European Missionaries Research Articles

“Who Would Believe What We Have Heard?”: Christian Spirituality and Images from the Passion in Religious Art of New Spain

AbstractThe colonial art of New Spain/Mexico provides the viewer with a locus of examination into the robust Christianity that emerged over time out of a native spirituality newly laden with the contours and images from the Old World theology of late medieval/early Catholic Reformation Spain. Franciscan and especially Jesuit missionaries, impelled by a devotional zealotry, championed an apocalyptic vision of hope and suffering that was well suited for artistic expression. Religious art, whether or not patronized by European colonizers, became an instrument for the missionaries to teach and for the native artists to interrogate religious doctrine, and some artists, consciously or not, created their art as a response to that catechesis, a subtle fusion of ancient passion with the dramatic intensity of the new Catholic faith. One array of images in particular, that of the dolorous Passion of the Christ, was especially vibrant in the imaginations of the native artists and in the contemplation of the European missionaries and patrons. The image of the Suffering Servant resonated in the hearts and in the daily lives of the people just as it humbled missionary ardor, and excited a spiritual enthusiasm that forged an art of stunning doctrinal intimacy.

A New Perspective for Anglicanism

ABSTRACTThis article argues that Anglicans in North East Asia face a challenge to re-imagine their history in the light of the resources of the Anglican theological tradition. That history has been largely influenced by a narrative which has seen the Christian faith come from across the sea in the form of European missionaries in the Age of Discovery. But there is evidence of the presence of Christian faith long before this which came not through missionaries but through ordinary people who practised their faith. Anglicans can deploy a notion of via media which is not the assumption of a midpoint between contesting claims, but a method for sublating differing opinions by providing a new paradigm, integrating them into a new conceptual framework. Anglicans are thus called to aim for a church whose very mode of existence bears its message.

Rituals of Resistance: African Atlantic Religion in Kongo and the Lowcountry South in the Era of Slavery (review)

Rituals of Resistance: Religion in Kongo and Lowcountry South in Era of Slavery. By Jason R. Young. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007. Pp. 272. Cloth, $40.00.)Reviewed by Randy M. BrowneIn Rituals of Resistance, Jason R. Young examines relationship between religious beliefs and practices of precolonial Kongolese and enslaved men and women of Lowcountry South, two populations linked intimately by transatlantic slave trade for nearly two centuries. In four comparative case studies, Young details ways in which Kongolese people and their enslaved contemporaries and descendants in Lowcountry interpreted and modified theology and practice of Christianity as means of resisting slave trade and slavery. Although more captives transported to Americas - and particularly to South Carolina - came from West-Central Africa than from any other single region, only handful of Americanists have paid close attention to region. Yet, as Young shows, it is among best documented of all regions involved in transatlantic slave trade, and his use of Portuguese and other non-English sources created in Africa allows him to develop sophisticated analysis of precolonial Kongolese culture.One of most compelling aspects oi Rituals of Resistance is Young's approach to questions of cultural transmission and creolization. Beginning with pioneering work of Melville Herskovits more than halfcentury ago, many scholars have focused on documenting Africanisms or African survivals in Americas. At same time, scholars such as Sidney M. Mintz and Richard Price have criticized efforts to identify same cultural practices on sides of as simplistic or misguided. Although Young's work bears imprint of contemporary historians who have argued that American slaves were able to retain key aspects of their cultures intact, such as Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Michael Gomez, and John K. Thornton, Rituals of Resistance moves beyond effort to identify formal cultural affinities between and American populations. Instead, Young argues that the cultures of are linked philosophically and theoretically (101-2). That is, ritual practices that looked very different aesthetically or formally could still be related through theoretical, cosmological, and symbolic meanings (184). For example, although conjure bags in Lowcountry contained different objects than those found in Kongolese conjure bags, Young argues that such differences should not be read as inability of Lowcountry blacks to replicate West-Central rituals in new environment, but instead as creative application of conjuring tradition that retained its cosmological essence while appropriating European and Native American objects (125). Equally important, Young's vision of religious practice as dynamic allows him to focus not on degree of similarity between and American rituals but instead on ways in which people on sides of creatively modified Christianity to serve different purposes. Historical change, Young contends, both in Africa as well as in plantation Americas, is central to his conception of cultural process (5).At heart of Young's study lies development of unique African Atlantic religious tradition that incorporated Christian and indigenous beliefs and rituals. Central to Young's argument is his understanding of conversion not as a clear and discrete movement from precessional realm of belief to successional one, but instead as process in which 'new' belief system is understood largely through context of 'old' (43). Although Young admits that many Kongolese and most Lowcountry slaves were at least nominally Christian, he argues that they practiced form of Christianity markedly different from theology of European missionaries or master class. …

