imperial agents spoke confidently of the self-perpetuating powers of a "sown spirit of ~hristianit~,"~that would lead to elevated levels of 'civilisation, " and lay the foundation for imperial hegernony, especially the incorporation into the colonial commercial enterprise. This sentiment rose as enthusiasm for overseas missions waned. Once missionary societies began to lose financial support £rom the

* Missionary Register, (January 1834 ) : 25. this sentiment is expressed especially clearly in an article entitled "The Peculiar Advantages of Bengal as a Field for Missions Erom Great Bxitain," in Missionary Magazine, (January 1797). Coates, Beecham and Ellis, Christianity the Means of Civilization. broader public, they drew more and more on the idea of a self-perpetuating religiosity. For example, in 1851, an article in a missionary periodical expressed doubt that the funding of mission stations ensured the perpetuation of Christianity among southern African "heathen."

Rathex, the Gospel, the article claimed, having once been planted, should from that teforward spread itself-

The author instructed missionary societies to spend their money bringing the Word to those who had never heaxd it, rather than wasting it among those who had refused to change their ways and had furthemore failed to support theix own pastors, thus proving themselves unworthy of

European ministrations. 5

From the start, London Missionary Society (LMS) missionaries hoped to educate their converts as best they could with the goal of permeating their thoughts and intentions with the precepts of "civilisation" before they sent them to spread the Word. Of the various missionary societies, the LMS in particular adhered to a policy of independent evangelising activity, which prescribed the missionaryCs role to be one of catalyst.6

The Society hence included evidence of self-disseminating

Christianity in their reports to demonstrate their success. In a letter addressed to Philip and reproduced

British Quarterly Review, Vol. 14, (1851): 111. hundkler and Steed, A History of the Church in Africa, 332. in a missionary periodical, two Englishmen noted that though the LMS missionaries may not have had "long lists of nominal converts," their labours had nonetheless paid off in the form of a sown 'spirit of Christianity" which was spreading itself. They offered several examples of

Khoe and slaves converted through the propagation of the

Bible and the evangelising by Khoe associated with the

Bethelsdorp mission station. 7 Another missionary publication gave a glowing report of Andries Stofflesfs incarceration for preaching among the Khoe and slaves on a public work project, and his subsequent successes preaching among the prisoners, 'so that the only alternative was to release him, and send him back to ~ethelsdor~."' Missionaries admitted to the greater efficiency effected by indigenous missionising at the same the as they trumpeted their own roles in their reports and letters . Paul Landau has pointed out the lack of attention historians have paid to the critical role of

African evangelisers, some of whom disappear from missionary accounts after their dismissals £rom the mission station for immoral conduct or drunkenness.

Exile from stations, he daims, would not have hindered

' Missionary Register, (September 1826) : 421-423. Foreign Missionary Chronicle, (October, 1838) : 290. A£ rican Christians from spreading the ~os~el.Elizabeth

Elbourne asserts that indigenous evangelisation played a

crucial role, at least in Khoe conversion, as she claims

in her examination of Khoesan adaptations and

interactions with mission Christianity.1° While LMS missionaries encouraged the propagation of the Gospel in this manner, they must have had to corne to grips with the

fact that African evangelisers moved faith out of their sphere of control. To assume that meanings of the message did not alter in the translation would be naïve.

Missionary writings at times even celebrated African adaptation of Christianity, as in the proudly reproduced sermon of a Khoe preacher who compared the devil to a lion stalking sheep in a kraal. 11

Hymns provide a fine example of early appropriation of the signs of Christianity. Early Christian hymns in

African vernaculars wexe loose missionary translations of their European equivalents and African Christians soon composed hymns of their own. Attempts to reconcile

Western musical forms with African language patterns meant that the two ended in complementing one another.

Problems in the transcription of Western metre, rhythm, literary forms, harmony, and even content into African vernacular worship songs usually lost out in favour of

Landau, The Realm of the Word, 131-134. 'O Elbourne, "Early Khoisan Uses of Mission Christianity," 72-73. the Africanisation of the hymns, which nevertheless

somehow managed to maintain a tinge of Western musical

flavour .l2 One interesting feature of African Christian hymnody involves "improvised poetry, " whereby a soloist,

while the congregation sings the known stanzas of a hymn,

'will interject some words or phrases, either taken from

the hymn or the sermon, or improvised on the spur of the moment. "13

Hymns were an aspect of Christian worship that

spread rapidly in Khoesan and Xhosa societies. They fit

into existing worship practices and oral methods of

transmission, thus enabling their rapid spread and

special efficacy in conjunction with preaching. While

the African adoption and creation of new Christian hymns

probably delighted missionaries eager for any signs of

success, the incorporation of indigenous cultural

signifiers into religious songs demonstrated that

Africans actively entered the contest for Christianity.

