Missionary Encounters: Sources and Issues [1 ed.] 0700703705, 9780700703708

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
List of illustrations
Contributors
Introduction • David Arnold and Robert A. Bickers
1. “Mighty England do good”: the major English denominations and organisation for the support of foreign missions in the nineteenth century • Steven Maughan
2. Some problems in writing a missionary society history today: the example of the Baptist Missionary Society • Brian Stanley
3. “Open doors for female labourers”: women candidates of the London Missionary Society, 1875-1914 • Rosemary Seton
4. Problems and opportunities in an anthropologist’s use of a missionary archive • J. D. Y. Peel
5. Four nineteenth-century pictorial images from Africa in the Basel Mission Archive and Library Collections • Paul Jenkins
6. Women and education in South Africa: how helpful are the mission archives? • Deborah Gaitskell
7. The nature of a mission community: the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa in Bonde • Justin Willis
8. Who is to benefit from missionary education? Travancore in the 1930s • Dick Kooiman
9. A “peculiar and exceptional measure”: the call for women medical missionaries for India in the later nineteenth century • Rosemary Fitzgerald
10. Missionaries as social commentators: the Indian case • Geoffrey A. Oddie
11. “To serve and not to rule”: British Protestant missionaries and Chinese nationalism, 1928-1931 • Robert A. Bickers
Appendix: Archival sources in Britain for the study of mission history • Rosemary Seton

Citation preview

MISSIONARY ENCOUNTERS Sources and Issues

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MISSIONARY ENCOUNTERS Sources and Issues

Edited by ROBERT A. BICKERS and ROSEMARY SETON

CURZON PRE 5 5

First published in 1996 by Curzon Press St John's Studios, Church Road, Richmond Surrey, TW9 2QA © 1996 Robert A. Bickers and Rosemary Seton Typeset by PDQ Typesetting, Newcastle-under-Lyme Printed in Great Britain by TJ Press (Padstow) Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-7007--0369-1 (hbk) ISBN 0-7007--0370-5 (pbk)

CONTENTS Acknowledgements List of abbreviations List of ill ustrations Contributors .. .. Introduction, David Arnold and Robert A. Bickers

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"Mighty England do good": the major English denominations and organisation for the support of foreign missions in the nineteenth century Steven Maughan Some problems in writing a missionary society history today: the example of the Baptist Missionary Society Brian Stanley.. "Open doors for female labourers": women candidates of the London Missionary Society, 1875-1914 Rosemary Seton Problems and opportunities in an anthropologist's use of a missionary archive J. D. Y. Peel Four nineteenth-century pictorial images from Africa in the Basel Mission Archive and Library Collections Paul Jenkins Women and education in South Africa: how helpful are the mission archives? Deborah Gaitskell

The nature ofa mission community: the Universities' Mission to Central Africa in Bonde Justin Willis 8. Who is to benefit from missionary education? Travancore in the 1930s Dick Kooiman 9. A "peculiar and exceptional measure": the call for women medical missionaries for India in the later nineteenth century Rosemary Fit::gerald 9.9. Missionaries as social commentators: the Indian case Geoffrey A. Oddie

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"To serve and not to rule": British Protestant missionaries and Chinese nationalism, 1928-31 Robert A. Bickers

Appendix: Archival sources in Britain for the study of mission history Rosemary Seton

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We should like to thank the Past and Present Society for permission to publish the paper by Dr Justin Willis, which first appeared in Past and Present 140 (August 1993), pp. 127-54, and the Overseas Ministry Study Center for permission to publish "Archival sources in Britain for the study of mission history", see Appendix, which first appeared in the International Bulletin of Missionary Research, vol. 18, 2 (April 1994), pp. 66-70. We are grateful to the Basel Mission and to the Council for World Mission for permission to reproduce photographs and engravings from their collections. We also acknowledge the generosity of The Nuffield Foundation for funding a survey of British Missionary Society archives in preparation for the Workshop on Missionary Archives, held at the School of Oriental and African Studies in July 1992. Robert Bickers, Nuffield College, Oxford. Rosemary Seton, SOAS, University of London. 17th March 1995

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS British Institute in Eastern Africa BIEA Baptist Missionary Society BMS Communaute Baptiste du Fleuve Zaire CBFZ Church of Christ in China CCC China Inland Mission CIM Christian Literature Society CLS Church Missionary Society CMS Council for World Mission CWM (formerly, London Missionary Society) EPM English Presbyterian Mission FSC Friends' Service Council LMS London Missionary Society (now the Council for World Mission) NCC National Christian Council NRA National Register of Archives SVD Society of the Divine Word TNA Tanzania National Archives UMCA Universities' Mission to Central Africa (U)SPG (United) Society for the Propagation of the Gospel WMMS Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society WMSI Women's Medical Service for India YMCA Young Men's Christian Association YWCA Young Women's Christian Association

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Cover

The Revd C. G. Sparham, LMS Central China Mission 18841917, distributing tracts. Council for World Mission Picture Archive.

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The Mohr family with Wilhelmina Locher, Akropong, Ghana, c. 1863, Basel Mission Archive.

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"The Fort at Christiansborg", engraving published in Evangelische Heidenbote (September, 1866, p. 117).

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The Fort at Christians borg, Accra, Ghana, 1862. Basel Mission Archive.

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Ali Eisami Gazirma. Frontispiece to S. Koelle, Grammar of the Bornu or Kanuri Language (1854).

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Part of the interior of an Akan chiefs or priest's compound. c. 1890. Basel Mission Archive.

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The Contributors David Arnold is Professor of South Asian History at SOAS, and has published a number of books and articles on colonialism in India. Robert Bickers completed a Ph.D. at SOAS on British attitudes to China and the Chinese, and is now a Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. Rosemary Fitzgerald is Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Department of Social Sciences, South Bank University, London. She has carried out research in Britain and India on gender issues and the development of the health care system. Deborah Gaitskell is Temporary Lecturer in History at SOAS and has published on African women and Christianity, domesticity, and girls' education in South Africa. Paul Jenkins is a scholar of African history and Archivist of the Basel Mission in Basel. He is particularly interested in the Mission's rich photographic collections. Dick Kooiman lectures at the Free University, Amsterdam, and published Conversion and Social Equality in India: The London Missionary Society in the 19th Century in 1989. Steven Maughan is Instructor in History at Albertson College of Idaho. He is working on a study of the organisation of major British missionary societies. G. A. Oddie is Reader in History at the University of Sydney and has written extensively on missionaries in India.

1. D. Y. Peel is Professor of Anthropology and Sociology with reference to Africa at SOAS. He has published a number of works on religion and social change in West Africa, and the history of social theory. Brian Stanley is Lecturer in Church History at Trinity College, Bristol, and published The History of the Baptist Missionary Society 1792-1992 in 1992. Rosemary Seton is the Archivist at SOAS, a major centre for missionary society archives. In 1992, together with Emily Naish, she carried out a survey of the archives of British missionary societies. Justin Willis is Assistant Director of the British Institute in Eastern Africa. Since completing his Ph.D. at SOAS in 1989 he has published widely on East African history.

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INTRODUCTION David Arnold and Robert A. Bickers

Mission history is a broad church, quite latitudinarian in the scope it allows its scholarly adherents. They do not even have to concern themselves directly with missions or with missionaries. The assembly that met in the auditorium of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, on 8-9 July 1992, for a Workshop on Missionary Archives was therefore quite representative of the field. Scholars of women's history rubbed shoulders with mission society archivists, postgraduate students of the history of medicine sat next to anthropologists, and all had something in common. The present volume is representative of that ecumenical ism, and is indicative of the fact that notions of mission history have altered radically over the past two decades. The old multi-volume standard histories - Lovett on the London Missionary Society, Stock on the Church Missionary Society now stand as monuments to the confidence and strength of missions during the heyday of the enterprise at the turn of the century. We find them useful reference books but they represent an obsolete view of what mission history is, and what the mission enterprise can tell us. Modern secular society takes little notice of contemporary missions or the history of the enterprise. Researchers take more notice, although outside missions themselves there is no longer a dominating scholarly concern with discourses of mission triumphs and successes, with chronicles of ecclesiastical progress, and with the propagation of various brands of Christianity. Instead, a broad cross-section of social scientists and humanities scholars are finding the missionary enterprise a fecund, if often frustrating, source of material to work on, and use to work through to other issues. Such latitude as we now expect presents problems of its own. How far is 'mission history' an interdisciplinary subject, and in what ways can researchers from different disciplines expect to be able to communicate, indeed, to learn from each other? What exactly is 'mission history' and what use is the term? Where do we draw the lines between it and, for example, the history of education in India, or medicine in Africa? Such questions and worries are misleading. Christian endeavour and church history may no longer provide unifying schema for approaching missions, but the bureaucratic competence of the missionary societies has supplied a unifying resource: the mission archive. Missions still retain importance because of the nature and relics of their enterprise. Individuals channelled voluntary efforts through the

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well-organised structures of metropolitan missionary societies, sending overseas great sums of money and large numbers of mission personnel (evangelical, medical and educational), who lived amongst and, to varying degrees interacted with, indigenous cultures and ethnic groups throughout the world. These European missionaries generally sent back a mass of material - private letters, reports, photographs, drawings, objects - to the metropolitan centre. Society secretaries were often the recipients of confidences, concerns and observations absent from official reports and minutes. (The introspection and self-analysis that characterises Protestantism is a boon to the researcher.) Regional and main branches of mission societies, as well as support groups, republished versions of such materials in their journals, pamphlets, and newsletters, and in books targeted at all sectors of the domestic reading public, at their supporters, and at those whose support they sought. There was a special emphasis on materials for the young. Information was disseminated through other media: lecture tours, rallies, lantern shows and exhibitions, and in the twentieth century, through cinema and radio. Much of this material survives in libraries and archives; much more may survive, too, in the former mission fields, and in private hands: the Victorian letter-book in the loft, the family letters in the hands of the grandchildren. It is the size and range of this material, and the possibilities it offers, which draw together scholars from such different disciplines. What becomes more and more clear as this material is assessed and contextualised by scholars not focusing primarily on the expansion of an uncompromising Christianity, is that it often reveals dialogue, not solely between Western and indigenous religious beliefs, and cultural and social practices, but also between the missions and their domestic societies. The workshop at SOAS centred its attention on mission archives, and mission sources, mostly British ones. The questions posed concerned practical issues about the location, accessibility and comprehensiveness of records, but also showed how such sources could be approached and used by scholars working in different disciplines with different aims. It was as much about the encounter between historian, anthropologist and the archive (and the archivist) as between the missionary and the wider world. Limitations were identified, new fields sketched out and older themes revisited. The draft of an up-to-date guide to the location of British missionary archives was presented and discussed. (A version of it appears as an appendix to this volume). It became clear that studies using mission records were growing apace, and that the workshop should be marked - in true mission conference fashion - by a commemorative volume. This collection of papers, then, explores the varieties of work which can be undertaken using mission sources. Of the papers collected here,

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seven are revised versions of presentations made at the workshop and are representative of the discussions that took place there; the remainder have been chosen to broaden the geographical and thematic scope and to show the use of mission records by other scholars, many of whom would fail to recognise themselves as being engaged in the study of 'mission history'. The volume brings together the work of scholars and archivists with a wide experience of missionary materials (mainly the archival collections of Protestant missionary societies in Britain). It surveys the existing literature on the subject and examines the exceptional wealth of missionary archives, and the major contributions they can make to research. We are concerned here, not only with the study of the processes of Christian evangelism and Western imperialism in Africa and Asia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but also with the documentation and analysis of the nature of Western encounters with indigenous societies and the light which missionary sources can shed on the character of African and Asian societies. It is wise, at this point, to issue a disclaimer: however self-consciously missions reflected on the issues discussed here by our contributors, archival and printed records were generated for specific purposes. Uncritically viewing the world through the mission prism can be profoundly misleading, and can often be a cause of disappointment to the researcher. Reading mission archives and publications requires skills that differ from those used in the examination, translation and deconstruction of the official discourse of the colonial power. To the secularly trained historian mission discourse can seem obscure and partisan; it does, in fact, require much more patience and work on the part of the reader. The contents of the mission archives themselves are problematic. They might be termed a 'tainted' source; they are mostly in languages other than those of the societies they refer to - trying to identify individuals from missionary transliterations of their names can often be impossible - and sometimes of the colonial power (or powers) there encountered. The Baptist Missionary Society (BMS), for example, worked in Belgianoccupied Zaire, and Portuguese-held Angola, among other locations. Furthermore, while many missionaries were perceptive long-term commentators on the societies they lived in and reported on, as many were largely ignorant onlookers or, not infrequently, blatantly hostile to what they saw, or to what they thought they saw. Of course, the writers are mostly European, although as anthropologist 1. D. Y. Peel points out below, where non-European respondents are involved the reward for researchers can be particularly great. To a generation of largely secularly trained and secularly minded professional academics missionary writings prompt suspicions of evangelical bias which precludes an objective approach to the past. The

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missionary is, by nature and vocation, biased. Consequently the utility of studying this type of material has been questioned. In reaction to this Peel, in his paper here, considers mission archives from the view-point of his profession. He shows that although anthropologists have often been disparaging about missionary source materials, missionaries were often the first outsiders to establish sustained contact with indigenous peoples in Africa, and often to undertake work which can only be described as anthropological. Using materials from the Church Missionary Society (CMS) archive relating to Yorubaland in West Africa (and especially the journal extracts and reports of native agents), Peel shows how anthropologists can mine missionary sources to illuminate and uncover the local-level encounters between Christianity and indigenous religious and social beliefs. Evangelical bias is certainly present, but it is not insurmountable. In fact, as G. A. Oddie points out in his paper on missionaries as social commentators, the biases of the missionary reporter are often much more clearly acknowledged and better known than those of other writers, which adds to their usefulness. Once their prejudices and assumptions are recognised, he argues, missionary sources offer valuable insights into social developments. Drawing on Protestant missionary accounts of nineteenth-century India, published and archival, Oddie shows that they provide a generally informed account of Indian (especially Hindu) society in a way not matched by many other Western sources. Other reservations about mission archives must be registered here. Ad hominem influences still cannot be discounted when dealing with the organisation of missions and the usefulness of materials generated in the course of their work: personalities set their differing stamps on the way the same mission societies worked at different times. Hierarchies might be very strict and debate - or material evidence for it - imperceptible to present-day researchers. On the other hand, more liberal individuals sometimes oversaw fairly full and rumbustious discussions and correspondences. As fund-raising organisations, mission societies distributed a great deal of publicity material, or printed propaganda, but the missionary letter reprinted and circulated as a pamphlet by a grassroots worker might be the product of several blue pencils and publicists' rewrites. It is no sure guide to the thoughts of that individual; but it is sometimes the only surviving indicator of them. We also approach mission archives with suspicion because they are nearly all incomplete. Considerations of space, or other expediency, or war-time bombing, saw to the disposal or thinning of many of them. Others have simply vanished without trace: where, for example, are the records of the North China and Shantung Missionary Association?

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Faith missions, such as the China Inland Mission (CIM), unencumbered by the bureaucratic structures and requirements of the CMS or the London Missionary Society (LMS) have, quite logically, left fewer papers. The smaller missions have proved elusive too; do the Plymouth Brethren (known as Christian Missions in their missionary work) have any records? The efforts of unsupported individuals or small groups are also often untraceable. Historians often encounter only resounding silences, or faint traces of documents, debates and facts. There are other practical problems. Many of the archives are scattered: as befits an international organisation, China Inland Missionary material exists in at least three different locations, SOAS, Singapore and the United States. LMS materials are stored in at least three places; Dr Williams' Library, London has some early home correspondence, SOAS has the bulk of the material (and of the library), but Chinese texts from the library are now thought to be in Australia. There is also an unknown amount of material in the countries where missions operated, still kept in the churches and church organisations established by missions, or now held in libraries and archives. Rumours of the extent of holdings in China continue to circulate among scholars of Chinese history. Brian Stanley's essay here on his writing of the history of the BMS indicates some of the riches of African BMS material, its sometimes precarious position, and the other practical difficulties of access. Furthermore, although say British, Swedish and Catholic missionaries might well be neighbours in a Chinese town, their records are often scattered in different locations in different continents. Getting to grips with a particular location can, in theory, involve research in two or three continents. Even so, there are still gaps. Private papers of individuals, where they do exist, often flesh out the record. Some collections are located in mission archives. Others have ended up in universities, or in county record offices, and there is obviously still the possibility of finding material in family hands. Physically, the surviving archives present practical problems of their own. There is often a lack of adequate guides. Different mission records are arranged in different ways, as were the societies themselves, and this can be confusing at best, and defeating at worst, as Deborah Gaitskell indicates in her paper. Here also the sheer volume of material can often be numbing. LMS China missionaries in the 1920s frequently groused about the committees that structured their working lives, but they rarely had to read as many of the resultant minutes and reports as the researcher does. Different missions also have different approaches to allowing researchers access to their material, and this can lead to difficulties; the historian and the society archivist are not always likely to agree on what is interesting, and what is intrusive. For all their gaps and biases the body of work created using, or partly

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INTRODUCTION

using, missionary records, continues to grow, and the themes dealt with continue to expand. A survey of some of the areas covered, or revisited in works like Stanley's, indicates just how far the retreat from Lovett and Stock has gone. In the first place, secular historians have been re-examining the history of mission societies (such as the BMS) or the story of their efforts to propagate self-governing churches. The epic chronicle has largely been replaced by the critical analysis. Brian Stanley, at a time when large histories of single missionary societies have become somewhat unfashionable, stresses the importance of considering how missionary history has changed from being solely history for believers to forming an integral part of wider historical and anthropological enquiry. Certainly, contemporary missionary organisations still publish works in the former category, but even they show a greater willingness to deal with the problems and the failures, as well as the successes of societies; Marshall Broomhall's seven volume study of Hudson Taylor and China's Open Century (1982-89) is a good example. To illustrate further the shift of focus in recent times, Stanley looks at the engagement of the BMS with indigenous society in Africa and South Asia and the documentary evidence surviving from that encounter. More broadly, the old topic of the relationship between the missionary enterprise and the development and consolidation of European imperialisms, seemingly discredited for its political naivete, has been revisited to show its pertinence: Brian Stanley's earlier The Bible and the Flag (1990) showed that such analysis certainly has a life outside political propaganda. Specific local studies show, too, how much work needs to be done to re-incorporate this theme back into mainstream mission histories. The growing awareness of mission workers after the First World War of the validity of some of the charges made against them, and their eventual willingness to adjust accordingly, are also interesting, and this is one of the themes explored by Bickers. The first things records tell us concern the people who created them; their attitudes and ideas are the subject of many studies. Bickers focuses on British Protestant missionaries in China in the twentieth century, and examines their attitudes to the Chinese. These were often highly ambivalent and, as their private correspondence reveals, missionaries were often very contemptuous and unsympathetic. However, in the 1920s and 1930s missionaries were forced to come to terms with the rise of Chinese nationalism and, as a result of the sinification of mission structures and practices, to learn to work alongside Chinese converts and missionaries rather than assume an automatic superiority over them. The international scope of mission work also offers the possibility of comparative studies of the impact of, say, missionary medicine, on different non-Western societies. Missions had to evolve differing strategies and

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institutions to cope with the faiths and cultures they encountered. The scope for comparative analysis in many fields is great. Area studies of states and regions penetrated by missions often benefit from the use of mission sources, especially on topics such as education, social change the growth of new mission-dependant, or mission-sponsored classes or groups - church history and women, who were often the specific target of mission campaigns or, indeed, organisations. Missions also have much to tell us about their enemies, such as the Boxers in China. Justin Willis, a historian of Africa, provides in his analysis of mission communities in what is now part of Tanzania, an example of the diligent integration of archival sources, printed materials and oral testimony, assembled from Britain and Africa. Willis outlines the nature of the communities, operated by the Universities' Mission to Central Africa, their interaction with and effect on indigenous society, and the processes of conversion. In fact mission records and archives have much to tell us about the minutiae of life in communities often difficult to access in any other way. They gain in usefulness through corroboration - or contradiction - with other sources, such as government records, oral history, local institutional records and even through anthropological fieldwork, as Dick Kooiman points out in his essay. The search for evidence for reconstructing the history of education takes many researchers to the archive. Deborah Gaitskell outlines her own odyssey in pursuit of materials concerning the education of African girls in South Africa. Concentrating specifically on the richness of information to be found within printed and archival materials, she concludes that only by integrating mission and government education records, and by attempting to flesh out the gaps through oral history and autobiography, can her field of inquiry be satisfactorily investigated. Education was also one of the main activities of British Protestant missionary societies in the princely state of Travancore in southwest India in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Dick Kooiman's paper considers the aims and effectiveness of missionary educational policies there in the 1930s, and looks critically at what the missionary records inadvertently reveal about the missionaries' difficulties and how these compare with other, non-missionary accounts. The educational enterprise was not confined to schools. Missions were also agents of Western secular thought, science and technology. The Jesuit endeavour in China was founded on the utility to the Qing court of Western astronomy. During the nineteenth century self-strengthening movement, Protestant missionaries translated mathematical treatises and technological handbooks into Chinese, and even published popular journals to disseminate such information. Missionary medicine has left a great deal of material behind which serves for the study of the intro-

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INTRODUCTION

duction of Western medicine into specific countries, for the type of comparative study mentioned above, and also for questions concerning specific diseases in different societies. Colonial medicine is currently a topic of much concern to the social historians of empire and to ignore the contribution of the mission doctors, hospitals and nurses, and of course, the medical and ancillary staff they trained, is to remain ignorant of the broader picture. Medicine is a profession, as well as a science, and as Rosemary Fitzgerald's essay shows, missionary medicine became very much the arena in which female doctors practised their skills in the late nineteenth century. This change was brought about by the circumstantial combination of male opposition to women's entrance into the domestic market, and by the opportunities medicine offered for piercing the social barriers surrounding Indian women and entering the Indian home. In fact, as Fitzgerald makes clear, from occupying largely subordinate roles, both women and medicine secured positions of key importance within the mission enterprise; in doing so they helped broaden, in many quarters, conceptions of the roles that enterprise should undertake. Mission archives are not just the preserve of the written word. One type of material which is grossly under-utilised (and often under- or uncatalogued), is the photographic collection. Photographs are often used merely to decorate texts, or book jackets. In his essay Paul Jenkins examines four photographs, from the collection of the Swiss Basel Mission, taken in West Africa in the 1860s. Jenkins considers what they tell us about the photographic techniques of the period, but also what they reveal of Africa as well as European missions, and European society, at the time. He concludes that rather than simply serving as images of colonialism and Europeanisation, they uniquely document the final phase of Africa's pre-colonial history. The abundant surviving images generated by missions await further examination. For the study of Western perceptions of non-European societies, mission societies, whose survival depended on skilful marketing, are prime sources. For Western popUlations at large missionaries were one of the most important sources of information and images of nonEuropeans, their religions, cultures, and societies. The history of the relationship between the United States and China before 1949, for example, is impossible to understand unless this factor is grasped. The printed materials have themselves been trawled by scholars for what they can reveal about Western images and attitudes, and their changes over time. Less obviously, the letters of individual missionaries have been used to explore the processes by which Europeans met with, and adapted - or otherwise - their preconceptions to fit the realities of a foreign culture and foreign individuals.

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This last point bears a close relation to the most interesting and least expected direction mission studies have taken, which is the use of the mission prism to examine the metropolitan societies that sent them out. Jane Hunter's The Gospel of Gentility: American Women Missionaries in Turn-of-the-Century China (1984) is a powerful example which explores the backgrounds and careers of female North American missionaries in China, dealing with issues of women's history in China and the United States, and the history and experience of imperialism. In her paper here, Rosemary Seton examines the role of the Ladies' Committee in the LMS, concentrating on the recruitment of female personnel and the ambiguites of their role in mission work. Close examination of the papers of both successful and unsuccessful candidates explicates the key class and gender issues that confronted the aspirations of Victorian British women and circumscribed their opportunities. Missionary societies had important social functions, as employers, as providers of social mobility for lower middle-class individuals, and for professional women, as sources of entertainment and information, and as highly organised pressure groups. Indeed, missionary societies were voluntary, philanthropic bodies that used all the tools of the market and of newly developing forms of mass media to further their aims and garner support, both financial and human. In an echo of John Mackenzie's work on the impact of imperialism on British society, Steven Maughan, taking the Anglican CMS as a model for British missionary organisations in general, discusses the nature of its records and support networks, and shows here how mission societies had a substantial and deep-seated impact on the sending culture. They provide another angle of approach to the social and political history of European societies, and indeed to religious history, from all of which they are often excluded. Turning this back to the indigenous societies that missions worked within, changes in the social and educational composition of missionary personnel, notably the role of women, had repercussions and echoes felt far from the metropolitan centre. This volume is certainly incomplete. Of European and North American Protestant missions only the work of the Basel Mission finds a place. Mission rivalries and conflicts, which often had important effects, as Dick Kooiman shows for Travancore, are here mostly ignored. Catholicism is excluded. We have been unable even to cover all the regions penetrated by British Protestant societies, and represented in their archives. There is no discussion on Southeast Asia, the Pacific, or South and Central America. Nor is the full range of thematic topics covered. Printing is excluded, as is the mission contribution to linguistic or sociological studies and academic scholarship in Europe. We have also focused on the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth. Post-

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1945 developments are excluded and so, on the whole, are the centuries of mission activity before 1800, which were chiefly Roman Catholic. Omission is a useful concept with which to finish this introduction; after all, the wonder of the archived materials lies in the recording of social practices and customs omitted from the printed mission records, if recorded at all. Often concerning itself with social groups or classes excluded from both colonial and indigenous official discourse, the missionary enterprise has indeed rescued many communities from history's ignorance and condescension. The mission archive is central to that rescue.

"Mighty England do Good": The Major English Denominations and Organisation for the Support of Foreign Missions in the Nineteenth Century· Steven Maughan In the spring of 1888 the Centenary Conference on the Protestant Missions of the World was held in London's Exeter Hall, the grand tabernacle of Victorian philanthropy. The location of generations of Annual Meetings of the foremost English denominational missionary societies societies which had led a massive nineteenth-century expansion of evangelical proselytising into the world - must have seemed appropriate for the most ambitious interdenominational conference on the conversion of the "heathen" yet organised. The Conference was planned primarily as a forum for the exchange of ideas on missionary practice, but its more conspicuous focus was on the fact that foreign missions had grown immensely over the course of the century aided by a fantastic proliferation of the societies which sent missionaries into the field. The number of delegates at the Conference alone was worthy of comment: 1,316 delegates from 53 societies located in the United Kingdom dined and conferred for ten days with 263 delegates from 86 societies based in North America, the Continent, and the Colonies. H. Percy Grubb, recently appointed Home Organisation Secretary of the largest of the British missionary societies, the Church Missionary Society, observed that fifty years before there had been only ten British missionary societies in existence. Now there were over a hundred. While the early societies had struggled to gain acceptance and support, in the past twenty-five years over £10 million had been contributed to foreign missions.! Such a shift in

*1 am grateful to the Centre for European Studies at Harvard University, the Krupp Foundation and the Fulbright Fellowship Program for grants in 1988, 1990 and 1991 that supported research for this article. Andrew Porter and the members of the Imperial History Seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London provided many helpful comments on earlier versions of this material. I would also like to thank the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and the Church Missionary Society for permission to cite from their archives. I. James Johnson (ed.), Report of the Centenary Conference on the Protestant Missions of the World held in Exeter Hall, 2 vols. (London, 1888), vol. I, p.I08. By 1900 154 missionary societies and auxiliaries operating in Great Britain had been identified; James S. Dennis, Centennial Survey of Foreign Missions (Edinburgh and London, 1902), pp. 257-60.

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fortunes was hardly to be overlooked by a gathering that consisted largely of English missionary propagandists, and to the more sanguine enthusiasts at the Conference it seemed that "heathen" dominoes the world round were set to fall. For many associated with foreign missions, the 1880s seemed the stage from which the Holy Spirit, through the providential rise of the British Empire, was set to sweep the world? Yet the 1880s were also a period when evidence of the resilience of other world religions led more sober observers to consider the plausibility of widely claimed "Christian successes". James Johnson, a Church Missionary Society missionary, reflected this uncertainty when in 1886 he produced a tract for the Queen's Jubilee. His pamphlet, ostensibly celebrating "an Empire stretching its wings round the habitable globe", took as its main theme the inability of Christian conversions to keep pace with population increases in the "heathen" world. Given this demographic challenge, he asserted resources must be pooled; but missionary efficiency was frustrated by the way "the number of missionary societies has multiplied to such an extent, that every year it is becoming more difficult to avoid complications or collisions, both at home and abroad". Like a growing number of missionary advocates, James Johnson questioned whether the growing resources of foreign missions were being put to their most efficient use, whether the home churches were doing their part to support this crusade, and whether the traditional organisation of the missionary movement was best calculated to bring about the conversion of the world to Christianity.3 Doubts and criticisms of this sort revealed the position of the late Victorian missionary movement: English Protestant missions had been very successful in developing loyal support among English congregations. 4 In the world at large, however, their successes - even where they had operated in clear co-operation with imperial power - had been uneven at best, and disappointing at worst, especially if the ambitious goal of the complete evangelisation of

2. Secular observers were less encouraging: a stinging editorial in The Times suggested, as other recent critics had, that funding for foreign missions should be cut off until they could account fully for expenditures and instances of slow progress; Johnson, Centenary Conference, vol. I, pp. xvii-xix, 469. 3. James Johnson, A Century of Missions and Increase of the Heathen, 2nd ed. (London, 1886), p. 33 and passim. 4. This article will consider only Protestant missions, not those of English Roman Catholics. Amounts collected by Roman Catholics in the British isles (£11,786) were negligible compared to those of Protestants (£1,020,390). W. A. Scott Robertson,

British Contributions to Foreign Missions. Analysis and Summary of the Receipts of Sixty-five Societies for the Year 1872 (London, 1872), pp.I-2.

STRUCTURES OF SUPPORT FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS

13

the world was held up as the missionary standard. 5 What the 1888 Missionary Conference and the late Victorian missionary debate showed was that British Protestant missions had reached a level of size and diversity that invited both serious reflection from within the movement and persistent criticism from without. 6 Regardless of criticism, however, the paramount reality for home organisers had become the incessant hunger for cash of an enormous world-wide movement. In the world of mushrooming expenses in the Empire and the regions beyond it, the enlisting and retention of a devoted body of home supporters was crucial to survival and growth. It would be difficult to produce a comprehensive account of home efforts by the various English denominations to support Protestant overseas missions because they were represented by an enormous number of voluntary societies with a broad range of geographical and theological concerns. However, the very multiplicity of societies is testimony to more than a century of impressive growth and the profound success of missionary advocates in making foreign missions a continuing concern in English religion. The world of English Protestant missions and their supporters especially as the century wore on - drew on a bewilderingly diverse set of religious and social milieux. Anglo-Catholic, evangelical, and High Church Anglicans all contributed to the missionary effort, as did all varieties of Baptist, Methodist, Congregationalist, Presbyterian, Quaker and other nonconformist denominations. In addition, later in the century, there were notable non-denominational missions like Hudson Taylor's China Inland Mission and Henry Grattan Guinness's Regions Beyond Missionary Union. The publications of the missionary societies record significant support from individual parishes and congregations in widely diverse areas from secluded agricultural regions and northern industrial areas to affluent southern suburbs and inner-city slum areas like Bethnal Green and Bermondsey.7 The breadth of support for

5. On tension in the missionary world between optimists and their critics see William R. Hutchinson, Errand to the World: American Protestant Thought and Foreign Missions (Chicago and London, 1987), pp. 118-45. 6. For an examination of the most serious public controversy over methods used by missionary societies see Thomas Prasch, "Which God for Africa: The IslamicChristian Missionary Debate in Late-Victorian England", Victorian Studies 33 (Autumn, 1989), pp. 51-73. 7. See, for example, the contribution lists of the CMS for the year 1895; lists of other societies demonstrate similar diversity; Proceedings of the Church Missionary Society (London, 1895). Diversity does not, however, indicate the relative strength of support from different English social strata which is more difficult to determine and varies from society to society.

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foreign missions is suggested by the dimensions of the missionary heroic type: from the working-class "weaver-boy turned missionary" David Livingstone to the wealthy Etonian and Cambridge Cricketer turned China missionary C. T. Studd.8 However, if there was considerable diversity in English Protestant missions, the permeation of English Protestantism by the missionary ideal indicates what a great theological coup was carried out by missionary theorists and supporters over the course of the nineteenth century: the successful diffusion of the idea that a sanctified, successful, and dutiful church must be defined as an expanding missionary church.9 The very existence of this almost universally accepted general missionary ideal suggests that if there were considerable variations in style, there were even stronger common principles tying the missionary effort together. Many clearly identifiable trends and patterns in missionary organisation and support characterise the growth of this cause in nineteenth century England. A brief survey focusing on the major denominational societies may serve as a useful introduction to the structures that the movement developed from its inception in the late eighteenth century until an era of radical new challenges was ushered in by the dislocations of the First World War. The pillars of the English missionary movement were its five largest denominational missionary societies. Other societies dedicated to specific regions in the mission field or run by smaller denominations helped to set the terms of debate about proper missionary methods or lead trends in new missionary activities both at home and abroad. Yet the denominational societies were the leaders of concerted missionary effort. The incomes of missionary societies help to demonstrate this, and also to suggest the magnitude of support the movement achieved at the pinnacle of its power. In 1899 contributions to foreign missions and their auxiliary societies from all sources in the United Kingdom stood at about £1,600,000, or .01 per cent of national consumer spending. Of this amount 72 per cent of English giving went into the five largest established denominational societies: the Anglican evangelical Church

8. See for example H. G. Adams, David Livingstone: The Weaver Boy who Became a Missionary, 24th ed. (London, 1892) and Norman P. Grubb, C. T. Studd: Cricketer and Pioneer (London, 1933). 9. This definition had links to Victorian ideologies of progress too numerous to be detailed here. In the Church of England only 3,209 of 13,650 parishes (23.5 per cent) did not contribute to the CMS or the SPG, and, of those which did not, a majority probably made contributions to the Universities' Mission to Central Africa (AngloCatholic), the China Inland Mission (extremely evangelical) or Special Missions associated with individual Anglican parishes; Proceedings of the CMS (London, 1895), p. 16.

STRUCTURES OF SUPPORT FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS

15

Missionary Society, the High Church Anglican Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the (largely) Congregationalist London Missionary Society, the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, and the Baptist Missionary Society.1O In terms of the fraction of total recorded church contributions these figures represent, the statistics compiled by the Church of England are suggestive: from 1860 to 1884 the Anglican communion sent £10,100,000, or about 12 per cent of total Church contributions to foreign missions. This placed foreign missions as the third largest Anglican charitable category, behind £35,175,000 (43 per cent) for Church building and £21,362,041 (26 per cent) for Elementary Education. 1I Such levels of support reinforce an impression that as a general phenomenon foreign missions had a powerful and widespread impact on the sending culture, in many cases perhaps more than on the receiving ones. The origins of English Protestant foreign missions lay in the Evangelical Revival of the eighteenth century and its activism, bibliocentrism, and conversionism. Evangelical enthusiasts like the Wesleys or the members of the Clapham Sect placed supreme faith in the transformative power of the Word preached by the converted and the Holy Spirit enabled by prayer. 12 Reliance on conversion and the Bible united the nonconformist societies and the evangelicals within the Church of England; as one contemporary noted, the British and Foreign Bible Society conference rooms - dedicated to the worldwide distribution of the bible - were "sacred territory within which denominational distinctions disappear"Y Evangelicalism was not the only spiritual style that motivated foreign missions; the SPG had been founded in 1701 by Royal Charter and drew support from High Church Anglicans. Nevertheless, focused and extensive missionary effort dates from the late eighteenth century with the foundation of the evangelical societies. By the 1870s High Church Anglican missions accounted for about 10 per cent of the

10. The home income of English and Irish societies in 1899 amounted to £1,250,977, of which £900,245 went to the five denominational societies; Dennis, Centennial Survey. pp. 22-25; B. R. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1988), p. 833. 11. Official Yearbook of the Church of England (London, 1886), pp. xvi-xix. For a discussion of the limitations on the use of charity income figures see Frank Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth Century England (Oxford, 1980), pp. 21-46. 12. For a recent examination of British evangelicalism see D. W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London, 1989). 13. Johnson, Centenary Conference, vo!' I, p. x.

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MISSIONARY ENCOUNTERS

roughly £1,000,000 voluntarily contributed in Britain to support foreign missions. 14 The rest of the money came from evangelicals of varying shades of enthusiasm and theology, making evangelicalism the core temperament of the British Protestant missionary movement. If evangelicalism united the supporters of foreign missions in principle, it did not lead to united missionary organisations. Although the LMS was formed in 1795 as an interdenominational mission, the reluctance of evangelical Anglicans to support it led to the founding of the CMS in 1799. This decision, reinforced by the earlier formation of the BMS in 1792, established the denominational pattern of society organisation. The evangelical culture from which foreign missions sprang remained divided, a fact which structured all efforts to organise and support foreign missions. IS Despite the desire of the SPG to continue operating as a state-supported society relying on Parliamentary grants and collections by Queen's Letter, the elimination of these sources of support in the aftermath of Church reform in the 1830s confirmed that foreign missions would be carried out by voluntary societies, funded by voluntary contributions, and dependent on the good will of supporters. The principle of each denomination working its own congregations to support independent voluntary societies was accepted as the basis of the entire movement, and placed advocacy for foreign missions firmly in the tradition of organisation that characterised English philanthropy generally.16 Such organisation was the logical extension of the religion of the Evangelical Revival which emphasised individual responsibility and the voluntary association of groups of like-minded converts. That a standard was developed in the early nineteenth century for the organisation of missionary societies meant all the denominations operated within similar parameters. Theoretically the subscribers of funds controlled each society through the authority exercised by an Annual Meeting convened to oversee policy, appoint committees, and accept or reject the budget. Voting members were generally those who

14 Scott Robertson, British Contributions, p. 1. 15. For a summary of the origin and development of British Protestant missions in the nineteenth century see Brian Stanley, The Bible and the Flag: Protestant Missions and British Imperialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Leicester, 1990), chapter 3. 16 J. B. Whiting, "Home Organisation in Support of Missionary Work", in Report of Proceedings and Papers read at the Church Missionary Society's Conference held at Lincoln (Lincoln, 1878). pp. 56-58. David Owen has traced this tradition in English Philanthropy 1660-1960 (Cambridge, Mass., 1964); see also Frank Prochaska, The Voluntary Impulse: Philanthropy in Modern Britain (London, 1988).

STRUCTURES OF SUPPORT FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS

17

subscribed a certain annual amount - usually around £1 - and all clerical subscribers. 17 This general principle of organisation, as CMS Secretary Christopher Fenn commented to a correspondent, defined the nature of the entire movement: The whole constitution of our Society is to give power to those who subscribe to its funds. The voluntary support of those who help us because they feel interest in the work is what we must humanly speaking depend upon. The money test is a rough one, and is often delusive as regards individuals; but in the long run when spread over numbers it is fairly correct. 18 While some of the societies had more authoritarian structures - notably the Wesleyan Methodists and the High Church Anglicans - and each of the societies relied on a small influential clique of administrators and policy makers, they all were ultimately dependent on subscribers. Above the extensive web of individual contributors, however, denominational and party loyalties did give considerable stability to levels of support. A significant aspect of the activity of foreign missions in England was the way that they fit into the world of competing religious denominations. Foreign missions legitimated the existence and demonstrated the vitality of different parties and different denominations; they focused the attention of adherents on the heroic religious expansion of their own particular denomination which was simultaneously engaged in intense religious competition in the highly contested world of Victorian Protestantism. 19 While in theory the Annual Meeting was the last court of appeal on policy matters, in practice it almost always operated primarily as a public celebration of denominational identity and resolve. These meetings were key annual rituals that provided the opportunity for regional leaders of

17. The exception to this rule was the SPG, governed by a corporation of co-opted contributors and clerics as defined by its 1701 Royal Charter. 18. Christopher C. Fenn (CMS Secretary) to Mr. Stead, 2 April 1875, Church Missionary Society Archives, G / AC 11 19, University of Birmingham, Birmingham (hereafter cited as CMS Archives). 19. To general missionary supporters, and especially clerics, sectarian issues were extremely important, and the activity of missionary societies was a central element in the construction of religious identities. See, for example, Whiting's defence of independent but loyal evangelical churchmanship as embodied by the CMS. Whiting, "Home Organisation", p. 56; cf. Stuart Piggin, "Sectarianism vs. Ecumenism: The Impact on British Churches of the Missionary Movement to India, c.1800-1860", Journal of Ecclesiastical History 27 (October, 1976).

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MISSIONARY ENCOUNTERS

the various denominations to socialise and engage publicly in conspicuous religious activity. As a returned CMS missionary commented in 1898 regarding the week-long variety of gatherings surrounding the London Annual Meetings: They were attended by a great number of supporters and helpers from all over the country ... They went from one meeting to another and returned home spiritually refreshed, carrying blessings to their supporters and churches. It was a time to meet one's friends and entertain each other ... [at the CMS annual breakfast] the leading supporters of the Society from all over the country [assembled]. .. They were all full of new ideas for the advancement of God's Kingdom. Their character was only restrained by the energy with which they attacked a sumptuous breakfast of eggs and bacon, sausages, toast and marmalade. 2o Such rituals were also re-enacted locally from April to August in every English city of any size. One central element of the Annual Meeting - whether held in London or the provinces - was the presentation of the Annual Report. Annual Reports always contained a summary of the events of the past year and often commented on the state of home organisation. More importantly, they always included a comprehensive list of local contributions. These contribution lists are filled with as many as 60,000 donations, often anonymous, from individuals, working parties, schools and collectors thus making them problematic sources for tracing networks of support. On a more general level, however, they provide an eloquent testimony to both the impressive breadth of support for Victorian foreign missions and the necessity in the world of Victorian philanthropy for a visible public record of the benevolence of regions, communities, congregations and individuals. 21 Over the course of the century these reports underwent an important change; by the 1880s news of home organisation and the state of society finances came to play a significant part in the report. Society organisers increasmgly emphasised the connection between the state of domestic religion and

20. Fisher manuscript memoir, A[rthur] B. Fisher Papers, CMS Archives, Acc 84 F 3/2, book 9, p. 4. 21. See, for example, the CMS contribution lists in the Proceedings of the CMS from the 1890s. It was standard practice for secretaries at local meetings "to read out distinctly the subscribers' names [for] (subscribers like to hear their names read out!)"; "Reminiscences of Missionary Deputation Work", Church Missionary Intelligencer, n.s., 6 (March 1881), p. 145.

STRUCTURES OF SUPPORT FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS

19

spirituality, and the state of missionary agency and success. This focus on missions as the measure of the health of the denomination gave essential support to the effort to maintain revenues at the level necessary to run expanding overseas operations. As the managerial work of the missionary societies increased with the rapid growth of income in the 1830s and 1840s, the size and complexity of these organisations led many societies to sprout sub-committees to handle expanding obligations and, slightly later, committees of investigation to examine levels of efficiency and cost in home organisation. Like the officials of any voluntary philanthropy, the secretaries of missionary societies were under constant pressure to keep the overhead of home collection and administration at a minimum. Those who contributed to the funds understood that money spent on home organisation and publication was not spent on the business of "saving the heathen". Societies also had to maintain an image of efficiency and denominational or party consensus. The various committees recorded all official decisions made on opening new fields, on missionaries to be trained and sent out, on policies to be followed in the field and at home - in thorough but not elaborate form. The Minute Books, which all the societies generated, provide a detailed outline of what the societies did, but in brief, factual language sheared of most illuminating explanatory detail. Publicly aired conflict, society officers understood, harmed organisations that relied on wide communities of support; differences of opinion and scandals in committee were generally disguised and concealed as much as possible. Society officers recorded routine business with the brevity that the barest of factual legal records demanded, and they considered the arrangements for increasing home support to be the most routine of business. The increasing complexity of missionary organisations also led to an increasing specialisation in the officers who ran them. Usually the central committee, and in some cases, the secretariat, was the dominant force in the missionary society. The principle on which voluntary societies operated was public accountability, or the appearance of such. But as the powerful Editorial Secretary at the CMS explained, the committee structure operated to channel the sentiment of the general contributor while simultaneously retaining the expert input and demonstrated activism of those supporters most interested in the movement. 22 Committees were for the most part dominated by the clergy who naturally forwarded clerical ideals and values. One result of domination by such elites was a bent toward an authoritarian style of management; subscribers and the denomination sacredly entrusted money to be spent

22. Eugene Stock, My Recollections (London, 1909), p. 331.

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responsibly and in accordance with their particular religious principles by the officers of the society.23 Clerical bias and concern with denominational standards were most evident in the training established for missionaries. Throughout the century, with surprisingly little variation, the training for missionaries mimicked the training for the home clergy in the various denominations. This meant that missionary societies provided little specialised preparation - particularly in the languages and cultural forms of the receiving society - to support missionaries in their activity in the varied fields to which they were assigned. 24 In the earliest years of the century the difficulty lay primarily in procuring men to be missionaries rather than money to support them. Since existing clergy were largely unwilling to risk life and comfort for the mission field, missionary societies founded training institutes and undertook to raise willing candidates to the acceptable clerical standard. 25 By the 1890s, however, the situation had changed and the CMS was rejecting 70 per cent of missionary candidates. This gradual rise in the availability of candidates increased the importance of pUblicity and organisation at home because of pressure to raise the funds needed to send as many of a growing pool of "qualified" candidates into the field as possible?6 From the 1840s onwards the publication by missionary societies of books, periodicals, and tracts for the home market grew enormously. In 23. Peter Hinchliff, "Voluntary Absolutism: British Missionary Societies in the Nineteenth Century", in W 1. Sheils and Diana Wood (eds), Studies in Church History 23 (1986) pp. 363-79. On clerical professionalism and its effects in the missionary movement see Jeffrey Cox, "The Nineteenth Century Missionary Movement", in Dennis Paz (ed.), Nineteenth Century English Religious Traditions (Lewiston and Queenston, forthcoming). 24. Cecil Peter Williams, "The Recruitment and Training of Overseas Missionaries in England between 1850 and 1900, with special reference to the Records of the CMS, WMMS, LMS and the China Inland Mission" (unpublished M.Litt. thesis, University of Bristol, 1976), pp.1l2-18. 25. On the training of missionaries early in the century see Stuart Piggin, Making Evangelical Missionaries 1789-1858. The Social Background, Motives and Training of British Protestant Missionaries to India (Abingdon, Oxfordshire, 1984), chapters 6-8; for later in the century, Williams, "Recruitment and Training of Overseas Missionaries", pp. 95-117. 26. For the figure of 70 per cent, Williams, "Recruitment and Training of Overseas Missionaries", p. 47. For analyses of the social backgrounds of missionaries drawn from candidates' files, cf. Piggin, Williams, and Sarah Caroline Potter, "The Social Origins and Recruitment of English Protestant Missionaries in the Nineteenth Century" (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1974).

STRUCTURES OF SUPPORT FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS

21

1898 the CMS had a total periodical circulation - divided into various magazines targeted to the educated, popular, laboring, or youthful reader - of about 216,000 monthly. When quarterly publications and tracts were added to this number, the amount of print distributed was formidable: in 1899 the CMS alone had a total circulation of 7.5 million magazines and papers. 27 From the first period of rapid growth in the support of foreign missions in the 1840s, the CMS remained consistently the most organisationally advanced of the societies. The CMS exemplified an emerging pattern in which societies developed varieties of sub-committees and specialised agencies to aid in the work; by the end of the century all the other societies also followed this pattern to some degree. Efficiency and coverage were not the only reasons for the construction of a complex organisational network, however. As Revd H. E. Perkins commented on the CMS structure: The whole of this complicated machinery has arisen partly out of the democratic features of the General Committee, which on one occasion may number 400 men ... and on the next may attract only 20, especially at the fag end of a day, when one has sometimes to use entreaties to keep a quorum. 28 Supporters wanted a role in the operation of the charity to which they donated their money and their interest, but not necessarily a restrictive commitment. One of the largest areas of expansion by the missionary societies was in home organisation - both to capture this diffuse and variable interest and to try to ensure its continuity. In England home organisation came increasingly under the control of London-based secretaries who established a network of thousands of centres and supporters linked together through voluminous correspondence?9 The

27. "Report of the Centenary Review Committee. Section XI", in Centenary Review Reports (n.p., private printing, 1899), p. 78, CMS Archives, G/CC b 15; Proceedings of the CMS (London, 1900), p. 37. One must treat these figures with some caution. It is difficult to believe that all this blizzard of print found avid readers, if readers at all. 28. Memorandum on Committees and Sub-Committees by H. E. Perkins, June 1896, CMS Archives, G I AC 41 201 3864A. 29. The various societies retain secretaries' home letter books and incoming home correspondence in varying degrees of completeness. The files are good at the CMS, patchy at the SPG and LMS, and missing from the archives of the WMMS and OMS. All the societies retain boxes of the various secretaries' personal papers and correspondence that, while in many cases arranged and culled, are still useful.

22

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surviving records of this home network attest to what was probably the greatest achievement of the missionary movement in England: the creation and expansion of a nationwide system of interlinked local "associations" dedicated to the dissemination of "missionary intelligence". From the inception of the English missionary movement the construction and maintenance of a home base of support had always been fundamental to success overseas for the simple reason that missions and missionaries were expensive and mission stations were in principle barred from self-support through commercial means. This led society secretaries to encourage the growth of widespread local structures for generating income; by the 1840s local missionary associations that organised collectors, an annual missionary celebration, missionary sermons, public meetings, juvenile associations and the circulation of printed materials dotted the country. Virtually every country parish or city centre had the benefit of at least one annual missionary appeal from one society or another, and most local areas saw some form of competition between associations attached to different congregations. There were of course variations in coverage: the SPG with its High Church bias shied away from voluntary local associations and relied more heavily on £1 subscribers and the machinery of the diocese,3o the WMMS incorporated missionary work into the Methodist circuit structure and its agents also played a role in denominational discipline, decentralised principles of church government in the nonconformist BMS and LMS led to resistance to organisation in the associations. 31 Nevertheless, the typical experience of the contributor with foreign missions was through participation in the activities organised by the local association. Linked closely to the growth of local associations was the increasing use of paid travelling organisers to rouse enthusiasm and provide ties to the London office. Aspirations to create a comprehensive nationwide network of support dictated that keen clergy would travel as pulpit and 30. For detail on the spa and CMS in the 1840s see Brian Stanley, "Home Support for Overseas Missionaries in Early Victorian England, c.l838-1873" (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1979), pp.76-1I7. 31. The ethos of nonconformity led to resistance to centralised authority. The BMS, with poorer and more scattered congregations, only appointed paid organising agents in 1859, an innovation that the CMS had introduced in 1835. Studies of local missionary organisation, while of potentially great interest, have hardly yet been attempted. For a recent analysis of LMS local organisation see Susan Elizabeth Thorne, "Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Imperialism: British Congregationalists and the London Missionary Society, 1795-1925" (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Michigan, 1990), chap. 5.

STRUCTURES OF SUPPORT FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS

23

platform speakers. The CMS institutionalised this practice in 1832 when a 'Visiting Secretary' was appointed, followed in 1835 by the appointment of two Association Secretaries. By 1846 the CMS had extended this system to eighteen paid Association Secretaries and several Honorary Secretaries organised into twelve districts. Their commission was to diffuse missionary information, secure pulpits for sermons, form new branch associations, recruit local speakers and organisers, and act as paid speakers for the Society.32 Soon after, in varying degrees, the other denominational societies followed this example; often, however, in an ad hoc fashion since there were persistent objections to society funds being used to pay the salary of itinerating home clergy rather than heroic missionary pioneers. The surviving reports show us a movement with its strongest bases of support among evangelicals in industrial Yorkshire and Lancashire and in the suburban southeast. 33 They also show a trend toward stronger support in the southeast and away from the north over the course of the nineteenth century, with the most rapid growth among suburban residential regions in the south?4 To a very large degree the missionary movement was urban, and as time went on, increasingly a London based movement in both inspiration and growth. This is hardly surprising; as urban centres grew with a frightening rapidity in the second half of the nineteenth century the wealth of the urban bourgeoisie grew with them. It is notable that in 1895 the London metropolitan region alone accounted for at least 20 per cent of CMS Association income and perhaps as much as 35 per cent. 35 Central Secretaries understood very well the differential costs and benefits of organising in residential urban, industrial urban, and rural areas. In 1900 a SPG subcommittee broke down the costs of collecting in various dioceses and discovered in residential dioceses that £1 of organisation expenditure brought in an average of £14 14s in contributions, in manufacturing

32. "Report of the Centenary Review Committee. Section XII", in Centenary Review Reports (n.p.: private printing, 1899), pp. 83-87, CMS Archives, G/CC b 15. 33. Such reports can be found for the CMS in the 1840s, and a few years in the 1890s; for the LMS from the 1870s through to 1910 (in certain areas only); and here and there for the SPG. 34. Note for example the comments of CMS Association Secretaries in their reports for 1892, 1895, and 1896. CMS Archives, G I AZ 1/4 no. 123A, and G I AZ 11 7 nos. 52 and 68. 35. Proceedings of the eMS (London, 1895), 27; "Reports of the Association Secretaries for 1892" , Revd H. P. Grubb for the Metropolitan District, pp.1-2, CMS Archives, G I AZ 114 no. 123A.

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dioceses £9, and in agricultural dioceses £6 IOs.36 The level of complexity and diversity of planning for the nationwide network was, however, daunting. By 1874 the CMS alone was responsible for the preaching of 5,000 sermons and the organisation of 4,000 public meetings over the course of a year. 37 While some associations dealt directly with the London office to arrange for missionary speakers, the bulk of this organising work fell on paid and honorary organising secretaries and local clerical friends?8 Even given such intensive efforts, London secretaries still complained of "the indifference still so widely felt concerning what is after all the one great duty laid upon the Church".39 Breaking this indifference was serious work for travelling secretaries; the routine - not including the voluminous correspondence necessary to arrange engagements for others - could easily entail weeks on the road involving daily speeches, children's lessons, prayer meetings and sermons.40 At the centre of the system was the missionary deputation. Travelling deputation speakers - the most desirable were returned missionaries with tales of "heathen" exoticism and encounters with "savages" - brought their stories and philosophy of missionary work to local congregations. Furloughed missionaries were in genuine demand and were usually dedicated to the most important urban anniversaries and meetings. Revd A. H. Lash returning from India reported that in three months of CMS duty in 1875 he addressed approximately 30,000 people, and his diary

36. Minutes of the Standing Committee, Oct. 1900 to Feb. 1902, vol. 53, "Report of the Sub-Committee on Home Expenditure, 8 Nov. 1900", p. 41, United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Archives, Rhodes House Library, Oxford (hereafter cited as USPG Archives). 37. Edward Hutchinson to Revd W. B. Crickmer, Beverly, 14 May 1874, CMS Archives, G I AC II 19. These meetings were organised through 1,050 local associations. 38. See for example Home Organisation Rough Minute Book, p. 227, "Draft Report of the Home Organisation Sub-Committee" n.d. [1898], p. I, USPG Archives, H \37. 39. Eugene Stock, "The London Churches and Foreign Missions", pamphlet reprinted from The Clergyman 's Magazine (January, 1883) p. 21. In this article Stock complained particularly of interest in the inner-city missions of T. H. Green and General Booth which he suggested undermined interest in foreign missions. 40. For example, in a relatively routine year of deputation work between February and December of 1895, Revd A. R. Cavalier addressed 3\3 meetings, or an average of 26 per month, for the Zenana Bible and Medical Mission. Zenana Bible and Medical Mission Minute Book, no. 6, December 1894 to August 1899, item nos. 43, 64, 78, 105, 121, 159, 190, 243, 267, 290, Interserve Archives, London.