‘A position of usefulness’: gendering history of girls’ education in colonial Hong Kong (1850s–1890s)

Girls’ education has been considered a site of struggle where ideals of femininity and domesticity are translated into curricula and practices that seek to shape and regulate. In colonial Hong Kong, British mission societies had a significant share in providing girls’ education, which was predominantly in the hands of European missionaries in the nineteenth century. The dual mission of evangelising and civilising colonial subjects in the Victorian era of empire expansion constituted a pertinent focus of inquiry in the writing of history of girls’ education. Drawing on selected texts on missionary literature and government reports, this article examines in what ways a domestic ideology framed within evangelical beliefs and the imperial gaze interplayed with the politics of race and class in shaping girls’ education. It challenges the presumed impartiality in education policies and practices concerning both sexes, and discusses women’s agency in re‐defining identities and boundaries in a colonial society.

Reconciling Two Careers: The Jesuit Memoir of Giuseppe Castiglione Lay Brother and Qing Imperial Painter

This essay explores the dual nature of Giuseppe Castiglione's career. As a professional trained artist and Lay Brother, from 1715 to 1766 Castiglione was deployed through the Jesuit Order in the Qing workshops. My analysis of Castiglione's unique career is based predominantly on an unpublished manuscript source, the Jesuit posthumous memoir of the artist, today in the main archive of the Order in Rome. The memoir describes Castiglione's professional engagement between his European and Chinese patrons who supported and supervised his work: the Jesuit Order, and the mid-Qing Emperors. Far from being just the description of an individual career, the memoir sheds light on important aspects of the early modern cultural interchange between Europe and China, as well as on the eighteenth-century European missionary strategy in Asia.

Polygyny and Christian Marriage in Africa: The Case of Benin

Abstract:Since the arrival of European missionaries in Africa, there has been charged debate over people's marriage choices. This article outlines the major elements in the academic, theological, and popular discourses on marriage in Africa, focusing on two topics: the conceptual divide between monogamous Christian marriage and African polygyny, and the claim that women automatically prefer monogamy. By comparing the assumptions in the literature with ethnographic data from the Republic of Benin, this article demonstrates that marital choices cannot necessarily be predicted by a person's gender and rarely are characterized by a definitive conceptual divide. Instead, personal motives related to economics, prestige, and competition for power are the main factors in marriage choices.

Commemorative Textiles and Anglican Church History in Ondo, Nigeria

The history of the Anglican Church in Nigeria, beginning with its establishment by European missionaries and continued by Nigerian clergy, reflects changing ecclesiastical concerns, which have been discussed in the considerable literature on the history of Christianity in Nigeria. This paper takes a different approach to Anglican Church history in the town of Ondo, in southwestern Nigeria, by focusing on four different commemorative anniversary cloths commissioned by two Anglican churches in Ondo and by the Anglican Diocese, Ondo, from 1925 to 2002. These cloths reflect the different concerns of church leaders during the times when they were made as well as the manufacturing techniques used in their production. This analysis of the four anniversary cloths differs from other studies of commemorative textiles as it details the extensive negotiations that went into the decisions made by particular church leaders, both in the design and commissioning of these cloths from textile manufacturers first in the UK and then in Nigeria. These Anglican Church cloths suggest the ways that cloth was used by church leaders and members both to depict the historical travails of the Anglican Church in Ondo and to express their different and, at times, conflicting opinions and experiences. They were also used to attract new members, who were impressed by the prestige imparted to the wearers of these innovative cloths. This focus on commemorative textiles as historical record thus provides a means of understanding church history from an African perspective.

