Much More Than Illustrations of What We Already Know: Experiences in the Rediscovery of Mission Photography Paul Jenkins
hanks to a numberoffoun mented series of between 50 and T da tion s and other spon 200 historical phot ographs, in sors, the Base l Mission Arc hive in some cases eve n more. For each the last ten years has been enabled location the Basel Mission Archive to document its collection of his is probabl y the only so urce of an to rical photographs and other organized body of historical pho types of image. Both the size of the tographs cu rre n tly availa ble . collection and the age of the oldest Basel' s archivists have also struc photographs we re surprising. In tured the collection's fuzzy bor all, the archive houses about50,000 d ers, indicating w hic h phot o images crea ted before 1950. The gra phs we re taken in a specific archiv e's oldest pho tographs taken region, eve n w hen the exact site of in Europe date back to about 1850, origin is uncertain. the oldest in Africa and Asia to Individual catalogi ng, how 1860or perhaps a little earlier.' The eve r, also presents imme diately institution s that financed the cata evide nt problems. First, it takes loging showe d intere st in a pilot time and therefore costs money. project tha t would address prob Second, when catalog ing of the lems of access as we ll as conserva Basel Mission collection was be tion . The arc hive tackled bo th is gun, I m yself and the people I was sues, concentrating on a body of in touch with cert ainl y underesti 28,000 p ho tographs and ot he r mated the number of holdings of types of image, half of them from photogr aphs in the world and the before 1914, with 80-90 percent of volume of photographs in those the m taken in Africa or Asia. The holdings. It is not hard now to find result is an interac tive sys tem that statistics that seem to rule out al allows da tabase searches of select together the idea of individua l images stored in an electro nic im catalogi ng . An important Euro age ban k. The images then appear pean conference on wo rk with col on-scree n. This image bank be lection s of historical pho tographs comes available for public use Rev. Johann Mosi. held in September2000 confronted through a Web site in lat e October Photograph by W. Zurcher. Courtesy of the Basel particip ants with the di smayin g 2002." Mission Arch ive. Reference number £-30.86.229. figure that in Swede n, a country This essay is not the place to witha relatively small population, give an account of the ten-year project.' Instead, one fundame n photographs are being taken at an average of one million per day.4Of tal an d problema tic issue in the Basel Mission's arc hival policy course, situa tions vary. Situa tions w here photographic docu with old ph otogr aphs will be raised , and the results that the me ntation is ra re-for exa mple, the West African coast in the policy enables will be illustrated by refere nce to a pho tograph of 1860s-contrast starkly with situa tions w here its bulk is over Pastor John Mosi (see photo above). The point at issu e is the w helming . Not much imagin ati on is need ed to sup pose, how postulate, built into the mission's arc hival policy, that proper ever, that the known photographs of the non-Western wo rld archiva l and research wo rk wi th old ph otographs requires that before 1914 in organized collection s, plus the number of pho to they be cataloged individually, that is, treated as separate, indi graphs no doubt existing in forgotten cu pboards , wo uld qu ickly vid ual docume nts.We have followed this principle in wo rk done swamp the resources that archivists have for work in this field . on the 28,000 photographs the arc hive now has "unde r con tro l." Anyone who has worked for any len gth of time with histori Creating Value cal photographs will im mediately reco gni ze the controversies that this policy can generate. At one level the postulate is easy to For this reason I we lcome the opportunity to write ab outcatalog defend. For people hungry for visual reso urces for the social ing and abo ut the wider impact tha t visua l sources from mission history of Africa and Asia, wha t the archive has d one is clearly arc hives can have in the cultural and social sciences . Individual important and jus tifiable. For man y places in southern Ghana, catalogi ng of historical photographs is va lua ble in itself-or Ca meroon, Sou thwest Ind ia, South China, and Borneo, w here perha ps better, taking up a phrase fashionable in cen tral Europe, Basel mission aries worked in the "classic" period of Western it creates value. My experience as archivist for the Basel Mission mission outreach, the arc hive presents a coordinated and docu- has convi nced me that individ ua l cataloging of photographs int roduces a new quality int o discussions of the past an d should Pau lJenkins is Archivist forMissiol121 /the BaselMission SocietyandLecturer enable new forms of discourse about the past to d evelop . Using in AfricanHistory at the University of Basel, Switzerland. visua l sour ces correctly and wi th the necessary rigor and accuracy
