Basel Mission Research Articles

Hunting, Planting and Malaria: How Cameroonian Ecosystems Changed the Basel Missionaries’ Worldviews

How did the land change the missionary? Almost all early missionaries, sent by the Basel Mission to the African colony Kamerun of the German Empire, died of malaria ( Klimafieber). On the fourth day after arrival in 1886 the first missionary died. In any case, Cameroonian ecosystems reshaped the self-conception and worldviews of missionaries. They used hunter's language, romanticised and conquered the land and its imagined virgin forests; Basel missionaries became strangers to themselves – involved in plantation policy, violent against, but at the same time absolutely dependent on, the local population. Most anthropological or historical studies on the Basel Mission and other Protestant missions in Cameroon focus on politics, economics, education and how the missionaries did change the land. However, how African agency influenced missionaries’ perspectives and activities is rarely acknowledged or discussed, which has so far limited historiographical works to a humanocentric understanding of mission. The article explores how the worldviews of the missionaries (especially Friedrich Autenrieth, Paul Steiner and Heinrich Norden) were challenged by the natural environment. In particular, it investigates how concepts of God, mission, culture/nature and human were renegotiated and reshaped while working and travelling the land. This analysis of printed travelogues, novels and articles therefore combines the question of the missionaries’ reactions to climate, disease, fauna, flora and the montane environment with an examination of how these were presented to specific target groups. To concentrate on the agency of African ecosystems consequently decentres the historiography of Christian mission that has separated the human from the non-human agency of nature. 1

Malarial Encounters and Shifting Racial Recruitment Strategies by the Basel Mission on the Gold Coast, 1828-1849.

In the early- to mid-nineteenth century, European mortality rates in West Africa were the highest in the world. Mortality estimates included nine missionaries sent from the Basel Mission (established in what is now Switzerland) to the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana), eight of whom died between 1828 and 1840, mostly from "fevers." In response to high mortality rates, the Basel Mission recruited several Afro-West Indians to work as Christian missionaries in the Gold Coast, mostly based on the presumption that individuals of African descent would better survive the environment. The decision to recruit Afro-West Indians to evangelize on the Gold Coast seemed to the mission to be a rational decision, one not in need of further justification or an overarching theory of race, environment, and disease. Surprisingly, the Basel Mission did not justify this position Biblically either. Once arrived, the West Indian Christian missionaries mostly lived in the Akwapem hills above Accra at an elevation that would have provided some protection against malaria; subsequently, their mortality rates were significantly lower than the European missionaries. After quinine came to be used as a prophylactic against malaria after 1850, thus lowering European missionary mortality rates, no more Afro-West Indians were recruited by the Basel Mission.

Protestant Christianity and Devotional Literature

Abstract The present article explores the first-ever publication of vacanas of the twelfth century in colonial Karnataka in which a native Christian convert (catechist) of Basel mission writes a treatise on the religious and philosophical tradition of Liṅgāyats. The intention is to study how a native catechist consciously thought through colonial categories and vernacular idioms in interpreting vacanas and employing them as a touchstone to adjudicate Liṅgāyatism. Totally antithetical to Christian views of Liṅgāyatism, the native Liṅgāyat scholars’ idea of vacana literature and what it represented for them will be examined in the second part. The article straddles two registers: a) construction of Liṅgāyat religious/textual traditions with Christian categories and formulation of an ethical framework by the catechist in a Christian tract Liṅgāyata Mata Vicāra (1874) and b) reception, subversion and re- constitution of such construction by the elite Liṅgāyat scholars in the post-1874 scenario.