For example, seTswana hymns name one of Godfs primary

functions as a rainmaker.l4 The first Xhosa hymn, written

by an early convert named Ntsikana, was composed to the music of a Xhosa wedding Song, and written in the form of

a praise-poem. Although the Great Hymn looked to a new

- - - LI Foreign Missionary Chronicle, (September, l837), 142. l2 J. Lenherr, "The Hymnody of the Mission Churches among the Shona and Ndebele," in Bourdilllon, ed., Christianity South of the Zambezi, vol. II, 114-118. l3 Ibid., 116. great power, God, the language echoed Xhosa oral poetry and was embedded in Xhosa imagery, as in the phrases

'hunter for souls, forest of truth, shield of truth, creator of the stars."15

Historically, the oral transmission of the message holds privileged status. The New Testament relates

Christ's oral proclamations of salvation to anyone who would listen, as well as the oral sermons of the apostles. l6 Evangelical missionaries undoubtedly thought of themselves as latter-day apostles, preaching the Word and sending converts abroad to spread Christianity.

Missionary enthusiasm for African self-evangelising and the spread of Christian hymns demonstrated their belief that oral methods of diffusion represented a step in the right direction. Indeed, the orally-delivered sermon remained a crucial method of communicating God's Word despite the rising trend of a private, literary relationship with the Saviour. The association of literacy with improvement and civilisation, together with missionary commitment to the civilising mission, however, added another dimension to the conversion experience.

Civilisation and Educition

We are al1 born savages, whether we are brought into the world in the populous city or in the lonely desert. It is the discipline of

l4 Landau, The Realm of the Word, 26-29 IS ffodgson, "Christian Beginnings Among the Xhosa, '* 72-73. l6 Rafael, Contracting Colonialism, 4ii. education, and the circumstances under which we are placed, which create the difference between the rude barbarian and the polished citizen-the listless savage and the man of commercial enterprise-the man of the woods and the literary recluse. l7

AS Philip makes clear above, education comprised an integral part of the achievement of civilisation. The civilising mission began home and cannot separated f rom philanthropic efforts elevate and inspire the masses nominal Christians Britain.

Philanthropists, of ten the middle evangelical working classes, unanirnously felt that literacy and a proper education formed the basis for industrious and law-abiding society.

Sunday schools first became fashionable Britain

the 1780s. The first Sunday school began in 1780 an experirnent to occupy idle and troublemaking children on Sundays.18 Although most were initially independent of religious organisations, they increasingly became attached to individual congregations and their content was soon confined to religious matters, particularly

Bible lessons. For the majority who attended, the appeal of the schools lay in their free teaching of reading.19

There exists some debate as to whether the Sunday schools represented an independent effort towards respectability

17 Philip, Researches, Vol. II, 316. and empowerment on the part of the working classes or

whether the schools were middle-class philanthropie

atternpts to impose reform and moral control from above. 20

The most plausible answer lies sornewhere in between:

becoming literate undeniably empowered the individual

while giving the governing classes more avenues through

which to communicate authority and noms.

Schools and literacy had the potential to initiate

social change, by drawing working class children away

from a self-perpetuating community sometimes perceived as dangerous to the existing social order and instilling in them new values and mores. Educators also hoped to keep the poor out of prisons and thereby prevent a drain on

social welfare systems. Some advocates considered infant and charity schools, often associated with the Sunday schools, to be simply the cheaper alternative to the workhouse system, which included the additional moral benef its of training an industrious poor and rescuing them from "the Great DevourerM- the Catholic Church. 21

Robert Owen's infant school systern, first established at his factory at New Lanark in 1809, quite openly professed a desire to spare children from their parentsf

l8 M. Sanderson, Education, Economic Change and Society in England 1780-1870, Znd edition, (Cambridge: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1995), 5. l9 ~ebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 123. Sanderson, Education, Economic Change and Society, 6. influences,22 and 0wen8s mode1 spread rapidly across

Britain and the Empire.

Striking parallels can be drawn between these

efforts to uplift the working classes at home through

education and attempts to educate and "civilise" Af ricans . In nineteenth-century southern Africa, however, literacy and education took on a decidedly less

secular tone. The word school in Xhosa became the term denoting Christians ,23 and literacy was so closely associated with the religious mission that one missionary had to reassure an ex-slave that literacy was not a prerequisite for entering heaven. 24 Religious institutions in Cape Town first sponsored Sunday schools to fulfill religious and educational functions while occupying Capetonian youth in respectable Sabbath pursuits, similar to the British model. 25 Infant schools established in Cape Town and on the frontier likewise reflected contemporary movements in Britain in their aims to entrench new values in the young before their lives followed the socially disturbing pattern of their parents'. In 1830, the LMS introduced the first infant

