Appendix D - A Note on Archival Sources

Summary

In addition to the oral evidence described in Chapter 1 and published primary and secondary sources, in this research I made extensive use of archival sources. The primary archives where I worked were the Council for World Mission Archive at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London; the Public Records Office in London (PRO); the Cape Town Archives Repository in Cape Town (CTAR); and the National Archives Repository in Pretoria (NAR). In addition to these, I visited specific collections at the National Archives of Zimbabwe (ZAR) and the University of the Witwatersrand. The small but interesting collection at the Moffat Mission in Kuruman was also helpful.

At SOAS, I read incoming letters from London Missionary Society (LMS) missionaries in Tswana areas from 1815–1910. These letters are not indexed by subject, so I read them page by page. For the first eighty-five years, these letters gave good details about environmental and social aspects of missions among Tswana-speaking people. For the missionaries, the existence of oppressed classes and extensive production were evidence of African depravity, and methods of food production were integral to their conception of themselves and the Christian message. By the 1870s, they made a link between Christianity, imperialism, intensive production, and land tenure, so their commentary on these subjects provided good evidence on the period of imperial annexation. At the turn of the century, missionaries described and expressed concern about rinderpest, violence, and famine.