Mission on Language, Language of Mission - The Role of European Missionaries in the evolution of the Chinese language into Modern Chinese -

Mission on Language, Language of Mission - The Role of European Missionaries in the evolution of the Chinese language into Modern Chinese -

Spiritual slavery, material malaise: ‘untouchables’ and religious neutrality in colonial south India*

The policy of religious neutrality in colonial India, the forebear of post-colonial secularism, was radically reshaped in the process of implementing governmental welfare measures directed at ‘untouchable’ Pariahs. This article reveals how caste came to be understood as a matter of religion – and therefore outside the purview of legitimate state intervention – in a series of conflicts involving state agents, European missionaries, Indian landlords and Pariah agricultural servants in late nineteenth-century Madras Presidency.

Written On Our Hearts: Tswana Christians and the 'Word of God' in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

AbstractThe adoption of Christianity by Tswana people in southern Africa during the nineteenth century generally involved being inspired in some way by stories and ideas presented in the Bible, but the role of Christian scripture varied according to local and personal circumstances. Although European missionaries introduced Christianity to the Tswana, they had little control over the different ways that early Tswana converts perceived, adapted and proclaimed the new teaching. This was particularly true among western and northern Tswana in the mid-nineteenth century before the extension of colonial rule into the interior, as many Tswana communities remained largely intact and were able to accommodate Christianity on their own terms. Rather than being simply a European-made tool, the 'lefoko la Modimo' (word of God) was also an expression of Tswana beliefs and aspirations, composed not on passive objects of missionary evangelism, colonial rule or scholarly inquiry 'but on tablets of human hearts'.

Missionaries, Colonialism and Language in Nineteenth‐Century South Africa

AbstractThroughout the nineteenth century, driven by the need both to communicate with potential African converts and to produce written Scriptural translations, Christian missionaries set about studying, transliterating and transforming South African languages. Their work served, in various ways, the demands of the developing British colonial order; established new ‘standard forms’ of South African vernaculars; and facilitated the development of literacy among African people in the region. The close relationship between missionaries, colonialism and language study in South Africa has been documented and analysed by scholars from a wide range of disciplines. This article summarizes some of the key issues in the field, as they have defined critical debates since the 1980s, by focusing on models of ‘invention’ on the one hand and ‘reciprocity’ on the other, and exploring continuities and dissonances between these debates and the wider fields of colonial studies and colonial discourse analysis. It concludes by arguing for a balance. On the one hand, it is vital that we acknowledge the significance of missionary language study as a mode of colonial discourse with the power to shape the social, linguistic, and political realities it purported only to describe. On the other, this should not eclipse our understanding of missionary linguistic work in social context, as the product of fraught, complex, and often mutually transformative encounters between European missionaries and African speakers of the languages in question.

:Strange Names of God: The Missionary Translation of the Divine Name and the Chinese Responses to Matteo Ricci's Shangti in Late Ming China, 1583-1644

One of the most precarious and daunting tasks for sixteenth-century European missionaries in the cross-cultural mission frontiers was translating the name of « God (Deus) into the local language. When the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) introduced the Chinese term

Conversations between China and the West: The missionaries in early Qing Dynasty and their researches on the Book of Changes

By the early 18thCentury, the “Rites Controversy” among the missionaries themselves has evolved into a culture conflict between the Qing Empire and Europe. To make the European missionaries in China follow the rites of Matteo Ricci, Emperor Kangxi had French Jesuit missionaries Joachim Bouvet and Jean Francoise Foucquet study theBook of Changesin his royal palace and had further conversions with the European missionaries based on their researches. Not only did this cultural conversation reveal the Figurist’s tendencies, as represented by Bouvet, and the interior conflict among the missionaries themselves after the “Rites controversy,” but also showed Kangxi’s policies towards the missionaries, as well as his attitude towards Western culture and religion.