21 M.G. Jones, The Charity School Movement: A Study of Eighteenth- Century Puritanism in Action, (London: Frank Cass and Co. Ltd., l964), 34-5. 22 Ibid., 52. 23 Sundkler and Steed, A History of the Church in Africa, 358. 24 R. Ross, "The Social and Political Theology of Western Cape Missions c.1800-c.1860," in Bredekamp and Ross, eds., Missions and Christianity in South African History, 109. H. Ludlow, "Working at the Heart,'" 112. school to Cape Town. " It enjoyed peak attendance during

the last half of the 1830s before numbers began to fall, around 1840, " Englishman William Buchanan established a

school for the poor and slave classes in Cape Town, and

soon Philip recruited him to introduce infant schools to the mission stations. 28

While Europeans appeared eager to teach literacy to

Africans (Dr. Thomas Chalmers exclaimed, 'one of the most sublime spectacles in nature is the wild boy of the woods conning over his lettersmtg),that they might be elevated in civilisation, the topic of education provides another example of missionary aims to both "civilise" and establish difference. Teaching reading paved the way for

Africans to read the Bible, and therefore be converted, which was the missionaries' main goal. By virtue of its ability to elevate according to European principles of civilisation, however, literacy empowered Af ricans within the colonial situation by giving them more weight with which to negotiate authority. Tellingly , James Read noted that different African groups competed for education: "The Caffres begin to see that they have not the same intelligence (1 mean as far as regards books and

26 Ibid., 108. " Ibid., 115. Ludlowfs numbers show that members of Philipfs Cape Town congregation at Union Chape1 were conducting 10 Sunday Schools for 674 pupils by 1837. By 1840, however, Ludlow States that financing from Britain was on the decline due to the waning of evangelical enthusiasm. 2e Ibid., 109. knowledge) as the Hottentots, and they have often wished to have missionaries, like the Hottentots, to instruct them and their children. "30 The education of Khoe on the frontier also affected relations between missionaries and settlers. Settlers who were, themselves, often illiterate, resented the education which the Khoe received for free at the mission stations.31 One colonist and critic of the mission schools clairned that the institutions were 'so many receptacles of idleness, filth, canting fanaticism and squalid poverty," while another scathingly remaxked: '1 hugely guess that the

Hottentots are improved only in psalm-singing .g'32 Batavian governor Janssens banned missionaries £rom teaching Khoesan to write to "keep the peace" among settlers.33 Literacy immediately tipped the power balance within the colony and Africans and Europeans alike were well aware of this.

As a result, missionary writings read as if they were trying to reconcile their desires to establish control with their goals to teach literacy. Philip, for example, noted that even if a Khoe person learned to

29 as quoted in Philip, Researches, Vol. 1, 216. 30 Report from the Select Committee on Aborigines (British Settlements), with the Minutes of Evidence, Appendices and Index, British Parliamentary Papers, Vol. VI1 (1836), 73. (sionaries, (sionaries, Khoesan Labour and the Overberg Colonists at the End of the VOC Era, 1792-5," in Bxedekamp and Ross, eds,, Missions and Christianity in South African History, 5s. 32 South African Commercial Advertiser, (March 10, 1824) . read, he should never reach an equal level of

civilisation with Europeans if he continued to live under

current conditions. According to Philip, the Khoekhoe demonstrated an irresponsible disregard for written texts by refusing to install shelves upon which to keep them.

Philip wrote that until the Khoe preserved their books from "damp, from filth, from vermin, or the children and the dogs34 by storing them appropriately, they would fail to progress. Another example from Philip's writings involved a group of San who had been converted by another literate San when he read to them from a Society Bible.

Philip con£essed that he had diff iculties reconciling their intelligent and acceptable interpretations of the

Gospel with their "uncivilized" manner of dress. 35 Thus,

Africans' failure to adopt outward manifestations of civilisation rendered their reading skills redundant in

Philip's mind. Philip thereby reassured himself and his audience of their own inherent cultural superiority.

Education was nonetheless paramount in ensuring the perpetuity of Christianisation. In a statement which echoed contemporary debates surrounding the need to educate and "civilise" the British youth to discontinue the poverty cycle, Philip claimed that young Africans must be educated in order to interrupt the cycle of

33 Elbourne, "Early Khoesan Uses of Mission Christianity," 69. 34 Philip, Researches, Vol. 1, 211-212. "savagery." Educating the elderly, however, would pxove the il1 spent. For those who were "advanced beyond childhood, and who may never be taught to read," oral sermons would s~ffice.~~Perhaps a perfect scenario, to

Philip's thinking, was found in a footnote to a dying

Xhosa leader' s deathbed account, where Philip noted that the leader had been converted by having a child read the

Bible to him every da^.^' Souls might be saved by Word of mouth, but an integral part of the mission agenda involved ensuring the next generation could read the

Scriptures in order to find salvation independently.