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25

shows he skipped from urban centre to urban centre speaking to crowds ranging from 100 to 1,500 people. 41 This was a duty that missionaries often resented greatly, especially when arrangements went awry. Organising secretaries found that dealing with men whose recent experience was completely foreign to the peculiar demands of popular speaking and constant travel could lead to spectacular rows. The conclusion that A. M. Campbell, SPG Secretary on deputation in 1839, came to regarding a difficult missionary colleague was "A mad Missionary is as bad as a mad dog".42 Despite the demand for returned missionaries, it was the organising secretary and the clergy he recruited, both honorary and paid, that did the bulk of the work in advocating foreign missions. While the CMS London office organised around 2,000 deputation meetings and sermons per year featuring missionaries and society officers, organising secretaries and local volunteers arranged for approximately 8,500 meetings and sermons using local men.43 The SPG and the nonconformist societies generally had even smaller numbers of furloughed missionaries to deploy. In London, the highest priority area for all the societies, the SPG managed 136 meetings and 671 sermons in 1898: of the sermons 41 per cent (271) were preached by the incumbent in his own church, 28 per cent (188) were preached by the Organising Secretary, and 32 per cent (206) were preached by deputations, many of whom would have been paid local clergy, not furloughed missionaries.44 If it was the lure of the exotic missionary that generated interest, it was most often the local clergyman, informed by spectacularly written missionary literature, who delivered the message about foreign missions to millions of listeners. The local attitude to missionary deputations was often less than the high-minded and pious ideal that missionary writers and organisers hoped for. A missionary on deputation for the SPG complained: The general conduct of the clergy puts the work of a Deputation in a false light before their people. They come together to be amused and tickled - the clergy as a rule, speak of it as "interesting the people" .45 The necessity of "interesting the people" led to the creation of a deputa41. Lash deputation diary, 1874-5, p. 41 and passim, Augustus Henry Lash Papers, CMS Archives, Acc 348 F liSA. 42. A. M. Campbell to Ernest Hawkins, 31 August 1839, USPG Archives, H94. 43. "The Church Missionary Society at Home", Church Missionary Intelligencer, n.s., 7 (April 1882), p. 194. 44. Home Organisation Rough Minute Book, p. 227, "Draft Report of the Home Organisation Sub-Committee" n.d. [1898], pp. 12-13, USPG Archives, H 137. 45. William Crompton deputation diary, 25 March 1890 at Partington, p. 39, USPG Archives, X5621 I.

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tion market, with keen ministers jockeying to secure the most interesting of the furloughed missionaries. Important missionary churches and centres demanded well-known and proven missionary speakers, leaving rural areas and smaller towns even more firmly in the grip of local speakers.46 The system also led to exaggeration and embellishment as deputation speakers without foreign experience used published materials provided by the missionary societies to create engaging presentations of missionary "facts". The results could be surprising. For a serious minded missionary on deputation it could become "too ludicrous for words" when, for example, a speaker for the CMS mixed his missionary stories from North America and India so that a Hindu convert addressed his English Christian instructor as "Massa" . When the same speaker then related that a recently converted Indian famine victim had proclaimed upon his conversion "Oh that you had converted me sooner, then I should have had my dear family around me, now, alas, I have eaten them all", the missionary involved had to confess: "This eloquent speaker was a difficult man to follow, he had made me laugh so much that I found it hard to recover my gravity, besides which, my simple story sounded tame in comparison with those highly spiced novelties".47 Clearly missionary societies had to appeal more to popular tastes than they often admitted in the published materials read by their pious literate supporters. Just as clearly the representations of foreign peoples were usually in the hands of speakers motivated to embellish the most crude stereotypes in a way that would contribute to "interesting the people". One evangelical critic found such methods deplorable and commented: The exposure of the idols of the poor Heathen to be laughed at, of curios brought from foreign countries, of children dressed up as natives of the East, of blind old men brought on the platform to interest; such things are thoroughly wrong, and a secular lecture on foreign cities, nations, and customs is a serious mistake. The object of Deputation-Addresses is to warm up the feelings of supporters, educate a Missionary-spirit, correct mistaken impressions as to policy, inform those interested of progress, evidence sympathy with the fallen races .... 48 Such serious minded critics were certainly more sober, but were just as enmeshed in a ubiquitous Victorian ideology of progress. This faith in 46. Lash diary, 23 July 1875 at Slough, p. 97, eMS Archives, Acc 348 F /1/ 5A. 47. Lash diary, 3 September 1874 at Handley and Walsall, pp. 27-28, eMS Archives, Acc 348 F /1/ 5A. 48. Robert Needham eust, Essay on the Prevailing Methods of the Evangelisation of the Non-Christian World (London, 1894), p.143.

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progress was supported by the paternalism and racism that pervaded the thought of the officers and the missionaries of the major societies.49 Itinerating deputations were important but necessarily augmented by local forms of voluntary organisation that depended largely on women and traditional methods oflocal philanthropic action. By involving local volunteers in prayer meetings, door-to-door charity collections, and working parties, the missionary societies were able to build regional support for foreign missions. The time-honoured style of Victorian philanthropy had been set in the early nineteenth century and relied heavily on the district collector and her collecting box, working parties of local ladies, and the annual or semi-annual sale of work produced by such parties. At the local level, such methods were one of the firm foundations of Victorian missionary work, and were inextricably linked to Sunday Schools and children's involvement in charitable work. 50 Working parties generally operated much like the Blackburn "Eastern Equatorial Africa Working Party" founded in 1888, meeting fortnightly in the YWCA rooms with additional weekly Tuesday teas, annual SUbscriptions, and fines for non-attendance. 51 From such parties a flow of needlework and clothing would issue, the sale of which at bazaars and annual fetes would benefit a particular mission. In addition, from these and other local missionary associations, local women and children also would be recruited for door-to-door collections. Contributions from locally organised sources were of great importance to the stability of society incomes and demonstrate the depth of local commitment to foreign missions. By 1895 sales held in the English counties for CMS missions accounted for £21,555, or 14.5 per cent of Association income; the amount from collecting boxes accounted for £31,704, or 21.3 per cent of Association income. 52 Unfortunately, records of such local agency, and of the meetings that sustained them, are generally difficult to obtain. Missionary societies were 49. For a recent insight into the paternalist racism that opemted at the CMS see C. PeterWilliams, The Ideal of the Self-Governing Church: A Study in Victorian

Missionary Strategy (Leiden, 1990), esp. pp. 181-82, 204-206. 50. For a detailed evocation of this philanthropic world see Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy, especially chapters 2 and 3. 51. Uganda Working Party Minute Book, CMS Archives, Acc 345 0 12. With an average attendance at the turn of the century of around 30, this working party remitted about £60 per year to the CMS. 52. Proceedings of the CMS (London, 1895), p. 27. Collecting boxes drew contributions door-to-door, in Sunday Schools and in homes, which were often tallied in parish box opening celebrations. Children were generally responsible for such collections, though often not credited with the work. Report of Revd Henry Fuller for the Eastern District to Centenary Review Committee XII, [c.J897], CMS Archives, G I CC b 11/2.

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extremely successful at permeating and influencing the culture that supported them; however, the fact that their archivists meticulously collected foreign records while simultaneously ignoring home materials demonstrates of what ephemeral importance organisers of home support for missions felt their own efforts to be in the heroic missionary saga. 53 That the missionary movement came to have such a pervasive and extensive system of local support is in large measure a tribute to the innovations of supporters early in the century who operated in a philanthropic world based predominantly on local concerns and organisation. In such a context, missionary and Bible societies as well as anti-slavery organisations were forced to bring the message strongly to the city, village, and countryside in order to build a sympathy that did not naturally exist precisely because their objects were so far removed from local concerns. 54 By the late 1870s the whole system of missionary advocacy revolving around deputations, local associations, and women volunteers had assumed a formidable existence in the English philanthropic world. Of all the societies, the CMS ran the most successful home operation, partially because it could exploit the organisation and discipline imposed by the Anglican ecclesiastical structure while retaining the freedom of action and innovation that a voluntary, independent society structure allowed, partially because it drew on a comparatively affluent constituency.55 Yet while the 1870s saw further advances in organisation at all the societies, the end of the decade also saw crises of income and administration. By the end of the 1870s the societies had pushed an association structure based primarily on the initiative of a local clergyman organising the efforts of predominantly female voluntary workers about as far as the interest and ability of the clergy would allow. The same set of problems existed at the LMS, where special measures taken to reorganise the society's deputation system had little effect in the face of clerical apathy, and at the SPG, where the decentralised nature of its organisation seemed to defeat attempts by secretaries to introduce efficiency into the deputation system.56 In the 1880s, however, the CMS and certain other missions - most 53. Fortunately, published materials -- periodicals, local and national newspaper accounts of missionary meetings, and missionary biographies -- can go a long way toward filling gaps that are most substantial for the Baptist and Methodist missionary efforts. 54. Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy, pp. 23-25. 55. Stanley, "Home Support", pp. 249-50. 56. Committee Minutes, (3 December 1872 to 22 December 1886), passim, Council for World Mission Archives (London Missionary Society), Home Occasional, Box 2, Book 3, School of Oriental and African Studies, London (hereafter cited as CWM Archives); Memorandum by H. H. Montgomery, "Survey of My Stewardship, 1902-1918", USPG Archives, H3, Box 2.

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notably Hudson Taylor's China Inland Mission - experienced unexpected growth and activity. A new cadre of supporters, driven by a new style of religious and imperial enthusiasm, rose in importance. Many activists in this era can be traced to a growing evangelical subculture which focused on organised religious revivals as the way to advance Christianity. From the 1850s English revivalism drew on the techniques and theology of the American evangelical Charles G. Finney; in the 1870s they were inspired by the popular urban revivalism of another American, Dwight L. Moody. The movement increasingly rooted itself in English evangelicalism and became institutionalised through the annual Keswick conferences held in the Lake District from 1875. Significantly for the missionary societies, the impatient temperament of revivalism for large-scale and instantaneous Christian conversions also came to be expressed as a vocal yearning for a "new era" of heightened activity in overseas missions. 57 The enthusiasm which revivalism brought to the world of foreign missions made the 1880s a turning-point in the fortunes of English missionary effort. Revivalism was normally associated with "holiness" theology which emphasised that Christians could have a spiritual experience beyond conversion that would immediately elevate them to a life of consecration and service above the snares of the sinful world. Faith would not only justify, but sanctify the Christian; and for many of the new "higher life" advocates missionary work was the ultimate sanctified Christian life. While on the one hand holiness theology exemplified an inward turn in evangelicalism that transformed it from being a central element in British culture at mid-century to being a subculture by the end of the Edwardian age, on the other hand the entire holinesslrevivalist community that surrounded the Keswick conferences became vital to the reinvigorated missionary movement of the late nineteenth century. The new spirituality of Keswick channelled the conviction of many that missionary societies had become too businesslike and bureaucratic while it also provided a model for a new style of missionary enthusiasm and organisation. Significantly this movement also had an impact at the British universities, especially Cambridge, and opened the door to a new wave of University educated missionaries who were to strongly influence late Victorian missions through the Student Volunteer Missionary Union and other similar organisations.58

57. On British revivalism see John Kent, Holding the Fort: Studies in Victorian Revivalism (London, 1978).

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At the CMS the impact of the new ideas registered itself in the 1880s with the emergence of new schemes designed to organise supporters into specialised groups. The focus was on people not given adequate freedom and scope for activity by the old association structures: the laity, younger clergy, women, children, and isolated individuals throughout the country. These new organisations had close ties to the London office, rather than being controlled by local clergy through the associations, and gave new increased autonomy outside the bonds of clerical paternalism. Freer scope for lay activists produced significant results for the CMS and the other major missionary societies were quick to copy, though with varying degrees of success; in the 1880s and 1890s the LMS, SPG and BMS all began proliferating Ladies Unions, Laymen's Unions, Younger Clergy Unions, and new organisations for children and adolescents. 59 The addition of fresh Unions and specialised meetings marked a new departure in the standard of practice that the missionary societies had established in the period from 1840 to 1880. Home organisation at the missionary societies was coming to depend not only on the efforts of paid and volunteer clergy but also on the laity. A new generation of supporters drew on the example provided by organisations inspired by revivalism like the Young Men's Christian Associations, the Young Women's Christian Associations, and the Salvation Army.6o Home organisation for foreign missions was on the one hand influenced by a revivalism that appealed to the evangelical middle-class, on the other by the charity structures developed to deal with the increasing Victorian urban crisis. Indeed, revivalism was in large part a reaction to urban problems, if a largely ineffectual one because of its limited ability to extend its influence outside the bounds of middle-class religious culture.61

58. Andrew Porter, "Cambridge, Keswick and Late Nineteenth Century Attitudes to Africa", The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 5 (1976), pp. 5-36, and "Evangelical Enthusiasm, Missionary Motivation and West Africa in the Late Nineteenth Century: The Career of G. W Brooke", ibid. 6 (1977), pp. 23-46; Tissington Tatlow, The Story of the Student Christian Movement of Great Britain and Ireland (London, 1933). 59. For the impressive range of new organisations for enthusiasts at the CMS, including Missionary Bands with suitably evocative names like the Mpwapwas, Sikhs, Talijahrs, see Proceedings of the CMS (London: 1901), xix-xxiii and Proceedings of the CMS (London, 1911), pp. 20-22. While the other societies remained distant from Keswick, all the societies adopted the successful educational and organisational styles generated at the CMS through holiness. 60. Bauman diary, passim, Augustus William Bauman Papers, CMS Archives, Acc 323 F /1; see also Stock, Recollections, p. 318.

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Influenced by this atmosphere, from the 1880s the missionary societies began rapidly incorporating methods that emulated popular entertainment - travelling missionary exhibitions, massive missionary prayer meetings, and well orchestrated special children's gatherings. The Society Reports of the eMS in the 1890s are filled with news of new Missionary Loan Exhibitions, Unions formed, special appeals and organised farewell meetings for missionaries. The popularity of these measures, it was asserted, had never been matched. 62 If missionary societies were to operate more effectively in the atmosphere of large scale mass "democratised" urban religion, such changes had to be made. They were also a response to increased competition from a whole range of new small specialised "faith" based foreign missions - inspired by holiness theology - that sprang up in the 1870s and 1880s. When the pressure of competition within the foreign missionary world was added to that generated by the general increase in the numbers of home charities that characterised the late Victorian period, it led to a situation of acute difficulty. An LMS deputation secretary indicated the state of affairs that all societies seemed to be dealing with when he asserted that these new Societies ... bring in adventitious aids towards getting a meeting which I fear comes to be looked upon as entertainment the result being that the craving for sensationalism is stimulated, and a disinclination to attend meetings - except by those already interestedis manifested. 63 Missionary societies could only counter with similar methods. But the uncertainty of older and more traditional evangelical supporters about the moral salubriousness of popular events created difficulties. The extent to which missionary societies could emulate popular entertainment was limited by the fear that they would receive censure from their more socially conservative followers for implicitly supporting the theatre and the music hall. 64 On one level, the sensationalism that did develop in missionary propaganda capitalised on examples drawn from popular entertainment and middle-class leisure and tourism. But on another level it was an extension of the logic of holiness theology 61. Kent, Holding the Fort, p.67 and passim. 62. Proceedings of the eMS (London, 1895), pp. 30-32. 63. E. A. Wareham Deputation Report, Midlands District, 4 May 1898.CWM Home: Odds, Box 9, folder 1. 64. Ralph Wardlaw Thompson to Cornelius H. Patton, Boston, 22 June 1909, CWM Home: Outgoing Letters (Home Office) Box 2, 1909-1910.

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drawing inspiration from American revivalism - that one could create religious (or missionary) interest and support through proper orchestration. Older supporters often saw these methods as both vulgar and a cynical manipulation of worldly interests, certainly not conducive to the sober response to Christian duty that an older and sterner evangelicalism demanded of its adherents.65 But younger enthusiasts argued they were the only effective means of advancing the cause. The reality was that such methods worked and organising secretaries at the societies advocated travelling missionary exhibitions as a potent new weapon for mass missionary education, leading one CMS organiser to state "I am largely in favour of them as a means of 'cracking' all classes of the population".66 These methods were not unique to missionary societies, and similar activities of other church organisations at the parish level were also commented on unfavorably by critics. It was all part of the adjustment that the churches were making to attempt to operate in the late Victorian urban environment by transforming themselves into more attractive organisations in an increasingly competitive secular culture.67 The most prevalent solution to the problem of retaining support for missions in the late nineteenth century was to focus on raising the enthusiasm of the most activist supporters while at the same time diversifying operations to appeal to a broader pUblic. It would be possible to examine a good deal of the material generated by missionary societies, and scholarship on missions for that matter, and not be forcefully struck by one of the most significant facts regarding the new generation of activists: that they were predominantly women. In fact, women had always been absolutely crucial to the support of foreign missions and secretaries of the missionary societies had long applauded women as an important section of the constituency sustaining foreign missions. But the levels of support that women supplied were seldom fully acknowledged. John Mott, leader of the student missionary movement, could comment that "there is an impression in the minds of many that the missionary movement is largely a women's undertaking", but, characteristically, only as part of a larger argument that more men needed to be drawn into the movement to stop it from languishing. 68 The words of female organisers, who increasingly gained their voice 65. Cust, Evangelisation of the Non-Christian World, pp. 28-30. 66. Report of Revd H. T. G. Kingdon for the Southwestern District to Centenary Review Committee XII, [c.l897], CMS Archives, G / CC b 11/2. 67. Jeffrey Cox has traced this transformation at the parish level in The English Churches in a Secular Society: Lambeth 1870-1930 (Oxford, 1982). 68. J. R. Mott, The Home Ministry and Modern Missions: A Plea for Leadership in World Evangelisation (London, 1905), p. 73.

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after 1900, however, reveal the true situation. At the eMS Georgina Gollock noted that by 1912 those who knew best estimated that "in a large majority of parishes, even where women do not hold nominal office, they carryon the work for the busy clergy whose names appear in the lists, and that as collectors the women have practically a clear field".69 The eMS Gleaner's Union, whose 70,000 members spearheaded the eMS's reinvigorated activity and rapid financial growth in the 1880s and l890s was almost entirely the preserve of women: 970 of its 1,128 secretaries were women?O Similarly, in the eMS Young People's Union 85 per cent of the officers were women, 75 per cent in its Medical Mission Auxiliary, and so on. It was obvious to organisers that women, "as a rule untied by business restriction", were the natural foot soldiers of home organisation because "concentration of devotion and energy in a restricted sphere are more akin to the genius of women than of men".71 Patronising attitudes of this type, welded to the activism generated by holiness evangelicalism, provided the ingredients that allowed religious women within an evangelical culture that had more narrowly defined women's roles earlier in the century to expand their range of acceptable public duties in the running of the networks that supported the missionary effort. Holiness theology emphasised the potential of spiritual power to transcend limitations imposed by older definitions of gender roles. While the increasing number of single women in Victorian England provided social pressure for these changes, holiness provided the cultural and theological sanction that was a necessary precondition for many religious women to engage in novel fields of public activity.72 One of the most fascinating aspects of the development of missions in the late Victorian period is how the various denominations adjusted to women's growing public importance in foreign missions. After women

69. Georgina A. Gollock, "The Contribution of Women to Home Work of the CM.S.", reprint from the Church Missionary Review (December, 1912), p. 5. 70. On the importance of the Gleaners' Union, especially in sparsely populated areas, see the Reports of Association Secretaries to Centenary Review Committee XII, CMS Archives, GICC b III 2. CMS income grew from £228,000 in 1880 to £405,000 in 1900 -- a great deal of this due to the Gleaners Union. 71. Gollock, "Contribution of Women", pp. 5-6. 72. On the growing number of "surplus women" in Britain 1851-1901 see Martha Vicinus, Independent Women: Work and Community for Single Women. 18501920 (Chicago, 1985), Appendix A and pp.I-7. Women also became crucial to the growth of overseas staffs: in 1879 their numbers were negligible yet by 1899 women made up 37.5% of British overseas missionaries; Dennis, Centennial Survey. p. 257.

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founded a few small independent female missions between 1840 and 1860, all the denominational missionary societies developed their own women's committees in the thirty year span between 1865 and 1895. However, in contrast to the American experience where large independent women's societies developed, the English pattern led, for the most part, to the absorption of women's missionary work by the denominational societies. In England the experience of greater female subservience to clerical power set the context in which women's activity in foreign missions would be played OUt.?3 The financial and organisational successes of foreign missions in the 1880s led to the development of a popular new trend of thinking among missionary organisers by the turn of the century. Hope grew that enthusiasm for missions could provide a bulwark against what was perceived as a more general erosion of religious belief. Thus at the London Conference in 1888 a speaker identified the chief tasks of missionary churches at home to be the conquering of apathy and the checking of Jesuits, atheists, agnostics and materialist scientists?4 In some denominations, especially among the Anglicans, this desire to bolster the church also led to a more aggressive association of Christian missions with the activities of the formal British Empire and the growth of a programme to create "an Imperial Church,,?5 Ultimately the new methods of organisation that developed in the 1880s aimed to extend the coverage of the country beyond the local parish connections that had dominated the organisation of missionary societies in the earlier part of the century. Key to this process was the incorporation of the laity through semiindependent organisations. These lay organisations thrived on strong ideological formulations which rested on ideas of a church, or an

73. On American women's missions see Patricia Hill, The World Their Household: The American Woman's Foreign Mission Movement and Cultural Transformation, 1870-1920 (Ann Arbor, 1985) and Leslie Flemming (ed.), Women's Work for Women: Missionaries and Social Change in Asia (Boulder, San Francisco, and London, 1989). 74. A. Sutherland, "Development and Results of the Missionary Idea, especially during the last 100 years", in Johnson, Centenary Conference, pp. 141-47. 75. Henry Montgomery (Bishop of Tasmania) to the Standing Committee of the SPG, 17 August 1901, Davidson Papers, vol. lSI, fols. 322-3, Lambeth Palace Library, London. In 1901 Montgomery became the new Secretary of the SPG. For a more detailed picture of his imperial vision, see also his Foreign Missions (London, 1902). For an expression of similar developments at the CMS see T. A. Gurney, "Modern Imperialism and Missions", Church Missionary Intelligencer, n.s. 27 (July 1902), pp. 481-88, in which he articulated an ideal of "Christian Imperialism" clearly inspired by Seeley's The Expansion of England and Froude's Oceana.

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Empire, in danger. They also anticipated modern marketing techniques by identifying target groups which they then sought to educate to the "truths" and complexities of missionary activity. Such education would anchor both belief and support. A new emphasis on formal education led to the proliferation of missionary study schemes and summer schools that characterised the missionary movement after the turn of the century. Led by the influential Student Volunteer Missionary Union, missionary societies sought to emphasise the "scientific", rational and systematic nature of missions, best exemplified by the elaborate organisation of the 1910 Edinburgh World Missionary Conference. The underlying idea of the new educational strategy was the same as that on which Indian missions (and inner-city English settlement houses) operated: by educating "the classes" to their religious and social duty, their services could be enlisted in reaching and saving "the masses" both at home and abroad?6 Ultimately, the project of the missionary societies to broaden their popular appeal through the activities of a new larger group of educated volunteers fell short of the expectations that the most enthusiastic held for it. Support for foreign missions could be as broad as religious observance itself, but not much broader. After about 1910 it had become evident to virtually all British denominational leaders that declining church membership was a serious problem. The difficulty of declining religiosity in the Edwardian period was also a clear challenge to missionary organisers who relied on giving by large devoted congregations?7 Still, within the evangelical subculture a surprising degree of support and co-operation remained through the Edwardian period, and the efforts to popularise the movement helped it to compete in an increasingly congested philanthropic world. Missionary societies were able to adjust to new problems and stresses; however, after the experiences of the First World War, no missionary organiser could realistically suppose that the societies could return to the old comforting assumptions of the world of Victorian missionary support.

76. See, for example, Mrs. Ashley Carus-Wilson, "A Call to the Colleges", n.d. [c. 1905], p. 3, CMS Archives, CEZ G / EA 113. 77. At the LMS see complaints about "the spirit of commercialism and of the love of pleasure seeking" making the support of missions in the churches "formal and flabby", 1. 1. K. Hutchin, London to Ralph Wardlaw Thompson, 2 June 1911, CWM Archives (LMS), Home: Incoming Letters (Home Office) Box 14, folder 1, 1911-12. For a more general account of this trend see Alan Gilbert, Religion and Society in Industrial England: Church. Chapel and Social Change. 1740-1914 (London, 1976), pp. 187-203.

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An inclusive Christian ideology of progress and religious unity pervaded the world of foreign missions throughout the nineteenth century. This ideology was reflected clearly in the deputation message of Jacob Wainwright. Wainwright was one of the "faithful negro servants" who had carried the salt-preserved corpse of Britain's greatest missionary hero, David Livingstone, out of the depths of Africa for its symbolic interment in "the national cathedral", Westminster Abbey. In 1874 while on the missionary circuit following his delivery of Livingstone's body, Wainwright described with much appreciated modesty the strange last journey of Livingstone's remains and brought his tale to culmination, as a CMS missionary recounted, with a characteristic missionary message: "The countries of this world are like the coaches in a Railway TrainOf this Train England is the Engine, the station to which England is drawing them is Heaven, and the Bible is the Time Table". He concluded by crying out "Mighty England do good". He was rapturously applauded. 78 This generalised message - that through its fundamental Christian character England could be the "Engine" for good in the world provided the foundation for the construction of a system of general cooperation among Christian proselytising agencies and a steady flow of donations from an increasingly affluent Christian nation. While there were considerable variations in missionary style, and denominational rivalries were an important element in stimulating the support of foreign missions, the broad contours of a progressive Christian programme for the world were, until the First World War, largely agreed upon by all the denominations. Foreign missions increasingly suffered division and distraction in the years after the turn of the century as liberal and conservative evangelical factions fought over "modernist" issues such as the value of Biblical criticism and the status of the Bible, the proper attitude to scientific rationalism, the stance best taken toward modern entertainments, the place of women in the church, and the dangers of "watering down" the Christian message to make it palatable to potential converts at home and abroad.79 Modernist controversies, combined with the growth of a commercialised, politicised, and secularised culture made the churches fight ever harder for relevance in English life. In this atmosphere evangelical Christianity became an increasingly defensive religious subculture. Yet despite the onset of such 78. Lash diary, 1874-S, p. 29, eMS Archives, Acc 348 F 1/ SA. 79. For a general discussion of these developments, see Bebbington, Evangelicalism, chapter 6.

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fundamental problems, foreign missions drew on a reservoir of loyalty and support which sustained them in their Victorian form well into the 1920s. This resilience is testimony to the central place that foreign missions assumed in Victorian religion and culture, a centrality which ensures that study of the experience of one of the most influential and pervasive of Victorian charities - in all its denominational variations will richly reward the religious, cultural and imperial historian.

SOME PROBLEMS IN WRITING A MISSIONARY SOCIETY HISTORY TODAY: THE EXAMPLE OF THE BAPTIST MISSIONAR Y SOCIETY* Brian Stanley

Histories of missionary societies are no longer a fashionable genre. Compendious multi-volume works, such as Eugene Stock's classic fourvolume history of the Church Missionary Society or, rather less memorably, the five volumes of G. G. Findlay and W W Holdsworth's history of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, belong to an era in Christian historiography which, for better or for worse, has passed away.' Gordon Hewitt's two large volumes on the more recent history of the CMS, which carried Stock's story from 1910 only to 1942, and were published in 1971 and 1977 respectively, were perhaps the final specimens of an exhausted and dying breed, and attracted comparatively little notice outside the immediate constituency of the Society.2 "Missionary history" can no longer be written for the edification of the faithful as a encyclopaedic catalogue of European achievements and institutional progress. Since the 1950s, the history of Western missionary endeavour has been prised from the grip of a narrowly-focused church history written for believers. Instead it has become an integral part of the expanding industry of historical and anthropological scholarship which concerns itself both with the Western impact on non-Western cultures and societies and increasingly also with the role of indigenous religious initiatives in these cultures and societies. This being so, it might well appear strange or downright foolish that I

*1 am most grateful to the Baptist Missionary Society for all the co-operation I received in the writing of their history, and in particular for permission to cite in this paper material from their archives, housed in the Angus Library of Regent's Park College, Oxford. 1. Eugene Stock, The History of the Church Missionary Society: Its Environment, Its Men and its Work (4 vols., London, 1899-1916); G. G. Findlay and W. W. Holdsworth, The History of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society (5 vols., London, 1921-1924). 2. Gordon Hewitt, The Problems of Success: A History of the Church Missionary Society 1910-1942 (2 vols. London, 1971, 1977).

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39

have recently published a large institutional history of a missionary society.3 If the book is greeted or ignored by the wider academic community as an historiographical dinosaur, the charge of foolishness will have been sustained. Certain pleas for the defence can, however, be advanced. Firstly, the book is only one volume, albeit a fat one, and as such the Society had no option but to eschew the encyclopaedic approach of the older genre. A radical selectivity of theme was inescapable. Secondly, the Baptist Missionary Society is the only one of the main British missionary societies never to have had its history recorded with any adequacy. Its jubilee in 1842 was marked by a two-volume work written by Dr Francis A. Cox (1783-1853), Baptist minister and one of the moving spirits behind the foundation of University College, London.4 In 1892 the Society published merely a Centenary Volume containing a collection of historical essays of uneven quality.5 In 1942 Dr Ernest A. Payne, later celebrated beyond his denomination as an historian of continental Anabaptism and as an ecumenist, was invited to commence work on a serious scholarly history. Payne agreed, but never got further than compiling a bibliography and an index of all BMS missionaries to 1942, which survives to this day in the Society's archives in Oxford. A brief popular history was published by Dr F. Townley Lord, minister of Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church. 6 The absence of a substantial published history of the Society has undoubtedly been one reason (although not the only one) for the comparative lack of academic writing on the work of the BMS in comparison, for example, with the amount of published scholarship on the CMS. To its credit, the BMS, in making plans for its bicentenary, decided to rectify the long-standing omission by commissioning a major history, to be published in the bicentennial year of 1992. Initially the task was entrusted to the Revd Alberic Clement, a retired Home Secretary of the Society. However, Clement died in December 1983, having made very little progress. After some delay, I was invited towards the end of 1985 to assume the task. A final and more substantial plea for the defence would be that I endeavoured to break the traditional mould of an institutional missionary society history in a number of respects. How far that endeavour has

3. Brian Stanley, The History of the Baptist Missionary Society 1792-1992 (Edinburgh, 1992). 4. F. A. Cox, History of the Baptist Missionary Society. from 1792 to 1842 (2 vols., London, 1842). On Cox seeDNB. 5.1. B. Myers (ed.) The Centenary Volume of the Baptist Missionary Society 1792-1892 (London, 1892). 6. F. T. Lord, Achievement: A Short History of the Baptist Missionary Society 1792-1942 (London, n.d. [1942]).

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been successful others will have to judge. In the first place, I sought to place the story of the Society in the broadest possible context, giving most weight to those themes which are of interest to the wider community of historical and missiological scholarship. I attempted, secondly, to give proper emphasis to the contributions of indigenous Christians, whose role was frequently minimised by the older missionary histories. Perhaps inevitably, I consider myself to have failed in this respect. The extant written sources are, of course, overwhelmingly European in their provenance and hence perspective. Their inbalance could have been partially rectified (in the case of the twentieth century) only by a systematic exercise in oral history conducted on the field in Africa or Asia with a thoroughness that the limited time available did not permit. A third respect in which the book departs from the traditional pattern of missionary society history is that it is weighted strongly in favour of the twentieth century rather than the nineteenth. It falls into three sections: from 1792 to about 1914; from 1914 to about 1960; and from 1960 to the present day. Although the first of these sections is the longest, and the third the shortest, this structure has had certain implications. Only a limited amount of space has been allocated to those parts of the story which are fairly well covered by the existing secondary literature namely, the early years of the Serampore mission in India, the role of Baptist missionaries in the emancipation campaign in Jamaica in the 1820s and 1830s, and the relations between the Baptist pioneers on the Congo river and the Congo Free State in the 1880s and 1890s. In comparison, relatively full attention has been possible to the years after 1914. These are, of course, the years of most rapid church growth on the Congo and the tribal areas of Mizoram and Orissa in India. This is also the period in which devolution of authority from mission to church becomes a major theme, as do the relationships of missions to the colonial state and movements of nationalism or indigenous protest. This chronological emphasis also facilitates a proper concentration on the crucial decades of the 1920s and 1930s, which saw the Anglo-American denominational societies reach their peak in terms of numbers and influence, and then begin to decline under the dual impact of economic depression and theological controversy? The BMS conforms in many respects to this general pattern. The missionary force reached its peak of 515 in the year 1921-2. Substantial deficits became a recurring feature during the 1920s, and were arguably the most powerful single stimulus impelling the Society to devolve power to the indigenous churches in 7. For this pattern in the American missionary movement see W. R. Hutchison, Errand to the World: American Protestant Thought and Foreign Missions (Chicago and London, 1987), pp. 125, 176-77.

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India from the mid-1920s onwards. Theological tensions between fundamentalists and liberally minded evangelicals hit the BMS in 1922, and at one stage seemed likely to precipitate a schism parallel to that which split the CMS in the same year. The BMS survived intact, but thereafter lost the allegiance of some, though not all, of the most theologically conservative churches in the denomination to interdenominational evangelical missions such as the China Inland Mission or the Regions Beyond Missionary Union. Nevertheless, the BMS remained the most theologically conservative of the English nonconformist missionary societies, and (perhaps for that reason) still flourishes today as an independent voluntary society, the missionary arm of a predominantly evangelical denomination. The twentieth-century weighting of the book has also made possible a fairly detailed examination of how a long-established missionary society has responded to the transformation in the global context of Christian mission, which was first signalled by the missionary exodus from Communist China after 1949. The trauma of the missionary experience in twentieth-century China is of first importance in seeking to understand the re-orientation of Western mission policy since the 1950s.8 Some former China missionaries, such as Victor Hayward, who became General Foreign Secretary of the BMS in 1951, played an important role in the leadership of the missionary movement during the 1950s and 1960s, decades in which mission policy was dominated by the issues of decolonisation and the emergence of fully autonomous national churches in the former mission fields. Hence themes in the recent history of the BMS, such as the response of Baptist missionaries and church members to the Angolan crisis of 1961, or the implications for church life of the tangled history of Zaire since independence in 1960, or the problems experienced by the churches in the Muslim nation of Bangladesh since 1971, are clearly of interest to a wider constituency than Baptists alone. Any academic historian commissioned to write an official institutional history is called to face both ways. His or her professional integrity depends on writing a properly critical narrative which contributes to a wider field of scholarly discourse. The continuance of his or her commission depends on the acceptability of what is written to the institution and its current public image. Having to submit each chapter that I wrote to a working group appointed by the Society, most of whom were not academics, was a new and interesting professional discipline. I am glad to report that my worst fears of ideological censorship were not realised. 8. See George Hood, Neither Bang nor Whimper: The End of a Missionary Era in China (Singapore, 1991).

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The occasional skeleton in the Baptist missionary cupboard was brought into the light of day with scarcely a question raised. Thus, my account of the true and hitherto suppressed reason for George Grenfell's otherwise inexplicable resignation from the Society in 1878 - namely, that he had made his black Jamaican housekeeper in the Cameroons, Rose Edgerley, pregnant - was never queried. Inevitably, the more recent history of the Society proved a more sensitive area, particularly where those still alive have been engaged in controversy. Hence I had to tread carefully in dealing with what became known in the 1950s as the "Yakusu palaver", an extremely far-reaching argument in the life of the Society which focused on the brilliant figure of Dr Stanley G. Browne, the eminent leprologist, popularly known in his later years as "Mr Leprosy".9 Browne was one of the first missionary surgeons in tropical Africa to use dapsone in the treatment of leprosy, and pioneered a preventive and community health approach to the problem in the upper Congo at a time when that emphasis in tropical medicine was still rare. Browne was, however, unpopular with his colleagues and was arguably representative of an older missionary generation in the style of his relationships with the African church. The fact that the feelings aroused by the palaver are still keenly sensitive was brought home to me when I visited Yakusu in 1987. My attempt to interview one of the Africans who supported Browne in the controversy was brought to an untimely end when the chief surviving representative of the opposing party pointedly arrived at the door of his house to ensure that no untruths were fed to me. Difficulties in securing liberty of interpretation were, therefore, much less substantial than might have been anticipated. Perhaps more of a problem was the fundamental difference of perspective between the anxiety of the academic historian to stress themes, issues, conflicts and problems, and the more personal and narrative concerns of those who have themselves lived through a particular story. Of the many helpful responses to draft chapters received from former missionaries, the most common criticism was that too little had been said of the personal contributions of this or that individual. These were legitimate complaints, but it was impossible to respond to them in full without sacrificing the integrity of argument and wholeness of perspective which had ultimately to be preserved if the book were not to lapse back into the encyclopaedic approach of the older missionary history. In view of the overall theme of this volume, I want in the remaining part of this paper to focus on some of the archival issues raised by the enterprise. Much the largest relevant archive collection was, of course,

9. See Phyllis Thompson, Mister Leprosy (London, 1980).

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the Society's own archives. Although somewhat depleted by bomb damage sustained during the Second World War, the BMS archives remain a rich collection for historians of the Indian sub-continent, central Africa, the West Indies and China. Until 1989 the archives were housed in a basement strongroom in the Society's London headquarters. They had never received professional archival care for any consistent period, and were not comprehensively listed. However, in the summer of 1989 the Society moved out of London to modern office accommodation in Didcot, shared with the Baptist Union of Great Britain. The archives were then placed on permanent loan in the Angus Library of Regent's Park College, the Baptist college in Oxford. They are now far more adequately housed, and have had the benefit of care by a professional archivist, paid for by the Society. A fringe benefit of the move from London was the chance discovery within a long-locked safe, about to be dispatched to the scrap-yard, of some extremely valuable letters. These included the original of the much-cited letter from William Carey to his friend, John Ryland, in 1821, in which Carey referred to the dictatorial and impersonal regime which had assumed control of the BMS after the death in 1815 of Andrew Fuller, the first secretary: Carey complained that the letters written by John Dyer, secretary since 1817, read "like those of a Secretary of State".l0 There was also a package of correspondence from 1903 to 1906 between George Grenfell and Alfred Baynes, then General Secretary of the BMS, regarding Grenfell's decorations awarded by Leopold II of Belgium for his explorations of the Congo river and services to the Congo Free State. The decorations themselves were found with the correspondence. Among the letters is one from Grenfell to Leopold, explaining why he no longer feels able to wear the decorations and is returning them. The interesting point is that Grenfell's action was motivated, not by revulsion at the rubber atrocities on the Congo (which Grenfell at this stage still attributed to wayward individual servants of the Free State rather than to the corporate will of the State itself), but by Grenfell's dismay at the consistent refusal of the Free State authorities to countenance further Protestant advance beyond Yakusu on the upper Congo, an advance which he believed to be essential in the coming struggle between Christianity and Islam for predominance in central Africa. The letter and the decorations never reached Leopold. Grenfell sent them to Baynes, leaving it to his discretion whether he forwarded them to Brussels or not; Baynes duly exercised his discretion by holding on to the letter and decorations; perhaps it was Baynes who

10. BMS archives, IN 113, William Carey to John Ryland, 14 June 1821.

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locked them away in the safeY The most interesting and indeed, worrying, archival issues are, however, those which relate to other collections than the official Society archives. Within the United Kingdom, a considerable number of private papers were located still within family hands. In most cases, the families concerned subsequently agreed to deposit either the originals or copies of such papers in the archives at Oxford. That is encouraging news for future researchers. Less encouraging is the situation with respect to archives in Zaire and India. When I visited Zaire in 1987, I was surprised to find how many important documents, some of them more than eighty years old, remained in insecure and adverse conditions in a variety of locations in Zaire. Two examples may be cited. The small office of the Baptist pastor at Ngombe Lutete, a rural location in lower Zaire, contains a cupboard which houses church and mission records from 1900 onwards. The most interesting of these records are the station minute book from 1900 to 1925, and the church meeting minutes (in Kikongo) from 1908. The BMS Ngombe Lutete mission was, of course, the centre from which Simon Kimbangu's "prophet" movement developed in 1921. There are numerous references in the records to Kimbangu's movement, and in particular an extensive first-hand account of the movement, and its relationship to the BMS mission, by 1. S. Bowskill, who was the senior missionary at Ngombe Lutete from July 1921. So far as I could ascertain, the only scholars to have discovered and worked on these archives are the Paris-based historians Susan Asch and Anthony D'Souza. 12 They have sorted and labelled the material, which, to the best of my knowledge, remains there today. A more intriguing example concerns the sons of Nlemvo (d. 1938), probably the first Protestant convert in the Congo, who was baptised by W Holman Bentley at Ngombe Lutete on 19 February 1888. As a youth, Nlemvo became Bentley's right-hand man in the production of his Dictionary and Grammar of the Kongo Language (1887); he subsequently became an evangelist and deacon in the Baptist mission; in 1921 Nlemvo was one of only two deacons in the Ngombe Lutete church not to side with Simon Kimbangu's prophet movement. In 1987 two sons of Nlemvo by his second wife were still alive in Kinshasa. The second son, Wai Nlemvo (b. 1916), is the director of a private clinic in Kinshasa, the

11. BMS archives, A/21, Grenfell to Leopold II, 10 August 1903; Grenfell to Baynes, 11 August 1903; Baynes to Grenfell, 9 April 1906. 12. There is no reference to the Ngombe Lutete archive in Susan Asch, L'Eglise du Prophete Kimbangu de ses Origines son Role Actuel au Zaire (19211981) (Paris, 1983).

a

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Omedis-Nlemvo Centre de Sante, Kinshasa. His office rejoices in the title "Centre de Recherches Historiques", and its walls are adorned with photographs of Nlemvo, Thomas Comber, Holman Bentley, George Grenfell, Robert Arthington (the Leeds eccentric whose money originated the Congo mission) and Simon Kimbangu. More significant than these and other early photographs in Wai Nlemvo's possession are the original church roll of the Ngombe Lutete church, beginning with the first baptism on 29 March 1886, and three volumes of the Kikongo minutes of the Ngombe Lutete church meeting, covering the years 1895 to 1907. Although these documents belong by right to the church founded by the BMS mission, the Communaute Baptiste du Fleuve Zaire (CBFZ), Wai Nlemvo refuses to hand them over them to the church, with whom he has fallen out. Thus a unique collection of records relating to the beginnings of Protestant history in Zaire remain extremely inaccessible - I saw them only for about an hour - and in a poor condition (one of the minute books is badly eaten by insects). Similar, but less dramatic stories could be repeated from other former BMS stations in Zaire. I also found records at Mbanza Ngungu, Kimpese, Yakusu, Upoto and Pimu. Most were not even boxed. On my return I drew the problem to the attention of the BMS. For reasons of ecclesiastical politics, there could be no question of bringing the records back to Britain for deposit in the BMS archives. The only realistic course seemed to be to recommend that all such archives were centralised in Kinshasa, either in the CBFZ headquarters or in the library of the Protestant Faculty of Theology of the University of Kinshasa. In 1990, at a major consultation between CBFZ leaders and the BMS, the CBFZ agreed to locate all such records in the Kinshasa secretariat. However, it appears that nothing has yet been done. Local pastors can be quite jealous of their records, even if not fully aware of their importance, and hence reluctant to hand them over to a central secretariat hundreds of miles distant in Kinshasa. Given the desperate economic condition of Zaire, the fact that nothing has been done is not surprising. However, the price of continued inaction is liable to be high. Some of the documents I examined in 1987 were already so fragile as to be almost beyond repair. What is worse, one of the offices where records were kept, in Mbanza Ngungu, was looted and flooded during the extensive civil disorder of September-October 1991. It is to be feared that the records - including three minute books from lower river stations dealing with the 1920s - have been lost for ever. A second research trip to India and Bangladesh in 1988 proved far less productive in terms of archival sources. It appears that relatively few records remain in church hands. The major exception I found was in Calcutta, where both of the two historic Baptist churches retain exten-

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sive and potentially important archives. Carey Baptist Church, the church founded by William Carey in Lal Bazar in 1806, has a large collection of records housed in four steel boxes; in December 1988 they were located in a cupboard within the main sanctuary. The oldest document is the admission roll of members from 1806 to 1885. There are also minutes of church meetings from 1886, and registers of births, marriages and burials from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. Of even greater interest are the records of Lower Circular Road Baptist Church, the congregation formed in 1818 by the so-called "younger brethren" of the BMS mission, who withdrew from the Lal Bazar Church in the early stages of the argument between the Serampore missionaries and the BMS Committee. The records include a complete series in four volumes of the minutes of church meetings from 1819 to the present day. They also contain, either as part of the minutes or as a separate document, two registers of admissions to church membership, commencing in 1819 with Eustace Carey, William Yates, W H. Pearce, James Penney and William Adam, and extending to 1935. The minutes of church meetings are clearly of particular interest. Thus those for August-September 1821 contain an account of the disciplinary action taken by the church against the former BMS missionary, William Adam, on account of his heretical views on the divinity of Christ, formed as a result of his contact with Rammohun Roy, the Hindu reformer and founder of the Brahmo Samaj. \3 The records of both these churches would clearly be of value to any historian interested in mission work or the English and Anglo-Indian community in Calcutta in the nineteenth century. Neither collection is listed by Professor Ray and Dr Bose of the Institute of Historical Studies in Calcutta in the relevant volume of their classified catalogue of missionary archives held in the Calcutta region. 14 Although in a better condition and in less immediate jeopardy than the Zaire archives, these records deserve some publicity among the scholarly community and some provision for a secure future. In other parts of northern India or Bangladesh, I was reduced by the absence of written sources to making the most of the fragmentary evidence (often literally fragmentary) afforded by inscriptions on missionary tombstones. Here again there is some cause for concern. Some graveyards of considerable interest to the historian were in a state

13. See E. Daniel Potts, British Baptist Missionaries in India 1793-1837 (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 233-34. 14. N. R. Ray and N. S. Bose (eds), A Descriptive Classified Catalogue of Christian Missionary Records in Calcutta and Around, Part 2 (Institute of Historical Studies, Calcutta, 1988).

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of total neglect: as was, for example, the cemetery in Dhaka where is buried William Robinson, whose long and varied missionary career with the BMS took him to Bengal, Bhutan, Java, Sumatra, then back to Calcutta as pastor of the Lal Bazar Church, and finally to Dhaka from 1839 to 1853.15 Similarly, the graveyard in Bhanjanagar, on the edge of the Kond Hills in Orissa, which contains the graves of Thomas Wood and Arthur Long, two of the pioneers of the Kond Hills mission in the 1890s and early 1900s, was so overgrown that it needed to be attacked with scythes and sickles before the tombstones could be found. 16 Perhaps most distressing of all, the cemetery in Serampore where William Ward, William Carey, and Joshua Marshman are all buried was in December 1988 half submerged under water, with cattle grazing freely among the gravestones. It is possible that efforts were made to clean it up for the influx of bicentennial visitors in 1992. Cleaning up is not, however, an unmixed blessing for the historian. The small missionary cemetery in Dinajpur in northern Bangladesh contains three graves of some importance: that of Carey's initial colleague, the East India Company surgeonturned-missionary, John Thomas; also the grave of John Fountain, the pro-republican BMS missionary, whose political statements gave Andrew Fuller so many sleepless nights; and that of Ignatius Fernandez, the former Roman Catholic priest from Portuguese Macao, converted by the Baptists in 1796. When the General Secretary of the BMS visited Dinajpur a year or so previous to my visit, he expressed understandable disappointment at the state of the cemetery. It was in consequence zealously restored by a local Baptist builder, and all three tombs were by 1988 resplendent in gleaming whitewash. There was, however, no means of knowing which was which, and no sign of the inscriptions. That is probably not the fault of the Baptist builder, since it appears that the headstones had been purloined some time before by the local inhabitants for the sake of their high-quality stone. Nevertheless, whatever clues might have remained prior to restoration are now no more. This paper has focused on some of the problems encountered in a writing project of this kind, for it is the problems which arouse more general interest. It would, however, be churlish to end on a negative

15. See John Robinson, Memoirs of the Rev W. Robinson, Baptist Missionary, (Benares, 1858). 16. On the Kond Hills mission see S. P. Carey, Dawn on the Kond Hills (London, 1936), and Barbara M. Boal, "The Church in the Kond Hills: An Encounter with Animism", in Victor E. W. Hayward (ed.), The Church as Christian Community: Three Studies of North Indian Churches (London, 1966), pp. 223-343.

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note. Despite the difficulties, and the extreme time constraints imposed by an inflexible deadline for publication, the project was an enormously stimulating one. Writing the missionary history of the last two centuries presents the challenge of interpreting aspects of one of the most significant trends in the entire history of the Christian Church - the process whereby a Christian tradition rooted in the West expanded to the nonWestern world, became indigenised there, and ultimately acquired such independent vitality that the very centre of gravity of global Christianity has been shifted to the southern hemisphere. The historian of Christian missions in Africa is still extraordinarily close to the beginnings of the Protestant tradition in the continent. It is still just possible to interview those, such as Wai Nlemvo, who are only one generation away from the earliest converts. Moreover, the landscape is littered with physical evidence of the complex social and cultural impact of the late Victorian missionary pioneers. One example will serve as a conclusion to this paper and as an illustration of the intriguing variety of historical evidence available to the historian of the missionary enterprise. In the grounds of the headquarters of the CBFZ in Kinshasa, overlooking Stanley Pool, lie the rusting remains of the boiler of George Grenfell's Congo steamer, the Peace. The vessel was bought with Robert Arthington's money, and on one occasion in 1887, to Arthington's great distress, was commandeered by H. M. Stanley for the military purposes of the Congo Free State in the upper Congo. I? The ground on which the Peace's boiler now lies is immediately adjacent to the large waterfront premises of the Huileries du Congo Beige (HCB), part of the Unilever commercial empire. Until 1916 the whole of this valuable site was owned by the BMS. However, in 1912-13 Sir William Lever, himself a Congregationalist, visited his Congo enterprises, and made a point of calling on the BMS headquarters. Two results of that courtesy visit soon became apparent. In April 1914 Lever gave £1,000 towards the building of a new BMS church in Kinshasa (now the International Protestant Church). The same mail that brought news of his donation happened also to contain details of Sir William's proposal to purchase a large section of the mission's waterfront site. The Kalina church was duly opened by a director of Lever Brothers in August 1915. The sale of a large part of the BMS land to the Huileries du Congo Beige was concluded in December 1916.18 Sir William's shrewd philanthropy thus

17. See Brian Stanley, .. 'The Miser of Headingley': Robert Arthington and the Baptist Missionary Society, 1877-1900", in W. J. Sheils and D. Wood (eds), The Church and Wealth, Studies in Church History vol. 24 (Oxford, 1987), pp. 378-81. 18. BMS archives, AI 102, Kinshasa station log book, 1881-1956.

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secured a prime location for the servicing of his massive palm-oil empire in the Congo. The BMS for its part gained £8,500 from the deal, and the right to use HCB vessels for the transport of mission goods and passengers on the upper river. Mission steamers such as the Peace (which had been decommissioned in 1908) were accordingly no longer needed. The rusting heap of metal on the edge of Stanley Pool is, in its own way, a source of evidence for the historian, symbolising something of the ambiguous nature of the role played by Christian missionaries in the Western penetration of the tropical world.

"OPEN DOORS FOR FEMALE LABOURERS": WOMEN CANDIDATES OF THE LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY, 1875-1914.' Rosemary Seton

There were few opportunities for unmarried, middle-class women seeking respectable employment in late nineteenth century Britain. The professions, especially medicine, were notoriously hostile to the idea of female recruits, while competition was sharply increasing for the "fixed number of openings" which were considered suitable. 2 Prospects overseas seemed more promising. An advertisement in a quarterly newspaper of a prominent missionary society drew the attention of the "young medical women of England looking for a practice, perhaps yearning for a sphere ... to China where you may have patients from morning to night.,,3 Sara Billing, a thirty-three year old Sunday School teacher from Guildford, was encouraged by "the knowledge of the many open doors for female labourers in all parts of the world" to offer herself for Christian service overseas. 4 The expansion of women's work in a number of British missionary societies in the 1860s and l870s offered to young Christian women opportunities for fulfilment without "the bold assault on female conventions demanded of the new 'professional' women".5 This essay assesses the recruitment policy of the London Missionary Society (LMS) with regard to women candidates and examines the motivation, education, and the social and employment background of female applicants to the Society between the start, in 1875, of this branch of work to the outbreak of the First World War. The call for single women missionaries had come early in the history of the LMS. In 1824 Robert Morrison, the pioneer Protestant missionary to

1. My major source has been the archives of the London Missionary Society (LMS), now known as the Council for World Mission (CWM), which are kept in SOAS Library. Candidates' Papers (CP) have proved a particularly fruitful source as have the papers of rejected candidates (UCP). I have also referred to the minutes of the Ladies' Committee 1875-1907 (LC); the Quarterly News of Woman's Work (QNWW); the Register of LMS missionaries and a number of published and unpublished memoirs, pamphlets and reports. 2. P. Levine, Victorian Feminism 1850-1900 (London, 1987), p. 84. 3. QNWW (April, 1894), p. 38. 4. CWM, CP, letter, dated 24 May 1881, from Sara Billing. 5. Jane Hunter, The Gospel of Gentility: American Women Missionaries in Turn-of-the-Century China (New Haven, 1984), p. 36.

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China, asked the Directors of the LMS to consider "the expediency of sending ... some unmarried ladies of experience and education ... with the design of teaching English and the principles of our religion to pagan girls".6 However, like most other missionary societies of the time the LMS fought shy of sending solitary, unmarried ladies to remote, uncivilised destinations and it was as home supporters or as "helpmeets" to missionary husbands that LMS women were destined to fill their role for the next half-century. Before 1864 the Society sent out only one female missionary, Maria Newell, appointed in 1827 as a teacher to Chinese girls in Malacca. (Newell married Karl Gutzlaff in 1829 and died two years later). Between 1864 and 1875, when female missionary work within the Society officially commenced, a further nine teachers were appointed. By the mid-nineteenth century there was a widespread view, particularly in the mission fields, that the chief obstacle to the successful transmission of the Christian message lay in the home. Amongst Victorian evangelicals home was regarded as "the sphere of women and the family"? where life was "generated and character formed and destiny shaped".8 The centrality of this theme to mission work was affirmed by the influential Sir Monier Monier-Williams, Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford University. He exhorted "the missionary band to carry their ark persistently round the Indian home ... until a way is opened for the free intercourse of the educated mothers and women of Europe ... with the mothers and women of India in their own homes." He was convinced that until this happened: "Christianity at least in its purer forms will make little progress either among Hindus or Mahommedans".9 In India, during the late 1850s, there were beginning to be encouraging signs that earlier male opposition towards the education of women and girls in zenanas and schools was gradually giving way to cordial support for these enterprises. lo In Calcutta, Hannah Mullens, wife of Joseph Mullens of the LMS Mission had by 1861 "four zenana morning schools" under her care, 6. Letter dated 7 September 1824, CWM South China Incoming correspondence, Box 2/21 D. 7. Catherine Hall, "The Early Formation of Victorian Domestic Ideology" in Sandra Burman (ed.) Fit Work Jor Women (London, 1979), p. 24. 8. Isabel Hart, "Introduction", Historical Sketches oj Woman's Missionary Societies in America and England (Boston, 1883), p. 9. 9. Quoted in Richard Lovett, History oj the London Missionary Society 17951895 (London, 1899), vol. 2, p.716. 10. The zenana was the secluded area for women inside the Indian home. For an account of the growth of zenana mission work see Rosemary Fitzgerald's essay in this volume. See also Geraldine Forbes, "In Search of the 'Pure Heathen: Missionary Women in Nineteenth-Century India", Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 21, 17 (April 26 1986), pp. WS2-WS8.

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with a further "eleven other zenanas which she visited in the afternoons ... a class almost every day in her own boarding school; ... a Bible class in the Cooly Bazar Sunday School." She was also engaged in writing "a book for the instruction of native females"Y To undertake such work in addition to home and family responsibilities was a considerable burden, and it was consequently to a supply of educated, unmarried women from Britain that missionaries began to look for recruits in the 1860s, 1870s and 1880s. In the Britain of the 1860s socio-economic circumstances favoured a radical change in the way women were perceived, and indeed many believed that "the woman question had become one of the most important topics of the day".12 The 1851 census had been widely interpreted as showing a surplus of 1,129,000 women over men between the ages of 20 and 42, and some felt a consequential concern as to what should be the fate of women thereby denied the role of wife and mother. One contemporary observer, Edward Carpenter, commented that "the life, and with it the character, of the ordinary 'young lady' of that period and of the sixties generally, was tragic in its emptiness"Y R. N. Cust, a great supporter of women's missions, feelingly voiced the frustrations of those who wished to emerge from inactivity: "endowed with talents, education and spirituality; [women] stand ... with the inaudible cry of the heart; my life what shall I do with it?" 14 During the nineteenth century middleclass women developed wider public roles for themselves. Firstly, and because they had so much time on their hands, in the role of fundraisers for good causes. In his study on Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth Century England, Frank Prochaska shows how women played an increasingly effective role as financial contributors, not least to the support of foreign mission. In the LMS alone the percentage of women subscribers rose from 17 per cent in 1820 to 44 per cent in 1900.15 Women became more active too in a variety of religious and charitable undertakings.