October 2002 157 could have as revolutionary an impact as working with oral Chapter 2: Incorporating New Research sources had in African history a generation ago. Properly cata loged photographs should also be the basis for "schools for In 1999 Richard Fardon, professor of West African anthropology seeing," in whichreflective studyof photographs helps people to in the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, visited perceive the deepermeanings and varied significancebehind the the Basel Mission Archive. In his early fieldwork he had studied historical and contemporary images used by modern mass me an ethnic group called the Chamba on the Nigerian side of the dia merely for their immediate impact. Nigeria-Cameroon border, in the region south of Maiduguri,? A Trying to prove these assertions in the abstract is unreward numberof groupsin theCameroonGrassfieldsclaimnineteenth ing. Instead, I increasingly draw on experiences with specific century Chamba origins, not least the kingdom of Bali Nyonga photographswhenattemptingto evaluatewhathas beenachieved (see "Chapter4" below). Fardon hadbeenextending his research in Basel. I would thus like to present a kind of "cataloging to include these Cameroonian groups, looking especially at biography" of photograph E-30.86.229, "Rev. John Mosi" (first questions of cultural dynamics as probably relatively small photo), in six short "chapters." They show how an individual groups of people brought their beliefs, customs, and social image, subjected to the attention of individual cataloging, can move from being one anonymous item among thousands of others to gain an individual profile and, even as a single photo John Mosi was pastor of graph or as one of a small group of photographs, to offer unexpected information and point our thinking in new direc the Grassfields church, tions. but it was not clear from The clothing of the subject is, as a general style, traditional among the people of the region known as the Cameroon our cataloging what he Grassfields, a highland area around the city of Bamenda, where was doing or why. more than a dozen ethnic groups live in a mode of ongoing competition that has been appropriately called an informal hier archy." Some ethnic groups are organized as kingdoms, and structures into the quite new cultural context of the Cameroon others are more egalitarian. Although there is a fairly lengthy Grassfields. Duringhis 1999visit he studiedcarefullythe archive's bibliography about the Presbyterian Church (formerly the Basel Bali Nyonga photographs, focusing on anthropological-histori Mission Church) in this region, from the viewpoint of a historian cal information. of Africa, a satisfactory social, cultural, and intellectualhistory of Fardon pointed out that the archive has a few photographs thechurchin terms of regionalsocialandculturaldynamicsis yet of people celebrating the accession in 1940 of Galega II, the new to be written." fon (king) of Bali Nyonga (photographs E-30.86.224-27; see sec Having established this background, we turn to the portrait ond photo). Three of these photos (nos. 224-26) had in fact of Pastor Mosi. already come to catalogers' attention because they raised a translation question that could not be easily answered. The Chapter 1: Creating the Database original German captions refer to die Gemeinde Grasland. This phrase means literally "the Grassfields community" or "the During the initial cataloging process in the mid-1990s, taken as Grassfields congregation." Neither of these made sense. The the first step toward creating the database, the photograph itself question, Why would "community" or "congregation" qualified wasinspected. The caption and the name of the probable photog by "Grassfields" be in the singular and not in the plural? had no rapherwere enteredin thedatabase. Theresults read, "'Rev.John satisfactory answer. Mosi.' Photographer:WilhelmZurcher,between1932and1945." A second question concerned a basic ambiguity in the word It was clear that John Mosi was a pastor of the old Basel Gemeinde itself. In the usual Basel Mission language the term Mission Church in the Grassfields. The photograph could be Gemeinde refers to a Christian congregation. In German, how dated to the 1930s or 1940s, given the presence of the photogra ever, it can also mean the basic local unit of government, espe pher in Cameroon during those years. With this information cially in Switzerland, where the Gemeinde, or local commune, is (and the allocation of keywords), the essential elements in the the foundation stone of the traditional democratic order. These initial cataloging process were complete. photographs showed men wearing traditional robes and carry The image remained in my memory, however, partly be ing weapons, so at first it seemed that Gemeinde was being used cause of the apparent anomaly of finding a Basel Mission pastor here in a political sense. of that time wearing traditional robes," It stuckin mymemoryfor another reason as well. Because of seeing photographs