An Exploration into the Public Theology of the Basel Missionary Society in Ghana

The article seeks to explore the Public Theology of the Basel Mission that gave birth to the Presbyterian Church of Ghana (PCG). The article argues that the theology of the Basel Mission emphasised the integration of the Christian faith and social action for social transformation. It held a position that the gospel message of Jesus Christ should not only address the spiritual needs of individuals but also their social, health, educational, environmental and economic needs. The church should therefore be actively involved in promoting justice, equality and human rights, particularly for the marginalised and vulnerable members of society. The study paid attention to the works of Hans Debrunner, Noel Smith and Kwamena-Poh who pursued various studies on the Basel Mission and the Presbyterian Church of Ghana for the actualization of the Public Theology of the Basel Mission on the operations of the Basel Mission. The study concludes that the Basel Mission has made a significant contribution to the development of Public Theology in Ghana as it has equally done so in the social transformation of Ghana. The study further makes recommendations for the churches in Ghana to consider the Public Theology of the Basel Mission, including Theology of Vocation, Prayer and Work (ora et labora) and the Bible and the Plough to serve as a drive in their pursuit of Public Theology and public witness. Keywords: Public Theology, African Christianity, Christian Public Witness, Presbyterian Church of Ghana, Basel Missionary Society

The Missionary Housemother and Her ‘Daughters’: Voice and agency in female subaltern spaces in 19th Century Malabar

ABSTRACT The paper attempts to explore notions of public-private dichotomy with reference to collective agency and inclusion. It looks at a women’s shelter run by a missionary wife Julie Gundert of the Basel Mission in nineteenth-century Malabar. The missionaries played a key role in the introduction of printing and the development of a modern public sphere in the region: a space, nevertheless, restricted to men from the educated elite classes. Julie’s shelter, meanwhile, provides an alternate cultural space where women, especially those from the excluded communities, the disabled, the abandoned and the lowest classes and castes could come together. The shelter is seen as a location of intimate and privatised cultural contact radically different from that practised in the formal, restrictive sites of the emerging public sphere; a space where subaltern cultures challenged the status of the visible public sphere as the key platform for social-cultural inclusion and agency.

Adapting Christianity to Hakka Culture: The Basel Mission’s Activities among Indigenous People in China (1846–1931)

The Hakka are a branch of the Chinese Han people, who immigrated from central China to Kwangtung (Guangdong 广东) Province. They have their own cultural norms in terms of language, lineage, distribution of work roles and status of women. The trans-national Basel Mission was headquartered in the Swiss city of Basel, near the Swiss–German border. The Basel Mission was distinguished among the missions to China by its rural Hakka Christian community. This article sets out to illustrate how the Basel Mission supported and maintained the rural Hakka Christianity community by integrating Christianity with Hakka cultural precepts. Previous Christian historiographical research has generally chosen not to emphasize Hakka cultural beliefs and practices. Examining the activities of the Basel Mission from the perspective of the indigenous Hakka culture, this article aims to enhance our understanding of the cultural precepts of receptors to shape the global enterprise of missionary society.

The Urban Culture of the “Model” Christian Settlement at Abokobi, Ghana, 1854–1929

Although the built spaces created by the Basel Evangelical Missionary Society (the Basel Mission) at Abokobi, Ghana, prioritized missionary ideals, these designs also demonstrated striking similarities with existing Indigenous Gã patterns of sociospatial organization, including both the patrilineal household (weku shiã) and the neighborhood (akutso). In The Urban Culture of the “Model” Christian Settlement at Abokobi, Ghana, 1854–1929, E. Sasu Kwame Sewordor describes how, beginning in the late nineteenth century, the members of an emerging Gã middle class projected and redefined Gã Christian ideas of “modernity” through architectural forms that enabled them to negotiate and sometimes contest the Basel Mission’s domination of the built environment in Abokobi. Drawing on material and archival evidence as well as oral testimony, Sewordor explores how Abokobi converts to Christianity reconfigured Indigenous domestic spaces, spatial practices, and cosmological notions to accommodate and also transform the religious and cultural framework imposed by the Basel Mission.