II. E. Storrow, Funeral Sermon/or Mrs Mullens (Calcutta, 1861). 12. See Martha Vicinus (ed.), A Widening Sphere: Changing Roles 0/ Victorian Women (Indiana, 1977), p. ix. 13. Edward Carpenter, My Days and Dreams (London, 1916), quoted in Carolyn Heilbrun, Hamlet's Mother and Other Women: Feminist Essays on Literature (London, 1990), p.m. 14. R. N. Cust, quoted in C. Peter Williams, "The Recruitment and Training of Overseas Missionaries in England between 1850 and 1900" (unpublished M.Utt thesis, University of Bristol, 1976), p. 319. 15. F. Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth Century England (Oxford, 1980), p. 29.

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The Revival of 11 September 1862, recorded the sudden rise in the number of female Sunday School teachers: "In 1820 only 140 out of an estimated number of 1,700 Sunday School teachers were women but by 1862 there were at least as many women as men".16 In a recent article on women evangelists in early Victorian Britain, D.M. Lewis points out that there were perhaps fifty of them in Britain's 350 town and city missions in 1858. Eight years later there were "over 270 women engaged in such work".17 During 1859 and 1860 much of Britain was swept by a religious revival which influenced the growth of the missionary movement, leading directly to the holding in Liverpool in 1860 of the first united missionary conference. IS It also led to a far wider acceptance of women's spiritual agency.19 One of the leaders of the Revival, Revd W Pennefather, offered in 1859 to include the training of lady missionaries for the Church Missionary Society in an institute he proposed setting up. This offer was not accepted. Indeed, according to a CMS historian, missionary enthusiasm waned in the early sixties partly because young evangelical men and women were so busily engaged in home mission work that they had "literally no time to attend missionary meetings and to read missionary periodicals".2o However, during the following years, a number of women's missionary organisations were founded. In 1858 a "Ladies' Committee for ameliorating the condition of women in heathen countries" was set up by the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, and Ladies' Associations were founded by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in 1866 and by the Baptist Missionary Society in 1868. In 1866 the first party of missionaries taken out to China by James Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission, included ten women, eight of whom were in their twenties. 21 It was thus

16. Quoted in Olive Anderson, "Women Preachers in Mid-Victorian Britain: Some Reflections on Feminism, Popular Religion and Social Change", The Historical Journal vol. 12, 3 (1969), p. 468. 17. D. M. Lewis, "'Lights in Dark Places': Women Evangelists in Early Victorian Britain, 1837-57", in W. 1. Shiels and Diana Wood (eds) Women in the Church, Studies in Church History, vol. 27 (Oxford, 1990), p. 415. 18. See Max Warren, The Missionary Movement from Britain in Modern History (London, 1965), p. 39. 19. See Anderson, "Women Preachers in Mid-Victorian Britain", passim. 20. Eugene Stock, The History of the Church Missionary Society (London, 1899), vol. 2, p. 357. 21. See C. Peter Williams, "'The Missing Link': The Recruitment of Women Missionaries in some English Evangelical Missionary Societies in the Nineteenth Century", in F. Bowie, D. Kirkwood and S. Ardener (eds), Women and Missions: Past and Present. Anthropological and Historical Perceptions (Oxford,1993) p.48.

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at a comparatively late date, 1875, that the LMS took steps to establish its own female missionary work. The LMS Ladies' Committee In March 1875, at the half-yearly meeting of the Directors of the LMS, resolutions were passed affirming the desirability of employing "suitable English and native Christian women ... more largely than at present in connection with our missions in India and China". A Ladies' Committee was to be established "to advise and assist the Board in the management and extension of this branch of missionary effort".22 Having found that its constitution did not allow for female participation, even to assist in the management of its affairs, the Society passed a special resolution at its annual meeting in May 1875 and the first meeting of the new Committee took place in the following July. The Ladies' Committee comprised fifteen women who were normally resident in London. The President of the Committee from 1875 until her death in 1893 was Anna Wardlaw, who had herself been a missionary wife in South India, from 1841 to 1859. The secretary for many years was the influential Caroline Whyte, nee Bennett, daughter of Sir Risdon Bennett, Physician to the Society. Mrs Whyte's influence was considerable. In addition to her Committee role (she succeeded Mrs Wardlaw as President) she also edited the Quarterly News of Woman's Work, and was the author of the pamphlet What are the Qualifications needed for a Lady Missionary?, which was sent to all female applicants. Other members were the wives and daughters of Directors or prominent members of London Congregationalist Churches. (The LMS had commenced its work as an interdenominational society but soon came to be predominantly identified with Congregationalist churches). The Committee met monthly at the Mission house with the President in the Chair, the Secretary taking the minutes, and with the Secretaries of the Society in attendance. While the Committee received reports from female missionaries in the field, the main business was to read letters from aspiring candidates, to interview those who had satisfactorily replied to a list of written questions, and to make recommendations on acceptance or rejection. Most candidates found the formal interview quite an ordeal, some being evidently so transfixed by fright that they were unable to respond to questions. After one unsatisfactory interview with a Miss Norris in 1882 it was decided that each candidate would have an informal preliminary meeting with two or three members of the Committee,

22. Document issued by the Secretaries of the London Missionary Society, Blomfield Street, London, 13 July 1875, p. 1.

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55

so as to ascertain whether it was worth subjecting candidates to scrutiny by the full Committee. Perhaps the formality of committee work also inhibited its members. By one account they seem to have done their best to feminise the proceedings. In an unpublished memoir Amy Foster who, as Amy Jackson, had applied to become a missionary in 1877, recalled how the committee members were "sitting round a long table eating bread and butter off willow pattern plates and asked her to have some". She thought them "not more at ease than I was".23 Women's work in the LMS was not organised apart from the main work of the Society, as it was in most other British and American Missionary Societies. The Ladies' Committee did not make appointments. It merely recommended suitable candidates to the Board. Nor did it direct the work of female missionaries who, on appointment, became members of the appropriate District Committee in the mission field. It controlled no budget, although it was empowered to organise Ladies' Auxiliary Committees to collect funds in support of women's work. Monies collected were paid into the general funds under a separate heading. Some would have preferred that the work "could be supported entirely by the efforts of women".z4 However, by the early 1890s there were more than sixty women in the field, and the work had achieved an importance and a magnitude which made separate development seem a real possibility. The local Ladies' Auxiliaries flourished and collections for women's work soared. At a women's meeting, held in connection with the General Missionary Conference in June 1888, members of the Ladies' Committee came into contact with the organisers of American women's missionary societies and were greatly impressed by their "energy" and their "systematic methods of work".25 At that meeting, too, it was proposed that a Woman's Missionary Committee of Christian Women be set up, and the LMS Ladies' Committee participated in its subsequent development. But in 1891 the possibility of separate development was ended when the LMS Board of Directors took the revolutionary step of inviting women to sit on the Board. Needless to say, the women were heavily outnumbered. They numbered 33 out of a total membership of 295. The Ladies' Committee, nine of whose members were asked to serve on the Board,

23. CWM Library (M6), 'Autobiography of Amy Foster, Hankow', unpublished typescript, p. 12. This memoir is written in the third person. 24. Mary Bliss, Antananarivo, Madagascar, letter dated 23 March 1887, published in QNWW (1887), p. 28. 25. QNWW (1888), letter from the editor, p. 4.

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now became known as the Ladies' Examination Committee. The change of name betokened a decline in its powers. The Committee was to be solely concerned with the selection and training of candidates and no longer received reports from missionaries in the field. It was the responsibility of the Home Secretary, A. N. Johnson, to conduct its proceedings, although in practice Johnson usually delegated this duty to a woman member. It is difficult to assess the response among LMS women to this absorption into the general work of the Society: however, in a retrospective article about women's work in the Quarterly News of January 1895, Caroline Whyte admitted there had been differing views as to the wisdom of the move?6 The process of generalising women's work within the Society continued with the call in 1903, that the Ladies' Meeting at the annual May meetings in 1904 be "thrown open to men as well as to women". The Committee agreed but insisted that only "lady speakers should take part in the meeting so that it might not lose its special character"?? In 1907 the Ladies' and the Men's Examination Committees were merged, following a shake-up in the organisation of the Society's committee work. But women members were able to establish a subcommittee in June 1907 to see female candidates for up to an hour in the preliminary interview which they felt to be so important. Throughout its existence and, as we have seen, to a degree afterwards, the Ladies' Committee exercised a careful and lengthy screening of applicants, the key element of which was a personal interview. A large percentage of those who applied were rejected for one reason or another. Between 1875 and 1907 the Committee considered applications from 400 women and rejected 186. Even after initial acceptance further hurdles ensued. A period of training was advised, and from 1891 all candidates had to prepare for and pass an examination. Only when all these processes were carried out to the desired standard (the order sometimes varied according to circumstances) was the candidate accepted for missionary service. There might even then be a period of waiting until a suitable vacancy arose, and during 1894 and 1895, when the Society was experiencing a severe financial crisis, several very promising candidates were advised to reapply to other missionary societies.

26. QNWW (January 1895), p. 6. 27. CWM, LC, Minutes, 10 November 1903.

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The Candidates Motivation First it was essential to establish "fundamental spiritual qualifications,,28 - a belief in Christ's saving grace and a desire to save souls. Many of the candidates could trace their desire to become missionaries back to childhood. The father of one had shown "us pictures of idol worship and we had missionaries stay in the house".29 Others had been affected by meeting or hearing legendary or charismatic figures such as Robert Moffat or Hopkyn Rees. One had been "very much moved at a missionary meeting held in a Bible Christian Chapel in Somerset".30 A number mentioned the influence of their own minister. It was after, for example, "prayerful consideration" of "a suggestion by my pastor, the Revd P. Whyte," that Lucy Linley offered her services "for female mission work among the heathen".3) Among motives specifically connected with women's work, there was a desire for emulation. One candidate, for instance, had read and re-read in her girlhood Heroines of the Mission Field, by Emma Raymond Pitman, of which there was a London Missionary Society edition. 32 The young Beatrice Fry's "resolve to be a missionary" came when she heard the missionary Mary Tuck speak at her school, Milton Mount College for the Daughters of Congregationalist Ministers, in Gravesend. 33 A feeling of empathy and concern was also expressed towards Indian zenana women whose plight was repeatedly and graphically depicted in missionary literature of the time. For many women there was a sisterly longing to bring sunshine and light into what they saw as the gloomy monotonous lives of their counterparts in India and China. "I want to show forth to poor dark heathen women," wrote one, "the wondrous love of Christ".34 Another wanted "the dark sad lives of the women in heathen lands" to be "flooded with the sunshine of the Gospel".35 The development of medical work in the Zenana missions in the 1880s and 1890s offered the opportunity of a dual ministration, since this work was

28. What are the Qualifications needed for a Lady Missionary? (London, 1895), 2nd edition, p. 4. 29. CWM, UCP, letter, dated 2 May 1879, from Emma Foyster, whose application was turned down on health grounds. 30. CWM, Cp, Lizzie Bovey, Answers to list of questions, 1894. 31. CWM, CP, Lucy Linley, letter dated 29 November 1877. 32. CWM, UCp, letter dated July 1881 from Lizzie Cloutman, who was rejected on educational grounds. 33. CWM, CP, Beatrice Fry, Answers to questions, 29 March 1910. 34. CWM, UCP, Myra Pertwell, letter, dated 5 October [1890]. Miss Pertwell's application was turned down on health grounds. 35. CWM, Cp, Margaret McLean, letter dated 6 November 1891.

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concerned with both bodily and spiritual ailments. Ida Darnton thought this work "such a splendid way of showing in a practical way our love for those who are heathen," while Lilian Joyce felt a "strong desire for work where the soul winning part is recognised as supreme and the nursing is a means to an end".36 There was, too, a sense of calling. Of one candidate her minister wrote "there is no earthly reason for the steps she is taking than that inward yearning which seems to her a divine command".37 Another felt "an earnest desire to devote myself and all I have of time and strength to this service, which seems to me the highest and grandest in which my life could be spent".38 There was a common sense of unworthiness and humility at such a high ambition. Elizabeth German felt that she did not have "one quarter of the qualifications of the ideal missionary" but she was confident "that if the Master needs me for His Foreign Field He will prepare me for it and help me to overcome all difficulties".39 Such trust could also comfort those to whom the doors remained shut, since this indicated that their sphere of usefulness lay elsewhere. Many candidates felt a sense of self-sacrifice and renunciation. For one missionary nurse the "love of ambition, home and friends called her to stay at home ... but it was not to be".4o Edith Sabin felt a sense of liberation, not loss, at "the giving up". She did not think she had "ever been so happy before".41 But Amy Foster recalled in later life that she had felt some inner contradiction. She had been taught that "we must give our first to God, our best to God and our all to God" so she was puzzled to feel her heart sink "when she found her sacrifice accepted so easily. She had been praying that the way might be opened and she certainly was very glad that it had been, so why did she feel tearful at the answer to her prayer?,,42

"Ladies of some education, culture and refinement" The London Missionary Society required its female missionaries to be "ladies of some education, culture and refinement". They would be expected to minister to "the higher classes of Hindu and Mahommedan

36. CWM, CP, Ida Darnton, letter dated 5 October 1892; Lilian Joyce, letter dated 18 July 1899. 37. CWM, CP, Emily Browne, letter dated 7 September 1886, from Charles Chambers, Minister of Stockwell Road, Congregational Church. 38. CWM, CP, Annie Grierson, letter dated 10 September 1897. 39. CWM, CP, Elizabeth German, letter dated 6 December 1893. 40. CWM, CP, Minnie Clark, appointed as a missionary nurse, 1908. 41. CWM, CP, Edith Sabin, letter dated 30 May 1905. 42. 'Autobiography of Amy Foster, Hankow', p. 13.

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Society" and would supervise the work of native female agents to work amongst other classes of women.43 Most other societies shared this view, at least at the outset of female missionary work. James Hudson Taylor, founder of the CIM, was a rare exception. He looked for evangelical and spiritual qualities in his missionaries, regardless of gender, class or educational attainment. In the LMS, however, great stress was laid on the importance of the interview even when candidates lived at a considerable distance. In 1881, Agnes Drysdale, a 32 year old headmistress from Fifeshire, was being considered for a teaching post in Madagascar. Her interview took place in the waiting room of Cupar railway station where Mrs Lucy Spicer interviewed her on behalf of the Ladies' Committee. Spicer could see "at a glance" that Drysdale was not a "lady". She was thoroughly good and sensible, "hardworking and persevering, will not stick at anything", but she spoke "with a broad Scotch accent", was a little like a servant in appearance, "and was painfully plain". In casting around for an acceptable cause of rejection Mrs Spicer took refuge in the fact that Miss Drysdale was over the usual age for "you cannot tell anyone she is not a lady".44 Appearance, voice and manners mattered, but not it seems quite so much in Madagascar (Agnes Drysdale excepted) and the South Seas, as they did in India and China, the two main areas of LMS women's work. Elizabeth Moore, a successful missionary in Samoa for thirty years, was found, at her interview, to be considerably wanting in "speech and manner".45 Agnes Lancaster, interviewed by the Ladies' Committee, impressed all with her energy and force of character, "Her parentage and associations were, however, such as to render it extremely unlikely that she would prove a suitable agent for work either in India or China".46 Higher standards of education were also desirable in those two countries. Jessie Porter, sister of R. C. Porter, an accepted missionary, had not had the "advantage of anything beyond a quite average education".47 Constance Long, on the other hand, a candidate for the medical missionary service, pleased a committee member very much. She was "ladylike, refined, and, I think, most intelligent and there was withal a diffidence and forgetfulness of self which much pleased me".48 In the

43. Qualifications, p. 5. 44. CWM, VCP, letter dated 2 September [1881) from Lucy Spicer to Miss Bennett. 45. CWM, CP, Elizabeth Moore, letter dated 12 January 1885, from Anne Hurry. 46. CWM, LC minutes, 12 November 1878. 47. CWM, VCP, Jessie Porter, letter dated II July 1892, from Constance Whyte to A. N. Johnson. 48. CWM, VCp, Constance Long, letter dated 19 February [1891) from Sarah Dawson to Constance Whyte. Long was accepted for training as a medical missionary, but she withdrew as a candidate in 1895. (See footnote 60).

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view of committee members being a lady was not entirely a matter of social class. There was also the matter of being socially at ease. Some of the women candidates brought up in the narrow environs of a strict nonconformist home were found, not surprisingly, to be socially unskilled. Of Lillie Sheldon Ashburner of Manchester, appointed to Amoy (Xiamen) in 1885, it was memorably observed that "if she can be sent to a place where appearance or manner are not of importance, I think she will prove an efficient missionary".49 The degree of social poise was nicely calculated. Modesty, humility, unworldiness, even genteel poverty, were very acceptable virtues, and perhaps members would not have looked kindly on anyone who outshone them in birth or breeding. Education The last quarter of the nineteenth century saw a great expansion in girls' secondary education in the British Isles. The subsequent improvement of standards is reflected in the candidates coming forward at this period. Those applying after 1900 had significantly higher attainments than earlier entrants. Many of the candidates interviewed in the 1870s and 1880s had been educated at home or in private schools. Their education was described as being a "good plain education" or a "good English education". Those who knew French or German had been taught by a governess, had attended special classes or had travelled on the continent. Of those recruited after 1900, 36 per cent had attended high schools such as Miss Buss's schools at Camden and North London Collegiate. Others had been pupils at Milton Mount College at Gravesend, or Walthamstow Hall School for the Daughters of Missionaries. Before 1900 it was rare for candidates to have attended a university. Of the 126 candidates recruited before 1900, four had done so, while a further eight had attended a teacher training college. Of the 104 recruited between 1900 and 1914, 19 had been to universities or university colleges, while a further six had attended medical schools or colleges. Thus, during the period 1875 to 1914, 7.5 per cent of female entrants had obtained university education or equivalent. This figure can be compared with 27 per cent of male missionaries going to India between 1858 and 1900, an admittedly smaller sample although over a similar period 50 Occupations However ladylike London Missionary Society women candidates may have been, they were not, for the most part, ladies of private means and

49. CWM, CP, Lillie Ashburner, letter dated 12 January 1885, from Anne Hurry. 50. See G. A. Oddie, "India and Missionary Motives, 1850-1900", Journal of Ecclesiastical History, vol. 25, 1 (January 1974), pp. 61-73.

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leisure. Most were in employment or were attending higher educational or training courses. Of the 230 accepted candidates, I have occupational data for 172. Of these, only 34 stated that they lived at home without outside employment. The largest group, 67, were teachers or governesses, 27 were nurses, and only one, Dr Ethel Tribe, was a practising doctor. Fifteen were engaged in home mission work and thirty had been engaged in overseas missionary work, either because they were the daughters of missionaries, or because they had worked with other societies. Five were in the millinery or drapery business and two worked in offices. Salaries varied from £48 per annum as a nurse, £50 as a store buyer, £92 as an assistant school mistress, to £120 as a senior teacher. Female missionaries with the LMS received a salary of £100. 51 One contemporary, Mollie Hughes, who was appointed to the teacher training staff of Bedford College, London in the early 1890s at the same rate, thought this figure "almost a starvation salary".52 But there were those who thought the salary for female missionaries too high. Ralph Wardlaw Thompson, Foreign Secretary of the LMS from 1881 to 1914, and a somewhat critical supporter of single female missionary work, commented that "there was a strong impression among many who know something of the market for women's work, that the prospect of a salary of £100 a year and house room really becomes a temptation to many women to enter upon mission work who ought never to have gone into it".53 Practical experience An essential precondition of missionary work, for both male and female candidates, was practical experience of Christian and philanthropic work amongst the "heathen" and deprived of Britain's towns and cities. Such work was usually carried out on week-day evenings and Sundays since, as we have seen, many candidates had daytime jobs. Most of the applicants had taught in Sunday schools or had run some or all of the

51. CWM, Funds and Agency Committee Minutes Book 3, 4 March 1887, Revised General Regulations, pp. 339, 343. There were three scales: that of the unmarried missionary; that of the unmarried female missionary and that of the married missionary. In addition there were allowances for transport and furniture. All missionaries had to pay a portion of the costs of training, outfit, furniture and passage money for service terminated within five years unless on medically advised health grounds. During home leave unmarried male missionaries received an annual allowance of £132, female missionaries £100, and married male missionaries £230. 52. Mollie Hughes, A London Family 1870-90 (Oxford, 1991), p. 409. 53. Quoted in Norman Goodall, A History of the London Missionary Society 1895-1945 (London, 1945), p. 12.

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following: watchers' bands and bands of hope, factory girls' clubs, camps and seaside holidays, goose clubs and reading circles. Nor was such work always directed at women. Edyth Fooks, working full-time with the East London Institute for Home and Foreign Missions, took weekly Christian evidence classes for working men, as well as organising a men's night school. 54 Despite the fact that the phenomenon of female preaching had become almost respectable by the 1860s,55 few of the LMS women candidates were experienced preachers. According to one testimony Selena Peel of Manchester was "much sought after" as a speaker at "Christian Endeavour Convention, Women's meetings and missionary meetings",56 but of accepted candidates only Mary Roberts of the Rhondda Valley in South Wales was described as "a lady preacher".57 Age

Great stress was laid on the age of applicants. Young and healthy candidates, between the ages of 21 and 28, were sought. Older women, it was thought, would have greater difficulty in accustoming themselves to extreme climates and would experience difficulty in learning foreign languages. Despite the sternness of the qualifications pamphlet which warned against waiting to apply "until the best years of life and strength are past",58 the age rule did not prove inflexible. A number of appointments were made over the age of thirty and exceptionally forty, where qualifications were felt to be particularly useful or candidates were well-qualified in all other ways. Notably, over-age candidates who were wholly or partly self-supporting were accepted. 59 Age could however, and often was used as a reason for rejection when it was judged tactful to do so. Health

The burden of responsibility for sending young women nurtured for the most part in a temperate environment to a strenuous life in hot and testing climates was taken very seriously and the figures for health breakdown are not overly high. Out of the 230 women appointed, 21,

54. CWM, Cp, Edyth Fooks, letter dated 18 February 1892. 55. Anderson, "Women Preachers in Mid-Victorian Britain", passim. 56. CWM, CP, Selena Peel, letter dated 15 November 1905, from H. H. Brayshaw, Chairman of the Lancashire Congregational Union. 57. CWM, CP, Mary Roberts, letter dated 25 February 1907, from G. Penrith Thomas, minister at Trerhondda Congregational Chapel. 58. Qualifications. p. 5. 59. A very small percentage of LMS women missionaries, about five per cent, were self-supporting. This compares with nineteen per cent of CMS women missionaries in the 1890s; Williams, "The Recruitment and Training of Overseas Missionaries", p. 304.

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just under ten per cent, broke down within five years of appointment. Before acceptance each candidate had to submit to a searching medical examination by the Society's medical adviser. During the first years of women's work this was Sir Risdon Bennett. He was succeeded in 1892 by Dr Pye-Smith. In 1896, it was decided to offer women candidates the option of a woman doctor following a complaint from Constance Long, who was experiencing difficulties during her medical training, that Dr Pye-Smith had been unsympathetic to her because of her sex.60 Three names were put forward: Dr Mary Scharlieb, Dr Elizabeth Garret Anderson and the "lady doctor who examines for the Post Office".61 Dr Pye-Smith recommended Dr (later Dame) Mary Scharlieb who had partly trained and practised in Madras. She served as medical adviser throughout this period and took a keen interest in her LMS work. Candidates who were visibly robust and vigorous and had a healthy life style were the most preferred. One such was Myfanwy Wood, who could walk "twenty seven miles in a daY",62 or Annie Pearson who, it was predicted, "would stand the vicissitudes and trials of a hot climate well, being vigorous, having a good digestion and being accustomed to partake sparingly of meat and to abstain altogether from alcoholic beverages".63 Those candidates with definite problems such as deafness, epilepsy and goitres were weeded out straight away. Mabel Cropper, appointed to Hankou in 1905, had a speech impediment which it was thought would cause her difficulties in pronouncing Chinese sibilants. Her problem was variously attributed to decayed teeth, a cleft palate or a short tongue. However, the expert to whom she was sent disposed of the latter view. He had seen her tongue and "had to step back when she put it out".64 In the end it was thought that her speech defect, whatever the cause, would not prevent her from speaking the Chinese language fluently and well. A history of illness in the family, especially consumption, would count against the candidate. A family history of mental illness could also disqualify. The gravest suspicions were entertained of Agnes Fredoux, at any rate by Ralph Wardlaw Thompson. "We cannot lose sight of the fact", he wrote, "that [her mother] Mrs Fredoux and her sister Mrs Livingstone (the daughters of Robert Moffat) were to say the least very peculiar and it would be grievous misfortune if one was

60. CWM, UCP, Constance Long, letter dated 25 October 1895 to Ralph Wardlaw Thompson. Long withdrew her candidacy and repaid the sum, £300, expended on her medical training. 61. CWM, LC minutes, 10 March 1896. 62. CWM, Cp, Myfanwy Wood, medical report, 1 November 1906. 63. CWM, CP, Annie Pearson, medical report, 26 June 1887. 64. CWM, CP, Mabel Cropper, letter from "J. S.", dated 18 July 1905.

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sent to a tropical climate who had any tendency to brain trouble".65 In the event Fredoux was appointed to Madagascar in 1886 and retained her post there until her marriage ten years later to Dr George Peake of the same mission. Some women with a medical history were appointed: Eleanor Shepheard, whose heart had been damaged by rheumatism in childhood, was recommended by Dr Scharlieb for work in India, while Mary Roberts was appointed despite having "some sort of peculiarity of structure ... in shoulders or back".66 Surprisingly, one question on the medical form dealt with the child-bearing potential of the candidate, despite the fact that it was single women who were being recruited. Training

Training for missionary service overseas was considered essential for all but a very few exceptionally well-qualified candidates. This was not intended to provide a professional training for teachers, nurses or doctors nor yet to supplement the deficiencies of those who "have not enjoyed the ordinary advantages, but to provide for educated persons a distinctly missionary training".67 The information pamphlet for lady missionaries gave useful information about training courses for teachers and hospitals willing to train nurses, but it was made clear that candidates were responsible for organising such training themselves. Candidates contemplating a medical career were regarded with considerable awe. Not only was it necessary for them to have "ability above the average and physical strength and health above the average,,;68 it also involved the possession of private means or generous sponsorship. By 1895, medical training for women could be obtained at a number of centres including Schools of Medicine for Women at London, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Fees and living expenses for the five year course were estimated to amount to some £500, and perhaps it was not altogether surprising that the LMS appointed only twelve medical women missionaries during this period. Once these vocational qualifications were obtained, a short period of missionary training, at the Canning Town Settlement or at the Mildmay Mission, was thought sufficient. For those without professional qualifications and who were preparing to become "ordinary Lady Missionaries", a year or two at a missionary

65. CWM, CP, Agnes Fredoux, letter from Ralph Wardlaw Thompson to Constance Bennett, dated 16 July 1886. 66. CWM, CP, Mary Roberts, letter dated 12 December 1907 from George Williams, Acting Home Secretary of the LMS, to Dr Pye-Smith. 67. Qualifications, p. 13. 68. Qualifications, p. 10.

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training institute was recommended. A number of these had sprung up in response to the needs of women's missionary work, although it was not until 1912 that, in conjunction with the BMS and the Women's Missionary Association of the Presbyterian Church of England, the LMS had its own training institution at Carey Hall, Birmingham. A number of LMS candidates attended the Free Church of Scotland's Training Institute at Edinburgh. The syllabus included a systematic study of the Bible, Christian evidences and doctrines, church history, mission history and studies, and lessons in singing and book-keeping, as well as opportunities for practical Christian work. Some instruction in Indian vernaculars was offered at Edinburgh, but language work did not form a prominent part of training in this period. It was only shortly before a missionary sailed that she would know the country of her destination and it was felt that language tuition from a native speaker of the vernacular of her prospective field of labour was more appropriate. Similar courses were provided at Glasgow and Liverpool while, for those unable to support themselves for a one or two year period, shorter courses were provided at the East London Institute for Home and Foreign Missions or the Home and Colonial School Society's Training Institute. The time at a missionary training institute also provided an opportunity to prepare for the examinations introduced for women candidates in 1891. Candidates had to take papers in scripture, Christian evidences, systematic theology, and the history of Christian missions. Between l896 and 1901 an additional requirement was an essay of 2,500 words on either Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism or Islam. The pass mark in the examination was an aggregate of fifty with no less than forty on anyone paper; although it was found necessary to drop the standard for nurses to forty and thirty respectively. Once the successful candidates had been through the lengthy processes of being accepted, the notice of sailing might often be just a few months or even weeks. During the first half of the period under survey the most common destination was south or north India. By 1900 China was established as the major mission field. Between that date and 1914, sixty women missionaries went out to augment LMS work in China, while 38 were sent to Indian stations. Fewer were posted to Madagascar and the South Seas throughout the period: eighteen and nine respectively. Africa was thought too unsettled at this time to receive single female missionaries. A great number of the successful candidates were appointed to general teaching posts in girls' schools; no subject specialisation was required at this period. By 1895 the LMS administered 375 such schools with 56,753 scholars.69 Others were involved in the training

69. QNWW (January 1895), p. 5.

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of native female agents or Bible women, in evangelical work among women and girls and in the preparation of text books and Christian reading matter for children and adults. Some were additionalIy proficient in first aid or in dispensing work, but medical mission work was expanding and becoming more specialised. Forty trained female nurses and doctors were sent out to work in LMS hospitals during this period. Marriage No woman candidate was accepted if she was married or engaged to be married, though six widows were accepted during the period under survey. The raison d'etre behind the women's missionary movement of the late nineteenth century was that single women, without the encumbrances of husband and children, would be able to devote their entire lives to missionary work. It was therefore impossible for them at the same time to contemplate matrimony. On the other hand the women appointed were at the peak age for marriage, and the result was that a number of them experienced a tug of opposing desires. Emily Arter, whose candidature had been accepted in 1892, subsequently received an agreeable offer of marriage from a Mr Henderson. At first she remained firm to her original resolve, fearing that otherwise she would, as it were, "be putting God second". However, Mr Henderson proved persistent and Arter eventually withdrew her offer of service?O There are signs that the members of the Ladies' Committee were nervous about losing missionaries prematurely in this way. Amy Foster, nee Jackson, with ten years experience of the China mission field behind her wrote, in 1887, to warn the Committee secretary that Canton was "not good as a study centre" for trainee missionaries, since "they are more likely to get married there than in Hong Kong. There are no batchelors [sic] in any of the missions in the latter place while in Canton there are always young Wesleyans and American Presbyterians who have not yet married"?) There was some substance to these apprehensions. Of the 230 women concerned in this period, 75 (34 per cent) got married and resigned from the service, even though 64 of these married fellow missionaries and continued to labour in the mission field. More than half of those marrying did so within five years, thus necessitating the partial repayment of the Society's expenditure on training, outfit, and travel. Resignation from paid missionary service was obligatory on marriage. Any "continuing service" which a missionary wife might render was

70. CWM, UCP, Emily Arter, letter dated 17 May 1892. 71. CWM, CP, Euphemia Barclay, letter from Amy Foster, dated 17 December 1887.

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"offered by her without contractual obligation".72 Married women therefore lost salary and status and largely disappear from the written record, despite continuing to work alongside their husbands. Following her marriage to the Revd John Parker of the LMS mission to Mongolia in 1893, the former Lillie Ashburner wrote with some pique at seeing her "name appearing in a list of those who have left the missionary service". Missionary wives hoped "for opportunities as great for serving the Master and our loved Society, in our present position ... as those we enjoyed as lady missionaries,,?3 Some missionary wives maintained their efforts in the mission field to great effect, though documentation is sparse. Dr Edith Nicholas, appointed as a medical missionary to Jiaganj, North India in 1893, continued to work on a voluntary basis there following her marriage to a fellow missionary, the Revd John Joyce, in 1897. She was awarded the Kaiser-i-Hind medal in 1921 for services to medicine in India?4 Dr Alice Sibree, who was appointed to Hong Kong in 1903, and who married a non-missionary (Mr C. C. Hickling), rose to become Government-Inspector of Hospitals in the Colony.75 Annie Berry, appointed to China in 1905 resigned from the service in 1916 and married Mr "Ho-Yueh-Han" in 1917, the only LMS woman missionary to marry a non-European in this period76

Position of Women Missionaries in the LMS By 1914 there were 86 single women missionaries in the London Missionary Society out of a total paid force of 310. In addition, there were 186 missionary wives, most of whom were involved in mission work, so that the actual percentage of women in active service was about 55 per cent. The introduction of female missionaries was not universally welcomed on the mission field. In his history of the LMS, covering the period when women missionaries were becoming numerous, Norman Goodall comments that "some of the men have showed up at their worst in the failure to adjust their service to the colleagueship of women,,?7 There were frequent complaints about the cost of female work and about the numbers of female missionaries. Administrative structures within the LMS were, however, more favourable to women's work than in some other

72. Goodall, History of the LMS, p. 13. 73. Lillie S. Ashburner, "An Old Friend with a New Name and in a New Sphere", QNWW (1893-95), pp. 88-92. 74. James Sibree, A Register of Missionaries. Deputations etc. of the London Missionary Society, 4th edition (London, 1923) p.131. 75. Ibid., p. 148. 76. Ibid., pp. 150-51. 77. Goodall, History of the LMS, p. 12.

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societies where arrangements seemed "designed to cause friction and difficult relations".78 The LMS was the first of the major British missionary societies to invite women on to its Board of Directors in 1891, even though representation was not in proportion to the numbers of women workers. It was not until 1917 that women were eligible for membership of the equivalent body in the Church Missionary Society. Female missionaries were granted membership of the District Committees of the LMS "under the same conditions as the Missionaries of the Society". Their vote, however, could only be exercised on "matters which relate to their own work,,?9 Vocation and professionalism

Most of the LMS candidates had a strong sense of vocation and an awareness of self-sacrifice and obedience to a divine command. Many relied on others to overcome their feelings of timidity and unworthiness in putting themselves forward. The influence of her minister, the Revd I. Maldwyn Jones, was decisive, for example, in an offer of service from Myfanwy Rowlands in 1908. She had "been so wanting in selfconfidence" but had been "strengthened and inspired" in her resolve by his ministry.8o Yet there was also a pragmatic acceptance amongst some that missionary work offered a sphere of work and usefulness for which so many contemporary women yearned. Moreover that work lay in distant countries about which most candidates had little knowledge and no experience. Training was not always sufficient to make up that deficiency. "I have witnessed things," wrote one woman missionary, "that would never have cropped up in Kentish Town Mission".81 Successful missionary work required abilities and accomplishments of a high order, which it was thought only well-educated ladies, socially competent and able to command, could possess. Ability, energy, and religious zeal were not enough in themselves, and a number of candidates were rejected because, like Mary Hunt, they had aspired "to that which is far above" them. 82 Professionalism was not rated highly at the outset of our period when, for example, teaching ability was viewed as an "art" rather than as a learned proficiency.83 By the early twentieth 78. Rosemary Seton, "Women Missionaries as represented in the Missionary Collections in the School of Oriental and African Studies Library", British Library Occasional Papers, 12, Women's Studies (London, 1990) p. 162. 79. Document issued by the Secretaries of the London Missionary Society, 13 July 1875, p. 3. 80. CWM, CP, Myfanwy Rowlands, letter dated 26 March 1908. 81. Goodall, History of the LMS, p. 12. 82. CWM, CP, Mary Hunt, letter dated 20 March 1877, from Jane Blomfield to Constance Bennett. 83. Qualifications, p. 6.

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century, however, with the development of medical work and the establishment of teacher-training colleges in many mission stations, candidates were expected to possess appropriate qualifications. Despite the comparatively enlightened views of the LMS, few women missionaries were able to realise their full potential. Nevertheless, many were able to exercise initiative, abilities and energies with fewer of the frustrations and obstacles they might have encountered at home.

PROBLEMS AND OPPORTUNITIES IN AN ANTHROPOLOGIST'S USE OF A MISSIONARY ARCHIVE* 1. D. Y. Peel

Anthropologists have only begun to use missionary archives on any scale fairly recently. However, except in some recent studies which have taken missionaries themselves as their subject matter - Beidelman on the CMS in Ukaguru (East Africa),1 Huber on the Catholic SVD in Papua New Guinea, 2 and Clifford on the notable French Protestant missionaryethnographer in New Caledonia, Maurice Leenhardt3 - they have often been unsystematic in their use of them. In any case, there is a greater reliance on published memoirs, ethnographic or historical studies and missionary periodicals,4 which are more access-ible and far easier (and quicker) to use than are unpublished sources. But it is dangerous to rely too much on published works, or to treat them as a short cut to what more primary sources have to tell us. Memoirs and periodicals are never so full or close to the originating experiences as journals or letters, especially those written from the field, and are of course edited to suit their particular audiences and functions. Indeed the proper source criticism of published materials - which is as yet virtually unattempted - must largely depend on their collation with the primary,

* Any user of the CMS Archive must owe a large debt of gratitude to Miss Rosemary Keen, Archivist of the Church Missionary Society, who produced the excellent catalogue, and to the Archives's present custodians, the helpful and knowledgeable staff of the Heslop Room, Birmingham University Library, notably Dr B. S. Benedikz and Miss Christine Penney. \. T. 0. Beidelman, Colonial Evangelism (Bloomington, 1982). 2. M. T. Huber, The Bishops' Progress: A Historical Ethnography of Catholic Missionary Experience on the Sepik Frontier (Washington, 1988). 3. 1. Clifford, Person and Myth: Maurice Leenhardt in the Melanesian World (Berkeley, 1982). 4. See, for example, M. Bloch, From Blessing to Violence: History and Ideology in the Circumcision Ritual of the Merina of Madagascar (Cambridge, 1986), who relies on the published works of the LMS missionaries Ellis and Sibree (except for one MS. of the rituals composed by Sibree); or 1. and 1. L. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism and Consciousness in South Africa (Chicago, 1991), which makes some use of archives but much more of the published writings of Livingstone, Moffat, Read, Mackenzie and other LMS or Wesleyan missionaries.

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archival materials which I am considering here.s Missionary archives, particularly those from the nineteenth century or from the early years in the mission field, often contain a great deal of information beyond that touching on traditional religion and the missionary encounter with it. In many parts of the world which have come to engage anthropological interest, missionaries were among the first outsiders to make sustained contact with indigenous peoples, and their writings frequently contain accounts of local culture and society, oral traditions etc. which, whatever their deficiencies, have an indispensible documentary value precisely for standing right at the beginning of modern cultural change. Long-serving missionaries have often attained a standard of competence in the local language that an anthropologist can only envy.6 Yet, as Nicholas Thomas has convincingly argued,1 since anthropologists developed from the 1920s a sharper sense of themselves as having a distinct professional practice (based on "scientific" fieldwork), they have often disparaged and neglected the accounts of missionaries - now seen as professional rivals - on the grounds that they must be prejudiced. 8 The relations between anthropologists and missionaries continue ambivalent: often close but strained.9 5. For example, the CMS published between 1886 and 1912 an annual volume entitled Letters from the Missionaries. This was compiled from the Annual Letters which each missionary was required to send at the end of the year from his or her posting. Frequently the letters have been edited substantially - the editor's pencil marks plain upon the original - to eliminate material judged inappropriate for publication, whether uninteresting, embarrassing, surplus to requirement or whatever. 6. E. E. Evans-Pritchard actually argued, in order to devalue missionary knowledge, that "speaking a language fluently is very different from understanding it" (Theories of Primitive Religion, Oxford, 1965, p. 7). For this he is very properly taken to task by V. Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge (Bloomington, 1988), pp. 64-68. 7. N. Thomas, Out of Time: History and Evolution in Anthropological Discourse (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 14-15 and chap. 6. Thomas's immediate focus is on Polynesia, but his remarks undoubtedly have a much wider relevance. 8. Malinowski, as the pioneer of the research practice of "professional" fieldwork, was the chief source of this attitude. His contemporary, A. R. RadC\iffeBrown, made important use in his famous essay on joking relationships of the writings of the French Protestant missionary Henri Junod on the Thonga (The Life of a South African Tribe, 1912). An earlier "pre-professional" generation had not merely used missionary writing, but sometimes virtually commissioned it: thus Sir James Frazer in relation to the CMS missionary John Roscoe (whose The Baganda, 1911, is dedicated to Frazer). 9. See P. G. Hiebert, "Missions and Anthropology: A Love/Hate Relationship", Missiology 6 (1978), pp. 165-80, C. E. Stipe, "Anthropologists versus Missionaries: The Influence of Presuppositions", Current Anthropology 21 (1980), pp. 165-79,

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A serious engagement with history, arising from a realisation of the essential historicity of its own subject matter, has been a dominant trend in anthropology over the past two decades.1O The use of missionary archives is an obvious corollary of this trend, because of the presence and role of missionaries in the course of cultural change in the societies where anthropologists chiefly work. In this essay I wish to argue that anthropologists need to practise a much fuller reading of missionary sources and to acquire a deeper understanding of what kind of source they are, in terms of both their potentials and limitations. Inevitably, in so doing, anthropologists need to acquire not just a theoretical awareness of historicity, but more of a mastery of the "historian's craft" , as part of their routine working equipment. This implies quite a different relationship to the data from that which prevails in the fieldwork which is anthropology's method par excellence. The social anthropologist, like most other social scientists, is able to "manufacture" quite a lot of his data - by asking questions of chosen informants, by conducting surveys, sometimes even by sponsoring the performance of a ritual, etc. - which means the research can be to a great extent guided by prior theories or hypotheses (and, if you read the more positivist research manuals, ideally so). The historian, on the other hand, while he will surely not start out with his mind a tabula rasa, usually exercises much less control over his data. Even the most ingenious historian, the one with a real nose for unsuspected sources and unused documents, mostly has in the end to work with the adventitiously surviving relics of what past people thought fit to record. A rather reluctant early conclusion to which I was led by working on the eMS Yoruba Mission Archive was that, in order to make the best use it, it was necessary to accept a certain displacement of my initial objectives in turning to it. The paradox is that, by thus accepting the historian's lower level of control over what he can know, the anthropologist may attain a richer understanding of the historical roots

D. L. Whiteman (ed.), "Missionaries, Anthropologists and Cultural Change", Studies in Third World Societies 25 (Williamsburg, 1983), R. Bonsen et al., The Ambiguity of Rapprochement: Reflections of Anthropologists on their Controversial Relationship with Missionaries (Nijmegen, 1990), S. van der Geest. "Anthropologists and Missionaries: Brothers under the Skin", Man (NS) 25 (1990), pp.588-601. 10. As guides to a large literature. see B. S. Cohn, "History and Anthropology in the 1980s: Towards a Rapprochement". Journal of Interdisciplinary History 12 (1981), pp. 227-52, and for a review of influential recent work, 1. D. Y. Peel, Review Essay, History and Theory 32 (1993), pp. 162-78.

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of the society he has set out to understand, and so also the sense which it has of its own identity over time. How this is so in the case of the Yoruba I hope to show. The CMS Archive is a source very well-known to all students of Yoruba history, arguably the most important source after colonial and local government records, particularly for the nineteenth century. I had made some selective and casual use of the Archive in connection with two earlier studies, of an independent Christian movement originating after the First World War (which was chiefly a contemporary field study), and of the social history of a substantial Yoruba town since the late nineteenth centuryY A deeper acquaintance with the riches of the CMS Archive only came in the mid-1980s, when I turned to it again, with two distinct topics in mind. The first of these was the origins of Yoruba ethnic identity, which led straight to the CMS since one of its major monuments, the Revd Samuel Johnson's classic The History of the Yorubas (1921), was the work of a man whose whole professional life was spent as a "native agent" of the CMS. Johnson's earliest surviving writing is in fact the "Journal Extracts" which he wrote from 1870, preserved in the CMS Archive. My other project, more vague and ambitious, was for an essay in anthropological comparison, of the relations between traditional religion and society in four major states of the West African forest zone: Yoruba, Benin, Dahomey and Asante. Yoruba would be the starting point for the comparison; but I had not gone far when I came to the view that available accounts of the "traditional" pre-colonial Yoruba religion were not adequate for the kind of re-analysis I envisaged. The earliest of them only went back to the 1890s, and the fuller ones, from the 1930s onwards (which were chiefly "anthropological"), drew their data largely from contemporary observations. What was called "traditional" religion had by then been considerably attenuated by colonial conditions and the inroads of Islam and Christianity, and could not be regarded unproblematically as equivalent to the religion of pre-colonial times. If one wanted to know what that was, I reckoned, one should proceed as a historian and reconstruct that religion as much as possible from contemporary evidence. My aim, then, was to try to find in the CMS Archive materials sufficient to enable me to put together something like a twentieth century style ethnography of nineteenth century Yoruba religion. But in this I was substantially disappointed: despite many hundreds of references to the "heathenism" from which the missionaries sought to deliver 11. J. D. Y. Peel, Aladura: a Religious Movement among the Yoruba (London, 1968), and Ijeshas and Nigerians: the Incorporation of a Yoruba Kingdom 1890s-1970s (Cambridge, 1983).

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the Yoruba, descriptions of ritual and myth, symbolic exegesis and vernacular texts are too exiguous to permit the kind of detailed reconstruction I envisaged. So what could be done with the materials to hand? The chief glory of the CMS Archive is the richness and detail of the incoming correspondence, addressed to the Secretary of the Parent Committee, who for three decades (1841-73) was the great Henry VennY Apart from business and ad hoc letters from senior missionaries, particularly from whoever was the Secretary of the Finance Committee (as the local management committee in Lagos was called), the best material, and the bulk of the Archive, consists of the "journal extracts" that were required of all missionaries, quarterly at first, later twice yearly. These documents are not the actual daily journals, which most missionaries must have kept, but were written up from such journals, hence "journal extracts". But they were substantial: perhaps two or three entries a week, and often up to twenty or thirty foolscap pages for a three-month period. They were meant to contain material of interest to the supervisors and supporters of the mission "at home", and occasionally an author worries that he does not have enough of interest to say. There are certainly marked variations of style and content from one author to another, and sometimes (particularly with some of the Yoruba authors, for whom this truly amounted to a literary apprenticeship) a growth in the quality of both writing and substance. In the late 1850s "Annual Letters" - eventually written on a four-page standard form came in, and by the mid-1860s the European agents had given up the lengthier "journal extracts", though the African agents continued writing them until after 1900. By then, with swifter and more reliable communications with London, with the establishment of local church councils which submitted minutes, with fewer African staff directly employed by the CMS and with a new wave of European missionaries who occupied more supervisory positions, the wealth of local detail falls off dramatically. The records of the bureaucratised mission of 1914 tell the reader of its Archive far less about what was happening on the ground in Yorubaland than the earlier reports sent back to Venn and the Parent Committee from the loose cluster of missionaries, often sick and depressed, opinionated and quarrelsome, who were active from the 1840s to the 1860s. So what does the Archive contain, when read substantially and across its range, rather than just dipped into to find nuggets of information

12. A full-length modern biography of Venn is greatly needed, but see M. HennelI The Sons of the Prophets: Evangelical Leaders of the Victorian Church (London, 1979), Chap. 5.

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about particular topics? The great bulk of its material is first-person accounts of the activities and impressions of the CMS's missionary agents. Firstly and most essentially, there are innumerable accounts of evangelistic encounters: preaching in the streets and in people's houses, arguments with devotees or priests of the orisa (the indigenous deities), with babalawo (diviners, who were sophisticated religious professionals themselves 13) and with Muslims and their alufa (teachers), religious discussions with chiefs, casual visitors and more serious "inquirers", all at varying levels of formality and informality. Secondly, as local Christian communities began to form, there are reports of the manifold interactions and activities within it. Apart from the expected services, sermons and prayer meetings, there is much reportage of sicknesses and deathbeds, the persecution of converts by their families and communities,14 religious "backsliding" and "immorality" (mostly adultery and polygamy), disputes over family relations, property, funerals and inheritance, pawns and slaves, whether among converts or between converts and non-Christians, in which the missionaries played a part as judges or mediators. The material side of running a mission station gets much attention: the erection and repair of churches, houses and schools, problems in getting supplies (especially under the conditions of the frequent wars and blockades), organising labour etc. Relations between the European and African personnel of the mission, an issue of great importance for its future, run as a theme through all this. Thirdly, there is much information about the communities in which the missions operated, which in Yorubaland included some of the largest settlements of pre-colonial Africa. These "towns" (ifu) ranged from Ibadan, which had around 100,000 inhabitants and took two hours or more to cross on horseback, to smaller places with only a few thousand inhabitants. Each town was surrounded by a zone of farmland with smaller settlements but remained very much the focus of its citizens' social existence. Most of what the missionaries tell us about Yoruba communities is strictly incidental or ancillary to accounts of their evangelistic activities, and is sometimes (for the student of Yoruba society) maddeningly incomplete or imprecise. Nevertheless, the reader of these journals does get a vivid impression of Yoruba urban life: the markets and trade caravans, the many crafts carried on, the public manifestations of the rival religions (such as the fines levied by the 13. See further 1. D. Y. Peel, "The Pastor and the Babalawo: The Encounter of Religions in Nineteenth Century Yorubaland", Africa 60 (1990), pp. 338-69. 14. On which see 1. Iliffe, "Persecution and Toleration in pre-colonial Africa: Nineteenth-centuryYorubaIand", Studies in Church History (1984). pp. 357-78.

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Sango cultists when a house was struck by lightning, the processions of the Muslims at the end of Ramadan), the terrible fires which often broke out and destroyed whole tracts because the low thatched houses were so close, the unruly behaviour of young warriors back from a successful campaign, suicides and mad people and the misery of newlytaken slaves, as well as old men playing ayo under the market sheds or a genial blacksmith. Most systematically treated is the local power structure, since the mission depended for its continued operation on the support, or at least the acquiescence, of the most powerful chiefs of each community. Yoruba towns were turbulent and politically unpredictable places, where the unending competition among the chiefs hinged on the interplay between the control of followings within the town and on the manipulation of contacts and resources from outside. The missionaries were ambiguously situated in this, being both clients of the king or a powerful chief within the town and significant players in the regional power system. It is thus not surprising that the journals and letters of the missionaries have much to say about the chiefs and their dealings with them. Fourthly, there is discussion and analysis of regional politics. Yorubaland was a cultural but not a political unity. It was a constellation of smallish states brought into conflict by the vacuum which had resulted from the collapse of Oyo, once the dominant regional power, in the 1820s. Abeokuta, where the main eMS station in the interior was sited, lived in continual fear of invasion by Dahomey, to the West. With the replacement of the slave trade by "legitimate trade" and the commercial growth of Lagos (annexed by Great Britain in 1861), interstate politics in the interior came increasingly to depend on getting the means to import guns and controlling the routes to the coast. Until the 1890s most of the Yoruba Mission lay beyond British territory, and the eMS had effectively to conduct its own foreign policy. This was the more tricky because the states in which it had missionaries were often at war with one another and were not always well disposed towards the British Governor in Lagos.1 5 The eMS needed political intelligence, and looked to its senior missionaries to provide it. Fifthly, scattered among the foregoing contemporary observations, there is much retrospective historical material. Most of this is personal: conversion histories or converts' testimonies about their earlier lives, the short autobiographies which were expected of African ordinands, obituary notices of notable church members or just memories triggered by 15. This has been excellently analysed by Jacob Ajayi, in his account of the politics of the Ijaiye War of 1859-62: 1. R A. Ajayi and R. S. Smith, Yoruba Warfare in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1964).

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some experience. Particularly poignant are the recollections of his enslavement made by a catechist while travelling down to Lagos through the place where he was kidnapped over two decades earlier. 16 Occasionally, the political analysis of a European missionary gives rise to attempts at a more synthetic regional history.l? But nothing of this kind gives promise of greater things to come than some of the entries in the Journal Extracts of Samuel Johnson, father of Yoruba historiography,18 which show how closely connected are the discourses of religion and history in much of the Archive's reportage. The final, and in some ways the most remarkable, feature of the Archive, is the fact that such a large part of it consists of writing by Yoruba clergy, catechists and teachers. Of the 84 authors of incoming papers before 1880, no less than 48 (over 57 per cent) are Yoruba; and the proportion of authors of journals (as against the shorter letters) who are Yoruba rises much higher after 1880.19 I imagine it is rather exceptional for such a high proportion of a mission's correspondence, from its earliest days, to come from its "native agents", but the reason is not mysterious: the CMS's recruitment of Christian ex-slaves of Yoruba origin in Sierra Leone, of whom the first and most famous was Samuel Ajayi Crowther. With the ordination of Daniel Olubi in 1876 there begins a remarkable run of purely home-grown clergy.20 The importance of their contribution to the Archive is twofold. Firstly, their writing is particularly rich in details of the day-to-day social and religious life of the community. Obviously they were much less likely 16. James Barber, Journal, 4 January 1855. In this and later references to documents in the CMS Archive, I will merely give the author's name followed by the date of the journal entry or the letter. Documents will be easily located by means of the Archive's catalogue, being classified: for the period up to 1879, under the code CA 2, 0 Series, listed by author (each of whom has an identifying number) with a number for each author; and for after 1880, under the code G3 A2, o Series, by year (all authors). 17. E.g., Henry Townsend, Journal for quarter to 25 December 1847. 18. E.g., S. Johnson, Journal Extracts, 30 June 1874, where he says in an argument about the relations between history and prophecy, that he "can tell you the names and histories of the kings of Yoruba, generations before King Abiodun [d. 1789]" . 19. The significance of the date 1880 is simply that before it, correspondence is classified by author (which makes these calculations easy), whereas afterwards it is classified solely by year. 20. Olubi, born at Abeokuta, was given by his uncle Ogunbona, the staunchest of the pro-missionary chiefs, to be a house-servant to the newly arrived David Hinderer. Baptised in 1848, he went with Hinderer to Ibadan, eventually succeeding him as pastor of Kudeti and head of the lbadan stations when Hinderer left in 1869.

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than Europeans to misunderstand the significance of what they heard and saw, and their relationships with local people were far closer. Their journal entries (though always in English) are much more enlivened with proverbs and remarks in Yoruba, usually from what they heard around them. 21 Though not a jot less hostile to idolatry than European missionaries were, they were more appreciative of what they considered the "redeemable" bulk of Yoruba culture and their occasional descriptions of it may be of great value. 22 Secondly, as the first generation of literate Yoruba, they played the central role in the process of Yoruba self-definition. Their work of mediation - between their Oyinbo colleagues and their "heathen" compatriots, between tradition and development, between the local and the global - is one which they have handed down to their descendants, the modern intelligentsia, who still address many of the same fundamental dilemmas. One should understand "descendants" here partly in a perfectly literal sense: Wole Soyinka, Nobel Prize winner in literature, is the great-great-grandson of Daniel Olubi. 23 To allow the direction of our inquiry to be governed by the peculiar riches of this Archive - the writing of the mission's native agents about their work in their society - will not at all divert us from the cardinal questions about Yoruba society. For if Yoruba cultural being is a matter of continuous self-recreation, the relationship between its current sense of itself (an essential aspect of the ethnography of any people) and the earliest writings of those who chiefly set in motion the path to that current sense must be central to our study. Perhaps the most surprising thing about the use which has so far been made (or not made) of the eMS Archive is that its major strength in the area of religion has been so little exploited, especially in the most characteristic form in which it figures in the Archive, the myriad of religious

21. In the aggregate these Yoruba quotations, as a sample of nineteenth-century speech, represent a valuable resource for the historical study of the Yoruba language, which has not so far been exploited. 22. Exceptional in his cultural interests was James White, pastor of Ota from 1854 to 1880. He was the first to encourage an indigenous Yoruba hymnody, gave us the first appreciation of the Gelede masquerade and of the "theatres" at Igbesa etc. (see Journal Extracts for 2 April 1858; 25 March 1855, 30 September 1862 and 13 January 1871; 16 February 1862). 23. Through the marriage of Olubi's daughter with Revd J. J. Ransome-Kuti, his mother's grandfather. See Soyinka's autobiography Ake (London, 1982), with genealogical explication in J. Gibbs, "Biography into Autobiography: Wole Soyinka and the Relatives who Inhabit 'Ake''', Journal of Modern African Studies 26 (1988), pp. 517-48. Some of the wider connexions in Egba society are traced out in Peel, Aladura , pp. 307-12.