Philip also suggested that in situations where teaching literacy was not possible, the missionary must provide oral instruction and publicly minister the Word,

"provided he can speak to them (Africans) in their own

language .ff 38 Some missionaries of this era seemed content, at least initially, to speak Dutch or use Khoe interpreters when conversing with Africans, and they taught their students and converts to read in English. 3 9

There is also evidence to suggest that at least some at the Cape encouraged the gradua1 eradication of Dutch in favour of Engli~h.~' In 1821, Barrow warned that if

35 Missionary Register, (July 1837): 316. 36- - Missionary Reqister, (January 1834) : 8-9. 37 Missionary Register, (July 1837) : 316. 3e Missionary Register, (January 1834) : 8-9. 39 Report from the Select Committee on Aborigines, 64. 40 expressed for example by 'A friend to utility," in "The English Language, " South African Commercial Advertiser, (October 3, 1833 1 . English were not introduced more rigorously to the

Colony, the Cape might become like Canada, whexe the

French remained as French as on the day of conquest.

Barrow expressed concern that the white races at the

Cape, as in Canada, "will for ever remain two distinct people. ""

If colonisers wished or intended to make English the sole language of southern Africa, why, then, did missionaries so diligently undertake the study of African languages? As a champion of Robert Moffat points out,

'If the goal of the missionaries was to create 'civilised

Englishmen' out of the heathen, then creating a class of people who used English would have gone a long way towards that goal. "42 The missionaries in southern Africa in the first half of the nineteenth century genuinely wished to make Christianity more accessible and learning

African languages provided an efficient and effective way to do this. They also acted, consciously or not, under the aegis of broader British imperial motives to create a dominating discourse, and studying the vernaculars of the colonised groups did just this.

Translation and Trrnslitaration

In the colonial situation, language was an enormously important medium of control which first demanded thorough

41 Quarterly Review, (April and July 1821) : 463. investigation before it could be used to exert physical and ideologicaf power and demonstrate western superiority. As William Carey often repeated to young

European aspirants at Fort William College, "Let no man be able to despise you... Out-Sanskrit the pundits, and then add such knowledge of the Scriptures and of Western science that, stronger than your antagonists, you may foi1 them with their own trusted weapons, and capture their spoil. "43 Bernard Cohn has explored the significance of European appropriation of Indian languages in British India in a chapter aptly titled "The

Command of Language and the Language of Comrnand. " Cohn sees the process of producing grammars, dictionaries, and translations as an 'invasion of an epistemological space" which served to reconstruct indigenous languages and therefore knowledge systems into European representations of colonial rule.4 4 The crux, he argues, depended upon gathering knowledge and information and then recasting it to serve those who hope to rule. However, just as missionaries who studied African languages helped to process , they ended in gaining new cultural understandings. Even Robert Moffat, who had little

42 S, deGruchy, "The Alleged Political Conservatism of Robert Mof fat, " 27. 43 S. Pearce Carey, William Carey, D.D., fellow of Limaean Society, (New York: George H. Doran Co., 1924), 329. 44 B. Cohn, Colonialism and Its Foms of Knowledge, 21. respect for the "liberal" outlooks of van der Kemp, Read, and Philip, and whose tone when writing of Africans bordered on disgust, hoped to master one particular dialect 'by associating exclusively with savages, entirely alone, without an individual who can speak a word of either English or utc ch."" In line with Lamin

Sanneh's beliefs, it seems evident that the background research Mof fat undertook to learn local languages would inevitably have led to some degree of intercultural exchange, and that Moffat, "confronted with an unfamiliar audience... had no recourse except to try to break through on the terms of his or her audience."46 In the form of translations, therefore, missionary writings held a great deal of significance for the colonial contest for power in the "periphery ." Missionaries were often arnong the first Europeans to learn African languages. After they felt they had mastered them, missionaries then reduced these languages to writing. This performed a particularly crucial function in the interwoven colonising, civilising, and

Christianising missions. A British missionary in New

Zealand proudly reported in 1835 that the effects of missionary exertions there had included "abolishing their superstitious observances, establishing the Sabbath,

45 Schapera, ed. Apprenticeship at Kuruman, 234. '' Sanneh, Translating the Messaqe, 192. rendering the natives more industrious, bringing a large proportion of their land into a state of cultivation, preventing war, ameliorating the condition of the slaves, and making the language a written one. 8847 This missionary included transliteration with his efforts to undermine aspects of Maori cultures, establish peace, Christianise, and otherwise pave the way for smooth incorporation into the British colonial enterprise. Thus, while missionaries undertook transliteration and translation projects in order to spread the Word, their transcription of indigenous vernaculars also formed new methods through which to communicate authority. Translation furthemore aided the coloniser's challenge for power in that it established a hierarchy among vernaculars.

Significantly, in translator' s jargon the African vernaculars became in these instances the 'receptor" languages, namely languages receiving and interpreting the meanings of the initiating language.