of mis Chapter 3: Gaining New Light sionaries from forty years earlier who are dressed in the same way, I had already begun raising new questions about the At this point the accuracy with which photographs can be interpretation to be given to the robe Mosi is wearing," retrieved oncethey have been individuallycataloged intersected Initial cataloging yielded no hint as to what Mosi was doing dramatically with Fardon's interest in photographs from a spe or whyhe shouldbe standingin a clearlytraditionalarchitectural cific locality. It turned outthat the portrait of Mosi was partof the setting, nor were we told where the photograph was taken. same film as the images clearly linked to the accession of the new Simply creating the database supplied no information about the fon in 1940, including those referring to the "die Gemeinde event in which he was participating or why he was presenting Grasland."lo With the Mosi picture seen as part of that series, it himself in this traditional way. Individual cataloging, however, became much more likely that Gemeinde means "Christian con meant that the image was given an unambiguous reference gregation." Here were the congregations with their pastors! number. As needed, it could be recalled easily and reliably at any This conclusion inspired a search in the written records of point in the future. the mission archive for any indication of an event of this kind
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------from this part of Cameroon in 1940-41. Records from this time beliefs occurred, though it was very different from the conver and place are somewhat sketchy, since the Basel Mission's Ger sion the missionaries had been trained to expect. man staff members were interned, but there was clear written confirmation that representatives of Christians from all parts of Chapter 5: Hearing a Different Message the Grassfields had indeed greeted the new fon of Bali Nyonga when the Grassfields Synod met in Bali Nyonga shortly after his Returning to the photographs and to the written record of accession." The photographs are likely not from this post acces Christians celebrating the accession of a new fonof Bali Nyonga, sion greeting but from the actual accession day, for it appears, we can see that the Grassfields Christians viewed this kingdom, from the phrasing of the captions of numbers 224-26, that the Bali Nyonga, very positively. This contrasts with the Christians of Bali Nyonga also presented themselves at the missionaries'negative assessment. The fonwho died in 1940 was accessionitselfas a clearlyidentifiable groupto welcomethe new the old king, Fonyonga, who had invited the Basel Mission to the king. 12 Grassfields in 1902-3. He was apparently popularly respected, Having these sources, visual and written, working together for all his unbending "heathenism" in the eyes of the missionar in synergy was like being given new spectacles that registered ies, as the founder of Grassfields Christianity. The Grassfields previously invisible wavelengths of energy. Much more now Christians welcomed the new king, Galega II, and they took part became apparent in and around the portrait of John Mosi. The in ceremonies choreographed in a manifestly traditional way. photograph made perceptible new and striking profiles in the There were no clerical suits, no sitting in rows of chairs under social landscape of relations between the church/mission and palm-leafshelters, and, presumably, no hymnsby Martin Luther the region's traditional polity. or Paul Gerhardt. There must have been dancing instead, and men moving back and forth in loose military formation holding Chapter 4: Establishing a Baseline spears or shooting guns, a kind of coordinated activity that is central to this day in traditional Bali Nyonga festivals. To sense the significance of this new information, we must review what we know about the history of the Basel Mission in Chapter 6: Returning to John Mosi the Grassfields. At the beginning of the German colonial occupa tion of the Cameroon Grassfields in the 1890s, Bali Nyonga was This cataloging biography has one final chapter. In June 2001 my still a relatively young, dynamic, and expanding kingdom. Right Cameroonian colleagueJonas Dahsupplied the information that from the start, it clearly tried to use the new German presence to John Mosi was a member of the Meta ethnic group. One of the further its own power, territory, and population." In 1902-3 more egalitarian groups in the Grassfields, the Meta are a large leading circles in the kingdom expended considerable energy in farming population. Though they had been present long before persuading the Basel Mission to found a mission station there, Bali Nyonga arrived on the scene, Bali Nyonga had attempted to the first one in the Grassfields. We see the extent of its success in integrate them as a subordinate population into their new and the Basel Mission's very early choice of Mungaka, the language expanding kingdom. Indeed, at least part of the population of of this relatively small kingdom, as its official school