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encounters at ground level. This may seem a surprising claim in the face of two books which are justly regarded as classics of Nigerian nationalist historiography: 1. F. Ade Ajayi's Christian Missions in Nigeria 18411891: The Making of a New Elite (1965) and E. A. Ayandele's The Missionary Impact on Modern Nigeria 1842-1914: A Political and Social Analysis (1966). The CMS Archive was probably the single most important source used in both books, and it was effectively used, but of course the use was relative to the intellectual concerns of the authors. It is true that Ajayi began with a pithy statement about the relations between religion and society,24 which might well have opened into a sociology of religious change; but this is not what he was chiefly interested in doing. His concern was with the trajectory of the first attempt to introduce cultural modernisation into (what was to become) Nigeria, that sponsored by the missions through the means, first of the repatriates, and then the local converts. The exemplary figure of the "new elite" was Bishop Crowther, the vehicle of Venn's hopes, whose episcopate (1864-91) forms the climax of Ajayi's narrative; and it is in its analysis of the politics of the mission that his study excels. Ayandele's book covers much of the same terrain, and though it is differently focused - it is more interested in the links between the missions and imperialism at the end of the century, and in the wave of "cultural nationalism" among African Christians which was a response to it - it shares the same paramount interest in politics and culture. The political information contained in the Archive is indeed an invaluable source for the history of the Yoruba wars and has been much drawn upon. 25 1. A. Atanda expresses a fair consensus when he writes that "records kept by the Missionaries contain matters of political importance, particularly [for the nineteenth century]" and lists the CMS Archive first. 26 Now a paramount interest in high politics is likely to lead to a certain bias in the use of the Archive, since the most relevant documents were those produced by the European missionaries, especially the senior ones like Townsend and Gollmer, since it was they 24. "Some people see religion as a limited set of personal beliefs about God and worship which can be isolated from a person's general culture and can be changed without necessarily upsetting that person's culture and world-view. Others see it as an affair of the community so intimately bound up with its way of life that a change of religion necessarily involves a change of culture and the development of a new conscience" : Ajayi, Christian Missions, p. 1. 25. For an interesting overview of the state of research see Toyin Faiola, "A Research Agenda on the Yoruba in the Nineteenth Century", History in Africa 15 (1988), pp. 211-27. 26.1. A. Atanda, The New Oyo Empire: Indirect Rule and Change in Western Nigeria 1894-1934 (London, 1973), p. 318.

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whom Salisbury Square looked to for field assessments. At no time was this plainer than during the Ijaye War of 1859-62, an episode of whose course and significance as a turning-point in history of inter-state relations in Yorubaland Ajayi has given us such a lucid account. Crucial evidence is provided by the reports of the CMS and Southern Baptist missionaries stationed in the beseiged town Ijaye, ruled by the despotic Kurunmi. The CMS agents were the Revd Adolphus Mann, whose journals were extensively used, and his African catechist, Charles Phillips,27 whose journals are unmentioned. But does this discrepancy matter? As regards the military and diplomatic issues which are Ajayi's chief concern, probably very little; but on the nature of Kurunmi's regime in Ijaye itself Phillips's reportage is indispensible. As Ajayi himself briefly notes,28 the fear in which Kurunmi was held was due in no small measure to his headship of the cult of the thunder-god, Sango; but it is Phillips, much more than Mann, who gives us the really densetextured account of the quotidian incidents and supernatural beliefs which sustained Kurunmi's reputation. For Phillips lived much closer to the people whom he was evangelising, and no doubt substantially shared their fears. The religious generation of the entire Archive is relevant, and may be crucially so, to any use of it. Data about social and economic conditions are widespread in the eMS Archive (even though they tend to be patchy and are usually based on random rather than systematic observations); but nevertheless there are topics of this kind for which it is the most important source. Slavery is only one such topic. 29 Again John Iliffe has used the Archive (chiefly the "journal extracts" of African evangelists) to excellent effect in documenting the incidence and character of poverty in nineteenth-century Yorubaland. 3o His analysis of Yoruba responses to poverty, however, is vitiated not merely by a cultural misreading of certain forms of Yoruba religious behaviour but by a mistaken conviction that the study of poverty and related phenomena in this context can

27. Phillips was a repatriate from Sierra Leone of Egba background. He is not to be confused with his son, also Charles Phillips (consecrated Bishop in 1891), who pioneered the Ondo station of the CMS. 28. "The Ijaye War", in Yoruba Warfare, p. 67. 29. On which see E. A. Oroge, "The Institution of Slavery in Yorubaland", (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Birmingham, 1971) - a pioneering study which was unfortunately never published - and T. Faiola, "Missionaries and Domestic Slavery in Yorubaland in the Nineteenth Century", Journal of Religious History 14 (1986), pp. 181-92. 30. J. Iliffe, "Poverty in Nineteenth Century Yorubaland", Journal of African History 25 (1984), pp. 43-57.

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be separated from the study ofreligion. 31 It may seem expedient to treat it so; but in the end the critical evaluation of the Archive as a whole depends on an understanding of its religious motivation and assumptions. If the chief value of the Archive, un surprisingly enough, is in its documentation of the religious encounters which lie at the heart of mission itself, what sort of account of religion might then be essayed? I have already mentioned the disappointing absence of those sorts of data - detailed descriptions of rituals, vernacular texts, indigenous exegeses of myth and symbols, etc. - which are the basis of most anthropological studies of religion (and not least of recent studies of Yoruba religion).32 Nevertheless, the documentation - even though it comes from witnesses who were anything but unprejudiced or disinterested - does cover vital aspects of Yoruba religion that are too easily neglected in conventional accounts. The classic anthropological accounts of religion tend to present it as "collective representations", a system of beliefs (with corresponding myths, rituals and practices) which is homologous to a social order which it represents and regulates. Variations in religious views between different sections of society, and the problem faced by any religion in maintaining its integrity and its social hold in the face of alternative systems and the vicissitudes of historical change, tend to be discounted in an overall emphasis on the system's coherence and stability. How individuals' apperceptions of their experiences may relate to the dominant interpretations is only recently explored. It is indeed ironical that such a line of analysis should have gained currency during a period when the solvents of missionary activity were so powerfully at work on the religions themselves. It is worth briefly asking why. Two main reasons seem to account for it. Firstly, anthropological fieldwork got underway during the heyday of "Indirect Rule" in colonial Africa, which presumed (and actively fostered) a notion of "Native Law and Custom", a sphere of supposedly stable tradition which stood in antithesis to all the forces of change which Aiye Oyinbo, "the Age of the Europeans", was bringing about. Anthropologists were among those who both drew upon and helped to define such images of traditional culture, which helps explain their long unwillingness to contemplate the mission-

31. 1. D. Y. Peel, "Poverty and Sacrifice in Nineteenth-Century Yorubaland", Journal of African History 31 (1990), pp. 465-84, and ensuing debate between Iliffe and Peel in Journal of African History 32 (1991), pp. 495-506. 32. For example, H. 1. and M. T. Drewal, Gelede: Art and Female Power among the Yoruba (Bloomington, 1983), and A. Apter, Black Critics and Kings: The Hermeneutics of Power in Yoruba Society (Chicago, 1992).

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ary presence or explain its disconcerting successes. Secondly, the conditions of fieldwork itself mean that the anthropologist is usually heavily dependent on rituals performed routinely and on readings of them made by the locally recognised experts. Even the one-to-two years which fieldwork typically lasts is a very small slice out of the time-scale over which a culture or a religion is realised, and may yield very few of the non-routine occurrences which, as it were, put individuals and the social order "on the spot", and so bring out the potentiality of the culture in practice. Statements of norms and inferences from routine practices are thus very likely to playa large part in the making of ethnographies. The conditions under which the missionary authors wrote their "journal extracts" were quite different. Even the Europeans among them (and in any case it is the Africans who give us the most and the best testimony) lived long years in the towns where they made their observations, at a time when "the traditional religion" was less that than an essential and omnipresent facility to which everyone, from kings and war-chiefs to the newly-wed wife or elderly farm-slaves, turned for healing, protection, guidance and empowerment.33 As they frequently say, "heathenism" was all around them and they did not have to seek it out. While they witnessed many religious events like Ifa consultations or sacrifices to household orisa or festivals of the masked egungun (ancestral spirits), they mostly saw little point in describing them closely (though the details they give in passing add up to much useful data). It is significant that the longest vernacular text in the whole Archive - a man's impromptu morning prayer, overheard from the next room - is quoted, not for the light it sheds on local religious attitudes, but as a specimen of the idiom of Yoruba prayer, in the interest of a better Bible translation?4 Still the sum of all these casual observations, made in situ in so many places over such a span of years, gives a matchless picture of Yoruba religion in use. But the most distinctive religious events described in the Archive are those which the missionaries provoke themselves, whether by their preaching (which evokes responses, variously appreciative or critical) or by their responses to situations, religious or other, which they encounter. Such encounters, reported as evidence of the work the eMS had engaged them to do, provide above all an enormously rich documentation of

33. The very concept of "religion", in Yoruba as in most African cultures today, is owed to the definitions made by Islam and Christianity. 34. A. C. Mann to H. Venn, 26 June 1856, from Ijaye. It is, nevertheless, a highly revealing text: a series of petitions, the first of which is Ki 'n rna ri ejo Are ("May I not get involved in a palaver with the Are [Kurunmi)"), striking evidence of the fear in which he was held.

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religious discourse. If this is relatively straightforward as regards missionary attitudes, it obviously presents greater interpretive problems when the speakers were "heathen" or Muslim. The "authored" quality of these accounts is evident when the encounter is composed like a morality playlet, perhaps even introduced with a heading of the sort you get in missionary periodicals ("Returning of a lost sheep,,35); rounded off with a prayer ("Oh may the Spirit of God interpret it to their better understanding", after a discussion of God as Spirit36) or a Biblical text which assigns the episode to a category of Christian understanding ("How are the dark places of the earth full of the habitations of cruelty", after a report of the murder of the lyalode of Ibadan by her adopted son 37 ). Quite frequently, the non-Christian interlocutor is represented as admitting the truth of the preaching, though regretting a present inability to leave their fathers' religion. 38 This is reported so often by different authors (and is described as a "standard argument,,3'1 that the question appears to be much less whether this was said than with what it really meant. Though virtually all the accounts are self-confirming, there are many instances where the missionaries admit the indifference, hostility, contempt or mockery with which their preaching was sometimes received; and it is often plain why (e.g., uninvited intrusions on family rituals, scathing public denunciation of orisa to their devotees' faces or just vexatious "God botherings"4~. For it was integral to the authors' purposes that they also make sense of the practical and discursive responses their preaching evoked. Their readers at home wanted to hear of successes, and the successes are indeed duly written up; but there were long years of disappointment and slow progress too, and these too needed to be made intelligible. That the heathens' objections to the truths of the Gospel make such sense is a real token of the integrity of much of the missionaries' reportage. A more subtle disquiet is analogous to that sometimes made against social survey research or intelligence tests: that the "data", being constructed by the researcher according to a theoretical schedule of his

35. Report of 1. A. T. Williams (Muroko, nr. Lagos), for half-year to 30 June, 03 A2 (1882), p. 150. 36. D. Olubi, Journal Extracts, 28 July 1867. 37. S. Johnson, Journal Extracts, 30 June 1874. 38.1.1. Hoch, Journal, 25 June 1856: "All what you say is true, but it is hard for us to leave off country fashion. We will not hinder our children to become book people..." 39. Hoch, loc. cit., and D. Hinderer, Half-yearly Report ending 30 September 1859. 40. As some men in a palm-wine booth at Badagry are reported to have described his efforts to an African pastor: S. Pearse, Journal Extracts, 23 November 1860.

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own, does not represent anything of significant independent reality in the subject of study. There is a real point here, in that missionary interrogation of traditional religion did bring a degree of discursive explicitness to a sphere where a code of ritual secrecy had discouraged it and performance had been the principle means of "saying". But it would be quite misleading to think of the missions as like a stone cast into a placid pool of ideological consensus. The Yoruba country presented a scene of continuous upheaval which was widely termed an "age of confusion". Islam had been the banner of the major power which overthrew Oyo in the 1820s and steadily gained adherents in the warring successor states to the south. The missionaries' journals give evidence enough of scepticism (or perhaps one should say, of cynicism and pragmatism) about orisa cults, as well as of people's reception of new orisa . The missionaries thus came in on a situation of religious speculation and cultic choice. Often they were taken to be offering a similar sort of religious critique as the Muslims had already made, and though this annoyed them and led them in arguments to underscore the differences, they did tacitly admit the point by preferring Muslim over "heathen" terms for several key Christian concepts. 41 So it is some answer to our disquiet that the missionaries were part of an encompassing process of change involving all forms of religious expression in Yorubaland. In making the criteria of religious preference more explicit, they were going with a cultural flow in which they were themselves a force, but they also had to compromise with those criteria, in order to win converts at all. There are real advantages in having a primary source which is so strongly wedded to an epistemology of becoming, rather than of being. It makes religion an achievement of human beings rather than a transcript of social relations, but without denying how indispensible social relations are to the figuration of powerfully felt but unseen forces. Instead of the consensus (or hegemony achieved) which is so often yielded by the analysis of public rituals, there is here no doubt about the contested character of religious concepts, or the provisional quality of religious identities in settings where life was often so uncertain and power could be very arbitrary. In telling us so much about power relations in Yoruba communities - the micro-politics of master / slave or husband/wife relations as well as the high politics of chiefly rivalries or war and diplomacy - the Archive's contributors are not merely providing us with the political backdrop which we need to understand the context in which the mission was operating. The mutual referencing between power relations and religious argument is much more continuous and

41. Notably alufa (Muslim teacher) for "pastor", rather than aworo (orisa priest).

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intrinsic than that. The search for individual or collective empowerment were constant themes in religious discourse, particularly on the African side, and the power relations of the community repeatedly stood as cogent metaphors for relations between human beings and the gods. Our best objective, then, is to analyse Yoruba religion as a process of change, rather than as a state of affairs, as a many-sided argument in a setting of power relations, in which the power is doubly relevant to the religion, (i) as deeply affecting the outcomes of the argument and (ii) as being very largely the subject of the argument. I conclude with three excerpts from the Archive, which serve to give some idea of the nature of the data and to illustrate the way in which religious encounter was set within a running argument about the conditions of human empowerment. Each is presented in a mixture of paraphrase and direct quotation (which sometimes includes ostensibly direct quotation from local people) from the source; and is prefaced and followed by some explanatory setting and comment.

Argument with Ibeji women, Lagos, 187042 Particularly in the early years, public preaching and very proactive (not to say sometimes aggressive and intrusive) engagement with nonChristians in both public places and in their houses were common evangelistic practices. This is a particularly full example of the sort of argumentative encounter in which the Archive abounds. M.F. Willoughby worked as a CMS agent for less than four years, mostly as a catechist under a European missionary at Faji, close to what is now the Marina in Lagos. He only wrote one "Abstract of Journal", but the quality of this entry shows what we might have missed. The scene is set somewhere in crowded central Lagos, an area where there would be many female petty traders, selling cooked food or other items from the fronts of their houses or from stands in the street. A woman, whom W. often sees when he passes this way, has left "her idol called Ibeji dressed up" on the verandah of her house, and "passersby who take interest in it give it a few cowries". In her absence, W. asks a young woman selling cloth from the verandah of the next house if the idol too is for sale. Jokingly she says: "Yes". W. asks the price. "It is not for sale but to be worshipped". "Do you worship it?". "Yes." "Are you the owner?" "It does not matter who the owner is." "But I should like to see the owner." "She will be here soon." W. starts to speak of the vanity

42. M. F. Willoughby, Abstract of Journal, 29 July 1870.

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of idol-worship and another woman comes to listen. She speaks much of Ibeji. "The discussion was getting rather warm, when the owner, hearing our voices, came out, evidently in a passion, and said 'Be ofT'." She says "I am the owner of the idol. Glober [Glover, the British Governor of Lagos] does not say people should not worship whatever they like, leave me and my idol and be ofT. Before I could say anything in reply, she went in and closed the door with a bang". Meanwhile other women come around, all speaking in support of the idol. "My friends ... do talk one at a time and I hope to answer you all." They speak of the idol's powers, especially to give children. W. replies: "Women, you know that there is a God in the skies?" "Yes." "He made you." "Yes." "Do you believe that God made us all? ... then I appeal to you as a mother, if God ... do not give you children, do you think this thing here - pointing to the idol - and thousands like it, can give you children?" The woman hesitated and the other women "began to make noise and praise the idol. Though they made much noise, yet I could see that the woman to whom I directed the question felt the truth. I appealed to her as a mother, her bowels yearned - for she has a baby on her back. Such an appeal to heathen parents always has the desired effect." Another woman now took up the discussion. "Our babalawos [Ifa divinersj ... tell us that the idol can give us children and we believe them." "How do you know that the babalawos speak truth?" "Oh! they consult their mysteries." (W. explains the meaning of babalawo - "father of mysteries" - to the reader). W. says they are all liars and deceivers, and the woman asks him to prove it. "If they are not deceivers", W. replies, "they would not keep the mysteries to themselves. We bookmen [i.e., Christians] have our own mystery the word of God, which we teach to men and women, boys and girls from their youth up ... If there is truth in it, why don't they teach you their so-called mysteries ... ?" W. returns to his original theme, to denounce the idol which "has eyes but cannot see, feet that cannot walk ... " Two of the women, feeling the truth of his remarks, quietly withdraw. But discussion continues for about an hour. "I left them, praying inwardly that God may work in them. Thus I embraced this sought-for opportunity and thus the need was broadcast. May God give the increase." /beji means "twins", which Yoruba regarded as an ominous birth, as well as the deity generically responsible for twins.43 When twins were born, twin figurines of appropriate sex were carved, and if one twin

43. T. 1. H. Chappel, "The Yoruba Cult of Twins in Historical Perspective", Africa 44 (1974), pp. 250-65.

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died, the mother would pay worship to its representation, so that the still living one would not be called to the other world to rejoin it. Like the cults of all the many other Yoruba deities (orisa), Ibeji's involved a cultgroup whose members enjoyed a religious fellowship and identified strongly with their god. Relations between an orisa and its devotees were strongly reciprocal: the orisa could dispense benefits to the extent that it was powerful, and was continuously proved in its empowering acts. Yet the devotees were not passive in the relationship: the orisa's power was bound up in its prestige, and they knew it depended on them to enhance its name by actively promoting it to build up its following. 44 They did this by the dramatic presentation of the orisa at its festival, by publicly chanting its praises, and by individuals taking their idols round the town, to receive sacrificial offerings and to pronounce in return the god's blessings. Likewise the woman's Ibeji was left on her verandah to receive the offerings of passers-by. Willoughby's approach to evangelism is combative, laced with a not always respectful humour, and strongly oriented to the pragmatic aspects of religion. To criticise idolatry for its "vanity" was to argue its ineffectiveness, more than its wickedness. This approach is not merely more in tune with the outlook of African religion - and it is much more characteristic of African than of European preaching - but embodies a key principle of effective evangelism: the invitation to adopt a different religion has to rest upon the identification of basic commonalities, which can be used as leverage to promote change. Several are evident in Willoughby's account: the pragmatic criterion of a religion's truth, the core value of human fertility, the appeal to "God in the skies" (literally Olorun in Yoruba) as the ground of being. Particularly instructive is the way in which, when a woman invokes the authority of the babalawo, the most respected of traditional religious experts, Willoughby at once sets up a parallel with Christian professionals like himself; and moves deftly from similarity to the assertion of a difference which argues for the superiority of Christianity. Yoruba pagans commonly took the Christian Bible as in some sense analogous to the oral corpus of Ifa divination verses ("mysteries" or secrets, awo in Yoruba). But Willoughby exploits the morally ambiguous character of secrecy to suggest that the babalawo are deceivers in contrast to the Christians, who teach their "mysteries" to all who want to learn. What is perhaps most remarkable about this passage is not Willoughby's reportage of the arguments of the women in defence of

44. See K. Barber's classic article, "How Man Makes God in West Africa",

Africa 51 (1981), pp. 724-45.

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Ibeji; he gives much more of his own. It is rather how well he evokes the tone of the encounter, the seriousness and mutual engagement of both parties to it, and the variable degrees of commitment and certainty in the cult's adherents. How vividly he conveys both the vulnerability and the strength of the women! The account discloses, rather than states, how much this strength was derived from their fellowship as women and mothers, relations given a focus by the cult of Ibeji.

In contrast to the domesticity of Ibeji, other cults were more salient in the public sphere and were the concern of the chiefs. Two widespread ones were those of Sango, worshipped as the god of thunder in northern, central and western Yorubaland, and the official cult of the Oyo kings, and the god of smallpox, known under different names in different places (Sopona, Omolu, Oluwaye, Olode, etc.). Most accounts of Yoruba religion present it in terms of a "pantheon", a system of deities with relatively fixed attributes and relations to one another, and fairly evenly spread across the whole area.45 Such a homogeneous, static and reified picture does not allow human agency much role in making the religion. Moreover, as if the Yoruba did not evaluate their cults very pragmatically, it completely ignores the question of how such a fixed system can respond to the challenge of circumstances.

Sango and smallpox at Ondo, 187946 The "Apostle of Ondo,,47 was the Egba, Charles Phillips the younger, who laboured there from 1877 till his death in 1906, as effective an evangelist as he was influential in politics. Ondo, in the south-east of Yorubaland, was culturally distinct in many ways from the west and central areas where the missions first operated. Yet the collapse of the Old Oyo kingdom half a century earlier had set in train events that opened Ondo to traders and strangers, and with them new cultural influences, as never before. From the late 1870s Ondo suffered a run of severe smallpox epidemics, and it is from the midst of one of these that Phillips now writes: On 17 July 1879, a Sango priestfrom out of town calls on Phillips. A few weeks before he'd declared to the chiefs "that he was sent by the god 45. For a recent example, see R. Hallgren, The Good Things of Life: A Study of the Traditional Religious Culture of the Yoruba People (Loberod, 1988). This is not based upon original field research, but upon a thorough review of the literature, whose general thrust it reproduces accurately. 46. C. Phillips, Journal, 17 and 22 July 1879. 47. As he is called in a recent Nigerian study of Ondo festivals: J. K. Olupona, Kingship, Religion and Rituals in a Nigerian Community (Stockholm, 1991), p.16.

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Sango to make a sacrifice that the mortality caused by the smallpox might be checked". Desperate and bewildered,48 the chiefs gave him the items he said he needed for the sacrifice and hailed him as the town's saviour. At the mission house he laughs at the chiefs'credulity. "These were his words:- 'I am worshipping the carved stick [the ceremonial rod shaped like a double axe, called ose, part of Sango's regalia] for the Ondo people. They are deceiving themselves and like to be deceived. They ask me to propitiate the smallpox and drive it away. They gave me a horse, a bull and a ram. The first 1 have killed on the way to Oke Igbo [a town some twelve miles from Ondo, where many Oyo and others lived]. Myself and fellow worshippers of the Sango have feasted on the remainder'." P. asks him if the smallpox had been checked. "He said that the smallpox said that it will continue to rage till it has destroyed all the witches and charm-makers in the country." P. reproaches him for his deception. He replies that the people don't want to hear the truth or else "they would have listened to us who are God's messengers". At this point they were interrupted by an Ondo man highly offended at what the Sango priest had said "and made a great palaver with him". Five days later the priest calls again to say he had finished his work and was leaving. He again derides Ondo credulity. P. asks him if he doesn't fear God's anger at his deceits. In reply "he said his motto is to earn his livelihood anyhow, without regard to consequences. As long as he can eat today, he does not care if perish tomorrow". P. speaks of the everlasting torment of Hell, and he says he will come again to hear the word of God. What emerges with especial clarity here is how the phenomenal world is read by the Yoruba as the outcomes of action by unseen but personalised powers of which the orisa are the most prominent. If the outcomes are untoward, then the responsible powers require to be propitiated with a "cooling" sacrifice, by analogy with how one would deal with the manifested anger of a chief or powerful person. In the many uncertain cases divination is necessary to identify the source agent, but some classes of phenomena are stably linked to particular sources, such as smallpox to Sopona or lightning strikes to Sango. However, all measures to propitiate unseen powers are liable to pragmatic reassessment, and if they are adjudged not to work - as evident in the sustained severity of the epidemic at Ondo - people will start to look elsewhere. The sufferers' search for solutions may then meet up with a new cult group's impetus to

48. Phillips' catechist Charles Young had noted earlier (Journal, 2 May 1879) the chiefs' public consultation of Ifa over the epidemic.

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expand. Already, late in 1878, Phillips had briefly noted the death of a woman from smallpox after much had been given to Sango priests "as fees for propitiating the disease".49 Although (as far as I know) Sango had no antecedents in his Oyo homeland as a smallpox god, this is the niche which his devotees addressed in Ondo. If we wish to understand the dynamics of Yoruba religion, then a more apposite model than a "pantheon", with its static, classical connotations, might be a "marketplace", in which religious entrepreneurs seek to adapt their product to local demand. We tend to think of uncertainty, scepticism and cynicism as the characteristic features of the modern situation of religion, but the passage shows that these can be found in "traditional" settings where the prevailing ontology is anything but secular. The uncertainty of the Ondo chiefs needs little comment. It is the outlook of the Sango cultists which is intriguing. They were as cynical as the proverbial second-hand car salesman in "selling" to the Ondo chiefs what they knew was no remedy for the epidemic, yet this does not imply that they took a more secular view of its causation: merely that they regarded mystical agents of a different kind ("witches and charmmakers") as responsible for it. They still speak of smallpox as an agent which could communicate its intentions ("the smallpox said ..."). It is not clear if they thought that Sango, properly approached, could have stayed the disease; but even if they did not think so, this would not have implied that they were other than sincere in their regard for their orisa . The Sango cult did enjoy a short-lived popularity in Ondo at this period, and all orisa were looked to by their devotees for protection and prosperity. A successful fraud in Sango's name counted for, not against, the power of the god. Perhaps the oddest feature of the episode is the Sango priest's move to bring the missionary into his confidence. He may well have felt that there was an affinity between them as fellow religious professionals and outsiders, and that they might share a collusive laugh at the expense of the simple-minded Ondos. His frankness backfired, however, since he fitted himself neatly to a missionary stereotype of orisa-priests: as deceivers who exploit people's ignorance. Very likely he was an Oyo Yoruba, and so came from a more pluralist milieu than Ondo, one, for example, where Islam had long been a presence. This may help to explain his professed respect for "God's messengers". Whether he was quite as much thrown onto the defensive as Phillips' account suggests we may doubt, for it is too common and easy a presentation of the evangelist's triumph.

49. C. Phillips, Journal, 26 December 1878.

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Yoruba cults may be seen as ranging along a continuum from the more domestic or private to the more public, and from the more peripheral in importance to the more official or community-wide. Islam and Christianity began, like other cults, as relatively private and peripheral forms of worship, but they were always ambitious to move towards the centre. Signs of a cult's success in this were the respect accorded to it by the chiefs, and the centrality of its festivals in the annual calendar cycle of the town. It would be achieved through an interplay between the religion's drive for hegemony and the chiefs' search on behalf of the community to establish good relations with the unseen controlling powers. To see this we move to Ibadan, the largest and most heterogeneous Yoruba town, and the main successor state to Old Oyo. Visit to the Bale of [badan, 1870 50 The formal visit which the Christians of Ibadan made to Orowusi, the newly-appointed Bale [head-chief] of Ibadan on 11 November 1870, went down in the oral traditions of the local church as a significant milestone. 51 The Ibadan Christians also had a new leader, since Daniel Olubi had taken charge of the mother-church of Kudeti less than a year before on the return to Europe of the German missionary David Hinderer, now sick, tired and (as a European) reduced to ineffectiveness by the blockade which cut off Ibadan from the coast. The visit was the culmination of a round of courtesies, marked by the exchange of presents, over several months. This account is a composite of the Journal Extracts of two men: Olubi and one of his catechists, W. S. Allen.

They went at the Bale's invitation, taking with them their big harmonium, a musical box and two doll babies, one nearly as big as a child, the other with eyes that opened and shut. First the clergy and teachers greeted him and then their wives. The Bale's compound [a large square surrounded by one-storey buildings and entered by a front gate] was too small to accommodate all the people nearly all the 400 Christians were present so the audience was held in the street. The Bale sat on an iron chair under a tree, wearing silk and red velvet, with ten wives, 40 attendants and drummers behind him. The Christians began with what Olubi calls a "special anthem"and Allen [who was probably its composer] the "Yoruba national A

A

50. Journal Extracts for II November 1870, of D. Olubi and of W. S. Allen. S!. See Johnson, History of the Yorubas, pp. 383-84, and Kemi Morgan, Akinyele's Outline History of [badan, Part II (Ibadan, n.d.), pp. 109-110. Johnson would have been present himself, being then one of the teachers, and so would Akinyele's father, as a leading layman.

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anthem": a version of God Save The King. 52 Then came Psalms 20, 45 and 118, followed by prayers. 53 Now was the time to show otT the musical box and dolls, which caused great wonderment and applause. Next, the senior man among the converts, James Oderinde, gave an address. White ants, he said, are never without a leader, who is surrounded by thousands of ants to protect it; none dare attack it, but when man comes he can break it as he likes. So it is with you the Bale: no man can lift his hand against you, but God can do as he pleases. We beg you to listen to the teachers of His Word. The Bale listened attentively and promised his protection. Allen then spoke, first to remind the people that the dolls were not "oibo gods", but mostly to review the mission's history in Ibadan, "pointing to the Christians as those who by God's mercy and grace have been enlightened". Finally, they sang the loyal anthem again, and the Bale gave them gifts: twenty heads of cowries, two "nice goats" and forty kola nuts. David Hinderer, the founder of the Ibadan church, had never sought the kind of influence over the chiefs which his colleague at Abeokuta, Henry Townsend, exercised for many years. The situation at Ibadan was certainly less propitious for it, since (unlike Abeokuta) there was no substantial body of repatriates from Sierra Leone to provide a core to the Christian congregations, nor was there a body of chiefs who saw alliance with the British as a key aspect of foreign policy. More immediately relevant was Hinderer's personal outlook, which deeply accorded with his theology. For he was not essentially an Anglican but a Wurttemberg Pietist, and did not share the impulse of evangelicals in the Church of England to exploit a close relationship with the political establishment to advance religious objectives. 54 So it is striking that, so soon after his departure, his African successors should set about cultivating a much

52. A pretty close translation which began Olorun gba Bale la, Pe titi ko Ie wa .. . ("God save the Bale, may he live long...") and was presumably sung to the same tune, with (for the tonal cadences of Yoruba) a markedly distortive effect. 53. The psalms were obviously chosen with care. Psalm 20, a prayer to God for deliverance; Psalm 45, "I speak of the things which I have made touching the king"; Psalm 118, a prayer of confident thanksgiving ("This is the Lord's doing; it is marvellous in our eyes. This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it"). 54. I am grateful to discussion with Paul Jenkins, Archivist of the Basel Missionary Society, on the religious character of the Pietism of South-Western Germany, where nearly all the German missionaries recruited by the CMS came from.

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closer relation with the chiefs, better Anglicans, you might say, than their teacher. That "Yoruba national anthem" speaks volumes: a bold assertion in a town like Ibadan, where Christians were a tiny minority and where it was the Muslims who were close to the chiefs. 55 A reciprocity was sought: the clergy offerred loyalty, legitimation and their own spiritual services, even to a non-Christian chief, and they asked in return a general support, protection for the Christians (especially for converts or inquirers who faced persecution from their families) and the right to respectful audience for their preaching. There is a particular point to Olubi's record of exactly what he'd been given by the Bale. Of course he wants to note it as a token of the regard in which the Bale holds the new African leaders of the mission, implicitly no less than the departed Hinderer. In fact it is generally the case that the journals of the African clergy take much more care than those of the Europeans to record the details of the gift-exchanges which expressed the mutual regard of the chiefs and the Christians. This was especially felt by the African clergy because mission policy expressly forbade the main form in which the value of religious specialists was recognised among the Yoruba: by offering presents in return for their prayers or other services, a practice which was judged by the CMS to be incompatible with the Gospel injunction "Freely ye have received, freely give". Though this had the desired effect of clearly distinguishing Christian clergy from Muslim alufa and orisa priests, it also cut them off from the main way in which non-Christians were disposed to relate to them. Olubi obviously felt the difficulties of the rule, for in the months before the November visit his Journal repeatedly raised the issue of presents. When in July it first looked likely that Orowusi would be elected Bale, Olubi went to explain the work of mission to him, and gave reasons why they did not receive presents. 56 But mission policy did not altogether exclude "secular" gift-exchanges, for that would have made it utterly impossible to operate in a Yoruba context. So after the clergy had attended Orowusi's installation on 30 September, they accepted ten heads of cowries and a large goat from him, reciprocating with the gift of the iron wire chair (on which he would sit in state to receive them six weeks later).57 Yet still they remained very wary at being, as it were, bound and defined by chiefly gifts: when on 15 October they went the rounds of the new titleholders created by Bale Orowusi, they again tried 55. A year later the Bale Orowusi died and was succeeded by the Kakamfo Latosisa, the first Muslim to be head-chief of Ibadan. He too looked benignly on the Christians. 56. D. Olubi, Journal Extracts, 11 July 1870. 57. D. Olubi, Journal Extracts, 30 September 1870.

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to decline them. Olubi wanted to show that the Christians' motives were disinterested - "It is out of respect to them on their newly elevated posts and not for what we can get from them", he explains - and avers it "made a deep impression on their minds".58 What was so satisfactory about the formal visit to Orowusi on 11 November, was that it went according to Olubi's script: the Christians had presented themselves in their way, keeping the moral high ground by initiating the gift-exchange but receiving a clear acknowledgment of the Bale's appreciation. Thus they enacted how they wanted it to continue. Hinderer's departure did not mean any dissociation between Christianity and the power wielded by Europeans. In fact, the African clergy tended to make this linkage more explicitly than the Europeans, as their decision to bring along the dolls and the musical box shows. This was less because they may have felt that as Africans they needed to spell out what could have left implicit by their European teachers. The real point is that it was more an African than a European argument to use such wondrous things as direct evidence for the truth of the religion of those who had produced them. For they were presented as more than objects to catch the attention, but quite literally as icons of power, vehicles of an implicit argument which some of the onlookers made embarrassingly explicit in their own way, to judge from Allen's rebuttal of it. 59 But there is in Olubi's journal what appears as an amazing "Freudian" nearslip, where he writes in one place "idolls", then crosses out the [i]. Does that indicate the edge of the unthinkable, a zone of cultural overlap where the two worlds which the African pastor mediates have to have to be forced apart? Here, in the struggle of the "native agent" to formulate his experience, we find ourselves at the heart of the process of religious change which missions seek to bring about.

58. D. Olubi, Journal Extracts, 15 October 1870. 59. The affinity of dolls and idols appears elsewhere in the Archive. At Ondo in 1877, an African catechist shows a doll to the senior chief to amuse him, stressing that it is a child's toy, not an idol. "[The chief) said... they will certainly wish to worship it if they get it at their reach, even he begged me hard to let him have it". C. N. Young, Journal Extracts, 26 January 1877.

FOUR NINETEENTH-CENTURY PICTORIAL IMAGES FROM AFRICA IN THE BASEL MISSION ARCHIVE AND LIBRARY COLLECTIONS Paul Jenkins I. Think again! Reflections on one example of a familiar image: the missionary family portrait in a European mode

I. Reference Number: Basel Mission Archive QD-30-01l,0060 Original Caption (transl): Akropong (in south-eastern Ghana): Mr and Mrs Mohr and their girls (with Wilhelmina Locher). Photographer: almost certainly Wilhelm Locher. Date: see text below. Ovaloid sepia-tinted vintage print (albumine?) 6.2 cm high x 7.4 cm wide.

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This photograph of a missionary couple, the African girls living with them, and - in front - someone else's little daughter, seems, perhaps, unremarkable at first sight. Indeed, its publication could even be considered unnecessary. The African girls wear well-made European clothes. Their European mentors present a picture of true Victorian rectitude. The photograph seems to document yet again the unreflecting Europeanisation which many writers have seen as a fundamental problem in the work of Christian Missions. Does this theme need any further exposition and demonstration? At the beginning of my own personal exploration of missionary photography in Africa, however, and in the rediscovery of the history of the Basel Mission as an organisation which, early in the history of photography, created and used photographic images, this one played an important role. The original caption tells us that the missionary couple photographed were Joseph and Julie Mohr, who worked for the Basel Mission in the Akwapim state of modern Ghana from 1847/50 to 1873. This indicates that this photograph must date from 1873 at the latest. Naturally a caption needs to be read with just as much critical scepticism as any other source. What proof do we have that this caption is accurate? Album 0-30.011, from which this photograph is taken, seems to have been put together earlier rather than later, and its images are consistently titled, right up to the last page, as if their documentary value was important for the Basel Mission of the time. Furthermore, another photograph, reference number QS-30.l08.0006, which is not in the Album, but which in its shape, dimensions, technique and tinting seems to belong to the same series as that reproduced here, again has a caption identifying the same man and woman as Joseph and Julie Mohr. So there are good reasons for accepting the caption as originally given. If we do this, the little European girl offers grounds for a more precise dating, or at least an earlier last possible date. Wilhelmina Locher was born, according to the Basel Mission's Familienregister, in 1858. Skilled parents and grandparents can discuss exactly how old she seems to be in this picture; my guess is that she can scarcely be older than five. This

I would like to express my especial thanks to the School of Oriental and African Studies for inviting me to take part in its Workshop on Mission Archives; to Timothy Garrard for his stimulating comments on three of the images discussed here; and to Barbara Frey, Claudia Fritz, Regula Iselin and Anna Pytlik for their open-minded and critical work together in the current project to catalogue the Basel Mission's photographic archive and to publish it in an interactive electronic system.

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would date the photograph to 1863 at the latest, perhaps even one or two years earlier.l It was looking at this image that I first learned that it is worth the effort to date photographs. In this case even an approximate dating helped to establish that a generation of missionaries well before those active at the turn of the century had also photographed in West Africa. This photograph stands at the beginning, in fact, of the co-operative effort in Basel which has identified two albums as containing, together, some 170 photographs from Ghana taken in the 1860s and 1870s. It has also inspired the effort to identify the early German-speaking missionary photographers in Ghana. One of them was Wilhelm Locher, which helps to explain little Wilhelmina's presence in the Mohr family group. 2 This image is more than merely a means to date itself and related photographs, however. It can also stand as an example of what happens if one tries to relate an image to what one knows of its context. In this case some very suggestive connections can be made between this picture and biographical information on the Mohrs. At the end it turns out to be a photograph documenting Europeanisation perhaps, but Europeanisation of a quality, both in its intention and reception, which deserves fresh attention. Joseph Mohr was sent to Ghana as what would have been called earlier in this century an "agricultural missionary". He turned out to be a great gardener before the Lord. So, at least, says oral tradition. To this very day, when a Presbyterian teacher in Ghana tells his pupils to tidy up the school

I. Timothy Garrard reckons that this photograph is one of Wilhelm Locher's first, to be dated to 1860. His dating relies partly on establishing a general relationship with other images in the same album (assuming the grouping of pictures on the pages to be original), and the technical character of the print compared with others in the album. The name "Akropong" might also have a significance for the dating: according the Basel Mission's main summary of personal information on the missionaries, the Briiderverzeichnis, the Mohrs moved to Aburi in December 1860. 2. Album QD-30.011 seems to contain mainly, but not exclusively, photographs taken by W. Locher. The other early album with photographs from Ghana is QD30.014, which, inter alia, contains images from the camera of Christian Hornberger, the Bremen missionary who took photographs on the territory of the present-day state of Ghana in the 1860s. On Hornberger see P. Jenkins, "The Earliest Generation of Missionary Photographers in West Africa and the Portrayal of Indigenous People and Culture" History in Africa (1993), pp. 89118; reprinted in Visual Anthropology 7 (1994), pp. 115-45.

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compound, weed, and cut the grass, it is possible he will say he wants it to be like "owura Mo turom": like Mr Mohr's garden!3 Outsiders - and indeed, pupils wielding a cutlass on a hot day - may feel that Joseph Mohr's ideal garden is also a piece of unreflecting Europeanisation (though chiefs in southern Ghana surely traditionally organised the clearing of rubbish and weeds from their palaces and towns). Mohr's work would have been designated, in those days, however, as that of the Oekonomieverwalter, and this term contains a nuance which "agricultural missionary" does not. The Oekonomie was the plot of land around a house in Mohr's home province of Wiirttemberg on which a household grew much of its own food. Mohr was, in other words, no stranger to the practice of subsistence farming. In this sense he was much closer, mentally and psychologically, to the people around him than many later agricultural missionaries. This greater closeness can be demonstrated in other respects, too. The present-day Mohr family in Germany still retains the originals of correspondence with the authorities in Julie Mohr's home town which was necessary before she could legally be joined in marriage with her husband. 4 It had to be demonstrated that being a missionary was an Ernahrungsstand within the meaning of the Act, that is, the town fathers wanted to know if a missionary couple in the service of the Basel Mission had a reasonable chance of bringing up their children without them becoming a charge on the parish. This marriage, in other words, took place at a time when the home commune had to give its permission, a familiar pre-modern situation in which the local government authorities tried to prevent marriages of people who were so poor that bringing their children up was liable to become a public responsibility.

3. I am grateful to Professor Adu Boahen for first telling me about this proverb (or should one say "idiom"?) twenty years ago, and Wilson Asiama Bekoe for confirming recently that it is still current. There has been a school of opinion in Europe which holds that it is Joseph Mohr's son Adolph who is being referred to here (he worked in Ghana 1875-1906). But there is a small plot of land in Akropong which people still identify as Joseph Mohr's garden and it seems likely that, if "owura Mo turom" ever referred to Adolph (who is reputed to have kept the compound of the Begoro Mission House, which he helped build, exceptionally tidy and beautiful), a saying was transferred to the son which had first been coined about the father. 4. This marriage was unusually well documented because Joseph Mohr was a convert from Catholicism who applied to transfer his citizenship to Julie Mohr's home commune, a traditionally Protestant village. He was, of course, very little known there. This seems to have provoked a better documented application of official procedures to clearing the marriage than was usual among Basel Mission couples.

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So the marriage between Joseph and Julie Mohr was surrounded by formalities not entirely different from the negotiations preceding marriage in Akwapim at that time. And it will have been understood at home that it created a potentially extended family in the sense that in Wiirttemberg Joseph Mohr as farmer or as craftsman would have expected labourers, apprentices and maid-servants who were working for him or his wife to live in his family. This photograph, in other words, portrays a couple who probably brought to their union the attitudes characteristic of rural husbands and wives which predate marriages concluded simply for love, or marriages agreed with no general social by-your-leave or with-your-leave, or the kind of marriage which founded a modern nuclear-type-family. Mention of the extended family, of course, carries our eyes back to the African girls on the photograph. Integrating an image like this with the information in our Ghana archive in Basel is potentially a time-consuming task. At this stage I can neither offer detailed and exact information as to how this image meshes with the lives and activities of the Mohrs at a particular point in time. Nor can I name any of the girls, or write about her then future life. But the opening to Ghanaian culture implied by the suggestion that the Mohrs would have expected to run an extended family at home in Europe is matched by a complementary thought about the girls. If we argue that the search for a patron can be a moulding force in Akan biographies, then they will have had their own concept of why, and under what terms, they had become part of the Mohr family circle. So, an unremarkable image, at first sight documenting an unreflecting Europeanisation, turns out to offer us an early dating for missionary photography in West Africa. It also offers us contact with a different and pre-industrial European culture whose links with the Akwapim environment, so one can argue, were much closer and more natural than ours would have been, and which allowed exploratory approaches from the indigenous side which were, in some ways, much more culturally integrated than became the case later. A last detail. Julie Mohr seems to be laying a kindly hand on the little girl's head. This looks like a gesture of affection, and may indeed have been so. But exposure times were long in the early 1860s. In more civilised climes clamps had been devised to keep heads still while they were being photographed. Julie Mohr's hand was undoubtedly applied to the little girl's head with some pressure, an improvised appropriate technology for photography in Southern Ghana in the early 1860s! 2. Photographs and Engravings Now we have realised that photographs were being taken and used in West Africa in the 1860s in the context of mission work, the hunt is on

2. Engraving: original caption (trans!.) "The Fort at Christiansborg", published in Evangelische Heidenbote, (September 1866, p. 117). Original dimensions: 8.5 em high x 15.7 em wide.

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for what is left of the images which date back so far. One important point to remember in this search is that photographic images could not be transferred directly and mechanically to the medium of book-printing (by the so-called photogravure process and half-tone printing) until very late in the nineteenth century - or at any rate, it was only at the end of the nineteenth century that missionary societies seem to have been able to afford this process in their publications. The only practicable way for a Society to use images in its book or periodical publications up to that point in time was to transform them into engravings. The general question of the link between engravings and early photography outside Europe, or the particular question of their link in the context of mission organisations, has scarcely been raised as yet. Most people have tended to look at engravings as "artists' impressions" with no documentary value - except in the context of the history of Western imagery of Africa. At best, we seem to have assumed, engravings will have been based on drawings made on the spot but "improved", editorially, back in Europe, before they were published. In fact many pairs composed of engravings in missionary literature and the photographs on which they were based could be published - as here. So it is possible to make judgements about the accuracy of the work of engravers on the basis of facts, rather than assumptions. In September 1866 the Basel Mission published an engraving in which Christiansborg Castle formed the back-drop, as it were (fig. 2). In front we see a group of almost 20 tents. Without in any way explaining how the picture came to exist, the accompanying text calls it a depiction of the situation after the Accra earthquake of 10th July 1862, when Christiansborg Castle had been so badly damaged the garrison had had to evacuate it and live under canvas. Now it just so happens that the Basel mission Archive also contains a photograph, which we reproduce here, of exactly the same scene, a photograph which is obviously the basis on which the engraving was made (fig. 3). In passing we might note that even in 1866 it was not felt necessary to explain that the original of the engraving was a photograph... from this (and many similar cases) we may conclude that by no means every time an engraving was based on a photograph was this made clear in missionary publications. Returning to this particular image: it offers a case in which the reader of this essay can judge for him- or herself how faithfully the engraver has transferred the image to the new medium. The conclusion must surely be that the engraving is a very exact reproduction of the photograph. Furthermore: one could even argue that in relation to some details the engraver helps us to look at the photograph with greater understanding. The engraving makes it clearer what the small shapes are between some

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of the tents. And in that he has omitted what appear to be possibly sheep or goats in the foreground of the photograph, it seems very likely that these are faults in the photograph rather than part of the image. The exactness of the engraver's work is no fluke, judging by a number of other photograph/ engraving pairs we can demonstrate in the Basel Mission Archive, a very important conclusion for any attempt to reconstruct the content of early mission photography, and a conclusion which makes engravings created after the advent of photography into a source of great potential importance for the history of Africa. 5 The value of this particular image for African history is, of course, low: it is essentially an image from colonial history. And in this respect the engraving does have, perhaps, one deficiency. Anyone who has lived in Accra will, I think, be only too aware that life under canvas cannot have been comfortable. The temperature in a bell-tent during the afternoon will have been spectacular. But careful observation of the photograph suggests to me that the tents have their brailings rolled up, allowing the breeze to blow into the body of the tent from any angle. With most tents, at least, one can see shadow under the bell, and not vertical tent walls. This nuance has been lost by the engraver. But in all other respects it is difficult to fault him. There are, of course, other questions one can ask in a colonial history context. Where are the people, the soldiers, the bystanders? And did the encampment really need no guards? Can the two people sitting in front of the tent at the left be on duty? Do not guards, by definition, in British colonial history, have to be standing or marching? 3. Taking the search for photographs-as-engravings to extremes ... ? At least some engravings, therefore, were based on photographs in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, and accurately drawn. It is impossible that all photographs will have survived which were transformed into engravings. Daguerreotypes are only stable, chemically, if they are mounted in air-tight frames. And indeed, one can imagine mechanisms whereby precisely the photographs which had served as

5. Since finalising this draft I have been told by Peter Horner, the photographer on the staff of the Basel Museum for Anthropology, that a process was used in making wood engravings from photographs in the nineteenth century in which photographic emulsion was painted onto the engraving block, so that the image could be photographed onto the wood, thus helping the engraver towards producing an exact copy of the photograph. Bamber Gascoigne calls this process "photoxylography" (How to identify prints, 1986, p. 6d). Whether this process was really being used in the workshops producing engravings for the Basel mission in the 1860s I have no means of knowing.

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4. An engraving published as Frontispiece to Sigmund Koelle's Grammar of the Bornu or Kanuri Language, 326 pp. (London, 1854). Original caption: "Ali Eisami Gazirma" . Printed black on white with a sepia wash, 13.6 cm high x 9.5 cm wide.

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the basis for an engraving would tend to disappear. They had been turned into a more permanent, more useful and less labile form of image which had developed a quasi-official character through being published. We can, therefore, assume that we possess engravings which were based on photographs which have since been lost. Such engravings would serve the historian as a valid substitute for the photographs, if only we can identify which engravings were based on photographs and which not. Figure 4, "a portrait", as Koelle writes, of his "Kanuri interpreter" which "faithfully represents him, as he was sitting with me in my study... day after day,,6 offers an interesting exercise in this connection. It is early; the engraving must have been made at the latest in the year in which it was published, and probably one or two years earlier. Koelle himself left Sierra Leone in February 1853, and seems to indicate that his work with Ali Eisami ended in 1852. Colleagues here in Basel looked at this image briefly, without knowing anything about its context, while they were attending lectures in the Department of the History of Art in Basel on continuities between painting and photography. Their first assessment was to see it merely as an artist's impression of Ali Eisami, firmly anchored in what was becoming the tradition of "Uncle Tom" images, and not a real portrait. The idea it communicates to the viewer, "read" in this way, they argued, is of an African who is in many ways Europeanised, one who, moreover, in the way his clothing and bodily attitude are depicted, willingly demonstrates that he belongs to the subordinate classes and offers trust and deference to his white masters. Looking at this image in the context of Koelle's work, however, I find the hypothesis that a generalised "Uncle Tom" image has been published and given this specific name very difficult to accept. Koelle must count among the leading linguists to have concerned themselves with African languages in the nineteenth century. His capacity for sustained, detailed and, above all accurate research is impressive. So in what sense could a generalised "artist's impression" masquerading as a portrait have been seen to enhance his book? Koelle is, moreover, in my experience, one of the few nineteenth century missionary linguists in West Africa who names his main informant in a prominent place in his publications. But he does far more than that. He writes in warm appreciation of Ali Eisami's knowledge and consistency, his feel for the language and his knowledge of its traditional texts. It is presumably Ali Eisami to whom

6. Sigmund Koelle, Grammar of the Bornu or Kanuri Language (London,

1854), p. vii.

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Koelle refers when he recalls an African informant protesting that African languages are richer and have more ways of expressing the same thought than English. One even gains the impression that there were times when the informant had to motivate the researcher, and force him to continue till work on a traditional text had been concluded to the former's satisfaction: "Please massa: word never done"? With such a warm admiration on the part of Koelle for Ali Eisami as a person it seems, once more, unlikely that the book would be disfigured by an apparent portrait which was no portrait. One could, perhaps, just possibly imagine mechanisms which might have led to a non-documentary engraving finding its way into Koelle's book and being entitled "Ali Eisami Gazirma" . Perhaps Koelle had no sensorium for pictorial images, found a type portrait inoffensive, and was glad that the frontispiece could help to focus attention on Ali Eisami; though Koelle's own description of the portrait seems to preclude this. Or, to go off on another track, perhaps Koelle was enough of an artist to have made a sketch of Ali Eisami himself, which was then used as the basis for an engraving. It is, however, highly probable that there were photographers operating at least at times in Sierra Leone between 1848-9 and 1851-2, the years in which Koelle was working with Ali Eisami. Vera Viditz-Ward has established an earliest documented date for a surviving photographic image from Sierra Leone in the late 1850s. But she also lists the reasons for thinking that studio photographers, and photographers stopping briefly in Freetown on their way to South Africa and India, will have been offering their services there even from the late 1840s.8 Once we have realised that portrait photographs may have been being taken in Freetown as early as this, and that engravers were capable of the exact reproduction of a photographic image, there is no reason at all to discount the possibility that we are contemplating here a true portrait of Ali Eisami Gazirma. This could, in other words, be an engraving based on a lost photograph. I confess that I find the idea that we can look at the appearance Ali Eisami presented to the world one day early in the 1850s very moving. And I am sure that one important function of historic photographs in

7. The Preface to Koelle's Grammar contains the author's comments on Ali Eisami on pp. vii-ix and ii. The information given here about Ali Eisami and Koelle's attitude to him is based on these passages. 8. Vera Viditz-Ward, "Photography in Sierra Leone 1850-1917" in Africa (1987), pp. 510-17. Viditz-Ward also makes it clear that photographer was a profession which Krio men in Freetown took up very early indeed.

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Africa is to confront us with people - individuals and groups - who were living out the gift of life as the photographs were taken as best they could, and to remind us, as historians, that we have to concern ourselves not least with people and their own conscious life-struggles, if our reconstructions of the past are to be more than academic exercises. But even without such metaphysics: being in a position to suggest, with good arguments, and a look at parallel cases, that an engraving showing an African theme and published for the first time in 1854 is possibly based on a photograph, is moving enough. The suggestion is still novel, though becoming better-founded by the year. Are there signs which one can see in the engraving itself, which suggest it was made from a photographic original, to return to the problem posed at the beginning of this section? The answer to this kind of question is going to need careful study and a detailed knowledge of engraving styles and techniques; it seems to me obvious that the new kind of originals offered to engravers as photography developed will have called forth new fashions of engraving. Nevertheless, two points can be made here. Firstly there is a very odd sepia background to the portrait which ends, around Ali Eisami's head, in a semi-circular frame. This frame is faintly visible in the reproduction printed here. It makes me wonder if the engraver was not reproducing a framed daguerreotype. Secondly, the presentation of shadows and shading on the figure of Ali Eisami seem to me subtle enough to argue for a photographic original. Attempting this last kind of analysis is to try to run before we can walk, however. And I am content to leave this study of the portrait of Ali Eisami with the simple combination of thoughts that photography was chronologically possible in Sierra Leone at the time Koelle was working with him, and that the quality of the engraving certainly allows us to think that the original could well have been a photograph. 4. Assessing the information offered on indigenous culture in the immediately pre-colonial phase by one missionary photograph The three sections of this essay so far have been chosen to show that photographs were being taken in the context of mission work in west Africa as early as the 1860s; that many of these images were published as accurate copies in the form of engravings; and that when we look at engravings from the third quarter of the nineteenth century we may well be looking at images which were originally photographs. All three of these images are primarily a documentation of colonial history, however. In two cases they arise from the process of mission work, and one documents the military aspect of a still almost archaic colonialism. It is true that a change of paradigm could lead us to see the photographs of mission work as actually part of the history of the African churches

5. Part of the interior of an Akan chief's or priest's compound, probably in Kwahu, probably between 1888 and 1896. Photographer: F. Ramseyer. Source: original negative of F. Ramseyer in the Basel Mission Archive.

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and therefore of African religion, but that thought needs more elaboration than can be offered in this essay. What can the body of photographs taken by missionaries in the nineteenth century offer when taken as a source for African history? The question is justified, but dangerous. Surely the source must come first, and only then, in the process of using it, can we know what it actually offers. Indeed, to my mind, photographs will "come of age" as sources only when they are used in a network with other kinds of sources to tackle specific problems in the regional history of Africa. The question about the interrelations between photography in general and work on African history in general can easily send us off on what they call in German a "Holzweg", the forester's track which leads into the wood and leaves you floundering, in this case in the thickets of reflexive discourse about colonialism and colonialist attitudes. The image published here (fig. 5) is only a colonial image in the sense that it was taken by a European photographer. Exactly what this relationship was with the compound depicted here and its people we do not know. Still less do we know what the occasion was which led to the photograph being taken. But it represents one of the kinds of image which lend themselves primarily to analyses in the context of indigenous history and indigenous culture. Clearly it documents three aspects of Akan culture. We see, firstly, part of the interior architecture - plan, structure and decorations - appropriate to a particular class of office-holder or a particular kind of social or cultural function. Obviously we are in a narrow compound or sub-compound. At the back is a room whose roof is covered, apparently, by shingles.9 The door to the room is open, but none of us in Basel, even with a good magnifying glass, have managed to identify yet what the shapes in the darkness inside amount to. The walls of the compound are decorated overall with mud relief and footed with a complicated system of steps leading both to the room at the back and apparently to a room on the right with a very small closed door. The architectural work - form and decorations - is

9. I have assumed, till recently, that shingle-type roofing in the Akan world was a spontaneous transfer of a roofing technology used and introduced by the Basel Missionaries to traditional architecture. But the ASA Photographic Calendar for 1991 (Men and Women of Power: Africa in Historical Photographs) included for May of that year a photograph of the King of Anyi Ndenye in the Ivory Coast taken early in this century, with a shingle-roofed house in the background. Did the Basel Mission craft of shingle-making really spread so far so fast? Were there other, Francophone, builders introducing shingle-making in the Ivory Coast at the beginning of the century? Or have I made the standard European mistake of ascribing an existing indigenous technique to European influence?