Cocoa Production in Ghana (1879-1976)

Abstract Cocoa production has been a major source of income and revenue to many citizens and the governor of Ghana respectively through time. Historically, although attributed to Tetteh Quarshie, records have shown that prior to Tetteh Quarshie’s achievement, the Dutch and Basel Missionaries had experimented with the crop in the Gold Coast. Since its introduction in the country, cocoa production has expanded and spread across all the regions in Ghana. The production of cocoa has affected every facet of development in the country since its inception and has once led Ghana to be world’s major exporter of the beans. Cocoa production in Ghana has gone beyond its agricultural and economic significance with its impacts felt across socio-cultural, religious and political life of Ghanaians. That notwithstanding, scholars have made partial effort at addressing the impact of cocoa production among Ghanaians between 1879 and 1976. Using a qualitative approach rooted in both primary and secondary sources, the current study sought to address the gap aforementioned by tracing the relationship between cocoa production and economics, politics and social-religious practices among Ghanaian between 1879 and 1976. Findings from the discourse revealed that though an agricultural product, cocoa can no longer be said to belong to that sphere alone. The product and its associated gains have permeated the entire life of Ghanaians since its inception.

»Die Polygamie bedeutet einen Krebsschaden für die deutschen Kolonien.«

Abstract In its African colonies, the German colonial authorities of ten encountered marriages among the colonized population that did not correspond to the European bourgeois ideal of monogamous marriage. Colonial government and Christian missions saw polygamy as an obstacle to their colonial or missionary project. Using files from the German colonial administration in Cameroon, documents from the archive of the Basel Mission, and texts from missionary and colonial magazines, the article examines what precisely the colonial government and missions saw as the dangers of polygamy and what challenges arose in dealing with it. Overall, it is shown how essential monogamy was for the self-definition of the German colonial power. Criticism of polygamy served to distinguish Germany from the colonial other and to devalue its culture. Polygamy was considered non-Christian, non-European, non-civilized. In practice, however, this clarity blurred in the face of diverse challenges, so that missions and the colonial government tended to seek pragmatic and temporary solutions.

Healing and Power in Ghana: Early Indigenous Expressions of Christianity. By Paul Glen Grant

Healing and Power in Ghana is a remarkable historical piece. Paul Grant sets out to use historical reports on the Basel Mission in the Ghanaian Akuapem kingdom to argue that indigeneity of the Christian faith started long before the advent of the African Initiated Churches. The book makes three claims; first, that a form of Christianity that is epistemologically and ontologically close to Pentecostalism developed a half-century before the emergence of the Pentecostal movement in West Africa. Second, that mid-nineteenth-century Christianity in the Akuapem kingdom was an indigenous product, not an importation from the West. Third, indigenous Christianity was a pervasive and sustained attempt that incorporated the missionaries into the emerging program. The introduction refutes a general assertion that West African Pentecostalism is an importation. Chapter 1 advances the argument that mid-nineteenth-century political, social, and economic upheavals in the Akuapem kingdom rendered people’s religious apparatus for dealing with life’s eventualities...

Constructing global missionary families: Absence, memory, and belonging before World War I

The separation of parents and children was a quite common imperial family constellation before World War I. Many children left the respective colonial or mission territories at the beginning of their seventh year. They were sent to their parents’ regions of origin in Europe to spend their childhood and youth in the households of relatives or in missionary boarding schools specially set up for them. This article examines German-speaking missionary families in the imperial context of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and focuses on letter communications between parents and children as an expression of family construction at a distance. I will mainly focus on two families (Kaundinya, Nommensen) in order to examine from a micro-historical perspective, the construction of missionary families in a transimperial framework. Rooted in the pietistic milieu of German-speaking missionaries from the Basel Mission and the Rhenish Mission, these families enable us to compare the results of imperial and missionary family historiography, which has developed over the last 20 years within the British context, with empirical material from other national and imperial contexts.