Imagining the Nyika Plateau: Laurens van der Post, the Phoka and the Making of a National Park*

The Nyika National Park, which spreads across northern Malawi into Zambia, is conventionally depicted as a ‘natural museum’, one of the last remaining untouched natural habitats in Africa. As this article demonstrates, however, from the late nineteenth century onwards the Nyika has been represented in a variety of different and often clashing forms involving local inhabitants (the Phoka) and European missionaries, explorers and administrators. From the late 1940s, a major influence shaping representations of the Nyika was Laurens van der Post, whose best-selling book, Venture to the Interior, provided a powerful image of the uncontaminated character of both the plateau and the Phoka people. At the same time, in his hitherto unpublished report on the Nyika, van der Post emphasised the potential of the plateau for European stock breeders and the inherently destructive nature of Phoka herders, gatherers and agriculturalists. The last section of the article focuses on the working out of van der Post's contradictory vision between the 1950s and the 1990s – the eventual rejection of the commercial model exemplified by the Colonial Development Corporation's ambitious schemes for a huge forestry plantation, the creation of a national park, yet also the expulsion of thousands of Phoka people from the plateau and the surrounding valleys.

The Cherokee Nation: A History

The Cherokee Nation is one of the largest and most important of all the American Indian tribes. The first history of the Cherokees to appear in over four decades, this is also the first to be endorsed by the tribe and the first to be written by a Cherokee. Robert Conley begins his survey with Cherokee origin myths and legends. He then explores their relations with neighboring Indian groups and European missionaries and settlers. He traces their forced migrations west, relates their participations on both sides of the Civil War and the wars of the twentieth century, and concludes with an examination of Cherokee life today. Conley provides analyses for general readers of all ages to learn the significance of tribal lore and Cherokee tribal law. Following the history is a listing of the Principal Chiefs of the Cherokees with a brief biography of each and separate listings of the chiefs of the Eastern Cherokees and the Western Cherokees. For those who want to know more about Cherokee heritage and history, Conley offers additional reading lists at the end of each chapter.

African Slavery Artifacts and European Colonialism: The Cameroon Grassfields from 1600 to 1950

African slavers used various articles, often of intrinsic value, in their slave business: in the purchase of slaves, in regulating the trade and in assigning special functions to slaves. These articles constitute valuable slavery artifacts in Africa today. Using the Grassfields of Cameroon as a case study, this paper shows how the study of these artifacts exposes not only how African slavers perceived and treated slaves but, more importantly, how these artifacts were used in regulating and controlling the trade. The paper also stresses the fact that a great number of these artifacts of material history were seized, destroyed or looted by European colonialists and Christian missionaries, which accounts for their scarcity. The authors conclude that the study of slavery art constitutes a novel approach for researching the slave trade and African history from an African perspective.

Religions in Vietnam in XVIII century according to the Systematic View of European Missionaries in North Vietnam

Religions in Vietnam in XVIII century according to the Systematic View of European Missionaries in North Vietnam

Educating the "Native": A Study of the Education Adaptation Strategy in British Colonial Africa, 1910-1936

This essay discusses how examinations were used as an strategy beginning in 1910 when British examinations boards were invited to assist with the conduct of secondary school examinations in colonial territories in Africa. Although adaptation covered all aspects of formal schooling, this study focuses on secondary education because of its importance as the highest level of education available, and its significant impact on colonial society at the time. Much of recent literature on the adaptation question has focused on the various levels of schooling beyond basic village education in rural areas. (1) The essay examines the responses, particularly in Nigeria, to the suggestion that secondary education should be adapted to local needs, and the results of the adaptation efforts, culminating in the introduction of the Overseas School Certificate Examination for Nigerian candidates in 1936. The foundation of Western education in Africa was laid by Christian missionaries who were eager to use literacy training to introduce Christianity and win converts to their religion. (2) The missionaries also used Western education to train as catechists, messengers, and other positions needed to assist them in realizing the social and economic development and transformations desired by the European missionaries and their agents. Merchants and traders also required qualified personnel to handle their business transactions. Thus after considerable consultations between the Church Missionary Society (CMS), founded by the Church of England to promote evangelization, and the local merchants and traders, the first secondary school in Nigeria, the Church Missionary Society Grammar School, was founded in Lagos in 1859. (3) It is by no means surprising that the first secondary school in Nigeria was established by the Church Missionary Society (CMS). Its secretary from 1841 to 1872, Henry Venn, firmly believed in the development of adequate human resources, and that the school must be self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating, and should employ African personnel. (4) The African commercial and business elite also required personnel that was well-trained and equipped to handle political and economic transactions between and outsiders involving record keeping and correspondence regarding the exchange of European and African goods and services. (5) also gradually began to recognize the advantages and the attractions of post-primary education, especially the increased salaries and wages, and improved conditions of service. Historian Andrew Paterson has observed that in South Africa, Africans perceived education to be an alternative source for economic security in a time of land dispossession. (6) In a quick succession, additional secondary schools were established by the CMS in various parts of Nigeria, and by other missionary organizations, including the Baptist Mission, the Catholic Mission, and the Wesleyan Methodist Mission, beginning in the 1870s. The Qua Iboe, the Primitive Methodist Society, established secondary schools mostly in Eastern Nigeria starting in 1922. Secondary schools also gradually began to spring up in various other parts of Africa, as community colleges, high schools, and secondary grammar schools, often in cooperation with Christian missions that provided the teachers, the curriculum, and the necessary contacts; however, the local communities provided the buildings and raised funds for these educational services. (7) This was the background to the establishment of various mission schools in Africa. In Nigeria, for example, ethnic-based secondary schools such as Oduduwa College, Ile-Ife; Edo College, Benin City; and Imade College, Owo began to sprout up to attend to the various needs of communities and individuals eager to take advantage of the new opportunities for advancement and promotion in the new society that emerged with the coming of the missionaries and the colonial administrative bureaucracy. …