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impressive and beautiful. In front, on the left, is the N yame Dua - God's tree, the shrine to the High God in Akan religion. Behind the Nyame Dua in the corner appears to be another shrine, perhaps capped by one of the mushroom-shaped ants' nests you can find in this region. The "codes" which give meaning to the architecture are, I think, in almost all cases easily accessible, at least at a generalised level, even to expatriates. The symbolism of the reliefs can be interpreted. And the steps at the foot of the walls are no doubt part of one of those systems of Akan architecture which enable groups of people to distribute themselves on a physical continuum between high and low according to their individual or group hierarchical status. Only one aspect of the architectural ensemble puzzles me: the objects hanging in the air. At the back on the left, a bar hangs to which things are attached; two seem to be very small drums. What appears to be a chain dangles from the right-hand side of the Nyame Dua. And over the doorway of the room at the back something hangs which looks almost like a fitting for an electric light; a chronological impossibility, of course, and no doubt my European imagination is playing tricks with me here and stopping me seeing what the object really is. But the question as to what is going on here is difficult: I do not recall seeing things suspended in traditional compounds or in photographs of them before. This photograph thus fulfils one of the primary roles which such images can play, to confirm that aspects of indigenous culture in the years of transition into colonialism were either like, or not like, what we know today, and to give us a chance to perceive the unfamiliar and ask questions about it. We see, secondly, the clothes and personal decoration appropriate to a specific office-holder and, presumably, his personal staff. Specialists in textiles may be able to identify the cloths worn: are they all, as they would appear to this untrained eye, imported? Do we conclude, from the general lack of decoration, that this is a rather informal event? But in that case why is the eagle-feather head-dress being worn? Thirdly, we see a group of people who in some way belong together. They remind me of the kind of group I would find myself greeting in a chief's compound when I went to pay my respects to him during an expedition to collect rural church oral tradition; a small group because this was a relatively low-key event, of marginal significance, as far as the traditional authorities were concerned. The question as to which of the people depicted was, in this case, the office-holder and master of the household, I tackle below. But it is worth noting that none of the people in this group, and none of the people in other group photographs taken in a traditional setting by Ramseyer, can be clearly and unambiguously recognised as female. What this observation implies is not at all clear to me at the moment.

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So far so good. We have been looking at this photograph in a general way. The trouble comes when we try to treat it specifically, and then put it into its general Akan setting. Where exactly was this building? Which traditional official held and used this compound, or which social function(s) was (were) performed here? Is it the sort of decorated space one would expect to find in every Akan grouping of a certain status; that is to ask: is it "typical", or is it really a rather unique building? These questions send us back to the basic question: how far can the image be documented? It exists, as far as I know, only as a negative in the collection of what we take to be a series of original late nineteenth century negatives taken by the missionary F. Ramseyer, which were recently rediscovered in a garret in the Mission House roof in Basel. So far I know of no vintage print made from this negative. This is very unusual with Ramseyer, whose images were publicly propagated by the Basel Mission and at least one publisher in Neuchatel, and which were also reproduced in extenso in large photo albums made for each of his children. 1o The documentation which is usually available with a Ramseyer vintage print - at least a hand-written note from Ramseyer himself, inaccurate though these sometimes are - is thus not available for this image. Consequently we lack any indication from Ramseyer as to where the photograph was taken, or when. Nor, indeed do we know what sort of office-holder was involved, not even whether he was part of the structure of a chieftaincy, or a priest of a cult. Consequently our uncertainty goes as far as not knowing, in the photograph itself, which of the depicted figures was the office-holder, or even whether the office-holder himself was present. The figure in the eagle-tail-feather head-dress seems to be the focal point... but such head-dresses often, or even usually, indicate a servant rather than a master. 11 All we can say about the location and dating is summarised in the (nonoriginal) caption given to the photograph above. Ramseyer seems to have obtained a camera for the first time in 1888. He was, at that time, a missionary in the hilly district of Kwahu, a former Asante province, which had broken with Asante when the latter was invaded by a British expeditionary force in 1873-4. Ramseyer moved to Kumase, the Asante capital, in 1896 in the wake of Asante being subjected to British suzerainty. In

10. Four such albums have been donated to the Basel Mission Archive. Another has found its way into the collection of the Yale Divinity School. II. A photograph of one such head-dress from Kwahu was published as figure 5 on page 58 in Jenkins and Geary, "Photographs from African in the Basel Mission Archive" in African Arts (August, 1985). The wearer in this case is definitely a servant, a sword-bearer, of the Adontenhene of Kwahu.

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Ramseyer's photographic oeuvre there are probably two to three dozen group portraits of chiefs and their followers, decked out with the instruments of power characteristic of an Akan court. They seem almost exclusively to date from his Abetifi years. And one can hazard a guess as to why. Once in Kumase Ramseyer was moving around a conquered country full of resentments, whose King had been sent into exile, and where many people regarded him personally as the cause of Asante's downfall. 12 In Kwahu things were different: the region had voluntarily put itself under British rule, not least through Ramseyer's intermediacy. The odds are that this is a compound in Kwahu, not Asante proper, and that it dates from between 1888 and 1896. Where can we go from there? The image could be taken back to Kwahu. Elderly people might be asked if they recognise the building, or any of the persons depicted, though the photograph is a century old now. Putting this image into the context of the full ensemble of two to three dozen photographs of chiefs and other office holders, and their entourages, taken in Kwahu by Ramseyer, might help to locate it better. But this full ensemble also raises in a general way the problems posed by this individual photograph: where was each one taken, exactly? And who does each one depict? Only some of the other photographs are clearly assigned, by caption, to a location, like Abetifi or Abene, or to a particular chief like the Kwahu Omanhene or Adontenhene. And the point at issue for research is also similar: we could, by knowing whether we are looking at a group of photographs taken in one or two centres of power, or the same group taken in five or six centres of power, sense how widely ceremonial centres of what level of elaboration were distributed through the population at large. Still more precisely: there are, of course, norms written down during the colonial period as to the level of decoration allowed each level of chief in the hierarchy of an Akan state. These photographs, if their geographical or political location can be established, will offer us an opportunity to see how far these allegedly traditional sumptuary laws were observed in late pre-colonial practice.

12. The story is still well-known. In 1869 Ramseyer and his wife were captured with two other Europeans by an Asante force and then held captive in Kumase till the British Expeditionary Force of 1874 was well and truly launched. From the Asante point of view this Force was put into the field not least to release the European hostages. Ramseyer and his wife then lived on the borders of Asante until its colonial SUbjugation in 1896. Their return to Kumase at the Governor's personal invitation in that year, and their return yet again after the Yaa Asantewa War, was seen by many people, both Africans and Europeans, as a major symbol of the power and superiority of things European.

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The full ensemble of images, however, taken as a whole, may also offer us a way of at least grouping the different photographs together according to the place where they were taken, or the chief they depict, and may thus help us to judge how many courts we have documented in Ramseyer's photographs from Kwahu. The method demands that we make careful comparisons between what is depicted on the different photographs. Comparisons can be made between objects; identifying the same decorated objects in different images (umbrellas in photographs taken in the open air, for example), and deriving from these an indication of which photographs depict people from the same court. It may equally involve us in recognising the same faces in different images, despite the evident difficulties. Being a historian always was a many-sided calling. Photographs may cause some of us to add a further facet to our skills: learning the policeman's ability to recognise the same face on different photographs, sometimes close to, sometimes at a distance, sometimes seen full front, sometimes in profile, sometimes seen from above, sometimes from below, and with a wide range of expressions. Be that as it may, it is, I think, clear, that photographers who produced images of this quality, even if they represent a small minority of the images which make up their full oeuvre, have a real contribution to make to attracting energies to work on African regional, or even cantonal, history, and to the analysis of particular aspects of African history. They can fuel nostalgia and admiration; it is no bad thing, I think, to be nostalgic about the achievements of traditional Akan architecture. They can also be integrated, as I have tried to show here in a preliminary way, into true social science analyses of African history and culture. Indeed, a consciousness of the earliness of the dates at which people tried to practise photography in Africa may well mean that, as here, we are going to be presented with many images which effectively document not so much the colonial period as the final pre-colonial phase of African history.

WOMEN AND EDUCATION IN SOUTH AFRICA: HOW HELPFUL ARE THE MISSION ARCHIVES? Deborah Gaitskell

Introduction In attempting to survey - as I have begun to do intermittently in the last few years - the social history of the education of African girls in South Africa, mission sources themselves are obviously central. Mission domination of African education, dating back to the early or midnineteenth century, was ended only by the passing of the Bantu Education Act in 1953. But how much do mission records actually say, and how much do they conceal, overlook or obscure? What else might be needed to supplement their version of what happened in African schools run under Christian auspices, particularly as regards African girls? Rather than attempt the broad comprehensive overview which the title might suggest, this paper will concentrate on the potential in a couple of specific examples. I need to clarify which records I have so far had access to. For my earlier research on women missionaries and African women's prayer unions in the three key missions in the Witwatersrand area in the first forty years of this century, I consulted the Methodist mission archives in London and the records of the Anglican United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, together with the papers of the Congregational American Board in Boston. 1 Education hardly features in the American records on Johannesburg women, so all I would comment on in relation to that collection at Harvard is how blissful it was to use twentieth century records generated by people who loved using the typewriter! I also used the Church of the Province of South Africa (that is, the Anglican Church) archives at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Brian Stanley shared a couple of horror stories with the conference about key Baptist records in Zaire disintegrating or being improperly appropriated; it is worth noting by contrast for South Africa that there are major, central, well kept collections for several of the key churches.

1. See D. Gaitskell, "Female mission initiatives: Black and white women in three Witwatersrand churches, 1903-1939" (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, SOAS, University of London, 1981).

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Although schooling was not my primary concern at that point, I gained some insight into female mission roles in relation to Transvaal urban African education in this century. USPG candidates' papers to which I was then allowed access, were very full on personal details of age, education, background, experience and aspirations of incoming missionaries in general, on similar lines to the material whose potential Rosemary Seton so ably demonstrates? Also included in these informative dossiers are the teachers for St Agnes' School, Rosettenville. Johannesburg Anglican missionaries started St Agnes with government encouragement in 1908-9 in the hope that a three year domestic training would produce "a better class of female domestic" to alleviate the twin problem of African males working in white homes and avoiding employment on the goldmines. From the church's point of view, explained Deaconess Julia Gilpin, they were also answering a need expressed by Christian parents for girls to learn more than was possible in a day school - girls boarded at St Agnes - either for employment or to improve their own homes in the future; that is, on marriage, the axiomatic destiny of adult African women. The personal dossiers alerted me to the frequency with which USPG applications came from elementary schoolteachers, some of whom then went on to teach African girls in Johannesburg. Interview reports on candidates, with their acute sensitivity as to whether women offering were sufficiently "refined and other-worldly" as one approving verdict put it, also showed up the ambiguous social position of elementary teachers. 3 One researcher has described elementary teachers as literally "going up into the next class" in the British context, or certainly hoping to.4 The stereotype depicted them as rather limited in outlook, "creatures of tradition and routine" as the Chief Inspector put it in 1911, "as a rule, uncultured and imperfectly educated".5 This explains two SPG interview reports on a clergyman's daughter as late as the 1920s: Though an elementary teacher she herself comes from quite a different background. She is intelligent and interested in many things outside her profession ... is in many ways above the average of our students . ... a lady in every sense of the term [reported another interviewer] and

2. See her chapter in this volume. 3. USPG Dossiers 2348, Report Summer 1915. 4. F. Widdowson, Going up into the Next Class: Women and Elementary Teacher Training. 1840-1914 (London, 1980). 5. Quoted in S. 1. Curtis and M. E. A. Boultwood, An Introductory History of English Education since 1800 (London, 1966), p. 175.

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well educated and refined: she is very different from the ordinary elementary teacher, and is much more the sort of woman you would expect to find at Cheltenham or Wycombe Abbey.6 But it was the Women's Work letters from Africa that gave an insight into what happened once these teachers reached Johannesburg. Two of the women argued that "the true education of the Native girl (at any rate)" was with her "hands, & eyes & ears, and a little of the brain", but at least they could "all learn to clean & cook, & sew, & be useful women when they leave school"? In fact, several girls left fairly soon, complaining about having to work too hard cleaning, and taking in laundry from whites to earn income for the school, and by the eve of the First World War, the subsequent head was downplaying laundry and stressing ordinary lessons to attract, as she put it, the "better-class" Africans, who were now happy for their wives to teach their daughters housework, and expected a boarding school to offer something more academic. By the early 1920s, echoing patterns established in the Cape and Natal much earlier, St Agnes' girls tended, one clergyman noted, to "make fitting wives for educated native men". Rising levels of education and expectation in the African community turned an industrial school into something more academic and prestigious. 8 This was all part of that interactive process of the missionary encounter to which, for example, Paul Jenkins called attention in his presentation to the conference. Apart from the boys' boarding school, St Peter's, with which St Agnes later amalgamated, other mission education in the Johannesburg area in this period was under white supervision, rather than actually being performed by white staff: all the teachers were African. The Anglican and Methodist records, and then actually interviewing two of the women involved in the 1930s, put me in touch with the main, indirectly educational, contact women missionaries had with the schools. In school hours, they all - and this was true of the American Dora Phillips too, wife of the more famous Ray - supervised girls' sewing, which remained an absolute staple of female mission endeavour, right across the Witwatersrand. More importantly, they helped organise Sunday schools and the girls' Christian youth movement, Wayfarers, the latter generally

6. USPG, Dos 2402, reports by c.c. Morgan and E. Courtenay-West. 7. USPG, WW Letters Africa, R. Oslar to Miss Harris, 2 January 1911; A. Kent to Miss Harris, 4 September 1910. 8. See further D. Gaitskell, "Housewives, Maids and Mothers: Some contradictions of Domesticity for Christian Women in Johannesburg, 1903-39", Journal of African History, 24, 2 (1983).

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meeting on school premises. This meant constant personal contact with women school teachers, who were much more heavily committed to both these children's activities than male teachers were.9 Since then, I have done some dipping into mission archival material for the late nineteenth century in the eastern Cape. The Ciskei region west of the Kei river was the heartland of the origins of African Christian schooling. (The Transkei to the east, where African chiefdoms retained much more land and political autonomy, was characterised, by contrast, by more patchy Christianisation.) In the Ciskei, three denominational institutions dominated the educational landscape for a century. They were the Church of Scotland's Lovedale, just outside Alice, the village where Fort Hare University, the first black university in South Africa, was later sited; the Anglican St Matthew's Mission near Keiskamahoek; and the Methodists' institution of Healdtown outside Fort Beaufort. Lovedale had its own printing press and is probably the most well known through the published literature, which includes a substantial history by a redoubtable twentieth century principal, R. H. W Shepherd, and the superb letters of Jane Waterston, first head of the Girls' Institution. 1o But all three premier institutions have also been the subject of unpublished theses too: Sheila Brock analysed the life and work of Lovedale's principal in the late nineteenth century, Dr James Stewart; Priscilla Fihla provided a very competent overview of St Matthew's history from 1859 to 1953; while Lesley Hewson looked at Healdtown's early history.l1 Healdtown is probably the most urgently in need of further, wider and deeper assessment. Hewson does not go beyond 1883 yet by the 1950s Healdtown had far outstripped the other two numerically, in its high school, practising school and teachers' college. 12 In view of Methodism's 9. See further D. Gaitskell, "Upward All and Play the Game: The Girl Wayfarers' Association in the Transvaal, 1925-1975", in P. Kallaway (ed.), Apartheid and Education (Johannesburg, 1984). 10. R. H. W. Shepherd, Lovedale, South Africa: The Story of a Century, 18411941 (Lovedale, 1940); L. Bean and E. van Heyningen (eds.), The Letters of Jane Elizabeth Waterston 1866-1905 (CapeTown, 1983). 11. S. Brock, "James Stewart and Lovedale" (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1974-75); P. M. Fihla, "The Development of Bantu Education at the St Matthew's Mission Station, Keiskama Hoek, 1853- 1959 (An Historical Survey)" (M. Ed. dissertation, UNISA, 1962); L. Hewson, "Healdtown: A Study of a Methodist Experiment in African Education" (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Rhodes University, 1959). 12. For figures, see Table 3, "Enrolment at three key Cape Institutions, 1955", in D. Gaitskell, "Race, Gender and Imperialism: A Century of Black Girls' Education in South Africa", in J. A. Mangan (ed.), 'Benefits Bestowed'? Education and British Imperialism (Manchester, 1988), p. 165.

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pervasive religious influence and its greater encouragement of lay endeavour, this is an area ripe for research, though part of my thrust here will be to urge that we move beyond institutional studies or at least try to compare, connect and contrast different institutions in the different provinces; and the wealth of records on Healdtown in the Cory library, from what I saw of them, could pose dilemmas of focus and interpretation. This business of the balance between institutions and the broad mass of hundreds of small African schools is a tricky one. For direct mission influence - personal contact between staff and elite pupils who did become community leaders - researchers obviously cannot neglect the institutions, but it also seems vital to get at the broader indigenous interaction with Christianity by looking at the primary schools where most African children, if they went to school at all, only spent a few years. Records from these three institutions are to be found at the Cory Library for Historical Research at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, along with a scattering of material from the three churches' wider work in the region. I have also looked at Church of Scotland material in Edinburgh. Apart from reading some USPG letters from the fascinating Miss Cooke, head of St Hilda's, Enhlonhlolweni, who definitely deserves more attention, I have not looked at all at mission education work in Natal, though the potential for the analysis of female schooling alongside issues of gender relations and expectations is clear from the research of Heather Hughes and Sheila Meintjes. 13 Nor have I yet done work on education in either the Orange Free State or the northern Cape among the Tswana, the area so richly trawled by the Comaroffs for the general mission encounter. 14 What sort of questions might one come to this material with and how satisfactory has it proved in answering those questions? I had a clutch of empirical questions about both teachers and pupils. To take the teachers first: having traced in women missionaries' work on the Reef a recurrent concern with the domestic - a concern which underlay their early teaching at St Agnes, their supervision of female church organisations, girls' hostels, even medical work 15 - I was keen to explore women educators' 13. See H. Hughes, "'A Lighthouse for African Womanhood': lnanda Seminary, 1869-1945" and S. Meintjes, "Family and Gender in the Christian Community at Edendale, Natal, in Colonial Times", in C. Walker (ed.), Women and Gender in Southern Africa to 1945 (CapeTown, 1990). 14. J. and J. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity. Colonialism and Consciousness in South Africa (Chicago, 1991). IS. See my "Housewives, Maids and Mothers", and "'Getting Close to the Hearts of Mothers': Medical Missionaries among African Women and Children in Johannesburg between the Wars", in V. Fildes, L. Marks and H. Marland (eds.), Women and Children First: International Maternal and Infant Welfare. 18701945 (London, 1992).

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background and assumptions from the late nineteenth century onwards, as well as their aims for their girl pupils. How sound was the picture first conveyed by Jacklyn Cock in her pioneering 1980 book of the "dominant stress" in African girls' education being "vocational, domestic and subservient", suited "to Africans, to women and to subordinate classes"? 16 Where was the balance struck between preparing girls for wifehood and preparing them for domestic service to colonists? Where and how did the role of African women teachers fit in to this dominating discourse of domesticity? What was the actual content of girls' education and its overriding emphasis? As far as the pupils were concerned, it seemed important to get an idea of the kind of girls going to mission schools, their background, how long they spent in this milieu, their own and their parents' aspirations for their education and how these changed. Could one trace their destiny after school or measure their impact on church life, social change and women's emancipation within the wider African community? Some more individual, qualititative, commentary from the girls and women themselves was desirable too, to give a personal feel to the educational encounter. I was well aware that there was another more theoretically sophisticated agenda of questions behind or beyond these rather empirical ones, formulated by feminist analysis of education in Britain. Researchers have drawn attention to classroom practices which ignore girls and highlight boys. Others have charted the benefits of single sex education for teenage girls' aspirations and achievements. The content, rationale and impact of domestic science training have been critically examined. Many have underlined the disparity between male and female representation in higher education and in the top teaching jobs. These are all questions relevant to South Africa's past - and present - as Rob Morrell has powerfully suggested. 17 Mission Goals for African Girls Letters and reports from women missionaries in the late nineteenth century are illuminating on their aims and hopes for their pupils. Jane Waterston's published letters to James Stewart, for example, provide a rich treasure trove emphasising the importance of home-making in her plans for African girls, and the need to cooperate with the most

16. 1. Cock, Maids & Madams: A Study in the Politics of Exploitation (Johannesburg, 1980), p. 305. 17. R. MorreIl, "Gender in the Transformation of South African Education", Perspectives in Education, 13, 2 (1992).

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promising ministerial candidates among the young men at Lovedale, in pairing them off with the brightest and best of the girls. IS The missionary refrain about African women as beasts of burden who need to be lifted by means of Christianity and a reshaped sexual division of labour into true companionship with their husbands is very strong in her writing.19 To set alongside the popular portrayals of mission heroines being published in the late nineteenth century,20 it is worth noting an equally important set of images which start emerging in the same period: of saintly indigenous Christians, worthy products of mission education. A Scottish pamphlet entitled Daughters of the King in Kaffir Ian d, published in 1884, provides sketches of three African women. Jane Waterston writes thus about Maggie Majiza, the third generation Christian girl: As she grew older, she developed a mind of rare powers for a girl who had so few advantages. There was also, mentally and morally, a delicacy and refinement [note that key word, , refinement'!] that in those days were deemed rare in anyone who had emerged from a round hut and native companionship. [She goes on to describe Maggie's marriage to Elijah Makiwane, an early ordinand, then continues:] Letters reached me from the quiet manse, giving me pictures of great happiness, and such community of feeling between husband and wife as only one who knew what a savage menage is could appreciate. Husband and wife real companions, and working together, was a thought enough to warm one's heart. 21 Other Scottish women likewise wanted to see women as helpmeets not slaves; the accepted route was to make men do agriculture while women sewed the new garments that betokened conversion and kept house in larger square huts. 22 Manuscript sources need to be supplemented by printed periodicals and contemporary pamphlets to get at these views. Apropos of this I was relieved at the communication from Scotland read out at the conference about the patchiness of material from the

18. See Bean and van Heyningen, Letters of Jane Waterston, pp. 25-27, 37. 19. Ibid., pp. 114, 125. 20. See, for example, E. R. Pitman, Heroines of the Mission Field (London, 1880?) and 1. Telford, Women in the Mission Field: Glimpses of Christian Women among the Heathen (London, 1895). 21. New College, Edinburgh: Free Church of Scotland Women's Work (FCSWW) pamphlets, Daughters of the King in Kaffirland (Paisley, 1884). 22. New College, Edinburgh: FCSWW pamphlets, Work among the women of Poona and Burnshill (Paisley, 1883), pp. 26-27, 29.

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mission field and the strength of the National Library of Scotland's Church of Scotland collection being in the home administration. I spent some long hours in that library a few years ago trawling rather unproductively through their women's committee records. They gave more of an insight into the home committee's anxieties that their money was not being spent wisely or properly accounted for, and also into the tensions and failures among staff sent. The African objects of their concern are rather veiled. I would want to endorse, though, the value in Edinburgh of the printed material at New College, from which I have already quoted. A Scottish pamphlet from the 1880s, for example, described an ideal Christian family in Natal living in a square cottage with bedrooms partitioned off inside: The wife and mother is tidily dressed in print or plain material. In her early days her leather petticoat, once made, lasted for years, and was never washed; now, besides her house to keep clean and the food to attend to, she has a new line of duties in sewing and washing for her family. She has also the lighter parts of the outside work to do, weeding, &c.; while her husband, with his newly acquired plough, cultivates the land much more effectively than she used to do, as a heathen, with her little hoe, toiling all day in the hot sun, with her baby tied in a sheep's skin on her back?3 Anglican periodicals of the time, such as The Grain of Mustard Seed, produced by the Women's Missionary Association, highlight similar aims, but suggest that preparation for domestic service, though held in tandem with the desire to produce good Christian wives, may have been a stronger motivation for Britain' s established church than for the Scottish Presbyterians. A Bloemfontein missionary described the rudimentary curriculum of a small Boarding School for Native Girls begun in 1876: They were taught house-work, cooking, sewing, reading in English and Secoana, writing, and elementary arithmetic. Their training was intended to fit them for being good servants, and to help them to appreciate order and cleanliness, so that when they married they should not be content to settle down into the dirty, untidy life of a Kafir hut. This object was very satisfactorily fulfilled in a fair proportion of cases; the

23. FCSWW pamphlets, Zulu homes by Mrs Dalzell of the Gordon Mission (Paisley, 1886), p. 5.

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From Pupil to Teacher: African Women in Education To turn now to the African girl pupils: their numbers can be gauged from annual reports and something of their background traced sometimes in correspondence and printed material. The evidence on their destinies has proved particularly interesting. An under-utilised source, Stewart's published record of the fate of 2,000 Lovedale pupils (538 girls among them) confirmed to me the need for a very flexible understanding of the lives of educated African women. Case after case illustrated that most girls moved rapidly in and out of several options (though it would be wrong to over-emphasise the degree of choice involved): teaching, time at home, domestic service, and then marriage (often to a church leader), which might not exclude further teaching or service. 25 Jackie Cock's linear model of girls moving from mission school to domestic service could not be sustained?6 Strikingly, Lovedale domestic service apprentices on the three-year course at the Industrial School seemed more likely to become teachers - admittedly with their sewing training a strong suit - while more from among the larger number in the academic classes became servants. 27 The priority of home life and teaching employment intensified over time. An 1896 Lovedale report on 750 "old girls" found only 11 per cent of them were working as domestic servants while 36 per cent were teachers (some of them married). A further 31 per cent were simply listed as "married" while 22 per cent were decribed as "at home or keeping house".28 A small cache of letters in Cory library provides some comparison of Anglican women teachers' experience at the turn of the century. Between 1897 and 1903, Charles Taberer, head of St Matthew's Mission, sent terse letters of notification to the Cape Superintendent General of Education

24. Grain of Mustard Seed (November, 1881), pp. 68-69. 25. Lovedale Past and Present: A Register of 2,000 Names (Lovedale, 1887),

pp. 425, 445, 468, 505, for Eliza Hina, Sinna Makiwane, Sana Mzimba, Elizabeth Zuma. 26. See the reiteration of this view in 1. Cock, "Domestic Service and Education for Domesticity: The Incorporation of Xhosa Women into Colonial Society" in Walker, Women and Gender, especially p.92. 27. Lovedale Past and Present. passim. See further the discussion in Gaitskell, "Race, Gender and Imperialism", pp. 161-62. 28. See Table I, "Occupations of Lovedale Girls' School pupils" in Gaitskell, "Race, Gender and Imperialism", p. 162.

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(SGE) about the appointment, qualifications and resignation or dismissal of some 36 women teachers in thirteen rudimentary "feeder" schools (which went only to Std. II) around the Mission. 29 In general they confirm the poor pay, youthful inexperience, inadequate training and instability of employment of the young women teachers. For twenty, we have their age at appointment: two-thirds were between 18 and 20. As regards pay, Taberer justified raising Jemima Tshembe's wages on the grounds that it was "very difficult to get girls to take up these posts" because they reckoned they could "get better wages as domestic servants".30 Of the 36 women mentioned by name, 25 resigned, left or were dismissed within six months to three years. Reasons are recorded in 15 cases. While four left to marry, six resigned because of ill-health, a ground on which women frequently left mission service, so one's suspicions are alerted that this might sometimes provide an acceptable formula for termination for both sides. Three were dismissed, one could not work with her female head, one disappeared. What proved frustrating is that there is a limit to how much inference can be drawn from the material and some hints can only feed speculation rather than provide hard evidence. The spare official notifications are insufficient to flesh out individual stories of poverty, job dissatisfaction, ill-health and disappointed marital hopes. The correspondence opens in 1897 with a representative glimpse of the tensions and ambivalence some of these early women teachers were experiencing: Paulinah Mgugi, of Ndlovini school, was not at her duties that day and Taberer had had no communication from her, "but I gather from other sources", he wrote, "that she has left altogether for Johannesburg,,31, the city above all others in South Africa which stood for anonymity and job possibilities, as well as being the centre from which errant males had frequently to be reclaimed. Another assistant teacher, under notice to leave anyhow at the end of 1900 because the inspector had condemned her work in his November visit, ran away from home and work to get married "privately" (which may suggest a compromising situation of some sort) on 2 December, not returning to 29. Cory Library, MS 14 839, Taberer to Superintendent General of Education (SGE). The period covered is I February 1897 to 12 October 1903. The rest of this section draws extensively on D. Gaitskell, "'What an Educated African Girl can do': A Case Study of some Eastern Cape Women Teachers, 1895-1945", to be published in P. Kallaway and A. Paterson (eds.), The Bible and the Slate: Christianity and Education in South Africa (CapeTown, forthcoming). 30. Cory 14 839, Taberer to SGE, 25 January 1900. 31. Ibid., I February 1897.

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complete the term. 32 Two dismissals prompt more vulgar curiosity about staff relationships at a particular school. Annie Mhlanti at Gxulu was guilty of "gross immoral conduct that could not be overlooked": presumably she had either been seduced or had an illicit liaison - perhaps the "gross" means she was pregnant. She was 27 years old and female teaching contemporaries were marrying at around 20 to 22.33 But was there something particular about this small settlement of Gxulu? Seven months later, her 21year old female successor was also dismissed for "bad conduct" and the principal teacher (a man of 24) resigned at the same time. 34 Had the principal been sexually harassing his assistants? In the absence of further information, perhaps it is inappropriate to speculate. But it is striking that eighteen months later a similar scenario occurred again at Gxulu: the female assistant resigned and the male Head Teacher was dismissed at the same time. 35 So although the timespan for this correspondence may be too short and the sample a little unrepresentative for the evidence to be given excessive weight, it does suggest, like the Lovedale mini-biographies of a decade earlier, that female investment in a teaching career was not yet widespread or generally longterm. In my eagerness for a more personal slant on some of the gender tensions which it seemed to me lay below the surface here - sexual vulnerability and problems about juggling marital and teaching timetables - I was enthralled to hear from an American researcher that she had come, quite by chance while looking at prosecutions for hut tax evasions, on a batch of very personal material. A woman school teacher in the Transkei had committed suicide, so the local magistrate had to hold an inquest, and her diary and letters to her fiance who was teaching some distance away were preserved among the relevant papers, because there was a suggestion that his infidelity had contributed to her desperation. Without wanting to gloat over someone's tragedy, this was precisely the sort of detail I longed for. It sounded too good to be true - and so far the documents have proved untraceable though I hotfooted it to the Cape archives to try to find them. However, by way of compensation the archives proved to have what could offer a superb complementary source to the scattered, rather skimpy insight into these vital small rural day schools gained so far. I began looking at the inspectors' reports to the

32. Ibid., 26 December 1900. 33. Ibid., Il March 1899 and for her age see 1 February 1897. 34. Ibid., 28 October 1899. 35. Ibid., 29 March 1901.

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Superintendent General of Education, which give various details for each grant-aided school. On staff, they provide name, qualifications, years worked, and salary, which might include some land or a hut for male teachers. Pupil numbers are distributed by standards and sex. Brief comments on the state of the building and equipment and the quality of the teaching follow. This very full series runs from 1893 to 1927 and provides the much wider context which snatches of mission letters need. This sort of source seems a particularly valuable supplement to Hunt Davis's substantial thesis on the history of African education in the Cape in the nineteenth century, which is based on the printed reports of the SGE and uses for its extensive tables figures on class C schools, which were exclusively African. 36 But in the closely settled and very missionised Herschel and King William's Town districts, which are where I have begun looking, there are masses of schools which are almost entirely African yet classified as B schools and omitted from his consideration. Having pointed to the need for government sources to reach parts mission archives do not, it is worth underlining once again the value of printed mission periodical sources. Again preserved in Cory Library for St Matthew's Mission, are the small half-yearly magazines produced after 1911, giving college news, examination results, teaching appointments and letters from past students. Though these letters, especially in the early years, are often brief, dutiful, pious and somewhat stilted, they at least give voice to common problems experienced by new missiontrained teachers: the need for patience and the difficulties of discipline, as well as the isolation and homesickness faced in many postings. Some of these letters come from women teachers. One writes from the Transvaal in 1917: My School has increased to 40 this term. I am living in a dreary place, with no books to read, hardly, and seeing nobody educated, from whom one can now and then ask advise on the school work. Though I do not like the place, I like my work very much and that enables me to enjure (sic) the loneliness. 37 Another exclaimed at how "dreadfully backward" her pupils, ranging from Sub. A right through to Std. IV, were: "Geography, Grammar, Composition, and Mental Arithmetic of any kind were never taught.

36. R. Hunt Davis, "Nineteenth Century African Education in the Cape Colony: A Historical Analysis" (unpublished Ph. D. thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1969). 37. Cory Library, St Matthew's College Magazine (SMC), 14 (October, 1917), p. 15.

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Children in Standard IV did not know what a noun was." She also felt responsible for the spiritual health of the community, criticising slack preachers and apathetic people while lamenting that "The Church matters are simply in a big ball of a dreadful mess" with no baptism and confirmation classes provided, despite demand. 38 Less "spiritual" aspects of cultural transmission were also singled out for mention to their former teachers in anticipation of praise. This example from a Grahamstown woman teacher in the 1920s recalls the film footage shown at the conference of a netball game at Chipembe, Northern Rhodesia: I hope Mfundisi will be pleased to know that my girls here are doing very well in Basket Ball. I tried hard collecting pennies in order to buy their equipments and at last I succeeded with the assistance of another teacher who kindly made the boys dig and rule the lines ready for the girls. 39

It was good that a teacher coping with 50 children in the first two substandards was able to laugh in reporting how the children kept coming to her with the refrain, "Please Miss so and so is beating me" or "Please Miss so and so is copying".40 By the 1930s, female teacher training students at St Matthew's were outnumbering male. How long they stayed in teaching and how they juggled it with marriage is still not altogether clear, but again it is a printed report - in a 1934 college magazine - which provides a rare glimpse of the career and family paths of a large batch of students. Of 249 fully trained women teachers on the college books after 1900, 215 were known to have held teaching posts, that is, 86 per cent, 95 (of whom 14 were married) were still teaching and 59 who had previously taught were now married and in their own homes. A few quite confounded the earlier stereotype of the barely trained nineteen-yearold girl; they had taught for 13 or 19 or even 31 years, suggesting a notable growth in the scope, solidarity and confidence of the female teaching profession.41 For any assessment of mission impact on African women in these later generations beyond the pioneering conversion era, surely closer attention to black female agency is needed. By 1946, women constituted 46 per cent of all African teachers, while at the 32 African

38. SMC, 12 (October, 1916), p. 15. 39. SMC, 29 (April, 1925), p. 18. 40. SMC, 29 (April, 1925), p. 21. 41. Report of St Matthew's College, supplement to SMC (May, 1934).

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teacher training institutions across the country some 3,000 female students outnumbered the boys by 800.42 Conclusion This brief discussion has pointed to the potential of both manuscript and printed mission sources in revealing more about the goals and fortunes of women, whether black or white, teaching African girls. On a topic such as education, it is stating the obvious to emphasise that mission sources need to be supplemented by the extensive government records created by the long history of state aid to mission schools, particularly for the broader statistical dimensions. There is also, clearly, a rich field for oral interview work. A former teacher at Healdtown whom I visited in Grahamstown was able to compile a list of perhaps twenty white past staff members still in South Africa: I managed to get to see only a few. Fihla lists many past pupils interviewed for her study of St Matthew's but the benefit of that is not fully realised in her somewhat deferential text. Personal written accounts are also emerging. Some African women's autobiographies such as those by Ellen Kuzwayo or Phyllis Ntantala, or the vivid letters in Shula Marks's 'Not Either an Experimental Doll', enable us to get a different slant on the personal experience of mission education. 43 The current concern to create a non-sexist, non-racist South Africa also seems to speak of a need for a richer picture of the past history of African girls' education.

42. The figures were 3,019 to 2,209. See P. A. W. Cook, "Non-European Education", in E. Hellmann (ed.), Handbook on Race Relations in South Africa (CapeTown, 1949), p. 376. 43. E. Kuzwayo, Call Me Woman (London, 1985); P. Ntantala, A Life's Mosaic (CapeTown, 1992; Berkeley, 1993); S. Marks, 'Not Either An Experimental Doll': The Separate Worlds of Three South African Women (Durban, 1987).

THE NATURE OF A MISSION COMMUNITY: THE UNIVERSITIES' MISSION TO CENTRAL AFRICA IN BONDE Justin Willis The Mission in African History The influence of missions on African history is a much-studied subject. Indeed this is, in a sense, where modern academic study of African history started.! Mission sources provide, in many areas, the earliest comprehensive written records, and this enforced reliance on missionary sources has understandably guided historians into studies of the interaction between missions and African societies, often concentrating on the political aspects of the relationships between powerful men in African societies and missions. 2 Very rarely, however, does this literature discuss the actual internal structure of the mission: how did a mission station work from day to day, and what were the hierarchies that existed within these often complex institutions?3 "The mission", after all, could be a station with dozens of schoolchildren, cooks, builders, teachers, priests and messengers. As one historian who has given some attention to this issue has pointed out, the study of mission stations as institutions offers useful insights into the societies among which they were established: both because some missions came to be partly modelled on

1. R. Oliver, The Missionary Factor in East Africa (London, 1952). 2. G. Prins, The Hidden Hippopotamus. Reappraisal in African History: The Early Colonial Experience in Western Zambia (Cambridge, 1980); T. 0. Ranger, "Missionaries, Migrants and the Manyika: The Invention of Ethnicity in Zimbabwe", in L. Vail (ed.), The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (Berkeley, 1989), pp. 118-50; A. F. Roberts, "History, Ethnicity and Change in the "Christian Kingdom" of Southeastern Zaire", ibid., pp. 193-214. 3. While 1. Comaroff and 1. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism and Consciousness in South Africa, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1991-92), vol. I, p.7, notes this gap, the book none the less focuses on the relations of the London Missionary Society with states, African and colonial, and not on the "anthropology of the mission". See also T. 0. Beidelman, Colonial Evangelism: A Socio-Historical Study of an East African Mission at the Grassroots (Bloomington, 1982), p. 7; again a gap in the literature is noted, yet the book does little to redress this, the only description of mission structure being a brief extract from a mission publication (p. 115). One fairly detailed account of daily life in and recruitment to a mission has been written, the description of the brief, ill-fated, Universities' Mission establishment at Magomero: L. White, Magomero: Portrait of an African Village (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 3-70.

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surrounding communities, and because missionary writings on the way in which people were taken into the institution of the mission provide, in passing, much evidence on the nature of social relations in local society.4 The question of conversion, or rather of recruitment to the mission, is central to any study of a mission as an institution - and this subject too is curiously neglected in the literature. The first volume of Jean and John Comaroff's detailed discussion of the encounter between the southern Tswana and members of the London Missionary Society (LMS) repeats what has become a near-cliche: that the mission tended to attract the outcast and vulnerable. Noting that young members of the royal clan were also drawn to the mission, the Comaroffs subsume this group into the same category, as marginal members of society.5 Robert Strayer's book on the Church Missionary Society (CMS), which regrettably does not deal in depth with the CMS in East Africa before the establishment of the freed-slave communities. repeats the suggestion that early converts were usually outcasts, but then qualifies this by setting the process of the making of mission communities in the context of the extreme fluidity of identity in nineteenth-century East Africa.6 This essay argues that, at least in the case described here, simply to categorise converts as "marginal" would be to obscure two essential, and linked. points: that there are varying degrees of marginality, and that not all who joined the mission occupied the same positions within it. Building on Strayer's idea of the mission community, this essay seeks to investigate the actual mechanisms of conversion, and to show how one particular mission turned local forms of dependence and clientage to its own advantage in the creation of a mission community: providing points of comparison with Strayer's work and (mindful of the need to understand the actual diversity of forms which lie concealed by such unhelpful general categories as "missions") 7 important points of difference. In examining more closely the process of the building of community, this essay suggests too that the varying status of converts came to be reflected in the developing hierarchy of the mission and that the resulting tensions were played out partly through local politics in the colonial period.

4. 1. Giblin, "Famine, Authority and the Impact of Foreign Capital on the Handeni District of Tanzania, 1840-1940" (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1986), pp. 180-89; also R.w. Strayer, The Making of Mission

Communities in East Africa: Anglicans and Africans in Colonial Kenya, 18751935 (London, 1978), pp. 53-58. 5. Comaroff and Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, vol. 1, pp. 238-40, 247. 6. Strayer, Making of Mission Communities in East Africa, pp. 11, 52-55. 7. Comaroffand Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, vol. 1, p. 10.

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Bondei Communities in the Later Nineteenth Century Bonde, in the period under discussion, was the area that lay east of the Usambaa mountains and west of the ISO-metre contour line. Close to, but not on, the East African coast, Bonde is a fertile and well-watered area. In the first half of the nineteenth century it had been ruled by Kilindi governors, children of the Kilindi king at Vuga in the mountains of western Usambaa. The political structure of this kingdom was undermined by the rapid expansion of trade with the coast in the 1830s and 1840s. The principal exports in this trade were ivory and slaves, and prominent among the imports were firearms, which were in turn increasingly used to obtain more ivory and slaves from the interior. Vuga was distant from the main trade routes, and the kingdom had been reliant on tribute, rather than trade; as a result the Kilindi king was left behind in the local arms race, and his subjects suffered increasingly from raids by better-armed neighbours. Meanwhile those Kilindi governors of outlying areas who were better placed to engage in trade did so, and became increasingly oppressive towards their subjects, and increasingly independent of Vuga, in the process.8 These tensions exacerbated a recurrent dispute concerning succession to the throne at Vuga, and by 1875 a combination of civil war among the Kilindi and revolt by the popUlation of Bonde, who are now and were sometimes then known as the Bondei, had brought Kilindi rule in Bonde to an end. A number of the Kilindi governors had been killed by the Bondei, and their children and Bondei wives had variously returned to their own families or been seized by local headmen. One of the Kilindi factions still claimed to exercise a degree of authority over the Bondei, but their ability to enforce their orders or judgements was extremely limited.9 Authority lay, largely, with the numerous petty local headmen. The Kilindi state had displaced a political and social system built around extended descent groups, or clans. After the collapse of Kilindi rule the names of a number of these clans survived, but no clan re-emerged as a unified community, all of whose members recognised some obligations to one another. There was a reduction of political scale and, in the search for personal security, people increasingly identified themselves as members of local groups, each of which constituted what might be called an "indemnity group", mutually responsible in their relationships with other groups. 8. 1. Willis, "The Makings of a Tribe: Bondei Identities and Histories", Journal of African History,33 (1992), pp. 191-208, describes the changing boundaries of Bonde. The mid-nineteenth-century crisis in the Kilindi kingdom is analysed in S. Feierman, The Shambaa Kingdom: A History (Madison, 1974), pp. 120-67. 9. A. bin Hemed l'Ajjemy, Habari za Wakilindi [The Story of the Kilindi] (Nairobi, 1962), pp. 198-238; Feierman, Shambaa Kingdom, pp. 158-67.

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Under Kilindi rule in the 1840s and 1850s, at least, all the people of the area had at times identified themselves as forming a single group, "the Bondei"; but, with the decline in central authority and the increasing reliance on membership of smaller groups for security, the use of Bondei as an ethnonym (that is, as the label for a distinct ethnic group) seems to have lapsed in the 1860s. The smaller groups, which claimed to be descent groups, seem to have been agglomerations of people of varied descent, who accepted for certain purposes the authority of a local headman and so, for certain purposes, behaved as members of the family of this man. \0 During the period of Kilindi rule, Kilindi local governors had actively raided for slaves in neighbouring areas, and had continually sought to attract new clients from outside Bonde, for example by offering wives to men who joined their following. II The immediate origins of the population of Bonde were thus quite heterogeneous. These were times of intense insecurity, for there was an active market in slaves both for very local use and for trade to the coast. In the absence of any powerful central authority, all people were at risk of being kidnapped or captured in a raid and sold, by others from Bonde or by intruders from the neighbouring Digo and Zigua areas; as one missionary observed: "The Digo are a great pestilence in this part of the world. They are continually coming by twos and threes and murdering the people ... They try to capture women and children to sell as slaves, if they cry or refuse to go quietly they put them to death and fly".12 Before

10. Willis, "Makings of a Tribe", pp. 197-98. II. University of Birmingham Library, Church Missionary Society Archives (hereafter CMS; microfilm in the Kenya National Archives, Nairobi), CA 5 0 16 177, L. Krapf, "Journal Describing Dr Krapf's Proceedings from the 10th of February to the 10th of April, 1852", entries for 23, 29 February, 2 March; CMS, CA 50 9 15, 1. Erhardt, "Journal Containing an Account of My Journey to Usambara and Back and of a Three Months Stay with the King of the Country, Kimeri, from the 9th of August to December 1853", entry for 10 August 1853. 12. Rhodes House, Oxford, Universities' Mission to Central Africa Archives (hereafter UMCA), box AI IV A, Wilson to Penny, All Saints' Day 188\. See also UMCA, box AI IV A, Hodgson to Mission, 17 July 1881; British Institute in Eastern Africa, Nairobi (hereafter BIEA), interviews B79a, Blc. References in the form "interview B79a" refer to interviews conducted by the author in Bonde between 1990 and 1992. The number identifies a particular informant, and the lower-case letter indicates to which of a series of interviews with that informant reference is being made. Thus "interview B79a" refers to the first interview with informant 79; "interview B I c" to the third interview with informant \. Full details of the names of informants and dates of interviews are on record at the British Institute in Eastern Africa in Nairobi, where the tape-recordings and transcripts of interviews may be consulted

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the growth in the slave-trade, people had been both a denominator of wealth, and the essential means of its production; while transactions in people had been of great importance, the outright sale of people as slaves to be taken out of the area had not been common. Transactions in persons had been partly structured through institutions of debt and "pawning", by which people fined for some transgression, or simply people taking a loan, handed over some junior dependant to their creditor as surety for the debt. With the steady growth in the market for slaves, and the demand for firearms and gunpowder which could be bought with slaves, pawning and debt were increasingly used as ways in which to enslave people and sell themY In these circumstances, individual security relied on association with an indemnity group which was powerful enough to deter raiders and kidnappers, or wealthy enough to redeem any of its members who fell into debt, or were fined for having committed adultery or caused physical injury. The head of such a group might anyway feel powerful enough to ignore a fine claimed from one of his followers by injured parties, though the other dependants of this patron would then be at heightened risk of kidnap, as the injured parties sought to extract compensation for themselves. 14 These patrons were the headmen of the fenced villages which dotted Bonde in this period. These villages were small, usually of around a dozen houses; in 1875 the largest settlement in Bonde had fifty houses. IS Within the village lived the head, his current wives and at least some of his children, and also his slaves and their wives, perhaps one or more "pawns", and possibly a few other men and women who had come to seek his patronage. Sometimes these were migrants fleeing famine in the area south and west of the Pangani, sometimes runaway slaves from the coast, sometimes individual migrants from the north seeking to better their 10t.16 Important in the definition of community, and in marking the level of

13. See Tanzania National Archives, Dar es Salaam (hereafter TNA), Magila mission log-book (microfilm), 23 March 1887,15 June 1889; BIEA, interviews B57d, B73a, B76a; University of Dar es Salaam, Swahili Manuscript Collection, document no. 18, Petro Richard bin Hadj, "Vumbukano la Asili ya Kabila la Wabondei" [A Hint on the Origin of the Bondei Tribe] (typescript), pp. 26-27; G. Dale, "An Account of the Principal Customs and Habits of the Natives Inhabiting the Bondei Country", Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 25 (1895), pp. 181-239. 14. TNA, Umba mission log-book (microfilm), 13 February 1887. 15. S. Speare, The Mission at Magi/a (UMCA pamphlet, London, 1873); Umba mission log-book, 27 August 1887; UMCA, box Al VIII, H.w.w. Woodward, "Half a Century in East Africa" (typescript), p. 40. 16. Central Africa (August, 1884); Umba mission log-book, 12 July, 29 August 1887, 5 March 1888.

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an individual's dependence, was the performance of ritual. Despite the varied origins of the populace of Bonde, all shared one essential idea: health and well-being depended on the goodwill of ancestors, and this goodwill was secured through ritual observance. Faced with sickness or ill luck, people made promises to one or more ancestors that, should their problems ease, they would tidy the chosen ancestor's grave and make an offering of chicken, maize meal or cassava there, or at some chosen tree or stone. Many villages had a particular tree or stone for this purpose. The essence of this was the establishment of, and then the recognition of, obligation; as in the physical world, people sought the security of a patron. The ceremony was called fika.17 The two worlds in fact overlapped; in seeking the patronage of an individual in the physical world, and thus joining his political community, the client also joined the patron's ritual community: for fika were performed by elder males for their dependants. That is, in order for the patron to be able to provide for them both spiritually and physically, clients had to be part of the ritual community for which he performed the fika. Thus, such dependants adopted the ancestry of their patron: his ancestors became their ancestors. 18 Such adoption was not necessarily permanent. Through kin or marriage links, people could lay claim to membership of other communities, with different ancestors, and their participation in the rituals of one patron's community did not involve a complete renunciation of their claims on other communities. 19 Should their patron prove inadequate to the provision of physical and ritual security, they could try to revive these claims, or make new ones. Some members of a patron's community might find it easier to do this than did others; and so not all the inhabitants of a village would be equally dependent on the village head. People could, in some circumstances, lay claim to membership of two different communities at the same time; as has been pointed out, a considerable degree of ritual pluralism can exist in non-literate societies. 2o While local ancestors could be asked for rain, andfika would be performed if the ancestors obliged by supplying it, people could also

17. BIEA, interviews B23b, B85a, B27a, B15a, B44a, B57d; Dale, "Account of the Principal Customs", pp. 234-37; "spirit trees" are also referred to in Central Africa (November 1886). 18. For the importance of elders in fika, see Dale, "Account of the Principal Customs", p. 236; BIEA, interviews B27a, B79a, B57d. 19. BIEA, interviews B 15a, B30a, B70b. 20. S. Feierman, Peasant Intellectuals: History and Anthropology in NorthEastern Tanzania (Madison, 1990), pp. 101-12.

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cast themselves as members of a much larger community by asking through the medium of a Kilindi family for rain from Sekiteke, a former ruler whose spirit inhabited the mountain of Mlinga. If Sekiteke obliged, the obligation thus created would be acknowledged by the slaughter of a sheep, given by villages all over Bonde. This too was a jika and implicitly cast Sekiteke as the patron and ancestor of the whole population; and thus identified the population as a single community.21 This was the ritual counterpart of the irregularly articulated Kilindi claim to be the physical protectors of the Bondei. Membership of one community did not, therefore, preclude potential or actual membership of other communities, and there was a continual flux in the actual membership of most village communities which belied the ideology of continuity and stability implicit in the ritual role ascribed to ancestors. Marginality in Bonde The ritual pluralism of the Bondei was a product of the determination with which people sought to maintain their ties to several communities, which were indemnity groups as well as ritual communities. In the formal discourse of kinship this determination found expression through the actual negotiability of the Bondei notion of kolwa, or clan, as a descent group which could supply the ideological content of a local community. No local settlement comprised all the members of a kolwa, and no complete kolwa was a mutually responsible body: but people could make initial claims on a community in terms of kolwa, expressing a move to a new settlement as a move to live with fellow clan members.22 Membership of kolwa is, according to many, ambi-lineal through every generation, so that an individual may claim membership of the kolwa of any known relative. If an individual knows the names of several generations of ancestors, and all are Bondei, that person can claim membership of sixteen, or thirty-two, kolwa ; and the ability to do this, according to some, is the real sign of non-servile status. Others, unable to give the names of ancestors and their kolwa, insist that kolwa membership is only patrilineal, or is ambilineal only in the parents' generation. To those who insist on the importance of multiple kolwa membership, this claim to a single kolwa is a sure sign of relatively recent migration, and marginal status. 23 The implication of all this is clear: that it is important to have a potential claim upon a number of different communities, as indemnity

21. BIEA, interviews B70a, B73a; Central Africa (June 1884, January 1885). 22. BIEA, interviews B57c, B57d, B94a, B37a, B6c. 23. For example, BIEA, interviews B58a, B64a, B24b stress ambilineality. BIEA, interviews B23b, B26b say that membership is patrilineal.

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groups. The fewer such claims an individual could make, the more complete was her or his dependence on a single patron, and the lower her or his status. It was harder to sell or pawn a child whose parents and kin were all known and living, for they could claim both an obligation to protect the child and, by the same token, a right to the proceeds of any transaction involving the child. Multiplicity of community was essential to the status and security of the individual, and it generated constant conflict over the bounds and claims of communities. The high incidence of kidnapping and of the selling of people as slaves inevitably spawned dispute over the rights of people over people. On occasion groups of elders met and either passed judgements or attempted to arbitrate in disputes, but they were unable to enforce their judgements; nor could they hold people to the decisions made in arbitration. 24 In such circumstances, the competing petty patrons of Bonde became very much alive to the potential, as allies or rivals, of the members of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa (UMCA), which had first appeared among them in 1867?5 Conversion and the Mission Community Founded in response to Livingstone's public appeals in 1857, the UMCA was a mission society of the Church of England. Unlike the existing Anglican mission organisation (the CMS), the UMCA drew on the Anglo-Catholic, High-Church tradition. After an initial disastrous foray into the Shire highlands, the UMCA had withdrawn from mainland Africa to the island of Zanzibar, where they sought to evangelise the slaves freed by British anti-slavery cruisers. Partly inspired by the writings of the CMS missionary, 1. Ludwig Krapf, the UMCA sought next to establish itself at Vuga, the capital of the Kilindi kingdom. In 1867 civil war in the kingdom had not yet broken out, and the young king of Vuga, newly acceded to the throne, still claimed authority over Bonde. When the Revd Charles Alington of the UMCA came to ask the king's permission to settle at Vuga, the king and the people of Vuga were too suspicious of the mission's motives to allow them to stay near the capital, and Alington was sent to Magila, in Bonde, within but on the edges of the kingdom. 26 Such suspicion was not unique; the predecessor of the Kilindi king had appreciated the potential value of an alliance with Krapf's colleague, a CMS missionary called Jacob

24. Magila mission log-book, 15 June, 24 July 1889. 25. The LMS arrived among the southern Tswana at a similar time of endemic raiding: Comaroff and Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, vol. I, p. 179. 26. UMCA Report for Parochial Use (Blue Book), for 1867,1868.

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Erhardt, but had equally appreciated the threat which the missionary might pose to his power. With evident misgivings, the king had suggested that Erhardt should settle in Bonde; which suggestion was not taken Up?7 At Magila too Alington found the local governor suspicious, and the missionary was kept waiting while the governor consulted with his uncle, the most senior Kilindi governor in Bonde. Grudging acceptance was finally given for Alington to settle, but illness curtailed his stay and that of several successors.28 Full-time occupation of the Magila station began only in 1875, by which time the Kilindi kingdom had collapsed and the attitude of the local governor, now reduced to the status of a village headman, had changed considerably; the missionaries appeared now more as potential allies and patrons, rather than as a threat to his largely vanished authority.29 1. P. Farler, the priest in charge of the mission station at Magila from 1875, was a man more than willing to take advantage of this: believing that God had directed him to mission work, and given to calling the Bondei "my people", he pursued an active and interventionist role in local politics. The UMCA had been strengthened by an infusion of new funds and personnel, and Farler used these resources to establish himself as a political power.30 The Kilindi ex-governor's view of the mission as a potential ally was one which many petty local headmen shared; the patronage of the mission was anxiously sought by those who appreciated the protection which it offered. Yet this appreciation was still not unambiguous. The mission could also be seen as a threat, a rival patron, which could entice away the dependants of these petty headmen. 3) This ambiguity was rooted in a central and unresolved conflict in the idea of mission espoused by the UMCA On the one hand, the missionaries at Magila thought in terms of nations. Implicitly calling on Old Testament models, they saw Africa as

27. Erhardt, "Account of My Journey to Usambara", 10, 11 October 1853. A Tswana chief treated the LMS with similar caution: Comaroff and Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, vol. I, p. 201. 28. UMCA Report for Parochial Use (Blue Book), for 1868,1869,1871-72,1873. 29. UMCA Annual Report. 1875 (London, 1876), p. 5. 30. For Farler, see Willis, "Makings of a Tribe", pp. 199-202. Catholic missionaries at Mhonda, to the south of Bonde, were similarly interventionist in their approach: Giblin, "Famine, Authority and the Impact of Foreign Capital", pp. 182-84. 31. See J. Glassman, "The Bondsman's New Clothes: The Contradictory Consciousness of Slave Resistance on the Swahili Coast", Journal of African History, 32 (1991), pp. 277-312, at p. 304.