and church Meta was living in acute tension with Bali Nyonga in 1940. This language for all the ethnic groups in the whole Grassfields. Basel tension escalated a decade later into intercommunal violence. Mission schools in the Grassfields thus became to an important John Mosi's portrait, however, suggests that, when he came to the 1940 accession celebration, he was to some degree accepting Bali Nyongaclaims to hegemony, for he worea robe thatcan bear this interpretation. It had been the kind of garment that within With visual and written living memory had customarily been presented by thefonof Bali sources working in synergy, Nyonga to persons prepared to accept a role among his leading John Mosi's portrait servants." It probably still had this significance in 1940. One can go further. We know that a missionary was enrobed revealed much more. in 1902, which probably meant that the kingdom was trying to incorporate him into its leading structures. And as recently as 1972 my colleague Hans Knopfli was incorporated in precisely extent instruments of the Bali Nyonga attempt to extend cultural this way (see third photo). As a result, he spent considerable and political hegemony outside its normally accepted borders. amounts of time and energy sitting with other officials of a Most missionaries, however, had difficulty coping with the similar grade working out common solutions to the problems of alien political and social structures of this African kingdom, and the broader community, an experience that still plays a major they did not find it easy to integrate the claims exerted by an role in his memories of three decades of work in Cameroon." African kingdom with their idea of what a congregation should be like. Thereis a longhistoryof missionarydisillusionment once Wider Implications it turned out that the early forecasts of large numbers of Bali Nyonga people becoming Christians were not fulfilled in the The final step in approaching the image given in "Chapter 6" way the missionaries expected. does not answerall possible questions." Rather, as I suggested at By the 1930s Basel Mission reports were stressing how few the beginning of this essay, step 6 indicates a direction for real conversions there had been within Bali Nyonga, that is, how research whose outcomeis still uncertainbutthatcan be pursued few people adopted the Basel Mission mentality and lifestyle, energetically with visual sources at hand. The first and second and, a modern historian would want to add, how many re photos immediately prompt the questions: What role did the mained tied into the power and status systems of the Bali Grassfields Christians expect the new fon of Bali Nyonga to play Nyongan kingdom. One suspects that, in Grassfield terms, a in relation to their future? And what role was John Mosi-e-and legitimate and rational appropriation of Christian ideas and with him the Grassfields Christian congregations of non-Bali
160 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH Nyongan ethnic groups such as the Meta expected to pla y in the developing history of Bali Nyonga? These qu estions lead to bro ad er issu es. It may be taken as axiomat ic that the cel ebration these two photographs document was not simply about the past or the re newal of kingly rul e but about bro ad er is sues, not least hop ed for future develop ments. We may also be sure that the con cepts and ass umptions in the minds of the Grassfields Christians-concepts and as sumptions that they would have held to a great extent in commo n with the new fon would have been dominated by the catego ries and values regn ant in Grassfields di plom acy, administration, and po litics. But what these values, cate gories, assumptions, and concepts we re, and wha t concrete ex pectations each side had for the othe r's be havior, remain unknown to me as an out side r. They certainly existed, however, and King Galega II is greeted by the Grassfields congregation on the we must recognize their essential role in accounting for the day of his enthronement. Photograph by W. Zurcher. Courtesy dyn ami cs of church history and cultural and political chan ge in of the Basel Mission Archive. Reference number £-30.86.226. tw entieth-century Grassfields . Questions arisin g about the portrait of Pastor John Mos i printed in the first photo have helped to focus attent ion on a set of events that are too easily forgotten in Westerndiscourse about Six leading offi cial s (Nkorn) ofBali Nyonga, including the Basel African churches and, ind eed, that have been largely forgotten missionaru Hans Kniipfli, during the Lela fes tival. Left to right, even in Basel Mission discourse about a much-loved African using their traditional names, they are Ba Gwambula, Ba daughter church. Answers to those questions support an asser Gwanyama, Ba Gwanyebit, Ba Gwambila, Ba Guiangaduna, and tion given inad equ ate recognition in the West, namely, that Ba Gwanjigan a. Photo taken December 1981 . Courtesy of Hans African churc h history is very different from Wes tern mission Knopfli: private collection.