While it appears that translation represented an effective form of control, in fact translation both established order and led to its dissol~tion.~~The long- term implications of translation into indigenous vernaculars included inadvertently aiding in the formation of African nationalism, and its subsequent

------'' Report from the Select Conmittee on Aborigines, 54. Rafael, Contracting Colonialisrn, 212. challenge to imperialism. Most missionaries learned

African vernaculars in order that they might eventually translate the Gospel into them. With this, as Cohn claims, 'as with many discursive formations and their discourses, many of its major effects were unintended, as those who were to be the objects produced by the formation often turned it to their own ends."49 The independent church movement in South Africa, for example, relied heavily on studying the Bible, which itself eventually undermined the authority of mission

Christianity.50 In this way, therefore, the issue of ambiguity appears again in the "profound disparity between the forces of indigenization activated by the translation enterprise of mission and considerations of alien suzerainty. '"l Missionary translation of the

Gospels into Af rican vernaculars aided in new interpretations and the creation of new identities ultimately incompatible with both foreign rule and the missionaries' own "civilising" mission.

The LMS wasted no time in reducing southern African languages to writing and translating the Gospels into these vernaculars . Early in his career in the Cape

49 Ibid.' 22. R. Elphick* "Writing Religion into History: The Case of South African Christianity," in Bredekamp and Ross, eds. Missions and Christianity in South African History, 24. Sameh, Translating the Messaqe, 106. Colony, van der Kemp produced a catechism in ~hoe,"

composed a Xhosa alphabet, and established a rudimentary

Xhosa gr.mar. Although van der Kemp apparently believed

that Arabic chaxacters would better represent the Xhosa

languages, he believed this would be too difficult for

European readers to decipher .53 This revealed his cooperation with imperial motives in that it proved van der Kemp produced the texts for the benefit of both

Europeans and Africans. LMS superintendent John Campbell continued the translating trend when he reproduced the

Lord's Prayer in both the Khoe and Korana languages in his 1815 publication,54 and by 1834 the LMS reported that nearly al1 of the New Testament had been translated into

Xhosa along with "elementary books.w55 The LMS missionary credited with tackling the transliteration of indigenous languages on a large scale is Robert Moffat. Moffat is often described as an extraordinarily dedicated and industrious, if unimaginativefS6missionary, who, for most of his career, believed strongly that missionaries shoula not embroil themselves in political affairs. As a result, more hagiographie interpretations portray

Moffat8s tireless efforts to translate the Gospel into

52 Elbourne , "Concerning Missionaries, " 157. 53 Enklaar, Life and Work of Dr. J.Th. Van der Kemp, 104. " Campbell, Travels in South Africa, appendix no. 8, 388-389. Missionary Register, (Septanber 1834) : 400. 56 A. Hastings, The Church in Africa 1450-1950, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 308. Setswana as a simple and pious decision to make

Christianity universally available. 5 7

Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff consider Moffat's work as more of a dominating act. In a particularly insightful chapter entitled "Conversion and

Conversation, " the Comaroff s examine translation, dialogue between languages, and the interpretation of signs. The creation of orthography, together with the hijacking of everyday words (such as the seTswana

"modumedi" or "one who agrees" which came to take on the meaning "Christian believer") served to redefine seTswana consciousness, the Comaroffs argue. This represented the colonisation of language, for the Europeans at least, but also developed a standard from which the southern Tswana themselves could negotiate. Of course, the majority of ground rules and terms had been set by Europeans, but what is important here is that once written dom, the languages provided a basis from which seTswana could work. Hence, the act of transliteration created a

"cultural register true to neither, a hybrid creation born of the colonial encounter it~elf."~~

Translation and transliteration did act as double- edged swords by attempting to subjugate while

57 S - deGruchy, "The Alleged Political Conservatisrn of Robert Moffat," 27. J. Ad J. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, Vol. 1, 213-230. 59 Ibid., 218. inadvertently providing the means for Africans to navigate the meanings of civilisation. During the era under investigation, the ambiguity of the missionary translation exercise is especially apparent. Somewhat later, however, in important ways this form of the written word succeeded in drawing colonised societies not only into the new sphere created by colonial interaction, but also eventually lent Europeans new avenues within which to exercise strict control. Reducing a language to writing created a standard within which Europeans felt comfortable participating in the definition of African vernaculars, and through them, the def inition of A£ rican cultures.

For example, when mission stations, especially those run by the Wesleyans, supported the publication of items written in Af rican vernaculars, (the first Xhosa periodical appeared in 1837~') they nevertheless retained censorship privileges. By encouraging Africans to print in their mother tongues, the mission stations both encouraged the preservation of their cultures and participated in their deconstruction. Consider the following exchange between a missionary and a reader. In

1871 the reader appealed to the Xhosa periodical to attempt the transcription and preservation of Xhosa

60 Opland, "The Drumbeat of the Cross," 305-306. customs . The Wesleyan in control of the newspaper responded firmly:

There is very little in old Kaffirdom worth preserving-and we think it will be the wisdom of the natives as soon as possible to move forward into day-and secure the blessings which the present time brings to them. We make this statement even while we intend if possible to publish from time to the brief notices of Kaffir Laws and Customs. These possess a value, as enabling us to understand the native people better-and have an interest as belonging to a certain state of society. But this is a very diffexent thing from holding up that state as worthy of imitation or preservation. 61

This correspondence occurred at a later date than the era in question, but still holds relevance for purposes here.