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peopled by myriad distinct tribes or nations, each of which could be brought to Christ as a nation. As Farler put it, "It is in the power of every true and earnest Christian clergyman to be the founder of national churches and the converter of whole nations to the faith of Christ".32 This vision, that by God's grace whole peoples would flock to the church as soon as the word of God was heard, may have been the inspiration for the kind of public preaching, in languages largely unintelligible to the audience, which occurred at Magila and at other missions. 33 On the other hand, like other English mission societies of the time, members of the UMCA were profoundly convinced that many of the basic institutions of African societies were inimical to Christianity: there was some doubt, indeed, as to whether Africans could ever offer moral leadership. Missionaries of this time generally believed that the authority of African rulers, and the structure of African homesteads, were thoroughly pagan in basis. The logical corollary of this was that Africans could only be brought to Christ through a radical change in their lifestyles and the renunciation of existing forms of authority.34 This sceptical view of the ability of Africans to come to Christ within their own communities led the UMCA to concentrate much of its energy on the education of children, who lived as boarders at the mission station, removed from the influence of their families. Since Alington's hesitant start at Magila, children had been the focus of missionary attention, and the constant attempts of the mission to obtain children must have seemed both familiar and suspicious to a local populace well used to institutions

32. 1. P. Farler, The Work of Christ in Central Africa: A Letter to the Reverend H. P. Liddon (London, 1878), pp. 8-9; see also the speech of Bishop Steere in Oxford in 1875, in A. E. M. Anderson-Moreshead, The History of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa, vol. I (London, 1955; first published 1897), p. 72. 33. Comaroff and Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, vol. I, p. 231; Beidelman, Colonial Evangelism, p. 100. In 1881, after six years of preaching, Farler admitted that he knew no Bondei: UMCA, box AI IV A, Farler to Mission, 3 June 1881. 34. T. 0. Ranger, "Missionary Adaptations of African Religious Institutions: The Masasi Case", in T. 0. Ranger and I. N. Kimambo (eds), The Historical Study of African Religion (London, 1972), pp. 221-51; Farler was always anxious to be friends with the powerful but seems equally to have felt that the basis of the power of the local headmen was profoundly pagan: UMCA, box A I VI A, Farler to Steere, Low Sunday 1877. Strayer comments on the decline of "conversionist" thinking, and the rise of pessimism about African abilities, in later nineteenthcentury mission thinking: Strayer, Making of Mission Communities in East Africa, p. 9.

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of child-pawning and slavery.35 The mission, like other patrons in Bonde, came to concentrate on the acquisition of clients and followers to build its own community; while the idea of converting other communities en masse was gradually forgotten.

Bought for Christ In the year following Farler's arrival the mission at Magila would seem to have obtained few followers. Farler devoted much of his time to befriending one faction of the Kilindi, possibly in the hope of a mass conversion; but this did not come. A few children were given as gifts by the local Kilindi ex-governor and the Kilindi faction in eastern Usambaa, who were anxious to secure the friendship of the mission, and to enlist Farler's sympathies against the opposing faction; rather like the Yao chiefs around Masasi, some hundreds of miles to the south, who similarly gave children to the UMCA to establish friendship.36 As far as can be told from the scanty records, there was no great rush by other people to seek instruction or to give their children over for schooling. The people around Magila were interested in securing the protection of the mission but, like others elsewhere in Africa, they were reluctant to surrender their dependants to gain this protection.3? The mission began to expand more rapidly after the establishment of a sub-station at the village of Umba in 1876. Umba had been the village of an important Kilindi governor, who had distinguished himself by constant slave-raiding against the Digo (and who was killed in such a raid about 1850)?8 It had thus attained some size. When the Kilindi were driven out, a headman called Semnkai took control of Umba, and the wives and children of several Kilindi who were killed in the revolt either took refuge with or were seized by Semnkai. Semnkai was anxious to secure mission friendship, and he either gave or sold (it is not clear which) a number of these Kilindi children to the mission to be instructed; in a way very similar to that in which prominent Kikuyu men were to demonstrate their friendship to the CMS mission in central Kenya by sending to school not their own children, but those of their

35. Hemed I' Ajjemy, Habari za Wakilindi, p.155; UMCA Annual Report, 1870 (London, 1871), pp. 10-11; UMCA, box A I IV A, Wallis to Steere, IS October 1881. 36. UMCA, box Al VI A, Farler to Steere, 10 October 1876, Low Sunday 1877. For Masasi, see Ranger, "Missionary Adaptations", p. 227. 37. Comaroft' and Comaroft', Of Revelation and Revolution, vol. 1, pp. 231-39. 38. Erhardt, "Account of My Journey to Usambara", 10 August 1853; BIEA, interviews B37a, BllOa.

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dependants. 39 The Kilindi orphans of Umba were in a very different position from those children who had been given temporarily by living Kilindi rulers. Having no living fathers nor any other paternal kin, the children given by Semnkai were particularly vulnerable and could thus be easily given away permanently. That they could make claims on only one community, that of their immediate patron, was the essence of their vulnerability: other children could appeal for protection to their maternal and paternal kin and these kin might object to the sale, pawning or permanent surrender of the children on the grounds that they too had a claim on them. There were no such competing claims on these fatherless dependants of the Umba headman, and so they became followers of the mission. Having made this start, the UMCA missionaries became increasingly proficient at using local idioms of dependence to secure a following from the most marginal members of Bondei society. Their consequent success in building a following contrasts sharply with the experience of the CMS station in Ukaguru, in the hinterland of Dar es Salaam, which attracted followers painfully slowly. Like the CMS station established near Mombasa in 1846, the Ukaguru station was reluctant to involve itself in local institutions of pawning and clientage, and as a result gained few converts.40 In a number of cases the Bonde missionaries bought children for Christ, giving money to the parents of children, on condition that the children then should stay as boarders at the mission for a certain number of years. 41 More common, however, were arrangements which grew out of existing pawning arrangements. The mission paid the debts of parents who had been forced to pawn their children, on condition that

39. BIEA, interviews B56b, B37b. For Kikuyu, see Strayer, Making of Mission Communities in East Africa, p. 59; regrettably the social position and subsequent history of these children is not discussed. 40. For Ukaguru, see Beidelman, Colonial Evangelism, p. 57. For Mombasa, see 1. Willis, "Mombasa and the Mijikenda to c. 1930" (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1989), p. 63. The missionary there, Krapf, had at one time bought several slaves outright as the basis for a future mission community, but he abandoned this plan when the British consul in Zanzibar insisted that it was illegal: Strayer, Making of Mission Communities in East Africa, p. 11. The lack of success which the Protestant Paris Mission had in Lewanika's kingdom may similarly be a result of the missionaries' refusal to become involved in institutions of patronage: Prins, Hidden Hippopotamus, pp. 198, 227-30. The Catholics at Mhonda, south of Bonde, were more willing to exploit local institutions: Giblin, "Famine, Authority and the Impact of Foreign Capital", pp. 184-89. 41. Magila mission log-book, I September 1889.

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the children then stayed with the mission. This was, with apparently unconscious irony, referred to as "redeeming" the children: "The mission are undertaking the redemption of Lukindo, now in the school. He was pledged to pay a debt of his father's, now dead. The terms of the agreement are to be that he should study three years at the mission',.42 The missionaries also redeemed adults who had been seized for debt, on condition that these adults should then provide a child to the mission.43 On occasion the mission also redeemed adults who had simply been kidnapped by slave raiders, and having done so demanded that they be given a child in return.44 In Bonde, personal names were indicators of the community to which they belonged: pawns who were given to new patrons would, if they were not soon redeemed, be given a name from the family of their new patron, signalling their membership of a new community.45 So the giving to these children of "Christian" names, often the names of local missionaries, marked their membership of a new community; and the names of the first missionaries to Bonde still echo down the generations of local Christians. After the fashion of local patrons again, the missionaries also took upon themselves the responsibility of supplying brides to their male dependants; many of them "Mbweni girls", as freed slave women from the mission school at Zanzibar were known.46 It is difficult to know just how many of the mission's children were obtained in this way. Only occasional references in letters and in the mission log-books (which do not cover the first years of the mission) suggest the importance of such transactions. The mission at Magila fostered the impression that, unlike the UMCA headquarters at Zanzibar or the CMS in Mombasa after 1875, their work was among free people, who came to Christ by choice. As the first official history of the mission put it, "the free native serves God of his own accord".47 The whole issue of the pawning or purchase of children was thus a delicate

42. TNA, Mkuzi mission log-book (microfilm), 3 November 1890. The Mkuzi baptismal record, in the Mkuzi mission log-book, records several cases. See also Mkuzi mission log-book, 6 June 1887; Magila mission log-book, 2 July 1889. 43. Mkuzi mission log-book, n.d. November, 17 December 1887. 44. Central Africa (August 1884). 4S. BIEA, interviews BSOa, BS7d, B79a. 46. UMCA, box AI VI A, Farler to Steere, 9 November 1881. 47. Anderson-Moreshead, History of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa, vol. 1, p. lSI. See also G. H. Wilson, The History of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa (London, 1936), p. 7S. The bishop's instructions to Goodyear, newly appointed archdeacon of Magila in 1889, suggest the delicacy of the whole question of redeeming: Magila mission log-book, 12 March 1889.

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one, and the published records of the mission, aimed at an English audience sensitive to the issue of slavery, generally avoided discussion of how the Magila schoolchildren were obtained. When the mission magazine did refer to a "gift" given to a parent in return for sending their child to Magila, a parenthesised note insisted that the gift was given "without intending to influence him, but only as a token of friendship".48 Mission publications focused their attention, meanwhile, on tales of derring-do by the British antislavery cruisers in the Indian Ocean which provided "liberated" children and adults for the UMCA on Zanzibar and the CMS at Mombasa. A Wider Community The UMCA (loud though the missionaries often were in their protestations of poverty) could dispose of much more wealth than could any of the petty local patrons, and so the Magila missionaries were able to build up a sizeable resident community, drawn from the most marginal in Bonde. Unable to compete with the power of patronage which the mission had through its wealth, local patrons instead sought accommodation with the mission. In such accommodations the Bondei notion of the plurality and negotiability of community played an important part: some seem to have believed that they could benefit in the short term by selling dependants to the mission, or allowing the mission to redeem them, and still in the long term retain a claim over those sold or redeemed. As among the Tswana, a local notion of cultural relativism encountered a mission idea of devotional absolutism, amid mutual misunderstanding.49 As the mission's reputation as a local patron grew, and as the missionaries became increasingly willing to involve themselves in transactions in persons, the mission attracted a second, less marginal, group of dependants. These were not all children, nor did most of them live within the confines of the mission itsel( Some did attend day-school at Magiia, or at one of the smaller mission stations under the control of Magila: principal among these being Umba, Mkuzi and Misozwe. All these followers attended church with at least some regularity, and it seems that regular 48. Central Africa (August, 1884). Comaroff and Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, vol. I, p. 37, notes the differing degrees of censorship which missions employed in writing letters internally, to family members, and for publication. The brief and unusual success of an eccentric, largely unsupervised and independently wealthy CMS missionary at Jilore, north of Mombasa (Strayer, Making of Mission Communities in East Africa, pp. 55-57), may have owed something to practices similar to those of the UMCA, which never came to light. 49. Comaroff and Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, vol. I, pp. 240-50.

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attendance at church had become, for the people of Bonde, a way of making a claim upon the church as a patron; a way of joining the church community, just as participation in fika marked membership of the communities of other patrons.50 The mission idea of the Bondei as a nation was skilfully manipulated by a number of local headmen and others, who revived the use of Bondei as an ethnonym, and, by calling themselves Bondei, established thereby the beginnings ofa claim to the friendship and support of the mission. 51 The mission effectively encouraged people to consider the church as another local community and source of patronage, by treating all those who attended church or school as their dependants. When any of these people were kidnapped, the mission would redeem them. 52 On certain days food was given to those who attended church and school. In time of famine the mission gave out some free food to its followers, and also lent them money, when they were threatened by famine or debt: "In the morning Sehiza and Sempondoni came to say that Wowed $5 for a powder horn who was pledged by a man to Shauri, passed on to Wand sold by him. To save him being sold advanced the money who he will pay off".53 While there was some missionary criticism of those Africans who considered attendance at church simply to be a way of marking themselves as "followers of the Mzungu", there is no doubt that mission practice encouraged this attitude. 54 Anxious to avoid any sort of public controversy over this sensitive issue, the mission did develop certain rules about transactions in persons. The essential purpose of these rules was to avoid conflict with the officials of the Zanzibar sultanate, whose general claim to authority over the area the UMCA never chose to dispute: for such conflict would have generated unwelcome publicity. So the mission decided that no person who was legally a slave in Zanzibar might be assisted by the mission, however long ago he had run away from his masters. Only the free, or the legally freed, could be redeemed or given refuge. 55 In the later 1880s the mission also became increasingly reluctant to redeem followers of the mission who were seized for debt. Missionaries

50. UMCA, box Al VIII, Dale to Travers, 26 December 1893. 51. Willis, "Makings of a Tribe", pp. 200-202. 52. UMCA, box Al VIII, Woodward to Child. 23 May 1889; Central Africa (May 1885); Magila mission log-book, n.d. September 1895. 53. Mkuzi mission log-book, n.d. December 1888. See also Magila mission logbook, 17 May 1884; Mkuzi mission log-book, 21 October 1885. 54. Central Africa (March, 1889); cf. Giblin, "Famine, Authority and the Impact of Foreign Capital", pp. 184-87. 55. Central Africa (August, 1884); Umba mission log-book, 6 March 1887.

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suspected, probably correctly, that some of their followers casually incurred debts, on the assumption that the mission would always redeem them. However, despite their reluctance, missionaries did continue in some cases to finance the redemption of indebted Christians. 56 The Hierarchies of the Mission The mission was not a homogeneous community for, as we have seen, not all the members of the mission were equally marginal in Bondei society, and not all came to the mission in the same way. The hierarchy which this created among these dependants was reflected in the hierarchy of the mission as an organisation; a hierarchy which developed over several years, but seems to have been well established by the late 1880s. In effect this inverted the Bondei definition of marginality; for those most completely dependent on the mission came to be those of highest status in this new hierarchy. At the bottom of the mission hierarchy were the "inquirers" - people not living within the mission, who had made no public demonstration of faith. Such people were offered instruction in day-schools, and at church services they were allowed to stand by the back door of the church. Those who attended with sufficient regularity would then become "hearers", permitted to sit at the back of the church during service, and offered separate instruction. People who had been hearers for some time, and had shown diligence in studies and attendance, would be expected to make a public avowal of their desire to follow Christ. They would then become catechumens, and each was given a small cross to wear as a sign of this status. They were permitted to be in church with the Christians. Though after 1884 they had to sit separately from the baptised they, unlike inquirers and hearers, could be present in church for the first part of Mass - the Litany and the first part of the celebration of the Eucharist - after which they went to wait outside the church, while those within took Communion. The catechumens were then given their own special instruction. 57 It seems that boys who were boarding at the mission were usually considered to be catechumens from the time they joined the mission. As well as crosses, the boarding boys had their particular status marked by their clothing. They were given white robes, or kanzus, and waistcoats. 58

56. Mkuzi mission log-book, 26 June, 26 October 1888. 57. Anderson-Moreshead, History of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa, vol. 1, p. 252; UMCA, box Al VIII, Dale to Travers, 26 December 1893; Magila mission log-book, 3 June 1884. 58. UMCA, box A I VI A, Farler to Steere, 7 October 1881.

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After some time as catechumens, they would be ready for baptism. A number were usually baptised at the same time, in the river which flows at the foot of the hill on which Magila mission stands. Once baptised, mission followers were permitted to be present during Communion. Confirmation usually followed very shortly after baptism, and the convert would then be a full Christian, able to take Communion at Mass. 59 The elite of the African hierarchy were the African clergy (deacons, subdeacons and readers) and the teachers employed by the mission. They were all lower in status than the European members of the mission, among whom there was, in turn (as in the CMS),60 tension between the clerical and lay workers. The African elite also had their status marked by their clothes; the clergy by their robes, and the teachers by mission coats, which Christians employed by the mission as messengers were also given.61 In the very early years the members of this elite were ex-slaves, educated at Zanzibar, but these were joined in the 1880s by some of the first local members of the mission: the boys of vulnerable status who had first been given or sold to the mission. As time went on, more local converts who had joined the mission through pawning or in other ways came to join this group of boys who boarded at the mission, but the elite was long dominated by the few first mission members, two of whom went on to be the first Africans from Bonde to be ordained as priests. There was an internal division within this boarding elite Those children who had been given to the mission in its early years because they were vulnerable and without kin lived solely as members of the mission community: they relied on the church for all their social relations as well as their subsistence. By contrast, many of those who came to board in the 1880s had maternal and paternal kin, and attempted to maintain their claims on communities other than the mission. The mission system of discipline emphasised the division between these two sections of the elite, which was to have a profound effect on the subsequent history of the mission and on local politics in the colonial period

Punishment and Exclusion Punishment was built into the stratification of the mission community; those who offended against the rules could be demoted, moved further down the hierarchy of favour. Catechumens could have their crosses

59. Magila mission log-book, 24 January, 8 February 1885. 60. UMCA, box Al VI A, Farler to Penny, 20 September 1886. For the CMS, see Strayer, Making of Mission Communities in East Africa, p. 6. 61. Central Africa (May, 1885).

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taken away and be made hearers again, the baptised could be ordered not to take Communion for a period, or teachers and minor clergy could be deprived of their jobs and mission salaries, as well as of the clothes which marked the status. As a final sanction, Christians could be excommunicated, with the full ritual drama of the dashing-down of candles and public condemnation. 62 Excommunications were not regularly used, however: they tended to come in brief bursts, when the European members of the mission suddenly became concerned about discipline in the community. Usually a series of warnings and instructions not to take Communion for a certain period would be the first resort.63 The aim of the European missionaries, when confronted with sin in the mission community, was always to secure confession and repentance, the essence of which was that it should be public.64 Once sinners had repented publicly, they were set a penance which was equally public: they might be ordered to stand with the inquirers at the door of the church for several months, or to kneel with the hearers at the back.65 The hierarchy of ritual space was used to punish, as well as to mark advancement. It has been argued that, in CMS stations, public confessions were a product of the style of Low-Church evangelism then current in England. 66 This is clearly not the case with the UMCA, a mission much more in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. In insisting that confession and penance be public, the mission was responding to local circumstance, and seeking to emphasise that these were absolute markers of commitment. It was this idea of absolute commitment which distinguished the mission idea of community from the Bondei idea of community, and which generated lasting conflicts within the mission community. Minor offences of theft among the mission employees and boarders were not punished by this sort of exclusion and demotion. The European missionaries, supreme in their power within the resident mission community, punished such material offences with fiogging. 67 Before the period of effective German rule began in 1888, the mission at Magila even had its own "police" to catch and punish these offenders. These

62. Mkuzi mission log-book, 24 January 1889; Magila mission log-book, 28 March 1886, 22 September 1889, 19 January, 27 December 1890, 4 June 1896. 63. Magila mission log-book, 6 July 1887. 64. Ibid., First Sunday after Trinity 1887,10 March, 14 June 1889. 65. Ibid., 28 April 1890. 66. Beidelman, Colonial Evangelism, pp. 105-109. 67. Magila mission log-book, 22 April 1887. Flogging and police were also features of the freed-slave establishment of the eMS at Freetown in around 1880: Strayer, Making of Mission Communities in East Africa, p. 16.

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police were also used to bring back boys who, having been sold or pawned to the mission, ran away.68 There was not, however, a major problem with runaways - few would be willing to offend the mission by harbouring them - and the missionaries at one stage announced that the parents of any runaways would have to refund all the money which the mission had spent on the children.69 Demotion within, or expulsion from, the mission hierarchy was used rather to punish sins, that is, offences against the missionary morality. These fell into two major categories; adultery, polygamy and incest; and participation in pagan rituals. The mission log-books supply plentiful, if terse, examples of each: "Kilongola removed from catechumenate for entering galo [the initiation ceremony],,;70 "Katua of Mkuzi was today deprived of his cross and put back from being a catechumen to the position of a hearer. He had in the first place committed adultery, and last week he married a second wife".71 Both sets of offences were, though the missionaries never acknowledged this, essentially to do with their followers' attempts to maintain their position within other communities. Christians took extra wives, or inherited the wives of dead brothers, or were inherited by the brother of their dead husbands, in obedience to Bondei ethics, which saw marriage transactions as essential to the building and maintenance of communities. They sent their children to take part in initiation rites, or joined their kin in fika, to maintain the potential place which they and their children had in communities other than that of the mission. The mission idea of community rejected such pluralism.72 In the eyes of the European missionaries, all of the followers of the church, whatever their position in the hierarchy, were expected to display the same degree of devotion to the rules of the community: and the most basic of these rules was the demand for ritual absolutism; Christians should only be Christians. The mission idea of community could mirror that of the Bondei in that both associated ritual and political communities; but the mission and the Bondei diverged sharply and irreconcilably on the number of communities of which individuals could claim membership. In this context the missionary use of the hierarchy to punish offenders

68. Magila mission log-book, 13 May, 24 June 1884. 69. Ibid., 27 November 1889. 70. Ibid., 27 December 1897. 71. Mkuzi mission log-book, 24 January 1889. For other examples of ritual offences, see Magila mission log-book, 10 March 1889, 19 January 1890, and Mkuzi mission log-book, 22 September 1889; for adultery and polygamy, Magila mission log-book, 28 March, 19 September 1886, 22 September 1889. 72. Cf. Strayer, Making of Mission Communities in East Africa, pp. 83-85.

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was essentially self-defeating. Those nearest to the top of the hierarchy were those to whom the mission gave its most complete support, paying wages, housing and clothing them, and supplying wives. Demoting people within this hierarchy, and thus decreasing the amount of patronage which the mission offered, increased the need of these people to call on other communities. If the mission was not to supply them with a bride, or to support them through a time of famine, they had to turn elsewhere. The mission system of punishment tended to push the sinner into further sin. It was not only the European missionaries who were fierce in their denunciation of sin among the mission community. The pick of the elite, the first African priest of the Bonde mission, Petro Limo, chaired a number of conferences of Bondei Christians, which pronounced stern punishments against those who participated in pagan rituals, and which played an important role in deciding which rituals were harmless and which were to be condemned.73 The attitude of Limo, and that of Samuel Sehoza, the second African ordained in Bonde, must be understood in terms of their own particular positions. Their dominance was not due simply to their early entry to the mission; those few who had joined at Magila in 1875-6 never achieved such prominence. Both Limo and Sehoza were among the first boys at Umba to enter the mission. Limo was the son of the Kilindi governor of Maduka (near Muheza), who had been killed in the Bondei rising. It is not clear why he was at Umba, but most likely he (and possibly his mother) were simply taken by Semnkai as servile dependants after the rising. Sehoza was the son of an Umba woman who had married elsewhere, but later left her husband and returned to Umba with her child?4 Both were without patrilineal kin, unlike the Kilindi of Magila whose immediate relatives had not been killed in the Bondei rising. Limo and Sehoza had been willingly given away by Semnkai. Not members of any community other than the mission, they devoted themselves to that one community; their singular loyalty was a mark of their lack of alternatives. Hugh Peter Kayamba, who later served the British administration in Tanganyika, was similarly the child of a dead Kilindi father; Hugh entered the mission at Umba and his position as a trusted member of the mission marked his lack of choice?5

73. "Minutes of conference", Magila mission log-book, January 1896. 74. For Limo, see Anderson-Moreshead, History of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa, vol. 1, p.167; BIEA, interview B56b; Hemed I'Ajjemy, Hahari za Wakilindi, p. 228; and for Sehoza, BIEA, interview B94a; Magila mission logbook, 15 March 1896. 75. BIEA, interview B56b; Magila mission log-book, 18 November 1888, 11 June 1889.

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This group, whose lowly status in Bondei society had been marked by their membership of just one community, found that in the mission their ascendancy was assured by just this lack of choice. By contrast, those of higher status who joined the mission, anxious to maintain their claims on several communities, found themselves subject to public humiliation. The resulting divide in the African Christian community was an enduring one: between those, of low status in Bondei society, who had become the judges of their fellows, and those of higher status who had become the judged. In the 1880s and 1890s several Bondei headmen and chiefs, who had become Christians but lived outside the mission, or who had more recently been given to the mission as pupils, were expelled from school, excommunicated, or forced to make public confessions of sin, all being accused of involvement in pagan ritual, polygamy or adultery. Semnkai of Umba, who had himself been baptised in 1884, was excommunicated in 1886 for performing initiation rites. Herbert Mtali, son of a local headman at Magila, was excommunicated not long after his baptism. The son of the headman of Mkuzi, baptised in 1886, was excommunicated ten years later for "impurity,,?6 A Divided Elite: Bondei Politics in the British Period By the time effective German colonial rule was established in Bonde, after 1889, the mission had already produced an educated local elite the members of which were to dominate local politics until Tanganyika became independent in 1961. Literate in Swahili, and often in English too, the elite of Bonde had unusual advantages in the colonial period by virtue of their early access to European education: both the German and the British administration were to draw on this body of potential teachers and minor civil servants, and people from Bonde formed a quite disproportionate section of the Tanganyikan educated elite.77 Their contrasting experiences within the mission had divided the elite of Bonde, however; and this division was to be of considerable importance in local politics from the 1920s until 1961, under British rule, when the central issue was that of "indirect rule" and the identification of a "traditional" authority. It is difficult to imagine an issue more likely to expose, and worsen, the division among the elite of Bonde; for indirect rule directly focused attention on the current and former status of members of this elite as members of the mission community and of the

76. UMCA, box Al VI A, Farler to Penny, 26 October 1885; Magila mission log-book, 13 August 1887. 77.1. Ililfe, A Modern History of Tanganyika (Cambridge, 1979), p. 341.

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communities of Bonde, and it allowed those who had maintained their position in other Bondei communities to make political claims to a status which the mission had denied them. While the mission had continued to attract converts after 1889, the rate of such conversions decreased with the availability of new sources of patronage. The establishment of German administration and of a number of plantations meant that the missionaries were no longer the wealthiest potential patrons in Bonde, and the missionaries lost influence as they repeatedly avoided challenging the authority of German administrators and planters, even when long-standing friends of the mission turned to them for help. Some of those on the lower rungs of the mission hierarchy turned to new patrons, and the Germans employed a number of former members of the mission as teachers and clerks,18 though the akidas who were the African mainstay of German local administration were in Bonde mostly Muslims, chosen for their local influence rather than their education. After the British had taken control of German East Africa during the First World War, a new ideology of local administration was introduced in what was now called Tanganyika. Building on British colonial practice elsewhere, the collection of taxes and the everyday administration of the African populace were to be taken out of the hands of the minor officials appointed by European district officials, and entrusted to "Native Authorities", which would wherever possible be based on pre-colonial structures of authority, whether these were chiefs or councils of elders. Where "traditional" authorities could not be identified, the local administration should be in the hands of people chosen, or at least accepted, by the people (which in practice usually meant the elder males)?9 Not altogether surprisingly the introduction of this system gave rise to much debate over, and not a little outright invention of, traditional forms of authority, as European district officials anxiously sought information on the nature of pre-colonial authority, and aspirant local leaders willingly provided it. Bonde had in the German period become a centre for the plantation production of sisal, administered from the growing

78. Willis, "Makings of a Tribe", p. 203; Central Africa (December 1890). The CMS in British East Africa lost many African staff to government employ, where wages were much higher: Strayer, Making of Mission Communities in East Africa, p. 19. 79. There is a considerable literature on indirect rule: see Iliffe, Modern History of Tanganyika, pp. 318-41; R. A. Austen, "The Official Mind of Indirect Rule: British Policy in Tanganyika, 1916-39", in P. Gifford and W. R. Louis (eds), Britain and Germany in Africa (proceedings of conference on "Imperial Rivalry and Colonial Rule", Yale University, spring 1965; New Haven, 1967). pp. 577-606.

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town of Muheza, and the European district administration determinedly resisted the introduction of indirect rule; since they thought that African local administrators who were not directly appointed by and answerable to district officials would lack the authority to control the large population of migrant labourers who worked on the sisal plantations of Bonde.8o So the district administration refused to introduce indirect rule in Bonde, justifying this on the grounds that there had not been any single authority in Bonde in the pre-colonial period, and the Bondei were unable to agree on who should be their chief. There was much truth to both these arguments, although the same could have been said of a number of other parts of Tanganyika in which "traditional" authorities were used as the basis for indirect rule. Instead the district administration appointed local administrators for Bonde, drawing these men from the elite of the mission community. The first jumbe mkuu, or chief, of Muheza in the period of indirect rule was the man who had been appointed as local administrator by the British after the First World War, whose continuation in office under the new dispensation was approved by a meeting of elders supervised by the District Officer. When he died, Hugh Kayamba was appointed as his successor by the District Officer, who announced that the local people were unable to agree on a candidate. Both Kayamba and his predecessor were the children of dead Ki1indi fathers, given to the mission in the 1870s or early l880s,81 and the missionaries had encouraged the district officials to appoint these loyal members of the African elite of the mission. The next jumbe mkuu, appointed in 1934, was the child of a slave of a Bondei headman. The child, Asharafu, had been given to the mission when his father died. 82 An educated and vocal group of Bondei campaigned against these appointments and for the installation of one of their own as chief: arguing that it was their families who had really held the power in precolonial Bonde, and that the government appointees were not really Bondei at all. This group was based around the sons of one Nkuya or Mhina, an Umba man and a contemporary and dependant and son-in-

80. 1. Willis, "The Administration of Bonde, 1920-60: A Study of the Implementation of Indirect Rule in Tanganyika", African Affairs, 92 (1993), pp. 53-67. 81. The family of the first, John Mwaimu, deny this, but are unable to give the name of John's father, who they say was a Kilindi, or to explain how he entered the mission: BIEA, interview Bll6a. See also BIEA, interviews B56b, B37b; Iliffe, Modern History of Tanganyika, pp. 333-34. 82. This account is given in BIEA, interview Bllf; interview BI20a suggests that Asharaf may (also?) have gone to a German school.

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law of Semnkai. 83 As Semnkai's own grandchildren, and the sons of a living father, these children were much less marginal than the children of the dead Kilindi whom Semnkai had given to the missionaries in the late 1870s. Nkuya had started giving his children to the mission, in return for gifts, in the 1880s, but three out of his five sons had been expelled from the mission, and in at least one case excommunicated, for repeated offences against mission morality.84 Two of the sons had served the British as civil servants, but both had lost their jobs for disciplinary offences. Disaffected by both the mission and the administration, both of which had denied them the respect and status which they felt was their due, Nkuya's children and their supporters retrospectively promoted Semnkai to the position of "paramount chief" of the Bondei and claimed that as the descendants of Semnkai, and as "pure" Bondei, their family were the rightful jumbe mkuus of Muheza. Interestingly Semnkai's descendants in the male line seem to have played no part in this agitation, for they had never risen far in the mission hierarchy. It was the potent combination of education and exclusion which inspired Nkuya's children in their campaign over indirect rule, and the issue of tribal identity and traditional status fitted perfectly with their particular grievance: for it was precisely their attempt to maintain their status in and links with communities in Bonde which had underlain their rejection by the mission. As one of their letters put it, "We [would] like to be ruled by a certain clever man of high family".85 The constant theme of their agitation was that the incumbent jumbe mkuus were of low status in pre-colonial Bonde. In turn, the son of Hugh Kayamba, who had risen to a position of influence in the Tanganyika Secretariat which was quite extraordinary for an African at this time, used the power which this gave him to ridicule the claims of Nkuya's children. 86 The claim of Nkuya's children was never accepted by the British, but it was the beginning of a lengthy and somewhat fitful agitation over the appointment of the jumbe mkuu of Muheza. This campaign, which was periodically fuelled by widespread Bondei resentment against migrant workers and colonial controls on palm wine, made much use of the idea of the Bondei as a dispossessed tribe. 87 When this campaign finally 83. BIEA, interviews B7d, B37b, B109a. 84. Magila mission log-book, 17 July 1896, 6 August 1899, 29 November 1916. 85. TNA, Secretariat 13051 (vol. iii), "The Bondeis" to Governor, 4 October 1934. See also the contents of TNA, Secretariat 26162, and TNA, 4/6/11 III. 86. There are minutes by Martin Kayamba attacking the Mhina family in TNA, Secretariat 13051 (vol. iii), Secretariat 26162, Secretariat 23140/1. 87. Willis, "Makings of a Tribe", discusses this in more detail.

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achieved success, with the election of a Bondei chief in 1959, Nkuya's sons were no longer the dominant figures, and the elected chief was from another, related, family; but the movement had remained one led by "old boys of the UMCA" who had fallen out with the mission establishment, usually because the mission had humiliated them or had failed to accord them the status they felt was theirs by right. 88 Conclusion

Behind the truism that the first converts of many missions were "the marginal" lies a more complex reality: that mission communities were constructed through the encounter between local idea of community (and exclusion from community) and the attitude of particular missions and missionaries to conversion. "Converts" were very often not brought to Christ of their own volition and while many were marginal, not all were marginal in the same way. Differences in status in local communities were bound up with the different ways in which people came to the mission, and came to be reflected in status within the hierarchy of the mission. In Bonde, the political consequences of this encounter between the pluralist Bondei idea of community and the absolutist mission idea of community - were far-reaching. Through this encounter was created a group of literate, educated Africans who in the colonial context saw themselves, and were seen, as an elite. Yet this elite was divided, and the resentment and frustration of those who felt that they had been denied proper recognition of their status was to fuel several decades of local political agitation framed in an idiom of tribal identity and traditional authority which was peculiarly suited to the nature of their grievance.

88. The quotation is from TNA, 4/6/11 III, District Officer in charge of Muheza to District Officer Tanga, 10 January 1955. The man chosen as chief, Mang'enya, was the son of an Anglican priest, but he felt that both he and his father had been treated badly by the mission and he refused to work for the mission as a teacher: E. A. M. Mang' enya, Discipline and Tears (Dar es Salaam, 1984), pp. 21-40, 207208. Of the three other leading figures in the movement, the father of one had been fired by the mission (Magila mission log-book, 4 December 1887); and another had fallen out with the mission by marrying a second, Muslim, wife (BIEA, interview BUf).

WHO IS TO BENEFIT FROM MISSIONARY EDUCATION? TRAVANCORE IN THE 1930s* Dick Kooiman

Introduction In the summer of 1991 the Indian state of Kerala proudly announced one of its most successful developmental achievements: its efforts in the field of education had resulted in a situation that was officially described as "total literacy". This achievement did not come about completely unexpectedly. Already, at the beginning of this century, the Princely States of Cochin and Travancore, which after Independence merged into the new Kerala state, were famous for their enlightened educational policies. Both states invested large sums in schoolbuildings and teachers' salaries and in turn headed the list of the most literate states and provinces of British India. In the 1930s especially, remarkable progress was made and a solid groundwork was laid on which, after Independence, "total literacy" could be attained. As is almost inevitable in Keralan public life, this achievement has become a subject of political strife. Opposition parties have dismissed the "total literacy" claim as a politically motivated hoax and pointed out that the many thousands of neo-literates who are now able to read and write their names cannot find suitable employment. Education has always been a bone of contention, and the history of Travancore, now largely coinciding with the southern part of Kerala, abounds with fierce disputes about education. Its high level of literacy, already more than 55 per cent in 1941, is often attributed to the progressive policies pursued by its erstwhile rulers or to the ancient mother-right tradition, which offered women comparatively favourable opportunities for intellectual development. There is also a strong conviction that the educational growth in Travancore was the result of the activities of numerous missionary societies. In this essay I will not discuss the question who should be honoured as the main agency responsible for the high level of literacy that has given Travancore and Kerala their exceptional place within (British) India. This exercise has been done before and I think it rather a futile endeavour. *Participation in the Workshop on Missionary Archives was made possible by a grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and the British Academy.

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Instead, I will deal with the missionary contribution as such, especially the educational work of the Protestant missions in the south of Travancore. The spectacular jump in literacy, from 30 per cent in 1931 to 55 per cent in 1941,1 may justify a strong emphasis on the period of the 1930s. Our main questions will be concerned with what missionary education aimed at, how it was received by the local people and what its effects were on Travancorean society. As part of that question I will also deal with the interaction between official policies, as documented in government records, and local developments as observed and reported by missionary agents. A case-study like this may give no explanation but at least offer some background to Kerala's present high level of educated unemployment. The main missionary archives are those of the London Missionary Society and those of the Church Missionary Society. Unfortunately, a cursory exploration of these files turns out to be quite disappointing. That disappointment is not caused by any complexity or obscurity in the structure of the collections. All the incoming letters and reports - and those are the most important for our purposes - are neatly arranged and kept in a sequence numbered for each year according to the missionary district concerned. However, most of these papers deal with the health of the missionaries' families, the division of work and responsibilities, and the problems of fundraising and churchbuilding. A study of the minutes and resolutions produced by a multitude of councils, boards and committees may produce interesting information on the history of the Christian mission, but it far from satisfies our need for information on developments in local society. Moreover, insofar as the missionaries did report on local society, many of them lacked the subtlety of mind and intellectual equipment necessary to give a reliable picture of their social environment. Their references to "dark heathenism with its ignorance and superstitions" strongly reflect the feeling of Western superiority inherent in the imperial situation. We have to bear in mind, however, that every historical source has its own particular bias and limitations. And, as far as missionary societies are concerned, we should realise that missionaries were hard pressed by demands for success: for a growing number of baptisms and a steadily increasing church-membership. Sometimes, missionaries themselves warned the authorities at home that their reports (with subscribers in

1. In these percentages, derived from the Census of India 1931 vol. XXVIII Travancore (Trivandrum, 1932), 2 Parts and Census of India 1941 vol. XXV Travancore (Trivandrum, 1942), 3 Parts, the population below five years of age is excluded.

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view) were giving rather too hopeful an impression of the state of affairs in their districts. But even their personal letters were often half-conscious defences, primarily meant to assure their missionary authorities that their money was well spent. Therefore, when using these files of correspondence, we have to read between the lines and often against the grain. In that way, I studied the active involvement of Christian converts and their missionaries in the commercial cultivation of coffee, on which the official records keep a deliberate silence, as well as the continual flow of converts to and from Christianity, especially during famines, which the missionary sources almost unwillingly disclose. 2 So the patient and careful scrutiny of the missionaries' correspondence often closely resembles seeking gold in a desert: heaps of sand must be washed to isolate a few glittering particles. And even information thus gained is much in need of corroboration from other sources, such as anthropological field studies or government records. In this respect, the study of education seems to be different. Right from the beginning education formed an important and legitimate part of the missionary endeavour. Therefore, the missionary archives abound with reports on schools, teachers and time-tables and create the impression that the preaching of the Gospel and the spread of literacy were almost synonymous. There can be no doubt that this strong emphasis on schooling has largely contributed to the opinion, stated not only in missionary quarters, that Christian missions have to be credited with the high rate of literacy in Travancore. However, like other fields, in the area of education we have to examine all these papers closely and critically in order to ascertain what missionary education was really like. The Travancore Educational System in the 1930s Travancore state had a widespread educational network. Because of the prevailing caste rigidity, the main problem focused not on the number of schools but their accessibility. In the nineteenth century the government preferred to support private schools open to all castes and creeds, rather than admit untouchables to its own schools, with all the concomitant social tensions. In the 1870s it had started the distribution of educational grants-in-aid to private agencies, and missionary societies working among the lower castes were quick to respond. In the 1890s the

2. Dick Kooiman Conversion and Social Equality in India: The London Missionary Society in South Travancore in the 19th century (New Delhi/ Amsterdam, 1989) p. 117, f.; Dick Kooiman, "Mass Movement, Famine and Epidemic: A Study in Interrelationship" , Modern Asian Studies 25, 2 (1991).

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grant-in-aid scheme was revised and grants were given to all private schools which imparted sound secular education and showed a prescribed minimum attendance. Apart from that, special grants were sanctioned to schools opened for untouchable castes, later officially designated as the depressed classes? In the 1920s the Government of Travancore claimed that it had opened all its schools to all communities. Nevertheless, an official inquiry in 1933 disclosed the existence of a large number of schools in which attendance was almost entirely confined to the depressed classes. It also found a considerable number of schools which were nominally open to the depressed classes, but had seldom, if ever, any depressed class pupils on their register. It also noted as a significant fact that four times as many depressed class pupils were reading in privately-managed schools as in government or departmental schools.4 In 1933 there were altogether 3,699 recognised educational institutions in the state. Of these, 1,077 were managed by the government and the remaining 2,622 were run by private agencies, such as churches and caste associations, 2,441 of which were receiving grants-in-aid. The heavy financial burden this involved can be seen from the distribution of state expenditure in these years: more than a fifth of state revenue was spent on education.5 The system of bUdgeting, however, was defective and large sums of money granted by the government to private institutions remained inadequately checked and supervised. The Travancore educational system was a three-tier structure and consisted of primary, middle and high schools. This pyramid-shaped structure found its base in 3,072 vernacular primary schools (1933), which offered a four year course and were meant for children from the age of five to ten. Actually, many of these schools did not have the number of classes that was officially required and their level of instruction remained restricted to the first or second class only. From the nineteenth century onwards, churches and missions administered a large number of these primary schools, the majority of them in receipt of government grants-in-aid. In 1926 the eMS, to give one example, had 285 vernacular primary schools and no less than 281 of them were receiving grants from the government.

3. Government of Travancore, Grant-in-Aid Notification 10 December 1894, in Crown Representative's Records (CRR) R/2 (Madras States Agency) (879/43). 4. Education Reforms Committee, Report of Travancore (Trivandrum, 1933), p.287. 5. In 1931 the percentage was even 23.6 per cent, see Travancore Administration Report 1930-31, pp. 16-17, 191 f.

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The same applied to the vernacular middle schools which had classes up to the seventh, but often no classes below the fifth standard. In 1933 they numbered 285 and a large number of them were privately managed. In 1933 the Roman Catholics managed 425 vernacular primary and middle schools, the LMS 315, the CMS 250, and the Mar Thoma Church 159, for both boys and girls. Finally, there were eight vernacular high schools with classes up to the ninth standard, some of them with preparatory classes in English. Three of them were privately managed.6 English education was becoming increasingly more popular. From 1913 to 1933 the number of English middle and high schools quadrupled, and the largest increase was in English middle schools for boys. In 1933 the total number of English middle schools for both boys and girls was 187, and the number of high schools 75. The majority were privately managed and did not stand in need of grants, as they were running at a profit. The general lack of supervision by the Educational Department gave rise to the suspicion that some private managements were not making any regular contribution towards their own education, or were even profiting out of the amount sanctioned by the government by way of grant-in-aid. Finally, at the top of the pyramid stood seven English colleges, from the Maharaja's College of Science and Arts in Trivandrum to the CMS College at Kottayam and the LMS College at Nagercoil, all of them affiliated to the Madras University. Five colleges were directly maintained by the government and four of them were in receipt of grants-in-aid. The number of schools was high and so was the number of pupils on the rolls? Educational Department statistics showed that 80 per cent of the children from five to ten years old were visiting a primary school. The Travancore Education Reforms Committee rejected these statistics and reported 52 per cent of the children as actually reading in the primary classes.8 Even then, literacy was high and increased from 10 per cent in 1891 to 55 per cent in 1941, four times the Indian average and on a par with a contemporary European state of comparable size like Portugal.9 This high literacy rate should not obscure the fact that education was

6. Education Reforms Committee, pp. 88, 153. 7. The number of pupils in all recognized educational institutions had risen from 159,831 in 1911 to 588,Q98 in 1931 and 764,544 in 1941, Census 1941 vol. 2, p. 217. 8. Education Reforms Committee, p.75. 9. In these percentages, derived from the censuses of 1931 and 1941, the population below five years of age is excluded. See also IL. Chiriyankandath, "Social Change and the Development of 'Modern' Politics in Travancore from the late Nineteenth Century to 1938" , (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, SOAS, 1985), p. 9.

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very unevenly spread among the population. In 1941 68 per cent of the men were literate as against 42 per cent of the women. Among the Brahmins more than half could read and write in the vernacular, as opposed to only a small proportion of Pulayas, a depressed Hindu class. The differences between religious communities were also striking: in 1941 65 per cent of the Christians were literate compared with 53 per cent of the Hindus and only 35 per cent of the Muslims. 1o Among those literate in English these differences were even more striking.

Educational Policies of the Protestant Missions The missionary effort in the field of education is not difficult to explain. Schools proved to be of invaluable service to all missionary activities. The general idea was that before people could acquire knowledge of the Christian truth, their mind had first to be cleared of all superstition and ignorance. Education recommended itself for reasons of prudence, and already in the nineteenth century Protestant missionaries concluded that "intelligence is the basis of our work".11 As mentioned above, the main Protestant missions in Travancore were the CMS and the LMS, which both had started their operations at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Whereas the Anglican CMS was working in the northern area between Quilon and Cochin, the (mostly) Congregationalist LMS had concentrated its efforts on the south, from Quilon to Kanyakumari, India's Land's End. Both missions drew numerous adherents from the depressed classes, but gained converts also from emerging middle groups like Syrians and Ezhavas in the north, and Nadars in the south. Virtually all the churches established by the LMS - on which from now on we will focus our attention - had the benefit of a so-called village school. As part of its Indianisation policy the mission had transferred responsibility for this primary education, including its finance, to the local congregations. These schools began and closed with singing and prayer, while Bible instruction took a prominent place on the time-table. The LMS missionary in Attingal reported, in 1932, that six of the thirteen primary schools under his charge had a majority of Hindu pupils and he proudly proclaimed that through these schools the Gospel was made known to the rising generation. His attitude was entirely in line with LMS policy to close educational institutions that could not be used for

10. Census 1941, vol. I, pp. 155, 159. ll. Eric Stokes The English Utilitarians and India (New Delhi, 1982), p. 32. The

quotation is from S. Mateer, LMS missionary, Annual Report from Trivandrum 1884, p. 22, Council for World Mission (CWM) Travancore Odds, Box 17.

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the spread of Christian knowledge.12 When, in the 1930s, the Ezhava caste threatened to leave the Hindu body in disgust, several missions tried to benefit from this caste's restlessness. Education was thought to be the main device and one LMS missionary expressed his firm conviction that without substantial educational assistance there was no hope for a mass movement towards Christianity among the Ezhavas.u Education was the key to conversion. The large number of missionary organisations and the concomitant rivalry further increased the urge to spread education. In the 1920s and 1930s LMS missionaries' reports, especially from Quilon and Trivandrum, abounded with complaints about Seventh Day Adventists and Pentecostals who "were doing a lot of harm to our work", Baptists and Plymouth Brethren, who were "making unwise appeals to the indisciplined emotional nature of our simple folk", and irresponsible Roman Catholics who bought away LMS converts by offers of financial help. In Attingal, the rivalry between LMS and the Salvation Army tended to crystallise into caste churches, when both were working among different groups of untouchables.14 As poor and illiterate people could easily be tempted away by offers of material aid, missionaries like those of the LMS only continued their drive for schooling with even more determination. This rivalry was not restricted to Christian agencies only. In the 1930s a Kerala Hindu Mission, popularly known as the "Congress Mission" , was working for the improvement of the social and economic conditions of the depressed classes. It also tried to reconvert Hindus that had associated with the Christian mission and in pursuance of that purpose it offered facilities for education free of charge. IS Missionaries reported processions of depressed class children led by caste Hindus who were not heading for a temple or sacred place, but for a library or public reading room. These processions were partly meant to reduce the need for Christian education.16 Education and Employment The rivalry for education can also be explained by the employment situation. There were only a few modern industrial establishments in

12. Burckhardt, Reports from Attingal 1932 and 1933, CWM Travancore Reports, Box II, mr. 3451, 3455. 13. LMS missionary Lefever, quoted in Travancore Mission Council Minutes, February 1936, CWM Travancore Reports, Box 12, mr. 3462. 14. Attingal, Decennial Report 1921-1930 and Report 1930, CWM Travancore Reports, Box II, mr. 3446, 3447. 15. Jacob, Report from Nagercoil 1936, CWM Travancore Reports, Box 12, mr. 3461. 16. Attingal, Annual Report, 1932, CWM Travancore Reports, Box II, mr. 3451.

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Travancore, producing yarn, mats, cloth and tiles, and there were plans for more. Yet most people working in industries (about twenty per cent of the labouring population) were processing the produce of coconut palms and plantations, thus remaining close to agriculture, which was the largest employer. The growth of commerce, particularly in the sectors of banking and plantation agriculture, was considerable but insufficient to accommodate a rapidly increasing labouring population. This situation was made even worse by the world-wide economic depression. Falling prices for raw materials caused the disbandment of a large part of the plantation labour force, and in consequence many people, both skilled and unskilled, working with industrial and commercial firms were also losing their jobs. The only ones not affected, or not in the same way affected by the depression, were those working on fixed money incomes, such as government servants. A vernacular school leaving certificate (after the seventh class) made pupils eligible for appointment to the subordinate ranks of the public service, while an English school leaving certificate made them eligible for university courses and the higher administrative positions. In 1931, 60 per cent of the educated worked for the government. 17 However, the benefits of official employment were far from equally shared by all communities. Nayars and other high castes were clearly overrepresented in the public administration. More than half of all public appointments were held by the Nayar caste alone, whereas the depressed classes were almost completely restricted to agricultural labour. Emerging castes like the Ezhavas and Nadars, and several sections of the Christian community such as the LMS and CMS Protestants, showed a more mixed occupational pattern, but were also under-represented in the administrative services. ls This under-representation served as a strong incentive to these groups to improve their educational standard in order to claim a larger share in government patronage. Unfortunately, the whole trend in the vernacular educational system was towards a purely literary type of education and not towards technical instruction or vocational training. The same trend could be observed in the English middle and high schools which offered a literary course, dominated by the requirements of the university entrance examination. 17. Economic Depression Enquiry Committee. Report of Travancore

(Trivandrum, 1931), pp.13-21; Chiriyankandath, "Social Change", p. 218. 18. Census figures used by P. Sivanandan, "Caste, Class and Economic Opportunity in Kerala: An Empirical Analysis", Economic and Political Weekly (Annual Number, 1979), p. 477; Travancore: The Present Political Problem, by the Executive Committee, the All-Travancore Joint Political Congress, submitted to His Higness the Maharaja of Travancore (Calicut, 1934), p. 20.

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There were only a few technical institutes in the state, but the high schools did not even prepare for any of the technical courses recognised at the intermediate stage by the Madras university. Therefore, the inevitable result of a run on the existing educational institutions was not only a spectacular rise in the rate of literacy but also an alarming increase in the level of educated unemployment. The limited channels of professional occupations became overcrowded, and there arose an acute bitterness over the difficulties of securing employment, especially in government services. Unemployment was highest amongst communities with the highest levels of education: Nayars, Brahmins and Syrian Christians. Yet, the distressing feature was that the less literate communities, some of them with the active assistance of missionary societies, were working very hard to obtain the necessary educational qualifications for entering government service and thereby only swelled the ranks of the educated unemployed. Yet, at the beginning of the 1930s, the number of high schools was still increasing, and so was the number of students. In 1931 a college principal expressed the hope that the economic depression would have some effect on college admissions, but to his regret the number of applications turned out to be double that of the previous year. The expenses involved did not curb the influx of students. 19 The missionary correspondence testifies to the same problem. Trowell, who was in charge of the LMS college at Nagercoil, wrote that there was much talk of stopping the senseless manufacture of graduates for whom no proper work existed. Yet parents still clamoured for admission even for students who had spent more than six years completing the last three years of high school. Therefore, he endorsed the government's policy of raising the standards of qualifications for admission to college education. At the same time, he observed that students in the 1930s were not so keen on their studies as those of twenty years ago: "There are enough students to fill the leading positions ten times over. For the vast majority there are only ordinary jobs ahead".2o A missionary society like the LMS also had few employment prospects of its own to offer. The annual grant from Britain had been reduced, while the economic depression had affected the sale of mission products such as lace and paddy, and with salaries falling in arrears, there was no scope for the employment of more agents or teachers. Earlier it had been difficult to find female teachers, but in the 1930s there were far

19. Economic Depression Enquiry Committee, p. 126. 20. Trowell, Reports from Nagercoil, 1935-37, CWM Travancore Reports, Box II and 12, mr. 3458, 3461, 3466.

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more girls qualified to teach than the mission was able to employ. Medical schools and training institutes for hospital nurses also had long waiting lists of applicants. 21 The fierce fight for employment opportunities even wrecked a proposed scheme of union with the Anglican churches in south India. The proposals for this union had been carefully studied and considered from the early 1920s, but were eventually rejected by the LMS churches. This rejection was couched in terms of doctrinal and organisational objection, but the main reason seems to have concerned chances of employment. A Government Order had recognised the LMS Protestants as a separate community entitled to a certain proportion of appointments to the administrative services. 22 If union were effected with the CMS Anglicans in northern Travancore, it was feared that the plums of office and appointment would be taken by the most advanced section of that church, which was Syrian. The decision was a purely Indian affair and the missionaries could only complain that their converts were becoming more and more communal in outlook, and that they were thinking in terms of political power rather than of Christian unity?3 Differential Response to Educational Opportunities The 1941 census report stated that the public in Travancore had come to realise the importance of education and actively cooperated with government, both in the spread of literacy and the development of higher education. 24 This comment confirms missionary intelligence to the effect that the people had an eager desire to place themselves under (Christian) instruction. Missionaries wrote that churches were demanding more schools and more classes in existing schools, and the LMS archives contain many optimistic progress reports which must have been intended to encourage the LMS Directors to allot more money for that lofty purpose. Yet, a careful reading of these reports reveals that the demand for schools and education was not as universal as suggested. In general it was not difficult to maintain a primary school of one or two classes,

21. Miss Blanchard, reporting from Neyoor, 1931 and 1936, CWM Travancore Reports, Box 11, mf. 3448, 3460. 22. Government Order No. 893 of25 June 1935, in The Travancore Government Gazette, 25 June 1935, p. 1243ff. 23. Account of Travancore Church Council meeting, Quilon, September 1935, and letter by Eastaff, Trivandrum, 10 July 1935, in CWM Travancore Correspondence Box 33; Sinclair, letter to Garstin, Agent to the Governor General, Martandam, 15 October 1936, in CRR R/2 (888/219). 24. Census 1941, vol. 1, p. 156.

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since village congregations regarded such schools as a matter of communal prestige. But to encourage the children to attend higher classes even when these were provided free of charge was an extraordinarily discouraging task. At some places one and two class-schools had remained the standard of missionary vernacular education since the early nineteenth century. "Needless to say", a missionary confided, "the value of such is exceedingly slight".25 Therefore, illiteracy was still widespread among many Christian congregations. Most of the existing primary schools had only one or two classes. A number of children had been given scholarships, but only a few passed examinations, and only in exceptional cases was English education successful. 26 An Indian agent in Quilon district wrote that the majority of his people were illiterate. The parents had no wish to educate their children and "with great difficulty we bring the children to school". Therefore, the Indian chairman of the district concluded, his district could not accept the praise given in the Census report to the fact that Christians had made marked progress in the matter of education. 27 In girls' schools regular attendance of pupils was also reported to be difficult to secure. Teachers often felt discouraged by the apparent lack of interest on the part of some of the children, and the indifference shown by many parents who regarded education as a necessary evil and kept their girls at home for all sorts of reasons, especially during the harvest, when most of the poor children went out with their little baskets to pick up the dropped ears of the rice.28 In keeping with these reports, LMS missionaries, especially when travelling between Quilon and Trivandrum, were struck by the poverty and backwardness of many village congregations. The majority of the converts in these northern LMS districts came from depressed classes such as the Pulayas and Pariahs. These former slave castes still belonged to the poorest and most despised communities of the state and were working as field labourers and coolies. Their situation showed a marked difference to that in the more southern districts, especially Neyoor and Nagercoil. There the great majority of converts came from the Nadar caste, with later additions from the 25. Decennial Report from Martandam/Neyoor, 1921-1930, CWM Travancore Reports, Box 11, mf 3446. 26. Burckhardt, Report from AttingallTrivandrum, 1934, CWM Travancore Reports, Box 11, mf 3457. 27. Rasalam, Report from Quilon, 1931 and 1932, CWM Travancore Reports, Box 11, mf 3451, 3453. 28. Report of Neyoor, Women's work, 1931, CWM Travancore Reports, Box 11, mf 3449.