Intertwining Christian Mission, Theology, and History: A Case Study of the Basel Mission among the Thiyyas and Badagas of Kerala, 1870–1913

For centuries, various denominations of Christian missionaries have contributed in a larger way towards the spread of Christianity among the people of Indian sub-continent. Each Church had its own principles of preaching the word of God and undertook welfare activities in and around the mission-stations. From establishing schools to providing medical aids, the Christian missionaries were involved in constant perseverance to improve the ‘indigenous’ societies not only in terms of amenities and opportunities, but also in spiritual aspects. Despite conversion being the prime motive, every Mission prepared ground on which their undertakings found meanings and made an impact over people’s lives. These endeavours, combining missiological and theological discourses, brought hope and success to the missionaries, and in our case study, the Basel Mission added to the history of the Christian Mission while operating in the coastal and hilly districts of Kerala during the 19th and the 20th centuries. Predominantly following the trait of Pietism, the Basel Mission emphasised practical matters more than doctrine, which was evident in the Mission activities among the Thiyyas and the Badagas of Malabar and Nilgiris, respectively. Along with addressing issues like the caste system and spreading education in the ‘backward’ regions, the most remarkable contribution of the Basel Mission established the ‘prototype’ of industries which was part of the ‘praxis practice’ model. It aimed at self-sufficiency and provided a livelihood for a number of people who otherwise had no honourable means of subsistence. Moreover, conversion in Kerala was a combination of ‘self-transformation’ and active participation which resulted in ‘enculturation’ and inception of ‘modernity’ in the region. Finally, this article shows that works of the Basel Mission weaved together its theological and missiological ideologies which determined its exclusivity as a Church denomination.

Upravlenie i organizaciya duhovnoj zhizni nemeckih kolonij Zakavkaz'ya (1820-e — 1860-e gg.)

This article is devoted to the complex research of religious life of German Protestants (Lutherans and separatists) in Transcaucasia in 1820s - 1860s. The main attention is paid to revealing general and specific elements in the organization of religious management in the process of settling German colonists. The work analyzes the researchers' views on religious reasons and factors of resettlement of German peasants in Transcaucasia, summarizes new material on the invitation, expulsion and subsequent prohibition of the call of the Basel missionaries. Archival sources are introduced into scientific circulation, allowing to analyze the nature of relations of different Protestant movements and groups with each other, with the government and local authorities. As a result, the authors substantiate the idea that confessional affiliation was one of the determining factors in the formation of national identity of Transcaucasian Germans.

Languages, Castes and Hierarchy: Basel Mission in Nineteenth-Century Coastal Karnataka

In the former South Kanara or south coastal Karnataka region, the presence of overlapping languages, mainly Tulu and Kannada, posed prolonged dilemmas in the nineteenth century for the Basel Mission. The choice of language was important for their evangelical work, supported by important language-related activities such as dictionary making, grammar writing and translations. Since language use was intertwined with caste hierarchy, this raised issues over the position of lower castes, mainly Billavas, for the native elites and upper castes. This article argues that the prioritisation of Kannada, and relegation of Tulu to a secondary position, was an outcome not only of missionary perceptions of the larger Kannada context, but also more importantly can be traced back to elite representations regarding the subaltern Tulu culture and lifeworld. As missionary intervention in education and native language use challenged the status quo of social hierarchy among local communities, this sparked efforts by the native elites to reclaim and restore the earlier hierarchy. In the process, the native elite representations of Tulu language and culture became at the same time an effort at dismissal and appropriation.

“The Humble Petition of Johana Nyewuame Bekrah”: Becoming/Being Gã, Straddling “Spaces”, and Negotiating Boundaries in the Gold Coast Christian “Model Town” (Abokobi), ca. 1860–1980

AbstractBy the mid-nineteenth century, Basel Mission (BM) evangelical activities on the Gold Coast had expanded beyond the Accra littoral and this significantly informed the establishment of many Pietist Christian urban enclaves or Salems for African converts. Salems therefore became sites that epitomized Basel missionary encounters on the Gold Coast. Abokobi, as an envisioned “Model Town,” is key because it was the only Salem established completely outside the sociopolitical ambit of an existing Accra polity. Abokobi is thus uniquely positioned for examining how intercultural exchanges shaped contested memories and for revealing the ways that African women of slave ancestry renegotiated identity and belonging. The assumption that the Christian outlook of Salems was enough to blur ethnic, hierarchical, and gendered differences is questioned in this study because such a notion misleads and shifts scholarly enquiry away from understanding the nuances of the everyday experiences of families of servile ancestry in Abokobi and other BM religious centers.