Missionary writings during the first half of the nineteenth century had undoubtedly gathered the knowledge which later informed the Wesleyan and his counterparts and lent them the confidence to speak authoritatively of the value of Xhosa history, culture, and tradition.

Particularly significant was the editor's claim that

Xhosa culture now served as an example, preserved in the past for the benefit of study. Clearly, by 1871 the balance had shifted a great deal in favour of the colonisers. The translation efforts of early nineteenth- century missionaries held more implications for future imperial relations that they could have realised.

The problems of def inition occurred, therefore, on several levels . For the translation of Christianity, missionaries often compromised and adopted local idiom, reconfiguring existing concepts and expressions to convey their message. Andrew F. Walls argues that the nature of the Christian faith is itself entirely tran~latable.~~

This manifests itself in the translatability of its message through the Bible. Walls's clab that

Protestantism is itself "Northern vernacular

Christianity,"63 may be stretched to conclude that translation of the Scriptures into indigenous vernaculars represented a continuation of the Protestant tradition of divexsifying Christianity. While the Bible proves its txanslatability by virtue of its existence in innumerable vernaculars, the accurate translation of concepts crucial to nineteenth-century evangelicalism is an issue many times more complex. Religious concepts were embedded in a broader power struggle where meanings were continuously under construction. The ultimate untranslatability of certain key concepts may actually have aided African societies in re-tuning the message for their own designs, and produced a Christianity askew to that of the evangelical missionaries.

Early nineteenth-century evangelical conceptualisations of such vital ideas as guilt, sin, and gratitude, for example, were likely ultimately

- - as quoted in Ibid., 306. 62 Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History, 21. untransiat~bie. Through the inevitable shift of meaning

during translation, missionaries contributed to a process

later termed the "Africanization" of Christianity. One

example, from the (particularly conscientious) translator

of the Bible into Luba-Katanga (Southeast Congo) and the

translation of the idea of the "Holy Spirit," dernonstrates this process . For this translator, the indigenous concepts of "spirit" were unacceptable for his transmission of meaning, and after many years he settled on the word "Nsenka," meaning the local court official who interceded with petitioners on behalf of the chief, and acted as theix advocate and mediator. 64 Tr ans lators more often than not compromised by implanting their own meanings into existing structures-an act which verifies the Comaroffs' notion of colonial "hybrid creations."

Missionary translation into indigenous vexnaculars did indeed serve to translate authority, as Cohn has suggested. In many ways, however, the imperfect transmission of meaning resulting £rom translations left enough ambiguity for an entirely new rneaning to develop, as in the translation of Christian concepts of the word

"word. " In seTswana, missionaries borrowed "Lefoko" for this purpose-a word once nearly synonymous with a word denoting 'voice" and holding meanings of social

63 Ibid.? 40. 64 Kaplan, 'The Africanization of Missionary Christianity," 14. importance. 65 Missionaries used lefoko and attached to it connotations of text and literacy, Lefoko had already loosely denoted social power but the tem grew in significance and became heavy with meaning, as in the

European sense of the ~ord.~~As Vicente Rafael pointed out in a study of translation and conversion in early colonial Philippines:

Translation, by making conceivable the transfer of meaning and intention between colonizer and colonized, laid the basis for articulating the general outlines of subjugation prescribed by conversion; but it also resulted in the ineluctable separation between the original message of Christianity (which was itself about the proper nature of origins as such) and its rhetorical formulation in the vernacular. For in setting languages in motion, translation tended to cast intentions adrift, now laying, now subverting the ideological grounds of colonial hegemony. The necessity of employing the native vernaculars in spreading the Word of God constrained the univessalizing assumptions and totalizing impulses of a colonial-Christian order. 67

Mission, and missionary translation, thus found joint inspiration from an evangelical need to propagate the

Gospel, and £rom imperial ideals to establish order.

The two at times seemed to complement one another, while at others they seemed mutually exclusive.

The translatability of "moral" concepts formed part of an especially liv~lydebate between missionaries, one that reminds us again of the missionaries' ties to the

65 Ibid., 18-19. Ibid., 19. metropole. In an 1848 discussion, the British Quarterly

Review debunked Moffat's daim that the "Bechuanas" had no concept of a supreme being, of an afterlife, or of

"the proper conception of sin"68 bef ore missionaries arrived among them. The magazine offered specific examples which suggested that these ideologies, which they deemed necessary for the successful proliferation of

Christianity, did indeed exist before the establishment of mission stations in southern Africa. The magazine assumed that enough money had been spent in the region to begin the evangelisation of the peoples there, and sought to prove that the missionaries were currently wasting time under the excuse that their work was impeded by the complete state of moral degradation in which they had found the Bechuanas.