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depressed classes. The introduction of private property in land and the increase in trade had led to the rise of a new middle class, and in the south Nadars were an important element of that class, just as the Ezhavas were, further to the north. It was these groups especially which responded to the new situation by claiming education, official employment and political power. Lefever, a missionary who in the mid-1930s had extensive discussions with leading Ezhavas, reported that the chief concern of these people was whether, if they became Christians, the LMS would give them a high school. 29 The Ezhavas wanted to improve their position in society, and for them education was the key to social progress. Whereas Nadars dominated the congregations in the south, Ezhavas were only a small minority in the northern LMS districts. Although the churches in Quilon, Mayyanad, Attingal and other large towns consisted mainly of Ezhava Christians and a few Syrians, the many village congregations were almost exclusively composed of the depressed classes. In spite of that, Ezhavas and a few Syrians occupied virtually all the leading positions in the church and served many village congregations as pastors and teachers. One missionary quite bluntly summarised the position by saying that 95 per cent of the Quilon Protestants belonged to the depressed classes, but were being bossed over by the other five per cent of Ezhava origin. 30 The exact number of Nadars in the southern congregations is not known. But all observers agree that Nadars formed a large majority among the local Christians. They were dominant in the larger towns and also in many village congregations. Their economic well-being enabled the churches in the south to contribute to a large extent to the maintenance of their own pastors. Several rich Nadars became deacons and proudly contributed to the building of new churches. In the northern districts there was no progress towards self-support except by the method of merely reducing expenditure in order to balance the budget. Missionaries from the north, probably also with LMS grants in view, emphasised that their districts were fifty years behind the southern ones. This regional differentiation was still more reinforced by a linguistic borderline, which divided the Malayalam-speaking districts of Quilon, Attingal and Trivandrum in the north, from the Tamil-speaking districts of Neyoor, Parassala and Nagercoil in the south. In 1936 representatives

29. Lefever, Report on the Ezhava movement, 14 February 1936, in CWM Travancore Correspondence, Box 33. 30. Legg, letter from Quilon, 1 May 1935, CWM Travancore Correspondence, Box 33.

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from the Malayalam-speaking districts submitted an appeal to church and mission authorities to split the Travancore Church Council into two separate Councils, one Malayalam and the other Tamil. In support of their plea they referred not only to wide differences in language and mentality, but also to the preponderance of southern interests in the existing Church Council which, in their view, had led to the enforcement of rules regarding self-support without proper consideration of the economic condition of the people in the northern districtS?1 This compound difference of economic condition, social status, region and language had resulted in a situation within the LMS area with, at one end of the scale, many educated members of the Christian community gathered in the larger towns with their schools and hospitals and, at the other, the persistence of an appalling degree of poverty and illiteracy in numerous villages especially north of Trivandrum. This fundamental imbalance was a constant menace to the stability and cohesion of the church organisation. The same imbalance was reflected in the differential response to educational opportunity. Most people living in towns and big villages were eager to have their children, male and female, educated, and the classes in the local primary, middle and high schools were generally full. But in small villages it remained difficult to convince the parents of the need of education, attendance was usually irregular and, as mentioned earlier, children were brought to school with great difficulty.32 However, it would be wrong to assume that all members of the depressed classes were satisfied with the existing state of affairs. In 1935 a large number of depressed-class Christians from Quilon district submitted a printed memorial exposing the many disabilities they had to endure within the Christian church. Only thirteen among them, two of them women, had acquired a vernacular school leaving certificate, the lowest examination in Malayalam, and only three from among them had received the chance to acquire an English School Leaving Certificate. They called this poor educational record "pathetic indeed", when compared with the strength of their community and educational standards in the state. The memorial further argued that there were agents in their community who were in a position to satisfy the conditions for ordination. 31. Appeal from Representatives of MaIayalam Districts to Travancore Church Council, Travancore Mission Council and LMS Home Board, undated (1936), in CWM Travancore Correspondence, Box 33. 32. Decennial Report from Martandam/Neyoor, 1921-30, CWM Travancore Reports, Box 11, mr. 3446; Miss Blanchard from Neyoor, 1936, CWM Travancore Reports, Box 12, mr. 3460.

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Nevertheless, the District had not conferred priesthood on any member of the depressed classes. Nor did any of them enjoy the privilege of representing their community in the District Council's sub-committee, which had unquestioned authority in all administrative matters. The memorialists did not blame the missionaries for this sad situation. On the contrary, one of their female SSLC's had got a job after two years only with the help of a European missionary. But they made it perfectly clear that they felt hindered by the intrigues and selfish intentions of the other communities. The positions of leadership were dominated by friends and family members of caste Christians who favoured each other with appointments and scholarships. The greater part of the scholarship money intended for the backward communities, they alleged, was spent for the benefit of others. Therefore, they urged that more educational opportunities and appointments be given to members of their community.33 Here again, education was seen as the key to progress. The Statham Report and Village Schools In 1932 the Government of Travancore appointed an Education Committee presided over by Mr Statham, the Director of Public Instruction. At the time the air was full of demands for political reform and the Committee's terms of reference were to enquire into the state's educational system and to advise the government as to reforms that might be introduced in that field. The Committee's report was published the following year and contained more than one hundred major recommendations, ranging from improvements in the administrative structure to special concessions to certain communities. As far as the literary bias in education was concerned, the Committee acknowledged the lack of modern industries in Travancore. But it rightly argued that local economic possibilities could not be fully explored and developed unless there was sufficient training in the application of scientific knowledge to productive purposes. 34 Therefore, it recommended the abolition of vernacular middle and high schools and their reorganization as vocational training centres. Not all recommendations were accepted or actually taken up for implementation. But some that were had important effects on missionary education. The Committee discovered that over one-half of all 33. Memorial from the Members of the Backward Community of the Qui/on LMS District to Revd A. H. Legg. Missionary LMS Qui/on. dated 25 August 1935, and signed by 459 church members, CWM Travancore Correspondence, Box 33.

34. Travancore Education Reforms Committee, p. 242

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primary schools (1,680) had only one or two classes and that the large majority of these incomplete schools (1,606) were under private management, especially that of the LMS and the CMS. It also found a considerable wastage in aided schools, which it partly attributed to the fact that many of the incomplete schools had no third or fourth class and usually only one teacher, who was usually the local catechist. When MacAlpine, the former Director of Public Instruction, inspected missionary education in Nagercoil, his comment was: "Whenever I look at a village school, I wonder anyone ever came out literate.,,35 For that reason, the Statham Committee thought it improper that public funds should pay over 90 per cent of the costs of catechists who were maintained by missions for religious purposes, but who made no significant contribution to the increase of literacy in the state. Local LMS missionaries who came to protest against this point of view were referred by Statham to a confidential report by their own missionary society in London. That report contained the warning that sooner or later the government would become alive to the fact that these incomplete single teacher elementary schools were of no value. 36 To improve matters in this field the Committee recommended that the primary stage was to be lengthened to five years and that only the standard primary school with five classes should remain entitled to official recognition and grants-in-aid. This could not but have a great impact on the education organised by the mission; and in view of the differences within the LMS area described above, we may expect this impact to have worked out quite differently in the northern and the southern districts. Most missionaries agreed that the incomplete primary schools were a "most wasteful form of expenditure". Yet, they regarded it also as "the best investment", since no work contributed so much to the spread of Christianity. Apart from that, the financial burden was light, since teachers in aided schools were usually paid by the government and managements were also in receipt of some fee income. 37 Therefore, the threat that the annual grant-in-aid might be gradually reduced, or even withheld in case of incomplete schools, greatly alarmed missionary circles. We will briefly review the situation in the LMS districts. 35. Quoted in Trowell, Report from Nagercoil, 1930, CWM Travancore Reports, Box II, mr. 3447. 36. Statham, letter from Madras, 24 October 1936, CRR R/2 (888/219). 37. Sinclair, Martandam 1Neyoor Report, 1932, CWM Travancore Reports, Box II, mf. 3453. Sinclair reported that for 1932 Government grants (Rs. 19,926) and fee income (Rs. 2,640) almost covered the total costs of education in Martandam (Rs. 25,956).

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The Differential Impact of Educational Reforms When the Statham Committee was appointed, Quilon district numbered forty primary schools, but only four of these were complete. Nine schools had only one class and were kept running for the sake of children from the most backward communities. Poverty prevented them from schooling beyond the first standard, but an Indian pastor hastened to emphasise that these children were receiving continued education at home, in the night schools, and even in Sunday schools until they were able to read the scriptures for themselves. 38 By 1935 the situation of schools in Quilon had become very serious. A fair number of small, incomplete schools had lost the grant and had closed and many others were due to follow. This process, prompted by the Statham report and also by financial stringency on the part of the government, could not but promise trouble for the remaining schools in these northern districts. The Education Inspector had intimated that nine incomplete schools in Kottarakara taluq would have their grant withdrawn, if the number of classes was not raised in the new year. The local missionary agreed that in some schools it would certainly be difficult to get children for higher classes. But in all cases, he wrote home: we cannot pay additional teachers, for no grants for new classes have been awarded by Government for some years. We cannot afford to put up the new buildings required or repairs demanded. I am quite aware that many of these schools are poor from an educational point of view. We cannot afford to improve them. But the rapid closing of our schools is having a most depressing effect upon our whole church in the north. In the case ofthe nine schools mentioned above, [we try] to raise money but people cannot do it. They may make a great effort here and there and fob off the Inspector a bit longer by some partial improvement. But in the end they will have to go. And as each school is closed comes a sense of defeat. 39 The European missionary might have preferred to close all schools with the exception of a few really good ones, but the Church Councils would not agree to it. They held on to each little school till the last, carrying it on even after its grant had been irrevocably lost, paying the teacher a mere pittance. But in the end, when it had to be closed, there was again that sense of defeat. In the Malayalam district of Attingal the situation was the same. The

38. Rasalam, Quilon Report, 1932, CWM Travancore Reports, Box 11, mr. 3451 39. Legg, letter 1 May, 1935, CWM Travancore Correspondence, Box 33.

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obligation to have five classes or at least a kind of feeder system to a complete school made many schools close their doors as, owing to poverty, classes higher than the second class could not be kept going. In 1935 grants were not being received for any schools except the one in Attingal town itself. In Trivandrum district nine schools were closed within two years of publication of Statham's report, and eighteen (six with one class and eleven with two classes) had had their grants withheld. The official explanation was that these schools were incomplete, did not forward children to near-by complete schools, or that they overlapped with other institutions in the neighbourhood. As long as there was a chance of regaining the grant, managements strained every nerve to keep these schools going. They did not want to close, but incurred financial risk by running classes without paying their teachers. In many cases managements were told that grants would be restored when higher classes were added. However, recognition of enlarged schools, if received at all, did not automatically imply grants-in-aid. No arrears were received for the long period that grants were withheld, whereas new grants were exceedingly unlikely. The heart of the dilemma was that without new grants it was virtually impossible to open higher classes. Therefore, many of these small schools had to close, such as the twenty-five year old, one-class Pariah school of the Aruvacode congregation. The teachers, often also from the depressed class, were dismissed or worked without pay.40 In the Tamil area south of Trivandrum the situation was less gloomy, as might be expected in view of the foregoing discussion. Earlier, we quoted a report from Neyoor saying that for a hundred years one and two class-schools had remained the standard of mission vernacular education in the villages. Yet, already in the 1920s and long before the appointment of the Education Reforms Committee, considerable improvements had been made, initiated by the local congregations themselves. In 1930 all permanent one-class schools had been abolished and the number of schools with only two classes had decreased by a third. After one or two schools had, with much difficulty, succeeded in adding higher classes, another important change took place. Every village wanted to get ahead of its neighbours and started adding classes. The local churches even established five vernacular schools up to class seven, all within a radius of six or seven miles. When the new decade started in 1930, vernacular education in Neyoor LMS district was almost self-supporting and, to quote the report, was "full of vitality and

40. Rasalam, Trivandrum Report, 1934, CWM Travancore Reports, Box 11, mr. 3457; Legg, letter 5 June 1935, CWM Travancore Correspondence, Box 33.

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promise for the future".41 Finally, in the extreme south, Nagercoil had its own special problems. The district numbered several recognised middle schools, but had much trouble in keeping the number of pupils in the sixth and seventh class at the prescribed level. Statham's recommendation to introduce a vocational bias and therefore to extend the course with an eighth class only added to the trouble. 42 As far as primary education was concerned, one-class schools seem to have disappeared from Nagercoil before the 1930s and LMS sources only refer to two-class schools. Having gone over the records of a number of two class-schools, the local missionary was struck with the poor quality of the schools in depressed class villages compared with those in Nadar ones. No wonder most of the worst schools, concerning which there was no hope, were in these Pariah villages. As it was very easy for the District Council with its strong Nadar majority to incur suspicion of being biased against the depressed classes, the same missionary reported that the Council often chose to carryon a few schools among that community, in spite of their poor quality. Even apart from these considerations, Church Councils were extremely reluctant to close a school. They were convinced that a village church which lost its school would never see its grant restored. District ministers were unable to change that attitude. If they enforced the closure of a school, the local church would stop contributing to the district fund and use the money for its school. Only the loss of government grants and recognition could make a council decide to close a school, like the two-class school in Nagercoil district which numbered less than five Christians among its sixty pupils. The LMS Christians did not want to unite with other Christians in joint representations to the government. They were afraid that any association with the Syrians, who at that time were pursuing a vigorous opposition policy, might incur the displeasure of the royal palace in Trivandrum. Instead, they thought it to be more profitable to coax and flatter local subordinate officers than to appeal against them to higher authorities. As an Indian district minister put it: "In times of trouble people worship the village deities, not Vishnu and Shiva".43 It remains difficult to say how far this worship of petty officials bore fruit. There are indications that the officials' firm attitude over the ineffi-

41. Decennial Report, Martandam/Neyoor, 1921-1930, CWM Travancore Reports, Box II, mr. 3446. 42. Nagercoil Report, 1933, CWM Travancore Reports, Box II, mf. 3454. 43. Trowell, Nagercoil Report, 1935, CWM Travancore Reports, Box 12, mr. 3458-3459.

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ciency of two-class schools was softened and in 1936 Nagercoil regained grants for nearly one-half of its two-class schools.44 Nevertheless, the main gain seems to have been in transformation rather than in accommodation. The local congregations made it a principle to develop all two-class schools into complete primary schools. That meant the raising of large sums for new buildings and additional teachers. Although villagers were reported to have come forward with handsome contributions, these were insufficient to meet all the costs, and new grants for additional classes could not be expected. In spite of this, the LMS missionary in Nagercoil concluded in 1937 that Statham had rendered them a valuable service in getting a number of inefficient two-class schools closed. That year had seen the end of the twoclass schools which were deprived of government grants and in point of organisation the educational programme had become much stronger. Only three of twenty two-class schools had regained their grant and those that still survived were run by unpaid volunteers.45 This fundamental readjustment of LMS village education, however painful it was, especially in the northern districts, perfectly suited the policy of the LMS Directors. When local missionaries applied to London for salvation from their financial predicament, the Directors were not moved by their urgent appeals that village education was the best investment for future progress. Instead, they wrote a stern letter reminding the missionaries that the large number of schools was not the result of any thought-out plan but of the desire of each local congregation to have a school of its own, however poor: The Government Department has acted rightly in not permitting this state of things to continue, and this is the time for the Church and Mission to set its educational house in order. The Directors will not attempt to prop up a faulty educational system which they themselves repeatedly asked to be renovated. 46

Summary and Conclusions The LMS Directors did not praise, but actually blamed, the missionaries for the large number of schools in Travancore and the inefficiency of the existing educational system. When we look at the past, that charge does

44. Trowell, Nagercoil Report, 1936, CWM Travancore Reports, Box 12, mr. 3461.

45. Jacob, District Chairman of Nagercoil, letter, 8 July 1937, CWM Travancore Correspondence, Box 33; Trowell, Nagercoil Report, 1937, Reports Box 12, mr. 3466. 46. Letter from Board of Directors, London, 11 September 1935, in CWM Travancore Correspondence, Box 33.

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not seem to be entirely unfounded. Wherever the mission had opened new posts, schools were established almost at the same time. Rivalry with other missionary bodies in the field, both Christian and Hindu, had served as another incentive for the building of schools, especially among the depressed class communities. The result had been the proliferation of a large number of small village schools which often contained no more than one or two classes. However, local congregations did not appreciate these schools for their educational effectiveness only. They also held on to them as a source of communal pride. Even when their maintenance was becoming too heavy a burden, especially after the gradual withdrawal of government grants, Church Councils and managements proved extremely reluctant to close any school. Missionaries should certainly share the blame for that state of affairs. Right from the beginning there had been a close association between church and school, the same building often serving both for worship and teaching. Yet, we should also remember that as part of the Indianization of the mission so strongly urged by the LMS Directors, the management of the village schools had passed from the hands of the mission to the local churches and their Councils. Missionaries might have come to prefer the closure of most of these inefficient schools - and a few expressed themselves very clearly to that effect - but in the end they had to comply with the policy of the local churches. And in most cases, that meant the continuation of schools, even when means were lacking and the number of Christian pupils was dwindling into insignificance. Studying this educational history, the LMS archives confront us with paradoxical information. On the one hand, there are many reports testifying to the apathy of children and parents with regard to education, and to continuing illiteracy in the villages. On the other hand, there are frequent reports of a consistent demand for more schools and a fierce rivalry for the available places in institutes of higher learning. This paradox can be explained by referring to a differential response to educational opportunity which was largely determined by communal background and economic position. For many poor and depressed class Christians a school meant status, even when it did not turn out any literates. Therefore, they may have clung to their schools, but could not afford education to interfere too much in their daily struggle for life. The case was different for emerging communities like the Nadars in the south. They crowded the educational institutions and asked for more. Even the economic depression did not deter these parents from paying the high entrance fees required for high school or college. The reforms proposed by the Statham Committee dealt a serious blow to many of the small village schools. Between 1935 and 1937 recognition of 758 primary schools was withdrawn, and as a result most of

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them closedY What the LMS Directors had been unable to achieve was enforced in a short time by government reforms which turned off the financial tap. For the northern congregations, with their majorities of depressed class Christians, the government measures implied the painful process of school closures, since there were no resources available to keep them open. In the south, where Nadars dominated the churches, the adding of new classes had already been started by the people themselves. Here also, the poor clung to their one or two-class schools, which sooner or later had to fall victim to the reform. However, in the larger villages there were church members ready to contribute to school extension. Communal prestige even led one congregation after another to add more classes to existing schools. In the end, the southern districts came out with a more consolidated educational structure, thanks both to Statham and to their own efforts. It might be suggested that the missionaries were prejudiced in favour of the more well-to-do communities. Betting on the strong could have been an attractive policy for missionaries eager to show results in the field of education. However, I have found no evidence in the sources for this period that such a deliberate preference existed. What comes out most clearly is the appalling poverty which prevented depressed class children from visiting school more regularly and which made their parents unable to contribute anything in the way of educational selfsupport. They remained dependent on government grants for the poor education that was available, and lost even that when grants were withheld. There are indications that some depressed-class Christians did want more and better education, as can be seen from an occasional memorial. Yet, they did not blame the missionaries for their educational backwardness, but attributed their disadvantages to the selfish disposition of caste Christians who kept all educational benefits for themselves. Finally, the lack of industrial employment and the effects of the economic depression seriously restricted the possibilities of employment. The higher educational institutions had a strong literary bias and prepared most of their students for the Madras University examination and government service. The result was a fierce rivalry for entrance into the administrative services and, because of their modest growth, an alarming increase in the educated unemployment. Many parents who paid all they had for the education of their children made the unpleasant discovery that literary attainment did not guarantee a career. That situation reminds us very strongly of the present situation in Kerala, where a state of total literacy is not accompanied by anything near a state of full employment. 47. Census 1941, vol. 1, p. 154.

A 'PECULIAR AND EXCEPTIONAL MEASURE' : THE CALL FOR WOMEN MEDICAL MISSIONARIES FOR INDIA IN THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY Rosemary Fitzgerald

A Plea for the Zenana' Methinks I hear a voice from India's land: 'Sweet sister, come and raise us by thy hand; Fast bound we lie within Zenana walls In satan's chains, while sin our souls enthralls; We may not come to you; our laws deny To us that liberty which you enjoy.'

Dear Indian sister, we obey thy call; And Faith rejoicing see the idols fall. This is the work to women He assigned To feed the hungry, aid the sick and blind; Hear Him, whose life was spent in doing good, Of woman say, 'She hath done what she could.'2 In 1905 Dr Martyn Clarke, a pioneer of the Church Missionary Society's (CMS) medical mission at Amritsar, wrote: "I can never forget what a Hindoo gentleman said to me when we discussed Indian missionary work. He said the two things that tell are women's work because it wins the home, and medical work because it wins the heart.,,3

I. In the following references, the notation 'RHL' refers to material in the archives of the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (USPG) held at Rhodes House Library, Oxford; and 'CBD' refers to material consulted at the Cambridge Brotherhood Library, Delhi. The zenana refers to the quarters of the Indian home reserved for secluded women. Such women were known as zenana women, or purdah-nishin (nashin): "those behind the curtain". 2. A. M., "A Plea for the Zenana" in J. Lowe (ed.), W. Elmslie, Medical Missions: As lIIustrated by some Letters and Notices of the late Dr Elmslie (Edinburgh, 1874), p. 177. 3. H. Martyn Clarke, "Ludhiana: The North India Medical School", Medical Missions at Home and Abroad vol. 10, 19 (1905), p. 295.

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Dr Clarke was writing at a time when those engaged in women's work and in medical work in the mission field could feel confident that their reputation for exerting the most "telling" effects on homes and hearts in heathen lands had placed them in the vanguard of the Protestant campaign to evangelise the world. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many in the Protestant foreign mission movement had come to view these two branches of mission service as the most distinguished forms of missionary endeavour. This had not always been the case. During the first half of the nineteenth century the medical missionary was regarded as a "rare curiosity" in the mission field;4 the possibility of the woman missionary was barely thought of. Medical work and women's work began their rise to prominence as missionary methods only in the latter half of the century. In an end-of-century review of mission developments Dr James Maxwell of the Medical Missionary Association commented: Two changes which bear especially on the progress of missions are worth noting. (1) Sixty years ago, when Queen Victoria ascended the throne, no church in this country had yet sent forth a medical missionary ... How great is the change since then! Today there are, including the brethren and sisters from America, not fewer than 500 medical missionaries on the field ... (2) sixty years ago, the wives of missionaries were the only ladies who were supposed to have a missionary function. The suggestion that unmarried women were needed in their thousands for the evangelisation of the women of the East would have been received with amazement. But today you might as well turn the stars in their courses, as try to convince the Church of Christ that unmarried women are not fulfilling a plain and manifest duty in taking up the work of evangel ising the women of India and China. 5 The emergence of the woman medical missionary was amongst the most striking of all developments in this new era of mission methods. She was said to possess unrivalled powers as a mission agent, for, by amalgamating the two most "telling" missionary methods, she promised to "gain an entrance for the Gospel into the hearts and homes of her patients".6 As a medical woman, it was said that she 4. "The LMS Centenary and Medical Missions" , Medical Missions at Home and Abroad (December, 1895), p. 42. 5. Editorial Notes, Medical Missions at Home and Abroad (July, 1897), p. 323. 6. J. Lowe, Medical Missions: Their Place and Power (Edinburgh, 1886), p.183.

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possessed the power to enter "the most inaccessible stronghold of heathenism, the home"? Armed with the science and religion of the West, she could engage in battIe with both disease and sin to accomplish that most prized of missionary objectives: the rescue and redemption of the "suffering women of the East". By the turn of the century the woman medical missionary was widely celebrated as an icon of the mission movement; her office was seen to represent "the noblest, and perhaps the divinest, calling for Christian womanhood".8 Focusing on the British mission movement, this essay will consider the development of mission understanding of the place and power of, firstly, women's mission work and, secondly, women's medical mission work, in the context of India during the second half of the nineteenth century. The final section of this paper will refer to the development of the Delhi Female Medical Mission to illustrate the changing character of women's medical mission work in the later decades of the century. The advent of the "lady missionary" During the first half of the nineteenth century the main missionary societies largely took the view that ordained men were the candidates best fitted to engage in "spiritual warfare" with the forces of paganism and heathenism in the non-Christian world. In this era of mission organisation and activity, paramount importance was placed on the direct work of conversion and the salvation of souls from sin; the missionary task was seen as less concerned with responding to the sorrows of this life than with ensuring spiritual readiness for the next. Missionary recruits who lacked "the stamp of ordination" were regarded as having only a peripheral role to play in this agenda, and were generally relegated to the lowly rank of the clerical missionary's lay assistant. 9 The marginal status of the lay missionary was clearly pointed out to a CMS medical recruit, Dr John Illott, as he set out for West Africa in 1842. His society's parting instructions included the

7. Ecumenical Missionary Conference, New York, 1900, Report of the Ecumenical Conference on Foreign Missions, April 21- May 1, 1900,2 vols., (London, 1900), vol. 2, p. 192 (hereafter cited as New York, Ecumenical Conference 1900.) 8. I. Barnes, Between Life and Death: The Story of C.E.Z.M.S. Medical Missions in India, China and Ceylon (London, 1901), p. 12. 9. The Secretaries to the Conference (eds), Conference on Missions held in 1860 at Liverpool (London, 1860), p. 161 (hereafter cited as Liverpool, Conference 1860.)

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reminder "You are not, strictly speaking, a missionary".10 Moreover, in this period missionary service was deemed to be a realm of male endeavour; the candidacy of women for missionary office was scarcely countenanced by the main mission boards.1I Denial of ordination excluded women from belonging to the foremost missionary ranks; only occasionally were they appointed as assistant missionaries. Marriage and motherhood were believed to be woman's natural calling; the home was woman's realm. As Miss Rainy of the Free Church of Scotland later ruefully recalled, women's role in mission in the earlier half of the nineteenth century was "generally supposed to consist in collecting and contributing money, reading Missionary records, and remembering the work in prayer".12 However, women were present in the mission fields of this period. As members of the male missionary's family, wives, daughters, sisters, even occasionally mothers and aunts, were generally welcomed by mission boards.13 Female kin were valued for their ability to bring domestic comfort to men enduring the trials of life and labour in the mission field. Furthermore, as creators of the "sanctified home life" of the Christian family, such women were also seen to provide "great object lessons" to indigenous society.14 Although their cardinal duty was seen as the care of home and family, many of these women did much more than act as passive exemplars of Christian domestic life. They were rarely allowed to claim the missionary title, yet, "silently and unassumingly", they pioneered mission work among the women and children of other lands. 15 10. 1. Wilkinson, Healing Hands: The History of the Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society 1841-1991 (Edinburgh, 1991), (typescript), p. 6; P. L. Garlick, Man's Searchfor Health: A Study in the Inter-relation of Religion and Medicine (London, 1952), pp. 232-33. For examples of the societies' cool responses to medical candidates for mission service in the first half of the nineteenth century, see C. P. Williams "Healing and Evangelism: The Place of Medicine in Later Victorian Protestant Missionary Thinking", in W. 1. Shiels (ed.), The Church and Healing: Studies in Church History vol. 19 (Oxford, 1982), pp. 271-72. II. In the early part of the century a few exceptional organizations were established to send out women to the mission field; for example, the Society for Promoting Female Education in the East (founded 1834) and the Indian Female Normal School Society (founded 1852). 12. 1. Johnston (ed.), Report of the Centenary Conference on the Protestant Missions of the World, June 9-19, 1888,2 vols. (London, 1888), vol. 2, p. 143. 13. On British women in the early mission field, see J. Murray, "Anglican and Protestant Missionary Societies in Great Britain: Their Use of Women from the Late Eighteenth Century to the Late Nineteenth Century", Exchange vol. 21, I (1991), pp. 1-28. 14. Johnston, Report, 1888, vol. I, p. 410. 15. J. Richter, A History of Missions in India (Edinburgh, 1908), p. 332.

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From the 1860s onwards the climate of opinion in the mission establishment began to show signs of change, with the emergence of a guarded but growing recognition that the missionary calling might belong as much to women as to men. Objections to the "lady missionary" receded and were replaced by increasingly insistent pleas for "virtuous" and "valiant" women - "the more highly cultivated and refined the better" to dedicate their lives to missionary service overseas. 16 This appeal for women missionaries did not imply any radical disturbance in the ordering of male and female spheres of action and responsibility. The call was addressed to the unmarried woman with "no specific home ties",17 who could proceed to the mission field without fear of accusation that she was "forsaking her true place" within her own domestic circle.ls The unmarried woman was invited to join the missionary army, not to "get outside of the womanly sphere that God intended her to live in", but to extend her natural aptitude for domesticity and maternalism to the stewardship of a larger circle: the households of the non-Christian world. 19 Thus women were sent forth on missionary service, not to trespass on the male missionary's domain, but to carry out their own distinctive female mission: "the Mission of women to women in the homes, to the mothers, and to the little children.,,2o Women missionaries were commissioned to develop the realm of work, known as "women's work for women", that had already been inaugurated by the female relatives of male missionaries. 21 These earlier "scouting parties" had revealed to the male authorities of church and mission that women's work might be of central rather than merely incidental value to the progress of the mission cause. 22 The most compelling evidence of the advantages that might be gained from women's work

16. Authorised Report of the Missionary Conference held in London June 22, 1875 (London, 1875), pp. 124-25 (hereafter cited as London, Report 1875). 17. Secretaries to the Conference (eds.), Proceedings of the General Conference on Foreign Missions held in Mildmay Park, London, in October 1878 (London, 1879), p. 295 (hereafter cited as Mildmay, Proceedings, 1878.) 18. London, Report 1875, p. 120. 19. Johnston, Report 1888, vol. I, p.413. 20. Johnston, Report 1888, vol. 2, p. 157. 21. In the later part of the century, the pioneer mission women, particularly missionary wives, received wide applause for having acted as "the heroic advance guard" that first revealed the place and power of women's work in the foreign mission field. See, for example, Johnston, Report 1888, vol. I, p. 399, p. 410; vol. 2, p. 143-44. 22. H. Barrett Montgomery, Western Women in Eastern Lands: An Outline Study of Fifty Years of Woman's Work in Foreign Missions (New York, 1910),p.

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came from those fields where strong traditions of female seclusion placed a multitude of women, and homes, beyond male missionary reach. Over the second half of the century mission boards were gradually convinced that women's mission work could no longer be "trifled with,,;23 its significance was such that it could no longer rest solely in the hands of women, particularly wives, whose primary province was the mission station home. The development of women's mission work demanded the deployment of 'regiments' of unmarried women missionaries dedicated to this work alone. 24 It was conceded that "to plant the 'home' of God's Church in foreign lands ... women are needed. Therefore, women must gO.,,25 As women entered missionary service they were to find their "first and most important field in the zenanas of India".26

Storming the zenana The vast peninsular of India - "the great battle-field of idolatry" - was widely believed to be not only the noblest but also the most difficult missionary field?7 By mid-century, fifty years of zealous "seed-sowing" had reaped only a meagre harvest of converts, gathered mainly from the lowest ranks of Indian society?8 Only missions to the "simpler villagers of the South" had gained converts in any significant number. 29 At the Punjab missionary conference of 1862-3, the inability of male missionaries to preach their message to the women of India was declared a "calamity" that might explain "the comparatively small and

23. The description of women's work as being "very much trifled with" comes from the Revd 1. Fordyce (one time missionary in Calcutta and an early champion of women's mission work for women), chiding the missions for their tardiness in employing female agents; Liverpool, Conference 1860, p. 274. 24. See C. P. Williams, .. The Missing Link' : The Recruitment of Women Missionaries in Some English Evangelical Missionary Societies in the Nineteenth Century", in F. Bowie et al. (eds), Women and Missions: Past and Present (Oxford, 1993), pp. 43-69. 25. London, Report 1875, p.120. 26. Richter, Missions in India, p. 339. 27. Anon, "Results of Missionary Labour in India", Calcutta Review vol. 16,31 (1851), p. 239. 28. By 1850 more than one quarter of the world-wide Protestant mission force was stationed in India. On the distribution of the missionary force in India and Ceylon at this date, see Calcutta Review, 1851, pp. 241-43; J. Mullens, Revised Statistics of Missions in India and Ceylon (London, 1853); Richter, Missions in India. p. 201. 29. For an appraisal of missionary results in India at mid-century see New York, Ecumenical Conference 1900. vol. I, p. 405.

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slow progress that Christianity has thus made in India.,,3o The conventions of purdah placed an insurmountable barrier between male missionaries and those sections of the female population whose lives were passed within the seclusion of the zenana, the women's quarters deep in the interior of the Indian home. 31 Although zenana women might, on occasion, leave their apartments in a heavily curtained carriage or under an all-concealing veil, the etiquette of purdah prohibited their appearance in any of the public places where male missionaries preached. Missionaries were well aware that female seclusion was not practised by all castes, classes, communities and regions of Indian society and that, even where the 'law of purdah' reigned, its customs might be applied with varying degrees of stringency.32 Although it was by no means observed on a universal scale, the purdah system became a predominant concern of missionaries in India, not least because female seclusion was most strictly maintained in those social categories and geographic regions that had remained most resistant to the proclamation of Christianity. Strict adherence to purdah customs was found among the higher ranks of the Hindu population and, more extensively, among the Muslim community. Geographically, the practice of female seclusion was far stronger and more widespread in the northern, north-western and eastern parts of the country where Mughul influence had taken deepest root. 33 The missions gradually concluded that their failure to win converts from these classes and localities was in large part due to the inaccessibility of women. Mission rhetoric depicted Indian women as "depressed, debased, neglected" figures whose subjugation to the "tyranny of custom" was seen as complete in the "prison-like confinement" of the zenana; yet, 30. Committee of Compilation, Report of the Punjab Missionary Conference held at Lahore, December-January, 1862-63 (Lodhiana, 1863), pp. 58-59 (hereafter cited as Punjab, Conference 1862-63.) 31. On the architecture of the Indian home and its expression of the division between public/private, male/female space, see M. Borthwick, The Changing Role of Women in Bengal, 1849-1905 (Princeton, 1984), pp. 7-10. 32. Although this was pointed out by some missionaries with long experience of the Indian field, Western observers (secular and missionary) gave extravagant publicity to the seclusion of Indian women. The Western imagination constructed an image of zenana women evoking such an intense mixture of fascination and repugnance that less "exotic" versions of Indian women's lives were effectively erased from Western view. The Revd J. Payne of Calcutta provides an example of those missionaries who were at pains to point out variations in the conditions of Indian women's lives; Mildmay, Proceedings 1878, pp. 315-16. 33. J. Nair, "Uncovering the Zenana: Visions of Indian Womanhood in Englishwomen's Writings, 1813-1940", Journal of Women's History 2,1 (1990), P. n.

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paradoxically, India's women were also represented as an "almighty power" in the land, the final guardians of the inner core of traditional culture. 34 Within the Indian home, where the customs of daily life were entwined with sacred creed, women, especially mothers, were said to be the "pillars" of the religious traditions that the missions sought to displace?5 It was assumed to be a universal truth that women set the moral compass of both the home and the nation. In mission minds, when that compass lacked Christian guidance and was misdirected, as in the heathen world, then the cherished maxim that "mothers make the nation" led to fearful consequences. Missionaries increasingly became convinced that while they touched only the surface of Indian life, the results of their work would never be permanent and profound; to win India finally to Christianity, India's women must be won?6 During the 1850s the female kin of male missionaries had begun to approach the "citadel of the zenana" with offers to visit secluded women for "conversation" and home instruction in reading, writing and sewing skills.37 Mission accounts of the first advances on the zenana speak of the opposition encountered and the need to proceed "quietly, almost secretly '" The workers required the wisdom of the serpent united with the harmlessness of the dove".38 The prospect of penetrating the zenana generated considerable excitement as reports circulated in the mission world telling of the "unsealing" of zenana doors by means of female agency.39 This mood was captured in the comment of Dr Watson who,

34. Report of the General Missionary Conference held at Allahabad 1872-73 (London, 1873), p. 163 (Hereafter cited as Allahabad, Conference 1872-73); M. Weitbrecht, The Women of India and Christian Work in the Zenana (London, 1875), p. 110. 35. Alexander Duff reported to mission audiences in Britain, "it is not the Shasters [sic] and the Brahmins that are the great teachers of superstition and idolatry in India; the great pillars of idolatry are the mothers." (original emphasis) quoted in H. W. Ellis, Toils and Triumphs; or, Missionary Work in the World's Dark Places (London, 1862), p. 277. 36. H. Barrett Montgomery, Western Women in Eastern Lands, p. 86; E. Stock, Beginnings in India (London, 1917), p. 85. 37. Indian women assistants were also employed in this work. Mrs Priscilla Winter was frank in her estimation of the value of the "native Christian lady" who accompanied her in zenana visitation in Delhi in the early 1860s. Mrs. Winter stated: "I always felt one of her visits was worth fifty of mine"; Allahabad, Conference 1872-73, p. 156. 38. H. W. Ellis, Our Eastern Sisters and Their Missionary Helpers (London, n.d.), p.61. 39. The Revd Joseph Mullens reported that "great interest has been excited everywhere among Indian missionaries by the stories of these [zenana] schools" , Punjab,ConferenceI862-63, p. 66.

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after a tour of Indian missions, reported to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1868 that the opening of the zenana by women's work was like "the discovery of a new continent".4o After more than half a century of male missionary efforts directed towards Indian men, "it was time to enter upon work for women in all earnestness".41 The "storming of the zenana" had begun.42 The zenana campaign was reinforced during the 1860s and 70s by the first contingents of accredited female missionaries. They arrived in India, "wield[ing] the crochet-needle and the school book", to establish a more extensive system of home visitation and educational instruction for secluded women. 43 Although the scheme met with a certain degree of success, most notably in Calcutta, Madras and Bombay, the army of zenana teachers found that doors were not always opened at their approach. 44 The lady missionaries were often forced to report that the zenanas, especially those belonging to households of rank and influence, remained "fast shut".45 As Dr William Elmslie, the celebrated pioneer of medical mission work in Kashmir, explained in a paper published in 1873, millions of secluded women remained unapproachable through the agency of zenana teaching because "except in the Presidency and other large cities, Western education is only appreciated by a comparatively small fraction of the people ... only a small number see its advantages".46 Elmslie's plea for the adoption of a more penetrating form of missionary approach voiced a growing opinion in the Indian mission field. He wrote: Is there no other key but that of Education with which to open the door 40. E. G. K. Hewat, Vision and Achievement 1796-1956: A History of the Foreign Missions of the Churches United in the Church of Scotland (London, 1960), p. 75. 41. Richter, Missions in India, p. 344. 42.1. S. Dennis, Foreign Missions After a Century (Edinburgh, 1894), p. 325. 43. W 1. Elmslie, "On Female Medical Missions for India", The Indian Female Evangelist vol. I, 5 (January, 1873), p. 205 (hereafter cited as Elmslie, "On Female Medical Missions"), reprinted as ch. 12 in Elmslie, Medical Missions, pp. 177-205. 44. Resistance to Western education was reported to be most evident among the

Muslim population of whom it was said: " ... they, as a body, have sulkily stood aloof from English education", Elmslie, "On Female Medical Missions", p. 195. 45. Even if admittance to the zenana was achieved, it by no means guaranteed that the lady missionary would gain intimate acquaintance with her pupils or any influence in their lives. The testimony of pioneer zenana missionaries, often suppressed at the time for fear that if widely circulated it would prove a "deathblow to the work" , conveys the marked reserve shown by many zenana women towards Christian "visitors". For examples, see Ellis, Eastern Sisters, pp. 62-68. 46. Elmslie, "On Female Medical Missions" , p. 197.

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to the inner social life of India? We think there certainly is one other such key, and that key is female medical missions. '" the practice of medicine by a lady, for the purpose, not merely of curing, but of Christianising her patients .... This is a key that may be said to fit every lock ... She would find an entrance where the educational missionary would find the door c1osed. 47 This challenging appeal for the development of female medical missions was mounted on the grounds that in India "the state of things is peculiar and exceptional, and not only warrants, but demands, peculiar and exceptional measures".48 These "peculiar" circumstances referred to Indian sentiments on female modesty that were said to be so intense that many Indian women would rather die than be seen by a medical man.49 A government report of 1872 estimated that "of the 100,000,000 of women in India at least two-thirds are, by their social customs, debarred alike from receiving the visits of a medical man at their own houses and from attending for gratuitous advice at the public hospitals and dispensaries".5o The strictly secluded women belonging to the Muslim community and the higher Hindu castes were seen as most bereft of opportunities to receive the benefits of Western medicine, but 47. Ibid., pp. 198-99. Similar sentiments were expressed at the Allahabad conference of 1872-3 when another noted medical mission figure, Dr Colin Valentine, gave unequivocal support to the "new movement" for female medical missions; Allahabad, Conference 1872-3, p. 197. 48. Letter from the Revd Dr Duff to the Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society, written shortly after the publication of Elmslie's paper in 1873 quoted in Elmslie, Medical Missions, p.18!. 49. Interestingly, versions of these same sentiments were expressed by British women in the public debate on women's medical education in the West. One female correspondent wrote to The Scotsman, 27 May 1872, of women's "agonies of shame and outraged modesty ... when submitting to male medical and surgical treatment", quoted in C. Blake, The Charge of the Parasols: Women's Entry to the Medical Profession (London, 1990), p. 147. 50. Report of E. G. Balfour, Inspector-General of Hospitals, Indian Medical Department to the Hon. W Hudleston, Chief Secretary to Government, 16 April 1872, quoted in Medical Missions at Home and Abroad, 3 (January, 1879), p. 47. In fact there was sparse provision of medical services for the bulk of the Indian population; where facilities existed they were little utilized, even by Indian men. In 1882 it was reported that "the proportion of the native population of Bengal seeking treatment at hospitals and dispensaries is 2.29 per cent, of which probably about three-fourths are men and boys". Other regions of India reported similar utilization rates at government medical facilities, all of which were staffed by men. Female use of government medical services was largely confined to women from the lowest classes and castes; F. E. Hoggan, "Medical Women for India", The Contemporary Review 42 (1882), p. 270.

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even the "average" woman was said to shun male medical assistance in cases of childbirth and "diseases peculiar to women".51 Missionaries, in common with others from the West, discounted indigenous healing traditions. The West's rising confidence in the superiority of its own diagnostic and therapeutic skills encouraged missionaries to dismiss indigenous medicine as "a few useless and disgusting nostrums ... [and as] to the diseases peculiar to women and children, they simply know nothing of them".52 It was claimed that female modesty was such that "native doctors", the male vaids and hakims, were seldom consulted in cases of "women's diseases".53 The treatment of the female popUlation at times of sickness was believed to rest largely in the hands of traditional midwives - the dais. Indian midwifery evoked the strongest expression of Western condemnation of indigenous medical care; Elmslie's portrayal of the dai was typical- "grossly ignorant ... very meddlesome ... and of most immoral character".54 The "barbarous" practices of traditional midwifery were believed to result in countless deaths and untold misery. To those who called for female medical missions it appeared evident that a vast number of Indian women stood in the direst need of Western medical attention and that only members of the female sex could hope to fulfil that need. Thus the provision of medical relief for Indian women demanded a "peculiar and exceptional measure" : medical education for Western women. 55

51. M. I. Balfour and R. Young, The Work of Medical Women in India (London, 1929), p. 35. If European and Indian male practitioners of Western medicine were called to treat zenana women, it was usually at a distance, either through intermediaries or by examination of the patient's tongue or pulse through a slit in the purdah screen. 52. Elmslie, "On Female Medical Missions". p. 196. Not all missionaries were so categorical. Some tempered their denouncement of local healing practices by conceding that in simple cases indigenous remedies were effective and might even produce "wonderful cures"; however, such effects were usually seen as deriving, not from the existence of a venerable indigenous medical culture, but from the fact that "natives, almost everywhere, have a kind of intuitive knowledge of the medicinal virtue of indigenous plants ... they are, as a rule, utterly ignorant of the diseases they presume to treat ..." Lowe, Medical Missions, p. 41. 53. Elmslie, "On Female Medical Missions", p. 198. Female treatment by male practitioners of indigenous medicine may have been more extensive than was reported by Westerners. Indigenous diagnostic techniques placed prime importance on pulse-taking - a relatively unintrusive procedure for Indian patients, but one judged wholly inadequate by the standards of Western medicine. 54. Elmslie, "On Female Medical Missions" , p. 198. 55. The Revd Dr Duff quoted in Elmslie, Medical Missions, p. 182.

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The movement for women's medical education was more advanced in the United States than in Britain, and American missionary societies led the way in commissioning qualified women doctors to serve in the foreign field. 56 An American, Dr Clara Swain, was the first woman medical missionary sent to the non-Christian world. Under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church she arrived in India at the close of 1869, to take up work at Bareilly the following year. Those pressing the mission boards in Britain to follow this example voiced their appeals at a time when the battle for British women's access to medical education was at its bitter height. 57 The advocates of female medical missions were conscious that the British "friends of missions" might be repelled by the suggestion that women should receive medical training, albeit for service in the mission field. In an era when the demand for medical education for women was associated in many minds with "dangerous innovators propounding revolutionary doctrines",58 the suggestion that women might be professionally equipped to carry out medical mission work was a daring proposition. Doubts on the propriety of the scheme were at least partially assuaged by the assurance that "the idea of mixed classes could not for one single moment be entertained".59 British "friends" of female medical missions were forced to recommend that, until there was a women's medical school in Britain, "the necessary professional instruction ought to be given to the lady missionary in a private manner".60 The female medical missionary was commissioned to enter the world of Indian women to apply the "double cure", the healing of both bodily and spiritual "disease" that was the special mark of mission medicine.61 It was claimed that "if a female missionary knew something of medical science and practice, readily would she find access [to Indian women], and, while applying her medical skill to the healing of the body, would have precious opportunities of applying the balm of spiritual healing to

56. As Bonner observes: "the history of the medical education of women before 1870 is largely an American story. Only one European woman, Elizabeth Garrett, ... was actually practising medicine with official approval at the end of the 1860s" ; T. N. Bonner, To The Ends of the Earth: Women's Search for Education in Medicine (London, 1992), p. 29. 57. Blake, Charge of the Parasols, pp. 114-55. 58. A. B. Le Geyt, "A Few Words on Medicine as a Profession for Woman", The Englishwoman's Review 10 (April, 1872), p. 94. 59. Allahabad, Conference 1872-3, p. 201; see also Elmslie, "On Female Medical Missions" ,p. 200; Elmslie, Medical Missions, p. 181. 60. Elmslie, "On Female Medical Missions" , p. 200. 61. W. J. Wanless, The Medical Mission; Its Place, Power, and Appeal (Philadelphia, 1900), ch. 4.

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the worst diseases of the soul" (emphasis in original).62 This confident prediction was based on a growing appreciation of the benefits derived from employing medical work as a vehicle for missionary advance. From the 1860s onwards medicine came to be regarded as a supremely effective agency for "breaking down the native wall of pride and prejudice, contempt and hatred" that commonly confronted "ordinary" missionary methods. 63 The medical missionary was said to be welcomed by the high-born and the low because medicine promised to answer a universal need, "the unquenchable desire of suffering humanity for release from pain or deliverance from the fear of death".64 The call for female medical missions was premised on the belief that the woman medical missionary, doubly armed with the humanitarian power of medicine and the religious conviction of Christianity, would "soften bigotry, remove prejudice, dispel ignorance, drive away gloom, and unobtrusively, but nevertheless effectually, deposit the all-pervading leaven of the Gospel in numberless hearts and homes".65

From medicine chest to mission hospital: the development of the Delhi Female Medical Mission In 1867, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) established the first female medical mission in India, the Delhi Female Medical Mission. Its history illustrates, in microcosm, the difficulties confronting the pioneers of women's medical mission work, and their struggle to establish the more systematic, formalised modes of medical practice that, by the opening of the twentieth century, had come to characterise this branch of missionary work. The SPG had founded its mission station at Delhi in 1854;66 three years later, the headquarters in London received the message: "The

62. Duff, quoted in Elmslie, Medical Missions, pp. 181-82. 63. Authorised Report of the Second Missionary Conference held at Oxford, May 2-3, 1877 (Oxford, 1877), p. 42. 64. Ibid. 65. Elmslie, "On Female Medical Missions", p. 199; see also M. Weitbrecht, The Women of India and Christian Work in the Zenana (London, 1875), pp. 129-34. 66. The founder of the SPG Delhi mission is generally reported to have been an East India Company chaplain, the Revd M. 1. Jennings, who was posted to Delhi in 1852. In 1854 the SPG responded to his pleas for missionary support, by sending out the Revd 1. S. Jackson and the Revd A. R. Hubbard to establish the Delhi mission: F. 1. Western, The Early History of the Cambridge Mission to Delhi (Private publication, 1950), pp. 14 -18, pp. 25-26, CBD. For discussion of the

absence of missionary activity in Delhi prior to the arrival of the SPG, see Avril Powell, Muslims and Missionaries in Pre-Mutiny India (London, 1993), pp. 202206.

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Delhi Mission has been completely swept away".67 The mission had been engulfed by the events of the Indian Mutiny and Rebellion. The re-founding of the Delhi Mission was led by the Revd R. R. Winter, head of the mission from 1863 until his death in 1891. 68 Delhi, a "stronghold of Mahomedan and Hindu feeling", was long regarded by missionaries as a "singularly conservative and unprogressive part of India".69 The Revd Winter wrote: We have had to try to solve the hard problem of how we can get down to the minds of these people, so as to make them care for us and our message, so that our work may not be a mere scratching of the surface, but such that it will reach down to the heart of human feeling. In such cases we should try to come before the people, not merely as preachers of a new religion, a capacity in which they care for us little enough, but that, as friends and sympathisers we should aim at benefiting the whole man. (original emphases)7o Medical mission work appeared supremely fitted to this agenda. It was an avenue of opportunity quickly grasped by Winter's wife, Priscilla?! When she arrived at Delhi in 1863,72 Priscilla Winter found "there was not a single zenana open for instruction in the Punjab and North West Provinces".73 It is said that as she began to establish a system of zenana

67. The Story of the Delhi Mission (London, 1908), p. 11. 68. Classified Digest of the Records of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts 1701-1892 (London, 1893), pp. 615-16 (hereafter cited as SPG Digest). 69. The SPG and Cambridge Mission to Delhi and the South Punjab (1894), RHL CMD 88; "Report on the Delhi Zenana Mission" The Grain of Mustard Seed (Women's Work In Foreign Parts), 113 (May 1890), RHL CMD 88. 70. R. R. Winter, "Organisation of the Delhi Mission", The Mission Field

(September, 1877), p. 383. 71. Although the mission work at Delhi was re-kindled under Winter's headship, the mission's revival owed at least as much to the prodigious efforts of his wife. As one of his fellow missionaries wrote at the time of Winter's death: "the names [of Revd and Mrs. Winter] must always be coupled when speaking of the Delhi Mission", SPG Digest, p.627. 72. Priscilla Winter (nee Sandys) had come to India in 1858, at the age of sixteen, to join her father, Timothy Sandys, a veteran CMS missionary of Mirzapore in Calcutta. When she arrived in Delhi she already had four years experience of working, as a missionary's daughter, in the zenanas of Calcutta. 73. Allahabad, Conference, 1872-73, p. 154. Although the Delhi mission had established a school for orphan Christian girls and another for low-caste girls, Mrs Winter believed that missions should not confine themselves to "levelling up" the lower orders when "with a little trouble, we may have access to higher grades in society" , Ibid., p. 155.

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visitation and teaching,74 "her quick eye at once detected the importance of medical work amongst the women of Delhi,,?5 Although Mrs Winter had "no further medical qualification than a medicine chest", she began to hold an open-air dispensary at the women's bathing ghats on the western bank of the holy river Jumna. 76 Here she distributed simple remedies amongst "all classes of Hindu women, the majority of whom, if they go nowhere else, yet go down every morning to the river both to make their vows and dip in the sacred stream,,?7 This rudimentary dispensary, and Mrs Winter's home nursing of women during epidemics of fever and cholera, formed the modest origins of what later became the Delhi Female Medical Mission.78 The Winters sought support for their plan to establish a female medical mission at Delhi while on furlough in England in 1865. Finding that "none of the existing Missionary Societies are able to provide funds for this special work, not withstanding its importance",79 they formed an association of English supporters to provide funds and publicity for their scheme. In November 1866 the association's founding statement announced that the Delhi mission proposed to employ a "lady with a knowledge of medicine" whose work would be: "1. To attend native ladies in their zenanas. 2. To set on foot a dispensary for women only. 3. To train native women as nurses".80 The pamphlet assured its readers that such a worker "will take an example of Christian life and philanthropy into many houses, which prejudice would keep shut to the zenana teachers".81 The boldness of these aims disguised many difficulties. During the early years of female medical missions, many improvised methods were 74. On the beginnings of zenana visitation and teaching by the Delhi Mission, see G. H. Forbes, "In Search of the 'Pure Heathen': Missionary Women in Nineteenth Century India", Economic and Political Weekly 21, 17 (26 April 1986), pp. WS2-8. 75. "In Memoriam: Priscilla Winter", Guardian (18 January 1882), reprinted in Delhi Female Medical Mission [hereafter DFMM] Annual Report for 1881,p.7, RHLCMD 130. 76. J. C. Muller, "Some Personal Reminiscences of Work in The Delhi Medical Mission, 1884-1910", Cambridge Mission to Delhi. Short Papers (1910), p. 3, CBD. 71. Ibid. 78. The limitations of her medical endeavours were plain to Mrs Winter. She reported: "as I did not give medicines for every disease, the women got angry, and believed I would not give them advice, not that I could not" (original emphases); Allahabad, Conference 1872-73. p. 157. 79. Pamphlet, "Delhi Female Medical Mission", issued by Mr and Mrs Winter, November 1866, RHL CMD 88. 80. Ibid. 81. Ibid.

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adopted in the effort to provide medical and nursing care;82 the search for better qualified agents was an abiding mission concern for many years. When female medical missions first began to be established formally, the British medical profession was closed to women, and the reform of Western nursing was still in its infancy. In Delhi, as in many other female medical missions, the presence of fully qualified medical women long remained "an undreamt-of boon".83 The fledgling status of the nursing profession meant that, initially, few "truly refined" missionary recruits could be found among the general nursing ranks. The first women missionaries drawn into female medical mission work possessed diverse and uncertain skills; many relied, like Mrs Winter, on little more than "medicine chests, common sense and the wisdom that experience soon began to give".84 At the Delhi Female Medical Mission, the appointment of their first worker, in 1867, ended with her dismissal within a year (in circumstances that are now obscure). In 1870 a replacement was eventually found, Mrs Littler, a midwife with hospital training. She was said to have been "well received by the native women"; Littler reported that between December 1870 and October 1871, "1,446 visits had been paid to 191 patients in the Zenanas, and ... 1,917 visits had been made to the Dispensary, by 305 patients".85 A "native house" in the Chandni Chowk (the main thoroughfare of Delhi) had been adapted to act as a female dispensary and to provide a "temporary Hospital" with ten beds for those few women who could be persuaded to accept in-patient care.86 At the close of 1871, the Revd Winter wrote that, with the beginning of a training class for Indian nurses, the three-fold object of the Female Medical Mission could be considered "fairly in operation, as far as circumstances permit".87 Following Mrs Littler's death in 1873, the Delhi Female Medical Mission went through "great trials" in searching for her replacement. 88 The scheme was finally placed on a less precarious footing in 1875, when Miss Engelmann, a former zenana teacher, took charge of the medical work. She was to direct the Female Medical Mission for the next sixteen 82. These difficulties are revealed in the Delhi Female Medical Mission's anguished correspondence with Florence Nightingale in 1866-7. Greater London Record Office, HI/ST /NC2/VS/66-VI4/67. 83. Barnes, Between Life and Death, p. 201. 84. Balfour and Young, Medical Women in India, p. 14. 8S. Excerpt from DFMM Report for 1871 in The Englishwoman's Review 11 (October, 1872), p. 268. 86. Draft leaflet on St Stephen's Hospital, Delhi (11 December 1929), RHL CMD l1S; Story of the Delhi Mission, pp. 112-13. 87. The Englishwoman's Review 11 (October, 1872), p. 268. 88. DFMM Report for 1873 and 74, RHL CMD 130.