Sixty years of teacher education in Ghana: Successes, challenges and the way forward

This paper was a presentation made at the launching of the 60th Anniversary Celebration and the Annual Graduation Ceremony of Peki College of Education, on Friday, 13th June 2014. The paper examined the history of the development of initial teacher training institutions in Ghana since 1835 when the first (i.e. Presbyterian Training College [PTC]) was established by the Basel Mission at Akropong in the Eastern Region. It explains that currently there are 38 public and 3 private colleges of education in the country producing teachers for basic schools. It argues that even though the 41 colleges of education have been elevated to tertiary status to offer programmes leading to diploma in basic education, they are still being run like the old missionary teacher training schools. These and several other factors had led to concerns about the quality of the products of the colleges in terms of the generic and subject-specific competences as well as the capacities of the institutions to meet the increasing demand for basic school teachers. It is therefore suggested that the boarding system in the Colleges of Education be scrapped, and instead, few (about 10) of the colleges selected for development and upgrading into Teacher Education Universities. It is further suggested that special incentives are introduced to attract the top candidates to the colleges of education and also the institutions should review their programmes and study modules to ensure pre-service teachers develop practical skills in teaching the core competencies in basic education.

Pitfalls of trained incapacity. The unintended effects of integral missionary training in the Basel Mission on its early work in Ghana (1828–1840). By Birgit Herppich (foreword Wilbert R. Shenk). Pp. xii + 372 incl. 6 figs and 4 tables. Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 2016. £31 (paper). 978 0 227 17621 4

Pitfalls of trained incapacity. The unintended effects of integral missionary training in the Basel Mission on its early work in Ghana (1828–1840). By Birgit Herppich (foreword Wilbert R. Shenk). Pp. xii + 372 incl. 6 figs and 4 tables. Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 2016. £31 (paper). 978 0 227 17621 4

Book Review: Birgit Herppich. Pitfalls of Trained Incapacity: The Unintended Effects of the Integral Missionary Training in the Basel Mission on its Early Work in Ghana (1828–1840)

Book Review: Birgit Herppich. Pitfalls of Trained Incapacity: The Unintended Effects of the Integral Missionary Training in the Basel Mission on its Early Work in Ghana (1828–1840)

Truth by Narration—Why Autobiographical Conversion Accounts are so Compelling: The Case of H.A. Kaundinya, the First Indian Pastor in the Basel Mission

ABSTRACTThis essay investigates the significance of autobiographical conversion narratives using a case study from the Basel Mission, active in India in the mid nineteenth century. I argue that such narratives are pivotal for the realisation of conversion in the discourse-oriented Protestant mission. Taking up Foucault's idea of ‘regimes of truth’, I understand autobiographical accounts of conversion as ‘acts of truth’. Such acts shape and contribute to a certain discourse formation that has a normative function for the individual and the community involved. The autobiographical conversion narrative thus not only reports events and experiences, it also brings an aura of authenticity and genuineness to the individual conversion, and it reinforces the validity of the norms expressed through the experiences of the subject for the community that subscribes to the discourse.

Returning African Christians in Mission to the Gold Coast

The transatlantic slave trade created an African diaspora in the Western world. Some of these diaspora Africans encountered and embraced the religion of their Western masters. Life in the Caribbean diaspora provided an opportunity for the nestling of ideas that were to shape the establishment of the Christian faith in Africa. Following the failures of European missionaries to make an impact in Africa in the early nineteenth century, freshly emancipated Christians from the Caribbean became agents of social transformation in the Gold Coast, Cameroun and Nigeria. Using archival records from Basel in Switzerland and Ghana, this paper explores the missionary initiative of Jamaican Christians who worked under the aegis of the Basel Evangelical Missionary Society from 1843 to 1918. It provides evidence that these Jamaican Christians became principal agents for the success of the Basel Mission's enterprise in the Gold Coast in the nineteenth century. The paper argues against a Eurocentric approach to mission historiography that has obviated the roles of Africans in the nineteenth century and demonstrates the legacy which these returning Africans have left the church in Africa.