October 2002 161 history. Intensive research and close attention is needed if Afri Certainly the originaldocumentation of photographs in the Basel can churchhistory, with its key indigenous categoriesand mecha Mission Archive has proved to be very fragmentary. Even speci nisms, different as they surely are from region to region, is to be fying the place where a photograph was taken often requires an properly and adequately perceived. Even a simple observa act of judgment on the part of the cataloger. For this reason, in tion-that Christians took part as a clearly identifiable group in part, cataloging at the archive is never an anonymous activity. the event at which Pastor Mosi was photographed, although it We routinely record who was responsible for initial cataloging of was choreographed in an indigenous way-should give cause a photograph, who contributes further insights in its analysis, for thinking about indigenous church history in new ways and and when they do so. for upgrading expectations of work with visual sources. Evi If researchers simply leaf through loosely organized card dently, visual sources are especially importantwhen working on indexes of photographs to find visual "prooftexts" for assertions the historyof culturesthatthemselveshavea strongandcomplex that everyone tends to think must be true anyway, they can be tradition of using visual symbols. found. But such an approach does not further the cause of The "rediscovery of mission photography" is not too strong understanding, and each time it is followed, another opportunity a term for describing the new insights into Grassfields church to put research on a new and extended footing is lost. Photo history outlined above. Clearly, the process of rediscovery docu graphs can have the power to energize and mobilize historical mented here and the further rediscoveries that may be possible and cultural research, and not only in the field of indigenous in the future are intimately linked with the discipline of catalog church history. Other themes (e.g., the social history of mission ing individual photographs. Here we clearly extend the term ary life) can also benefit from injection of this source of new "cataloging" to include, where appropriate, rigorous intellectual information. Achieving this potential, however, depends on our encounter with an individual photograph or a group of photo understanding the grammar and syntax of working with visual graphs. Experience at Basel demonstrates that archivists work materials, and it depends not least on our applying precision to ing in this field must possess sound academic and scientific questions of when and where an individual photograph was judgment if their work is to achieve the greatest possible results. taken and what is going on in it. Notes------ 1. See Paul Jenkins, "The Earliest Generation of Missionary long been linked. But here is a Cameroonian pastor of the equivalent Photographers in West Africa and the Portrayal of Indigenous church wearing traditional robes-and also carrying a gun! People and Culture," History in Africa20 (1993):89-118; reprinted in 8. Paul Jenkins, "Warum tragen die Missionare Kosturne? Visual Anthropology7, no. 2 (1994):115-45. This essayincludes a plea Forschungsmoglichkeiten im Bildarchiv der Basler Mission" (Why to realize that all nineteenth-century missionary societies may have are the missionaries wearing fancy dress? Research possibilities in shown an early interest in photography. the photo archives of the Basel Mission), Historische Anthropologie: 2. The address is
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