To prove the missionaries wrong, the magazine considered the compatability of European ideas of sin with Bechuana concepts of 'boleo, ' roughly describing both as "doing or working wrong, adultery, theft, murder, witchcraft, tic. "" Pointing to San acknowledgement of the dead "as if they were actually in existence" seemingly proved the existence of the notion of a 'future state" among San. 70 Declining enthusiasm for missions in Britain

67 Rafael, Contracting Colonialism, 21.

68- - British Quarterly Review, (1851): 106-109. 69 Ibid.. 107. Ibid., 108. thus shaped written European debates surrounding the translatability of Christian concepts. The magazine sought to establish the inherent ability of the

'receptor" cultures and languages to hold crucial

Christian ideas in order to justify discontinuing support for certain southern African missions. In this manner, meanings within African languages came under discussion among Europeans who had vested interests in proving that the Bechuana and the San were not as "degraded" as they initially supposed. Such debates highlight the struggle between missionaries such as Moffat, who felt compelled to prove they had much work ahead of them, and supporters and opponents at home, who became reluctant after 1840 to continue funding the better-established mission stations.

At heart of this dispute between European imperial agents lay the contest for ownership of African meanings, informed by missionary interpretations and translations.

The three notions of a 'future state," a supreme being, and moral sin formed missionary and other European writers' rule of measure against "savages." Against this rule they measured cultures with whom they came into contact. Part of the negotiation of dominance within the colonial situation-for colonisers at least, was formed by these concepts. The lack of a concept of a future state within a society signified bestial beings, and served to dehumanise. 7 1 Questions to the converts in London regarding their earlier state of mind produced the response (however contrived, for Kicherer and the LMS were anxious to prove they had created "civilised" beings out of "savages"), '1 thought 1 was like a beast; and that when 1 died, there would be an end."72 Moffat claimed that one tearful convert confessed, "You found us beasts and not men. 8873

Speculations as to the existence of these key

Christian concepts varied according to the missionary's aims and reflect that meanings on the frontier were constantly in flux. For example, in Philipf s Researches, widely considered a work of propaganda to encourage more direct British intervention in Cape affairs, (Philip believed that Europeans had run amok at the Cape and provided bad examples for Africans by digressing on the ladder of civilisation) Philip acknowledged the savage status of the Khoe by remarking that they had neither a notion of a future state nor a word in their language to signify the Deity, but claimed that they used to hold a concept of sin: 'Before they were corrupted by their intercourse with Europeans, adultery and fornication were considered among them as crimes.'f74 Of groups farther

71 Moffat, Missionaxy Labours and Scenes, 92.

72- - Evangelical Magazine, (December 1803) : 545. - -- -73 - Moffat, Missionary Labours and Scenes, 184. 14 Philip, Researches, Vol. 1, 7-8. east, near Kat River, however, Philip wrote the people were 'in a condition much worse than that of common

Slavery: they were without any religion, without morals ... without property-living in licentiousness and drunkenness-and without any desires, excepting such as terminated in beastly gratifications. Moff at denied any existence of "morality" and remarked with frustration that Mzilikazi laughed at the ultimatum that if he wanted to become 'civilised" he must wear clothes. Mof fat seemed exasperated: "Alas, the idea of shame never was in al1 his thoughts. "'' Missionaries tended to believe in the inherent capability of indigenous languages to denote ideas culturally specific to Western Europe, Janet Hodgson's revealing study of Xhosa adaptations of mission

Christianity probes this issue. From the time of van der

Kemp's mission among the Ngqika Xhosa, she says, Xhosa reconfigured Christian sacred power in a way that both complemented exiçting systems and took into account the dramatically fluctuating relationships on the frontier.

The incorporation of new religious ideas represented a continuation of a tradition of religious reconfiguration.

Hodgson backs this up with the notion that the Xhosa had already borrowed the Khoesan rainmaking Gods Qamata and

'' Foreign Missionary Chronicle, (Sept. 1834) : 290. Thixo when their world expanded to include interaction with the ECh~esan.?~Van der Kamp later appropriated Thixo and began attaching to the God al1 signs associated with his own Deity, thus attempting a religious reconfiguration of his own. 7 8

Missionaries decided early on that to rely on interpreters might garble their message and reduce their own power. The acquisition of indigenous vernaculars, however, required missionaries to gain considerable knowledge of African societies' customs and cultures.