La frontera que nos une : proyecto para educar al bárbaro, México, 1807

Fuertemente influenciado por las ideas ilustradas que circulaban por las colonias hispanoamericanas a fines del siglo XVIII, y por el contacto con misioneros europeos procedentes de Asia, un hermano franciscano elaboró un proyecto para establecer un colegio de misiones dónde educar al indio bárbaro de las Provincias Internas de la Nueva España. En ese mismo colegio habría cabida para niños provenientes de la China y de otras naciones asiáticas. El artículo revisa los planteamientos del religioso que justificaban su ambicioso proyecto, y los antecedentes socio-históricos que lo respaldaron. Uno de los ángulos fundamentales se centró sobre el contacto entre las distintas culturas y los beneficios que se obtendrían por el mismo. Con la invasión napoleónica de España y los movimientos independentistas de las colonias españolas, la realización del proyecto peligró, pero la iniciativa fue reflejo de una necesidad real de educar y civilizar al bárbaro.

The Missionary Work of the <i>Société des Missions Étrangères de</i> Paris and its Catechists in Vietnam

The catechists were involved in various activities; they belonged to the Société des Missions Étrangères de Paris (MEP) in a province of North Vietnam called Tonkin, and they were not limited to the ordinary functions of simple preachers of catechism. After the dissolution of the Society of Jesus in the latter half of the 18th century, with authorization from Rome, the hierarchy and functions of the MEP catechists developed in a range of unique ways in the Vicariate Apostolic of Western Tonkin.The Tonkinese Christians always paid their respects to the highly-ranked catechists who were literate not only in Christian dogma and rites, but also in the world of the traditional Sino-Vietnamese classics. It was the catechists who gave moral education to these Christians and connected them with the non-Christian villagers by means of their intellectual influence in the local communities of North Vietnam.However, in the view of European missionaries and Tonkinese priests, the catechists had never broken free of their hierarchically determined position as followers or simple servants and became increasingly entrenched in this position from the end of the 18th century onwards.The gradual tendency for catechists to be subordinated to their superiors became more widespread with the increase in their numbers and the accomplishments of the local clergy system in the Vicariate Apostolic of Western Tonkin.By the early 19th century, most low-ranked catechists had already become almost mechanical in their actions. They worked in the “Maison de Dieu” of each parish, which offered food, clothing, education, and shelter to displaced people and refugees from the civil wars and famines caused by natural disasters such as droughts and floods. Candidates for such catechist work were not primarily motivated by religious reasons.Though the catechists in the Vicariate Apostolic of Western Tonkin seem to have lost their early high status, they continued to act within Christian communities as indispensable intermediaries between European missionaries or Tonkinese priests and local Christian villagers. Their role cannot be considered negligible when we consider the tenacity and flexibility of Vietnamese Christian communities, which survived severe persecutions perpetrated by the Nguyen dynasty under the French military invasion in the mid 19th century.