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“Go Ye into All the World”: Missionary Archives in the School of Oriental and African Studies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 April 2022
Extract
For many, the spread of the missionary movement overseas is inextricably linked with the rise of the British Empire. Missionaries often preceded the arrival of colonial government in many parts of the world and some of the first recorded encounters between Westerners and indigenous peoples are those of missionaries seeking converts to Christianity. At the height of the missionary movement, between 1880 and 1920, some sixty societies based in the UK were actively engaged in this work with many thousands of missionaries going out to the mission field. The legacy of all this global activity lies in the archives, personal papers, books and pamphlets, published annual reports, missionary magazines, photographs, films, slides, sound recordings and artefacts scattered throughout museums, archives and libraries across the UK.
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- Copyright © African Research & Documentation 2005
References
Notes
1 Source: World Missionary Atlas (London: Edinburgh House Press, 1925)
2 The Central Africa Mission was launched by the LMS in 1877 in an area south of Lake Tanganyika. Diseases such as sleeping sickness cut swathes through the ranks of early missionaries. Between 1877 and 1893,36 missionaries were sent to the region, of whom 11 died and 14 gave up missionary work, many having served only a matter of weeks or months in Africa.
3 Gales of Change: responding to a shifting missionary context ed by Bernard Thorogood (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1994), p. 53.
4 That is Protestant and Non-conformist missionary archives. The archives of Roman Catholic missionary societies are, for the most part, located in their motherhouses on the European continent though some information about UK provincial archives is available on the MUNDUS website, http://www.mundus.ac.uk, as are details of British-based Catholic missionary societies. Good collections of printed materials relating to the work of Catholic missions are held by, among others, the British Library and the SOAS Library.
5 Rosemary Seton and Keith Webster, “The SOAS Library and Archives” SOAS since the Sixties ed. David Arnold & Christopher Shackle (SOAS, 2003), pp. 129-145.
6 The CWM is a co-operative of 31 member churches worldwide, with a common commitment to mission. It grew out of the London Missionary Society (LMS), the Commonwealth (Colonial) Missionary Society and Presbyterian Board of Mission.
7 Originally founded as the School of Oriental Studies in 1916, SOAS took its present title in 1938, by which time it had established itself as a centre of African studies. The Hayter Report of 1961 resulted in additional funding for the SOAS Library, which in turn prompted an active acquisition of manuscript collections throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
8 A related collection is the archives of the Presbyterian Church of England Foreign Missions Committee, now the United Reformed Church, which is a member of the CWM.
9 Work in the Cape region after 1895 passed to the care of the Congregational Union of South Africa.
10 The leading African missionary Robert Moffat began work at Kuruman in 1821, while David Livingstone (who was to marry Moffat's daughter Mary in 1845) joined the mission in 1841.
11 The History of the London Missionary Society 1795-1895, Richard Lovett (London, 1899). Livingstone's reservations were based mainly on the sparse population at Kuruman, and this did indeed hamper missionary endeavours in the area.
12 The archives include a vivid - and somewhat farcical - description of LMS officials scurrying around London in a taxi the day before the proposed marriage trying desperately to stop it taking place at all. CWM Africa Subject files 1941-1950, AF37
13 Letter from D.M. Buchanan to Rev Rodney K. Orchard, 5 October 1948. CWM Africa Subject files 1941-1950, AF37.
14 Letter to the Rev Rodney K. Orchard from Reginald Smith, editor of The British Weekly, 8 September 1950. CWM Africa Subject files 1941-1950, AF37
15 Seretse Khama was eventually allowed to return to his homeland in 1956 as a private citizen. In 1961 he founded the Bechuanaland Democratic Party, which won elections in 1965, and he himself became the first President of independent Botswana. Knighted in 1966, he remained president until his death in 1980. Lady Ruth Khama died in 2002.
16 As the London Missionary Society had done several years previously, the Methodists made their first foray into Africa on the West coast. The earliest Wesleyan missionary work there began in Sierra Leone in 1811 and spread within the next 20 years to neighbouring regions, including Fernando Po, French West Africa, The Gambia, Gold Coast and Nigeria. A Wesleyan mission was first established in southern Africa at Namaqualand in 1814.
17 Taylor's publications include: African Aphorisms; or, Saws from Swahili-land (1891); Giryama Vocabulary and Collections (1891); The Groundwork of the Swahili Language (1898); he contributed to Mrs F. Burt's Swahili Grammar and Vocabulary (1910); he contributed to C.H. Srigand's A Grammar of Dialectic Changes in the Kiswahili Language (1915); Ukumbosho wa Uongozi (Memorandum of Guidance for East African Field Officers) [1925]; translations of the Bible into Swahili and Giryama, published 1889-1909.
18 The SOAS Archives Collection Policy is to acquire archives, manuscripts and other primary source materials of research value for African and Asian Studies in the following categories:
• Missionaries, missionary organisations and religious groups
• Business organisations and individuals involved in business
• Humanitarian organisations and political non-govemment groups
19 This is the case with the Church Missionary Society (CMS), which does not deposit records at Birmingham University Library until they are 40 years old, and even more so with the Bible Society, which has a 70 year closure rule before records are sent to Cambridge University Library.
20 The Conference of British Missionary Societies (CBMS) was founded in 1912 with a membership of more than 40 Protestant missionary societies. It grew, out of the Continuation Committee established as a result of the World Missionary Conference held in Edinburgh in 1910, which aimed to encourage the foundation of national co-operative councils for mission. The CBMS was not itself a missionary society, but its archive documents show how home missionary organisations co-operated with contacts abroad, show the public face of missionary activity, and also offer evidence on contemporary social and political, as well as religious, events.
21 The word Mundus is taken from the Latin version of the gospels of Matthew and Mark: ager autem est mundus “the field is the world” (Matthew xiii 38), and euntes in mundum universum praedicate evangeliumis “go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel” (Mark xvi 15)
22 In partnership with other academic libraries and missionary organisations, SOAS has joined the Internet Missionary Photographic Archive (IMPA), a project to digitise images from missionary archives and make them available on a web site hosted by the lead organisation, the University of Southern California. The web site will be launched in 2005. Some of the manuscripts from the Swahili collection have been digitised (www.swahilimanuscripts.soas.ac.uk). Digital images of documents are not presently included in the Mundus database, although a selection of visual images is displayed in the Mundus Gallery (www.mundus.ac.uk).
23 Adrian Cunningham, National Archives of Australia, reviewing “Archives, Records and Power” in the Journal of the Society of Archivists, Vol 25, No 1, April 2004.
24 “Problems and opportunities in an anthropologist's use of a missionary archive” by J.D.Y. Peel, Missionary Encounters: Sources and Issues ed Robert A Bickers & Rosemary Seton (London: Curzon Press, 1996).