They therefore probably came near to rnaking accurate translations, but difficulties remained. Hodgson notes that the missionaries had difficulties translating

Christian concepts of love, forgiveness, atonement, purity, heaven, and salvation, and that as a result they appropriated loose Xhosa equivalents and attempted to attach new meanings to them. 79 Predictably, these efforts either failed to emit an exact translation, or were met with consternation and confusion. It followed that an entireiy new understanding of Christianity evolved along with the translations, one undeniably controlled by the

Xhosa :

Ultimately missionary use of the vernacular was a radical step forward in the inculturation of

76 Moffat, The Matabele Journals of Robert Moffat, Vol. 1, Wallis, ed., 27. 7 7 J. Hodgson, 'A Battle for Sacred Power," 69. 78 Ibid., 70. 79 Ibid., 77. the gospel. Significantly, Ntsikanafs disciples, as some of the first litetate Xhosa, played key roles in providing appropriate and idiomatic- expressions for biblical translations, setting in motion a dialogue between faith and culture that not only came to be largely controlled by black Christians but also became an important part of their spiritual liberation £rom white domination. 80

The intercultural dialogue upon which translation

embarked ended in the formation of new identities which

represented an unexpected byproduct of colonial efforts

toward domination, First, to some degree missionaries

necessarily came to understand southern Af ricans by

learning their languages. Second, by attempting

translations into African vernaculars, a process which necessitated the cooperation of at least a handful of willing African interpreters, missionaries set in motion the 'Africanization" of European cultural signifiers.

Translation was a dominating act, in that it established standards and dif ference, and helped to communicate colonial authority. However, some "civilising" efforts of missionaries, such as teaching literacy and translating the mediums of Christianity, though they too may be interpreted as patriarchal and patronising acts,

frequently worked against imperial hegemonic goals to "colonize consciousness .

Hodgson, "A Battle for Sacred Power," 77. 8 1 J. and J.L. Comaroff, "The Colonization of Consciousness in South Africa ." Conclusion8

We may interpret the entire missionary movement within colonisation to be an exercise in translation,

Missionaries sought to translate European cultural signifiers into African consciousness; they aimed to translate authority, translate Christianity, and translate non-Christians into Christians. Walls claims that translation itself parallels the conversion experience - through a shift in meaning complemented by existing systems within the receptor language. Both translation and conversion require a transformation which first involves the "turning of existing structures to new directions" and then applies new ideas to existing systems .l To stretch this centrality of translation even further, Walls parallels the incarnation with translation, claiming that "the translation of God into humanity, whereby the sense and meaning of God was transferred, was effected under very culture-specific conditions" and that therefore "Christ is Word

~ranslated.8'2

The centrality of the word/Word to the Protestant evangelical experience was bound up with several concurrent trends at the heart of empire. These included, but were not exclusive, to increased literacy,

' Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History, 28. Ibid., 27. the popularisation of evangelical Christianity through a prolif eration of religious publications, and the increased inclusion of missionaries to prepare colonial frontiers for alien control. Missionary civilising actions among southern Africans similarly reflected contemporary philanthropic efforts to "uplift" the working classes at home, demonstrating their ties to the imperial enterprise. ks figures possessing agendas both in Britain and in Empire, missionaries provide unique personalities through whom to examine the inherent ambiguities of the civilising task. Through their works with the written word, the early evangelicals in southern

Africa informed both sides of the struggle. They aided later colonial atternpts to subjugate Africans and establish hegemony, and they aided African efforts to negotiate the terms of control and subvert the dominating process . OFFICIAL PUBLICATIONS

British Parliamentary Papers

Rtport from the Select Comrnittee on Aborigines (British Settlements), with the Minutes of Evidence, Appendices and Index, (l836), Vol, VI1 (538)

South African Commercial Advertiser 1824, 1833

British Quarterly Review 1821, 1851

Edinburgh Review 1808, 1834

Evangelical Magazine 1797-1804

Foreign Missionary Chronicle 1834-1838

Missionary Magazine 1797

Missionary Register 1824-1851

TRACTS AND BOOKS

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Carey, William. An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to use Means foc the Conversion of the Heathens. Facsimile reprint. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1892.

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London Missionary Society. The Report of the Directors to the Members of the Missionary Society, At their Fifth Annual Meetinq. 1799.

Moffat, John Smith, Emily Moffat, David Livingstone et ai. The Matabele Mission: A Selection from the Correspondence of John and Emily Moffat ~avidLivingstone and Others 1858- 1878. Edited by J.P.R. Wallis. London: Chatts and Windus, 1945.

Moffat, Robert. Missionary Labours and Scenes in Southern Africa. llth edition. New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1850. . The Matabele Journals of Robert Moffat 1829- 1860, 2 Vols. Edited bv J.P.R. Wallis. London: Chatto & Windus, 1945.

Philip, John. Researches in South Africa; Illustrating the Civil, Moral, and Religious Condition of the Native Tribes. 2 Vols. London: James Duncan, 1828.

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Bowen, H.V. "British India, 1765-1813: The Metropolitan Context." In P.J. Marshall, ed. Oxford History of the British Empire. Vol. II. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, 530-551,

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Cuthbertson, G. "Van der Kemp and Philip: The Missionary Debate Revisited." Missionalia. Vol. 17, no. 2 (August 1989) : 77-94.

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