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years, until the mission finally acquired its first woman doctor in 1891. Later generations of women medical missionaries looked back on this era with amazement, for Miss Engelmann, like many others of her time, had embarked on medical mission work with slender qualifications: "while on furlough she had taken a training ... in midwifery and 'by sitting beside a doctor in his consulting room learned to use the stethoscope and something about eyes'! ,,89 Despite such scanty preparation, Miss Engelmann substantially extended the medical work of the mission. Between October 1876 and September 1877, Engelmann and her "little army" of Indian nurses reported treating over six thousand women and children in the dispensary, and over a thousand more women in their own homes. However, Indian women remained unwilling to submit to in-patient care, only thirty-two cases had entered the hospital in that year.90 Although domiciliary medical care continued to be offered to secluded women who could not be induced to leave their zenanas, the missions came to recognise that much more could be accomplished. both medically and evangelically, by removing the patient from her home for dispensary or hospital treatment. 91 The Indian home environment proved to be a less than favourable setting for missionaries to apply the double cure that touched the ailing body and the "sin-sick soul". In the mission view, treatment was all too often "spoilt" by the air of dirt and disorder within the home, by non-compliance with medical directions, and by the persistent "meddling" of indigenous healers. 92 There were also fewopportunities, in the apparent chaos and confusion of the zenana, to impart a "quiet word in season", the crucial missionary message of salvation. To tempt the zenana woman to seek dispensary care, elaborate precautions were taken to guarantee that no male eyes would ever fall on her within the mission dispensary's walls. It was said that in Miss Engelmann's time "crowds of women of all classes ... flocked to the Dispensary ... this being for many years the only really purdah Dispensary not only in Delhi, but in the whole district".93 Inside the dispensary, the assembled patients were read to from the Scriptures, 89. Draft leaflet on St Stephen's Hospital, RHL CMD 115. 90. DFMM Report for 1876-1877, RHL CMD 130. 91. The same considerations applied to zenana teaching which, like zenana medical care, came to be seen an expensive and impracticable system that could not be maintained on any extensive scale. 92. See G. A. Lefroy, "A Plea for Medical Missions", Short Papers of the SPG and Cambridge Mission to Delhi, 2 (1897), CBD; M. E. Staley, "Medical Work in the Delhi Mission", Short Papers of the SPG and the Cambridge Mission to Delhi, 8 (1898), CBD. 93. Muller, "Personal Reminiscences", p. 4, CBD.

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prayers were said, tracts distributed and Bible texts placed in the hands of all awaiting treatment. These arrangements, commonly adopted in mission dispensaries, ensured that a "good dose of the Gospel" was administered before treatment commenced.94 However, even with the help of Indian Christian Biblewomen to supervise the patients, missionaries found it was not easy to hold the attention of a restless, everchanging crowd; it was reported that there were few patients who "would not miss that part of the treatment if they could".95 While women might be persuaded to pay a fleeting visit to the dispensary, very few were prepared to accept in-patient treatment, although it too was offered with deference to purdah customs. In the early 1880s, when the Delhi mission decided to build a hospital with a small number of in-patient wards, the Revd Winter wrote: "at home people may think the site too small, but we shall never get a very large number of female inpatients, as it is contrary to their prejudices". More hopefully he added: "we can of course put on a third storey if needed".96 In 1885 the new building was opened as St Stephen's Hospital for Women and Children, the first women's hospital in Delhi. It provided improved quarters for the dispensary and staff, but, as one of the missionaries later noted, given the unpopularity of in-patient care and the limited medical expertise available in the mission, "very little actual Hospital work was attempted ... and none but the most minor of surgical operations. It was significant of the time that no operating theatre was provided in the new Hospital".97 As medicine attained an increasingly secure place in the panoply of mission methods during the final decades of the century, there was a growing conviction that if mission medicine was to display its medical and evangelistic powers to full effect, it must replicate more closely the styles and standards of Western professional practice. Concern was increasingly expressed that "inferior" medical mission work might tarnish the reputation of Western medicine and of missions among the Indian populace. The unregulated modes of work, typical of earlier years, gradually passed away as growing numbers of fully qualified doctors and nurses entered the field The founding of the London School of Medicine for Women in 1874, and of three more women's medical schools in Britain in 1886, 1888 and 1890, finally allowed British women to obtain a complete medical training under the single-sex conditions

94. Allahabad, Conference 1872-73, p. 203; Barnes, Between Life and Death, p.4. 95. Medical Missions at Home and Abroad (January, 1893), p. 230. 96. Quoted in Western, Early History of the Cambridge Mission to Delhi, p.l04. 97. Muller, "Personal Reminiscences", p. 4, CBD.

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acceptable to mission sensibilities. 98 Fanny Butler, one of the first students at the London School, entered the British Medical Register in 1880, and immediately set sail for India, under the auspices of the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society, as the first medically qualified British woman missionary.99 The arrival of fully qualified medical women, bearing an array of medical and surgical skills, heralded the rise of the hospital as the primary arena of female medical mission activity. As the Revd Dr John Lowe, the great champion of medical missions, explained: "it is in the hospital that the most satisfactory and successful medical and surgical work will be accomplished - work which will produce the deepest impression, and direct public attention most favourably to the higher objects of the mission".lOo The medical and evangelistic limitations of dispensary and domiciliary work were overcome in the hospital setting where patients were placed under close observation and control that guaranteed both greater conformity to Western principles of medical management and maximum exposure to Christian influence. In the Delhi Female Medical Mission the appointment of the first women doctors, in the early 1890s, marked this shift towards hospital services. By the late 1890s, the mission reported yearly figures of between six and seven hundred new hospital in-patients, 15,000 patients at the dispensary and 1,200 home visits by the medical staff.101 Although no separate statistics are given, the reports of this period noted, with satisfaction, increases in the number of secluded women attending both the dispensary and the hospital.102 Although by the end of the century female medical missions offered their patients an infinitely more impressive range of medical and, especially, surgical skills, the increased utilisation of mission medicine by Indian women could not have been achieved without mission concessions to the strength and resilience of Indian sentiment and tradition. In

98. Women began to gain entry to government colleges and schools of medicine in India in the same period, R. Jeffery, The Politics of Health in India (Berkeley, 1988), p. 90. 99. From the London School alone, 112 women doctors went out to the mission field between 1874 and 1918 (74 to India, 19 to China and 19 to other destinations), R. Bowden, Royal Free Hospital Missionaries (London, 1984) (mimeograph). 100. Lowe, Medical Missions, p. 48. \O\. Staley, "Medical Work in the Dehli Mission", p. 1, CBD. The mission reported that in 1897 it still provided the only women's hospital, staffed by fullyqualified medical women, in Delhi (population 200,000). See Lefroy, "Plea for Medical Missions", p. 5, CBD. 102. See Dr Staley's reports for 1894-6 in "Hospital Work in Delhi", Short Papers of the SPG and Cambridge Mission to Delhi. 4 (1897), CBD.

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order to persuade Indian women to accept in-patient treatment, the missions were compelled to modify the routines and rituals of Western medical care. They were obliged to defer not only to purdah conventions but also to many other caste, class and religious practices. 103 As Elmslie had surmised, Western medical care would not attract Indian women unless it was delivered "in a manner harmonising with the social customs of their country".I04 The female medical mission, most especially the hospital, represented both a point of contact between the women of two cultures, and a site of struggle between the beliefs and practices of the medical missionaries and those of the patients in their care. On some matters women medical missionaries were unwilling to relent. The hospital, with its thorough order, hygiene, and discipline must stand as a "moral text-book" where lessons of physical and spiritual cleanliness could be learnt. 105 As Dr Mildred Staley wrote from Delhi in 1894: "one cannot help seeing that the cleanliness, regularity and discipline of the life of the Hospital, so different from the hopeless muddle prevailing in the patient's home, must form a very important item of the treatment".I06 The hospital, as a "Home of Healing", was designed to reveal to its patients "a treasure of new ideas" that they would absorb and carry back to their own domestic worlds. 107 At the Delhi Mission the ascendancy of hospital work was confirmed by the decision to build a much larger institution to provide wards with sixty beds, an out-patient wing, an isolation block, kitchens, chapel and nurses' and doctors' quarters. The new St. Stephen's Hospital for Women and Children opened in 1908, far from the "native quarters" where the first hospital work had begun. Nearly fifty years after Mrs Winter had inaugurated the mission's medical work for women with nothing more than a medicine chest, the Delhi Female Medical Mission was staffed by

103. Mission reports contain many references to "the almost infinite patience and forbearance and understanding of [Indian women's1 ways and fancies" needed in order to induce female patients into the hospital, Report of the Third Decennial Missionary Conference held at Bombay, 1892-93, vol. I, p. 316. For example, the question of diet and the appropriate preparation of food was a key patient concern that could not be dismissed lightly by a mission hospital. Again, the entourage of female relatives usually accompanying the patient had to be tolerated by Western staff who would have preferred to see these "intruders" banished from the ward. See Staley, "Hospital Work in Delhi", CBD. 104. Elmslie, "On Female Medical Missions", p. 198. 105. Medical Missions at Home and Abroadvol. 7, 9 (June, 1898) p.138. 106. Staley, "Hospital Work in Delhi", CBD. 107. J. Rutter Williamson, The Healing of the Nations (London, 1899), p.62.

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qualified women, both doctors and nurses, whose work was centred in the hospital. The hospital returns for 1909 reported 1,069 in-patient cases and 21,171 out-patient treatments. 108 Conclusion The promise of the "double cure", to heal patients and win converts, proved to be more a hope than a reality if judged by the criterion of the number of patients admitted to the Christian faith. Those in the mission world who had remained sceptical that mission medicine could perform this double act had suspected that in practice medical matters would swamp evangelistic concerns. The reports of the women doctors and nurses of the Delhi mission convey the strong sense of religious purpose that had guided them to the mission field; yet the details of their work schedules - the flow of patients seen, the arduous conditions of their medical and nursing practice, as well as their expressed regrets that they had little or no time for evangelistic efforts - confirm that the pressures of medical work dominated their agenda. 109 In some quarters of the mission world there was anxiety that medical missions, by drifting into a spirit of "mere humanitarianism", were forgetting their primary evangelistic aim; others applauded the medical missionary as the supreme example of Christian philanthropy. The latter view gained greater legitimacy as the narrow, muscular Christianity of earlier years began to give way to an expanded theology of missions and a broader definition of the missionary task. A new vocabulary entered mission rhetoric that spoke of a "concrete, tangible and practical Christianity", embracing concern for temporal as well as spiritual matters. IIO As the embodiment of "the practical humanitarian side of Christianity", medical missions claimed a foremost place in this enlarged perception of missionary duty.llI By attending to the needs of suffering humanity, the medical missionary was seen as providing one of the most impressive demonstrations of the "Gospel of Love and Mercy" and the surpassing benevolence of the Christian faith.

108. Muller, "Personal Reminiscences", pp. 3, 14. 109. At the turn of the century the general work of conversion among the "better classes" of Delhi was said to be more difficult than ever; the mission reported that "Indian society has roused itself to resist the progress of the Gospel", Cambridge Mission to Delhi in connexion with the SPG, 24th Annual Report (Cambridge, 1902), CBD. 110. Wanless, The Medical Mission, p. 56. 111. Report of the Forth Decennial Indian Missionary Conference held in Madras. December 11-18. 1902 (London, 1903), p.120.

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It was work that attracted a significant proportion of British medical women. The London School of Medicine for Women reported that at the turn of the century as many as one third of its students were studying medicine with a view to working in the mission fieldY2 In 1900 there were 258 women on the British Medical Register; 1\3 of these, seventytwo were serving as medical missionaries, forty-five of them in India. 1I4 Ten years earlier there had been only twelve women missionaries with British medical qualifications (ten of these serving in India). By 1900 the total number of qualified medical missionaries, from Britain and elsewhere, stationed in the Indian missions stood at 169: 88 women and 81 men.lI5 The significance of the mission factor in the display of Western medicine in India can be recognised by comparison with other agencies delivering Western medical relief to Indian women. The colonial government's commitment to the subject of Indian women's health care was slow to emerge and never more than limited. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the state relied on charity and philanthropy to address the question of Indian women's health needs. Apart from the missions, the Dufferin Fund, a secular philanthropic organisation set up in 1885, provided the main source of Western medical care for Indian women. 1I6 Although, like the missions, the Dufferin Fund served to popularise Western medical care among India's female population, the Fund was plagued by administrative and financial problems; at the turn of the century, its medical staff included only 28 women doctors "of the first grade" (that is, fully qualified and on the British Medical Register).lI7 The Women's Medical Service for India (WMSI) was finally constituted in 1914, but it was tiny, starved of funds and constantly threatened by retrenchment; by 1927 there were reported to be 183 hospitals in India staffed by women, of which 93 were run by missions, 62 by provincial governments, Indian states or local committees, but only 25 by the WMSI. lI8

112. The Magazine of the London (Royal Free Hospital) School of Medicine for Women, vol. 23,99 (March, 1928), pp. 1-2. 113. Blake, Charge of the Parasols, p. 28. 114. Annual List, Medical Missions at Home and Abroadvol. 8,4 (January, 1900), pp. 51-56. 115. J. S. Dennis, Centennial Survey of Foreign Missions. Statistical Supplement (Edinburgh, 1902), p. 207. 116. D. Arnold, Colonizing The Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth Century India (Berkeley, 1993), pp. 254-68. 117. J. S. Dennis, Christian Missions and Social Progress (Edinburgh, 1899), vol. 2, p. 413. 118. Balfour and Young, Medical Women in India, pp.182-83.

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By the beginning of the 1930s, the number of women's mission hospitals in India had reached 134 (compared with 112 for men). Annual returns reported more than 138,000 in-patients, over one and a quarter million out-patients, and over 35,000 surgical operations performed}l9 The "peculiar and exceptional measure" adopted by the missions in the 1870s - to train women as medical missionaries, principally for the Indian field - had prompted a movement of Western women into the male bastions of mission, medicine and empire that initiated the development of Western medical relief for Indian women. Certainly the number of women medical missionaries was never large, and was dwarfed when set against the number of women in the Indian population - there were estimated to be some 140 million women in British India and the Princely States at the turn of the century; yet women missionaries played a leading part in the development and display of Western medical ideas, institutions and practices in India.

119. Committee of the Christian Medical Association, The Ministry of Healing in India, handbook of the CMA of India (Mysore, 1932), pp. 45-46.

MISSIONARIES AS SOCIAL COMMENTATORS: THE INDIAN CASE Geoffrey A. Oddie The purpose of this essay is to discuss missionaries as social commentators with specific reference to British Protestant missionaries in India in the nineteenth century. There is no attempt in what follows to deny that missionary observers shared many assumptions and attitudes in common with other Europeans including aspects of the so-called "orientalist" view of India: the notion that India was essentially different from Europe and generally inferior.' The argument of this paper is that, notwithstanding these views and the particular bias inherent in missionary perspectives, missionary comment (if used critically) can provide a valuable and, in some cases, unique insight into social developments in India in the nineteenth century. The first part of the essay begins with remarks on the extent and variety of comment which was, at least in part, a reflection of the extent to which missionaries succeeded in mixing with various classes in the population. A discussion of the nature and degree of missionary contact with different groups in Indian society is followed by an attempt to identify the main types of social comment; comment which can be categorised according to the missionary's purpose. The question arises as to why the missionaries were drawn into making social comment in the first place and how their aims and objectives affected what they reported and how they wrote. The second part of the paper concentrates on the advantages and problems for the historian of using this type of material with all its limitations of selectivity, bias and unacknowledged assumptions. Here I move from a consideration of more general themes and material to an analysis of individual accounts of particular Hindu socio-religious customs. One of the first things that strikes the research worker familiar with missionary literature and archival material is the wide range and variety of missionary comment on Indian society throughout the nineteenth century. Almost everywhere they went, the missionaries observed, took notes and commented on the nature of Indian social life and on social conditions and particular problems which claimed their attention from time to time. Indeed it is most unusual not to find somewhere remarks on 1. For a discussion of the Orientalist view as applied to India see especially Ronald Inden "Orientalist Constructions of India," Modern Asian Studies, 20, 3 (1986), pp. 401-46.

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almost all major issues of social concern raised and discussed in India during this period. The missionaries were especially interested in the broad question of the relationship between Hinduism and the social system, but apart from that more theoretical consideration, they usually confined their comments to the more down-to-earth problems and issues which arose out of their work and in the context of their particular situation. These issues include many over-lapping matters such as caste and caste conflict, sati, early marriage and widowhood, temple prostitution, hook-swinging, the plight of the untouchables, slavery (especially in Travancore), land systems and landlord oppression, the use of coercion in the recruitment and management of labour, racism and oppression by European indigo planters, the sufferings of the peasantry, the partiality of the police and corruption in the courts, the spread of drunkenness, opium cultivation and consumption, famines in south India and elsewhere, epidemics and disease. Apart from comment on these and other specific social issues, some of which were confined to rural areas, the missionary records are also a valuable source of comment on urban life and development. This includes a fairly regular flow of information on intellectual movements and political, religious and social developments among the new Western-educated elites. But while the coverage and number of topics is impressive, missionary comment was (to state the obvious) always positioned from a particular point of view. The main focus and emphasis in their accounts was, for example, somewhat different from that of government officers concerned with procuring the East India Company's investment or with the problem of reconciling the landed gentry to British rule. One major and increasingly important focal point in missionary literature was the life and condition of the depressed classes in the rural population: the poor, the marginalised and oppressed, including untouchable communities. As a result of their movement out into the countryside in increasing numbers after 1815, the missionaries became better acquainted with the depressed classes and depressed class problems than most other Europeans. Indeed their letters, journals and reports, and the evidence they gave before various inquiries, constitutes one of the most valuable sources for "history from below". One of the classical methods of evangelism was through what was known as itineration: going on long tours for days or weeks at a time, camping and preaching in the countryside. Many of the missionaries went on these journeys and their journals provide us with fascinating detailed comment including reports of encounters and conversations with all kinds of people, not the least of whom were the peasants and the poor and oppressed. Mission centres with sub-stations, including

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schools and chapels, were established in outlying villages in the heart of the countryside and in areas where other Europeans, let alone district officers, were seldom seen. Furthermore, it was the peasantry and poorer class peoples who were among the converts even before the advent of the large scale and more dramatic depressed class movements into Christianity during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Secondly, while the missionaries were well acquainted with what was happening at the bottom of the social scale, they were also well aware of some of the developments at the top, more especially the attitude and aspirations of the modern Western-educated elites. Almost all British missionary societies concentrated their energies, at least initially, on trying to capture the hearts and minds of the educated classes. The Protestants were pioneers of education through English and, by the end of the century, they were teaching about 6,000 scholars, or 35 per cent of the total number of college-level students excluding those in professional and technical education. 2 In addition to this some societies like the Cambridge Mission to Delhi and the Oxford Brotherhood in Calcutta devoted much of their attention to work among the same small section in the population: providing hostel accommodation, mounting extramural lectures and circulating handbills and newspapers, the most famous of which was the Epiphany. Thirdly, missionary sources also provide a considerable amount of comment on women's issues throughout the century, such as the discussion and debate over sati, early marriage, enforced widowhood, female education and other topics. The fact remains, however, that despite agitation aimed at improving the Indian woman's status and condition, males were still the primary focus of attention - missionary journals, reports and other papers being much more about men than women. 3 The missionaries preached to audiences which were composed very largely of men and they also worked in an educational system which at least at the college level, was also largely a male affair. It was therefore only after the extension of women's work for women - the development of the Zenana visiting system, the further growth of female education and the advent of female missionary itineration - in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, that missionaries in general (male and female) gained a much greater knowledge and understanding of Indian women.4 2. 1. Ritcher, A History of Missions in India (translated by Sydney H. Moore) (Edinburgh and London, 1908), p. 320. 3. Ibid., pp. 329-45. 4. For some of these points on gender and Christian mission lowe a great deal to Helen McCulloch, who recently completed her History IV honours thesis in the Departm(:nt of History, University of Sydney on "The Female Encounter with Christianity: Protestant Missions in Nineteenth-Century South India".

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In London in 1875 Mrs M. Weitbrecht, wife of a CMS missionary, published a collection of essays entitled The Women of India and Christian Work in the Zenana. It included a paper on "Condition of women as it actually exists in Bengal and Northwest India", a sad reminder of the state of ignorance prior to 1875. After that period however, female missionaries arrived in India in increasing numbers until they outnumbered male missionaries at the end of the century. Thus while the emphasis in missionary sources is on the depressed classes and the Western-educated elites, it also includes useful material which might be used in research on gender issues. A major weakness in the range of archival holdings is perhaps in the comparative lack of sympathetic and, in some cases, detailed comment on the life and problems of the more traditional dominant classes in the population. A few individual missionaries were well-acquainted with the life-style and attitude of some of the princes and rajas. There is, for example, substantial missionary material on the Rajas of Tanjore and also valuable evidence of discussions between CMS missionaries and the Raja of Burdwan. But this material really only reminds one of what was exceptional, and of the fact that missionaries in general had comparatively little contact with princes and rajas, or with the traditional (non-Western-educated) landed and commercial classes. In fact, the Protestants spent most of their time and attention working among people who tended, if anything, to represent a challenge to the power and status of these traditional groups. Furthermore, though the missionaries knew a lot about landlords and landed and tenurial systems this was not out of sympathy for the landlords as a class. It was not for the missionaries to write books like Nirmal Mukherjee's well-known and sympathetic study entitled Zamindar, but rather for them to expose the abuses of power and the injustice perpetrated by the landed c1asses. s Indeed, missionaries and landlords were not infrequently in direct conflict, partly because missionaries regarded the latter as an obstacle to the spread of the Christian Gospel and because landlords felt very directly threatened by the spread of Christianity among their tenants and labourers, mainly because they feared loss of control over them.6

5. N. Mukherjee, A Bengal Zamindar: Jaykrishna Mukherjee of Uttarpara and his Times, 1808-1888 (Calcutta, 1975). 6. On this issue see especially G. A. Oddie, Hindu and Christian in Southeast India (London, 1991), pp. 161-62; M. M. Ali, The Bengali Reaction to Christian Missionary Activities 1833-1857 (Chittagong, 1965), ch. 8; G. A. Oddie, Social Protest in India: British Protestant Missionaries and Social Reforms 1850-1900 (Delhi, 1979), ch. 4.

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In relying on missionary social comment, therefore, the historian is unlikely to obtain a balanced over-view of the different groups in nineteenth-century India, but rather might develop a perspective which emphasises the role of the new elites and which also offers a critique of society from the point of view of the underclasses or dispossessed. Moreover missionary reports probably devote an excessive amount of space to Hindus rather than to Muslims (even when we take into account the higher proportion of Hindus in the population)? If one is to understand missionary social comment, it is not only important to gain some insight into how and where missionaries gained their social information, but also to understand something of their aims in writing. With this latter problem in mind it is helpful to classify missionary comment into three different types according to what appears to have been the author's purpose. Firstly, there was general comment on social structure, social conditions and the life of the people, told in such a way so as to encourage Christian missions. Secondly, there was similar general information presented not so much with the aim of arousing missionary enthusiasm, but with the aim of providing the general reader with the results of well-researched scholarly investigation; and, thirdly, there was considerable focused and impassioned comment and analysis of particular social problems and issues, material which was presented with very specific goals in mind. Much of the general comment on Indian society and on the daily life and condition of the people appears in books and pamphlets specifically designed to influence the European public and to encourage greater support for Christian missions. One of the earliest and best known examples of this type of literature was William Ward's A View of the History, Literature and Mythology of the Hindoos, first published in 1811, and reproduced with some modification in several further editions.8 Ward's aim appears to have been to describe Hindu manners and customs in such a way as to demonstrate the enormity of the Hindu

7. While a considerable amount of missionary work was conducted among Muslims in the North-West Provinces much less was done elsewhere. According to the Revd F. M. Wherry, one of the speakers at the 1882-3 decennial conference, "though Protestant Missions had been established in India for three quarters of a century, yet there are only two or three foreign Missionaries especially interested in working among the eighteen millions of Bengali Muslims! The case is scarcely better in some other provinces", Report oj the Second Decennial Conference held at Calcutta 1882-83 (Calcutta, 1883), p. 228. 8. A View oj the History, Literature and Mythology oj the Hindoos, including a minute Description oj their Manners and Customs and Translation Jrom their principal Works in three volumes (London, 1811).

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system and to show the need to replace it with Protestant Christianity.9 Other missionaries, while not so condemnatory, were also anxious to encourage an interest in Indian people, and a greater sympathy for them in their "heathen" condition, and to stimulate greater support for Indian missions. Writing in his book The Land of the Veda, published in 1854, the Revd Percival declared, for example, that the object of the work was: to supply information respecting India, its people and their condition, in such a form and to such an extent as may, it is hoped, contribute to awaken interest where little may have been felt, and to produce among the friends of missions ... a deeper sympathy and greater effort on behalf of Hindus and other Eastern nations, whose intellectual and moral improvement demands from the Church of Christ greater earnestness and self-sacrifice. to W 1. Wilkins, author of Daily Life and Work in India, and Henry Rice, author of Native Life in South India, were also concerned that their work would awaken sympathy and encourage greater support and activity on behalf of Christian missions. II Secondly, there were other publications, less concerned with Christian missions, where the author's intention appears to have been to make a more scholarly and impartial contribution to knowledge and understanding. Among these more academic works of social observation and comment one might include 1. E. Padfield's The Hindu at Home, Samuel Mateer's Native Life in Travancore, Bishop Caldwell's sketch The Tinnevelly Shanars and his History of Tinnevelly, and a number of works by James Long. 12 Long, who according to one of his colleagues, "delighted in antiquarian and historical researches",13 was one of the

9. Ibid., introduction to vol. I, and E. Daniel Potts, British Baptist Missionaries in India 1793-1837: The History of Serampore and its Missions (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 92-94. 10. P. Percival, The Land of the Veda: India Briefly Described in some of its Aspects. Physical. Social. Intellectual and Moral (London, 1854), p. vi. 11. W. 1. Wilkins, Daily Life and Work in India (London, 1888); H. Rice, Native Life in South India: being sketches of the social and religious characteristics of the Hindus (London, n.d.) 12.1. E. Padfield, The Hindu at Home. being Sketches of Hindu Daily Life, 2nd edition (London, 1908); S. Mateer, Native Life in Travancore (London, 1883); R. Caldwell, The Tinnevelly Shanars: A Sketch of their Religion. and their Moral Condition and Characteristics. as a Caste. with special reference to the facilities and hindrances to the progress of Christianity amongst them (Madras, 1840), and A History of Tinnevelly (New Delhi, 1982). 13. M. A. Sherring, The History of Protestant Missions in India (London, 1875), p. 127.

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founders of the Bengal Social Science Association which was launched in Calcutta in 1867.14 As one of its most active members he contributed a number of papers, some of which have recently been republished. These include examinations of Bengali proverbs, the social condition of the Muslims of Bengal, and aspects of social life in Calcutta and Bombay and village communities in India and Russia. ls Some missionaries also made a contribution to well-known ethnographic and official publications. Gustav Oppert, author of The Original Inhabitants of Bharatavarsa or India, and Edgar Thurston, compiler of eight hefty volumes on Castes and Tribes of Southern India, as well as Ethnographic Notes in Southern India, both made use of missionary social comment and observation. Missionary data was also incorporated into District Gazetteers. 16 The third main type of missionary comment is observation and argument focused on specific issues and aimed at strengthening movements for social reform. As we have seen, the missionaries campaigned against what were described as Hindu "cruelties" practices such as the exposure of the sick and dying on the banks of rivers, sati, and hook-swinging, customs which the missionaries believed were irrational, barbaric and inhumane. They also advocated some fundamental changes in the socio-economic system, especially in Bengal and Madras. In this respect they had much to say about issues such as caste and untouchability, indigo planting, landlord oppression, and other factors which kept the underclasses in a perpetual state of poverty and dependence on the will of others. One of the reasons for concern about these problems was a conviction that such conditions, including the unbridled power and attitude of the landed classes, created serious obstacles to the spread of Christianity.17 It was held that in Bengal, for example, the European indigo planters, "socalled" Christians, set a very bad example in the way they or their agents maltreated their Hindu and Muslim employees. The missionaries were also concerned and frustrated about the way in which Hindu landlords deliberately attempted to prevent tenants and others from converting to Christianity; and they were also dismayed by the general effect of poverty, which seemed to create a type of religious apathy among the 14. G. A. Oddie, "The Revd James Long and Protestant Missionary Policy in Bengal, 1840-1872," (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1964), pp. 366-72. 15. Ibid., p. 372. 16. G. Oppert, On the Original Inhabitants of Bharatavarsa or India (New Delhi, 1986), (first edition 1893); E. Thurston, Castes and Tribes of Southern India (Madras, 1909); E. Thurston, Ethnographic Notes in Southern India (Madras, 1906). See also Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Belgaum (Bombay, 1884). 17. See especially Oddie, Social Protest in India, Chs. 4 and 5.

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people; the Bengali peasants, for example, being too preoccupied with their immediate needs and suffering in the here-and-now to attend to teachings about their spiritual condition or the life hereafter. These evangelistic considerations were, however, not infrequently mixed with feelings of indignation, or even outrage, at the level of brutality and injustice inherent in the socio-economic system. Furthermore, linked with a growing recognition of injustices, prevalent especially in rural areas, was a growing consciousness of the powerlessness of the lower classes and a feeling that poor, unorganised and illiterate peoples could do little to help themselves. Thus the further the missionaries extended their work and the longer they remained, the more they recognised the way in which social and economic conditions seemed to impede the progress of their work; the more they were disturbed by evidence of exploitation and suffering and the more involved they became in social debate and agitation. The end result was a greatly increased degree of social criticism and comment. However, as already implied, it was hardly objective comment. In what the missionaries wrote there was no attempt at any kind of dispassionate objectivity. They were passionate one-sided advocates resolutely determined to turn the world upside down.

Issues related to the use of material Given then that this is the nature of missionary social comment, what are the advantages, or disadvantages of work with this type of material? How difficult is it to use in the reconstruction of Indian social history? The first point that needs to be stressed with reference to missionary sources as a whole is that there is one clear advantage in using them that is not always present in other records, namely, that in the case of missionaries we already know something about their ultimate aims and what their biases are likely to be. Whereas in some other sources the writers' aims and agenda are not always so clearly apparent, in the case of the missionary material, missionaries seldom tried to hide their objectives or particular point of view. Furthermore, the material which focused on particular issues such as sati, indigo-planting and other topics, though produced in the heat of controversy, is not necessarily misleading or particularly problematic. The missionaries were under considerable pressure to produce the evidence and verify everything they claimed. The very success of their reform crusades depended on their collection of reliable and trustworthy information and on convincing the sceptics and unbelievers. Moreover, if they were to enlist the support of others they had to do their research and be prepared to defend the findings. One of the earliest examples of this type of social research, vital if the

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missionaries were to sway public opinion, were the surveys they undertook in connection with sati. 18 In 1803 the Serampore Baptists deputed a number of Indians to travel from place to place within a radius of thirty miles round Calcutta to report on the number of satis of which they had heard In the following years the Baptists and their allies systematically collected a considerable amount of detailed information, material which was published in books and pamphlets and quoted in debates in the House of Commons. This information included the names of the husband and wife, their caste, the age of the widow and the number and age of children left as orphans. 19 The success of missionary agitation for reforms in the indigo planting and zamindari systems also depended on the extent to which they were able to establish and verify their case. European planters for example, accused the missionaries of ignorance, lies and slander, and the Hindoo Patriot, one of the more influential Bengali-controlled papers, declared that: "No body of men have been more bitterly or more grossly or more indecently attacked by the organs of the indigo manufacturing interest in Bengal than the Christian missionaries settled in the country".20 Those in the countryside had first to convince their city colleagues, members of the Calcutta Missionary Conference, of the need for reform of the indigo system. Once the missionaries as a body were better informed and more aware of what was involved, leaders of the movement had to be prepared to debate the issues in the public press and eventually to try to convince the government of the need for intervention. When, after the indigo disturbances of 1859, the authorities finally agreed to appoint a Commission of Enquiry the missionaries were once again called to give evidence and substantiate their views. Those who took part in agitation for reform of the zamindari system, for improvement in the position and well-being of pariahs (untouchables) in Madras and for some of the other reforms in Indian society were also well aware of the fact that their case rested, at least in part, on the reliability and persuasiveness of the evidence they produced. In one sense, therefore, missionary records are easier to use than many other sources. The purpose of the missionary's comment - the agenda is usually fairly clear and, in certain circumstances, the missionaries had every incentive to produce documented and well-founded information.

18. K. Ingham, Reformers in India 1793-1833: An Account of the Work of Protestant Missionaries on behalf of Social Reform (Cambridge, 1956), p. 45. 19. William Johns, A Collection of Facts and Opinions relating to the Burning of Widows with the dead bodies of their husbands and other destructive customs prevalent in British India (Birmingham, 1816). 20. Quoted in the Calcutta Christian Observer, 30 (February, 1861), p. 83.

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However, this is not to say there are no traps or problems in working on missionary material. On the contrary, these sources present many of the same difficulties and pit-falls which can arise when one is using government or any other records. Firstly, in some of the published material, including more general comment on Indian society, it is difficult to identify the author's sources of information. Some authors, such as Percival, acknowledge the fact that they incorporated material from other books, and in cases such as these, it is not always easy to distinguish second hand information from comments which were based on experience and observation. Because of the lack of modern forms of documentation the reader must remain uncertain of the basis of information. In some other cases, however, authors were much more conscious of the need to describe their credentials and to verify and check for themselves wherever possible. One such missionary was Henry Rice who in the preface to Native Life in South India explained that he had for upwards of eighteen years moved freely among all classes of the people in various parts of the country; that he had taken notes on what he had "seen and heard", and that he had checked on the accuracy of his description of manners and customs with "an educated brahman gentleman". Even if one may doubt whether a "brahman gentleman" was fully qualified to comment on low caste customs, Rice was at least attempting to provide the reader with accurate and reliable information. 21 Secondly, there is the problem of selectivity, the all-too-familiar process whereby commentators ignore material which might have given a more balanced view. For example, there can be no doubt that William Ward witnessed much of what he describes in his View ... of the Hindoos. In fact many of the scenes he refers to are recorded in his letters and in a separate diary which is now located in the archives at Serampore. Historians such as K. K. Datta and others who have made use of Ward's book are certainly justified in using parts of his work as evidence, especially where there is corroboration. 22 However, the fact remains that in order to underline the benefits of Christianity, Ward tended to dwell on the darker and more reprehensible aspects of Hinduism and the Hindu social order. This was a technique which some of the more liberalminded missionaries were inclined to reject. One of these was James Long who commented that: Many of Mr Ward's remarks respecting the cruelties and immoralities among the Hindus are no more applicable to the body of the people

21. Rice, Native Life in South India, p. 5. 22 Potts, British Baptist Missionaries in India, p. 94.

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than a description of Billings Gate and the Old Bailey, in London, would be to the inhabitants of the west end of the town?3 Thirdly, there are all kinds of personal and cultural factors which one has to take into account when using missionary material. Like most other European writers on India the missionaries were foreigners, on the outside, looking in. Even in their most scholarly work, when dispassionate objectivity was a primary goal, factors in their background, education and European perspective could determine not only what they noticed or looked at, but the way they interpreted or explained what they saw. One of the best ways of illustrating this point is to take missionary accounts of particular social customs. For example, even a brief analysis of missionary comments on hook-swinging exhibitions will show that the descriptions varied a great deal depending on the background, education and assumptions of the individual observer. Hook-swinging was, for the most part, a form of voluntary or self-imposed bodily penance in which the individual was swung on hooks embedded in the flesh and tendons below the shoulder blades. The aim was usually to fulfil a vow and/ or appease the deity on behalf of the rest of the community. The practice, which was widespread in India during the first half of the nineteenth century, was condemned not only by missionaries and other Europeans, but also by an increasing number of Indian reformers. Missionary descriptions of hook-swinging usually tell us as much about the individual observer as they do about the custom itself They generally contain some or all of the following components of information. First, information about the observer (who was usually a male): why he went to see the exhibition, how he felt and the theological or moral import of what he saw and heard. Second, information about the ritual itself, what the missionary saw and heard and how he interprets or explains the phenomena. Two missionaries who wrote detailed accounts of hook-swinging were James Lynch, a Methodist missionary, and 1. E. Sharkey of the eMS. A brief comparison of their descriptions not only helps to pin-point background, cultural and other factors which influenced their accounts, but also highlights limitations which might and should be taken into account by any critical historian looking out for the evidence and attempting to understand hook-swinging rituals at this time. Lynch visited a hook-swinging exhibition at Royapettah in Madras in

23. 1. Long, Handbook of Bengal Missions, in connection with the Church of England together with an Account of general Educational Efforts in North India (London, 1848), p. 40.

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August 1820, three years after his arrival in Madras?4 Not being fluent in Tamil he took a Tamil-speaking friend with him. He described in some detail the temple complex and the appearance of the deity. He noted the extent of animal sacrifice and the fact that hook-swinging was not the only form of self-torture being practised among devotees. He described in detail how the hooks were inserted (an experience which changed his views that the ritual was a fraud) and he also described how the men were swung, what they did while swinging and how they were revered by the crowd. There are, however, limitations in the account. Lynch confessed he did not understand the pedigree of the deity and he made the very serious mistake of thinking the priests were Brahmins, a point which is clearly contradicted by all the other evidence at our disposal. Having recently arrived from Europe, and being familiar with the Brahminical idea of the four varnas, he seems to have simply assumed that all priests must be Brahmins, whereas others, more familiar with religion in practice, were aware that many other castes had their own priests and ritual specialists. 1. E. Sharkey described a hook-swinging exhibition at Weyoor in Masulipatam district in February 1848 and again, three years later, in February 1851.25 He was an Anglo-Indian and, unlike Lynch, fluent in the vernacular and familiar with local custom. He had already had five years of work and experience among the people of Masulipatam district and had witnessed a hook-swinging exhibition in another village and on an earlier occasion prior to his first visit to Weyoor in 1848. 26 In his first account of swinging at Weyoor, Sharkey described the deity and forms of worship and also included comment on why people were attending the festival. His report also included a detailed description of the principal swinger and how the swinging was carried out. Feeling somewhat dissatisfied with this, his first report, and wanting to know more, Sharkey revisited the festival three years later. In the report on his second visit he included a lengthy discussion of the origins and legends connected with the deity, emphasised that the priests were in fact shepherds, and had a great deal more to say about the commercialization of the ritual, and about which particular parties profited most from the practice. Clearly all reports on hook-swinging have some kind of limitation; and Sharkey himself admitted that observations, as a result of his first

24. WMMS, Lynch to Secretary, 25 August 1820. See also N. W Taggart, "The Irish Factor in World Methodism in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries" (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Queen's University, Belfast, 1981), pp. 198-255. 25. CMS Archives, C 12/ 0222/ 3, Sharkey'S Journal for quarter ending March, 1848 and 12/0222/9, Journal, 15 February 1851. 26. CMS CI2/0i0I/5, H. W Fox, Journal, 26-27 December 1844.

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visit, were somewhat inadequate and incomplete. Yet it is also apparent that the Sharkey material generally provides the historian with more satisfactory and more extensive data and evidence than the Lynch account. Unlike Lynch, Sharkey was able to take advantage of his fluency in the vernacular to interview the local people. His previous experience, length of time in the country and knowledge of local customs enabled him to explain and interpret much more fully what he encountered at the festival. Furthermore, he asked a broader range of questions and was determined to check the accuracy of his information. While Lynch confessed that he had seen enough, Sharkey confessed no such thing, and revisited the site three years later. This not only enabled him to check his stories and the main events, but also to see the differences between the festival in 1848 and 1851. If used critically and with common sense much of this type of missionary material is of considerable value to the writer of Indian socio-religious history. The crucial point is for the scholar to ask questions about the observer's credentials. Why was the missionary there in the first place? What was the purpose of the account? What was the observer's past history? What did he or she know of India or social customs? Was the author of the report fluent in the local language? Whom did he or she consult? In other words, who were the informants, and so on? The author's pre-history has always been an important factor in missionary social comment. It was, for example, an important ingredient which not only affected the way they described and understood hook-swinging, but also the caste system. Coming from what Stuart Piggin has described as a "middling" section of the British population, from a dynamic upwardly mobile class, which placed considerable stress on the importance of individual initiative and talent and on the individual being able to rise through the ranks, they looked for a similar system in India itself. However, instead of finding a system which provided opportunities for the individual they discovered what they claimed was a form of "tyranny" which frustrated individuals, keeping them "locked up" within their social circle. What was not so apparent to missionaries (because it was not something they were looking for) was corporate mobility, a factor which gave the caste system a greater flexibility than many missionary commentators were able to perceive.27

27. S. Piggin, Making Evangelical Missionaries. 1789-1858 (Appleyard, Abingdon, Oxford, 1984), ch. 1; Oddie, Social Protest in India, pp. 66-67.

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Conclusion Though the purpose of this volume is to highlight issues relating to missionary archives, I have not attempted to distinguish between the archival and other missionary material. While it is true that some missionary records are to be found only in manuscript form in archives, a certain amount of what is in manuscript collections was eventually published, and, added to this, are pamphlets, books and other works which appeared only in a printed form. I have argued that this material contains a wide range of social comment and that many of the difficulties of working with it are little different from difficulties which arise when one is using government or other specialist data. There too one finds selectivity, a lack of balance, the imprint on the material of particular points of view, cultural bias, presuppositions and so on. What therefore seems to be different about the missionary corpus of social information? It is focused perhaps no more narrowly on particular objectives than, for example, material which was compiled in order to perpetuate empire. Furthermore, missionaries, perhaps unlike some government commentators, were open and frank about what they were trying to achieve. The subject matter and angle of vision is very different from what one sometimes finds in official and government records concerned with the trading and commercial classes or with placating the princes, zamindars and other groups within the established order. Missionary records, by way of contrast, focus primarily on the world of the modern Western-educated elites and especially on the underdog - the under-privileged classes and eventually also on women. Last, but not least, this material also includes much of the available information about the missionaries themselves, their problems and way of life. They were not only observers and commentators on Indian society, but were also (at least temporarily) part of the scene they so often attempted to describe.

"TO SERVE AND NOT TO RULE": BRITISH PROTESTANT MISSIONARIES AND CHINESE NATIONALISM, 1928-1931 1 Robert A. Bickers

This essay is based upon a selective survey of the archives of the Baptist Missionary Society (BMS), China Inland Mission (CIM), Friends Service Council (FSC), the London Missionary Society (LMS), the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society (WMMS), the Foreign Missions Committee of the English Presbyterian Church (English Presbyterian Mission, EPM), and papers concerning the North China and Shantung Missionary Association. It concentrates on the usefulness of British missionary archives for the study of twentieth century Chinese history and the history of the British communities in China in the late 1920s. 2 It grows out of a larger body of work concerned with the structure of British society in China in the 1920s, the processes of socialisation which maintained that structure, and the responses of British institutions to the Nationalist Revolution of 1925 to 1928, and the challenges posed by the coming to power of a nationalist and avowedly anti-imperialist regime. The records used were not only pertinent to that section of the work which dealt with mission history but were equally useful as a source of material for the more general themes, such as relations between Chinese and Britons in the treaty ports. Mission criticisms of the behaviour of British businessmen, for example, are easy to locate and often worth noting; the furious distaste caricatured by Somerset Maugham in his story "God's Truth" is not unfamiliar, although most comments are more reasoned. 3 I. "The Society recognises that the new generation of missionaries must be well-equipped intellectually for the work and be content to take a second place and to serve and not to rule the Churches in China", North China Daily News, 20 September 1928, "Present Opportunities for Missionaries in China", enclosure in C. G. Sparham to F. H. Hawkins, 21 September 1928, Council for World Mission Archives, School of Oriental and African Studies [hereafter CWMl Central China Box 43. 2. Many of the themes discussed here are also applicable to North American Protestant records. The most recent archival guide to these is Arthur R. Crouch, et aI., Christianity in China: A Scholar's Guide to Resources in the Libraries and Archives of the United States (Armonk, NY, 1989). 3. W. Somerset Maugham, On a Chinese Screen (London, 1922), pp. 90-93.

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Missionary attitudes Missionary accounts of the Chinese in private and circulated correspondence in the late 1920s were ambiguous and often contradictory. The revulsion exhibited, at cruelty to animals or the apparent "cheapness" of human life, was real but Chinese "faults" were usually perceived as resulting purely from their deficient moral values. Quaker lecturer William Sewell announced that the "disdain for the Chinese on the part of the foreigners" in Shanghai made him "sick" but in his ownjudgement the Chinese were decadent, ignorant, childlike, cowardly, dishonest and their civilisation inert, a "jelly-fish". When sufficiently exasperated he would announce that "East is East and West is West and they just won't meet" before denouncing China's "topsy-turvy" nature. When on furlough, however, he lectured widely and effusively on China and on the absolute necessity of British understanding of the Chinese. In later years Sewell accepted the primacy of economic factors in many of the areas in which he found the Chinese wanting, but at the time his was the disgust of a Briton confronted by practices he believed barbaric and beliefs he felt superstitious. 4 Another throwaway comment is a useful guide to how valuable these observations can be. Harold Rattenbury, District Secretary of the WMMS complained in 1928 that, "The Chinese Compradore class tends to swarm all over [Ouling], which possibly, from the original point of view of a health resort, will not have the best effects." This is interesting for several reasons. It is a direct comment on social change in China. The term "compradore class" is used loosely to describe the urban bourgeoisie whose rise to prominence in Chinese society in the early twentieth century has been the focus of much academic interest. They expressed their new status with an appetite for Western goods, modes and expectations, in this case the cool weather retreat at a hill station founded by British missionaries. 5 Secondly it exhibits a highly typical aversion to this new class, one often found in the writings of treaty port businessmen and soldiers. It hints, as does Sewell's, that missionaries were an integral part of treaty port life and thinking. The link made between the Chinese

4. W. G. Sewell, journal letters, 25 March 1927, 19 February 1927, FSC CH May, 194; journal letters, 5 June 1928, 4 November 1928, Sewell Papers, SOAS PP MS 16/3; "Engagement Diary", PP MS 16/37; "Cultural Continuity: The Past in the Present", Talk for Europe China Association at Oxford, 29 July 1977, PP MS 16/18. 5. H. B. Rattenbury to C. W. Andrews, 10 August 1928, Methodist Missionary Society Archives, SOAS, [MMS] Hupeh fiche 390; Marie-Claire Bergere, The Golden Age of the Chinese Bourgeoisie. 1911-1937 (Cambridge, 1989). On the appetite for things Western see Virgil Kit-yiu Ho, "The Limits of Hatred: Popular Attitudes Towards the West in Republican Canton", East Asian History, No.2 (December 1991), pp. 87-104.

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and public health was common; it was the standard defence of foreigners in Shanghai who supported the exclusion of Chinese from the International Settlement's parks before 1927. Thirdly the adaptation of treaty port society to the consumer demands of this new class was a key theme in business thinking among British companies in the later 1920s. As this paper will show missionaries had also to adapt their Church and mission structures, and their educational and medical services in similar ways; indirectly and directly mission records tell us much about changes in such services, and in expectations of them, in Chinese society at large.6 Fourthly, it hints at the desire for some sort of continued segregation of missionaries from Chinese society, segregation that was a key feature of the structure of mission work in China. Other more direct observations are invaluable, such as Sewell's atmospheric accounts of the communist Canton uprising in December 1927, and its bloody aftermath, which provide sobering reading. Such vital first-hand reports are scattered throughout the archives. Depending as they do on the awareness and articulacy of the individual missionary (Sewell is quite exceptional on this score) they cannot always be relied upon to exist, but are always worth searching for. They provide useful reports on local conditions. After all missionaries provided invaluable reports on local conditions for the consular service (although as most local consular files no longer exist this is not immediately apparent): they even provided local information for the diplomatic service about conditions in Beijing itself, which speaks volumes about the insularity of the foreign community in that city.7 They also, of course, acted as "outport" correspondents for the Shanghai newspapers, especially the North China Daily News. Missionary writings were voluminous and were the biggest source of "friendly" material about China readily available in the West but these works are often an unreliable guide to the realities of mission life and thinking. They are often hagiographical and selectively factual, but this is not surprising as they served a public purpose. William Sewell's more colourful and hostile notes about life in China were not reprinted in circulated versions of his letters. This form of censorship was common and the subjects uncensored included the stock cliches of mission propaganda, such as reports on opium growing. Published missionary writings

6. On this point see R. A. Bickers, "Changing British Attitudes to China and the Chinese, 1928-1931" (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1992), especially Chapter 5. 7. See, for example the letter from the Salvation Army's Lt. Commissioner W. Mackenzie to the British Minister, Sir Miles Lampson, 9 November 1928, in FO 228/ 3718/738 2. For Sewell on Canton see SOAS PP MS 16/2 and 3.

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are not, therefore, generally a reliable source of information about their views towards the Chinese and the tensions of mission life.8 Although missions are often excluded from social histories of twentieth century Britain their archives tell us much about changes in British society itself, especially the position of professional and educated women after the Great War. The BMS in China worried about the rate their young female missionaries had "collapsed", or were losing sight of their vocation and vocational celibacy. In the LMS Marjorie Clement's experiences, in her year of language training at Beijing, were quite obviously a liberation from a dull and predictable existence in Britain. There were holidays, the "whole of August free. Absolutely. It's a thing I have never had in my life before." There was a servant, (at one point she had no idea if the servants went home or slept somewhere in her house) and responsibility both to the local communities and to the wider Christian enterprise in China. For an ex-shop assistant and domestic help this was revelatory. Its consequences for her relations with the Chinese were tangible, as her letters, for example, repeat treaty port cliches about the modern Chinese.9 Responding to revolution: the need for reform Perhaps most pertinent, however, are the observations implicit and explicit in the processes of adaptation and reform in the mission world in the aftermath of the Nationalist Revolution of 1925-1928. These observations can perhaps best be studied in an examination of the question of the sinification of Mission and Church institutions in the aftermath of the revolution. As far as missions were immediately concerned the most traumatic aspect of the upheaval was the mass evacuation of mission personnel from the Chinese interior in late 1926 and early 1927. This took place, of course, against a background of wider intellectual change and political turmoil. Disenchantment with Western "civilisation" and "progress" was as common a post-Great War theme in China as it was in Europe. The changing intellectual climate in the West was experienced at first hand by many Chinese returned students, and also as a result of the visits of Western intellectuals, such as John Dewey and Bertrand Russell, to China in the 1920s. Younger Chinese intellectuals and students were

8. Contrast his journal letter of 5 May 1928 with the version published in The World Outlook (July, 1928), p. 48, SOAS PP MS 16/3. 9. Katherine M. Franklin to M. E. Bowser, 31 May 1930, Baptist Missionary Society Archives [BMSA] CHI70; Clements to May, 2 August 1931,4 March 1932; see her description of a modern Chinese student, 23 September 1932, and Chinese warlords, 23 September 1932, CWM China Personal Box 13; CWM Candidates Papers 1900-1950, Box 8.

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interested in Western science by whose standards the fundamentalist Protestantism which so characterised mission Christianity was charged with "obscurantism and social defeatism.,,10 The need for missionaries to appeal to the "better educated" classes was well attested, and the success and influence of Dewey and Russell paradoxically gave some the hope that well-aimed and informed Christian work could also have similarly far-reaching results. Certainly, such organisations as the YMCA were popular, and Christianity had a higher public profile in Nationalist China than it had ever had before, most symbolically with the conversion of Chiang Kaishek and the influence of the Song sisters and Kong Xiangxi (H. H. Kung). David Yui of the YMCA had officiated at Chiang's wedding, Wang Zhengting was briefly General Secretary of the YMCA, Kong Xiangxi had been a secretary and so had an estimated 148 Government officials. II Anti-Christian thought was given a political articulation and structure throughout the politically contentious 1920s. An anti-Christian movement was launched by the Anti-Christian Student Federation [Feijidujiao xuesheng tongmeng] and the Great Anti-Religious Federation [Feizongjiao da tongmeng] in response to the 1922 National Christian Conference and its tactlessly-titled report The Christian Occupation of China (1922). (The military metaphor is worth noting, such terminology was prevalent in mission description and propaganda). In 1924, the Educational Rights Recovery movement organised student strikes and attacks on mission schools and colleges. The May 30th movement and the Nationalist Revolution exacerbated this activity. Students rebelled, and were often joined by Chinese staff members. This poisoned relations but also revealed, in effect, severe structural problems in mission education, in relations between staff and students and between foreign heads and teachers and Chinese staff12 These experiences left a legacy of increased distrust of Chinese Christians among many missionaries and prompted others to realise that relations with their converts, colleagues and organised Chinese Christianity had to

10. Chow Tse-tsung, The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1960), pp. 320-33; E. R. Hughes, "A Background to the Problem of Christian Literature in China", International Review of Missions [IRM] (October, 1930), p. 519. H. Dawson to Hawkins, 22 January 1931, CWM North China Box 28; Shirley S. Garrett, "The Chambers of Commerce and the YMCA", M. Elvin and G. W. Skinner, eds., The Chinese City Between Two Worlds (Stanford, 1974), p. 237. 12. China Christian Year Book [CCYBj 1925, pp. 51-60, 269; CCYB 1926, pp. 225-26. On the anti-Christian movements see Ka-che Yip, Religion, Nationalism and Chinese Students (Bellingham, Washington, 1980), passim., and Jessie Gregory Lutz, Chinese Politics and Christian Missions: The AntiChristian Movements of 1920-28 (Notre Dame, Indiana, 1988) passim.

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be re-negotiated, especially as the evacuations of 1926-27 "rudely thrust" autonomy and responsibility onto many Chinese Churches. Many missionaries retrospectively welcomed this shock-treatment, it was "the opportunity the Church of China was needing". Developments in national politics, then, often exposed "festering" problems, at local levels, between Church and Mission, and offered real solutions, for the first time, through organisational sinificationP Many individual missionaries were driven by the events of the Nationalist Revolution to question their own assumptions, and much of this debate, for example in the pages of the Chinese Recorder, was articulated as a question of race, and institutional and individual race relations. Ideas about the world-wide decline of "white" supremacy were as prevalent in mission discourse as in other fields. This was not a debate unique to China, and it must be viewed in the context of missionary reactions to political developments in India and in the still wider context of the 1928 International Missionary Council meeting in Jerusalem. This body, which represented Protestant groups world-wide, laid stress that year on the necessity of the process of "indigenisation" of Church and mission structures. 14 In the archives a more heated and less theoretical debate is revealed. The rawness revealed by accusations of social segregation, such as against Dr Liddell of the LMS in a letter to the Christian World by a younger missionary, Henry Marsden, in 1928, is revealing. Marsden was severely censured by his colleagues and superiors, but his claim was generally justifiable. E. R. Hughes of the LMS, who gave up traditional evangelical work in Fujian because he became convinced that it was ideologically unjustifiable stated that, for his part, "in the past I have slipped into a way of living which was prevalent when I came to China and that way of living could and should be revised." William Sewell was not acting unusually when he attempted to exclude Chinese from temples used as foreign holiday retreats in Sichuan. 15 Marsden also joined in the ongoing debate in the Chinese

13. For a sample of distrust and bitterness see E. R. Rainey, "Report of Ting Chow Girl's School for 1926", 16 February 1927, CWM China Fukien Reports; W. W. Gibson to Andrews, 11 November 1927, MMS Hunan fiche 212; F. J. Griffith to Miss Heathcote, 13 May 1927, Scott papers, SOAS; Hughes to Hawkins, 19 July 1928 and "Minutes of the Fukien District Committee, December 1928", in E. A. Preston to Hawkins, 5 January 1929, CWM China Fukien, Box 15. 14. E. C. Lobenstine, "Church and Mission", CCYB 1929, pp. 252-53. 15. Sparham to Hawkins, 28 December 1928, CWM Central China Box 45; Preston to Hawkins, 3 December 1928, and enclosures; Hughes to Preston, 19 December 1928, enclosed in Preston to Hawkins, 5 January 1929, CWM China Fukien Box 15; Sewell journal letter, 10 July 1928, SOAS PP MS 16/3.

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Recorder about missionaries and their "standard of living". While liberal writers saw the mission life-style as exclusive, pragmatists saw it as sensible, and psychologically and physically necessary.16 Some claimed that the Western life-style of missionaries was not in itself a problem unless it was inflexible, segregated or zealously preserved. However, it was recognised that the existence of this situation automatically raised problems in relationships with the Chinese, habits of superiority or of indifference, of which missionaries were not always aware. 17 Reinforcing this, missionaries in the larger treaty ports, such as Shanghai, Tianjin and Hankou, generally took part in the social and institutional activities of the British communities and many openly identified themselves with the business communities and the political status quO. 18 Mission societies indulged in a fit of introspection in and after 1927. London deputations or secretaries from the LMS, BMS and the FSC made investigative trips to China. The deputations came up with similar, unsurprising, conclusions. They assessed the damage, physical and metaphorical, caused by the revolutionary period. They also identified the wider social and other changes which could not be ignored and which had to be accommodated. 19 It was widely realised that on returning in strength to China a different relationship with Chinese Christians and Chinese Churches would be required. Missionaries, like the business community, had no intention of pulling out of China. A certain amount of pride and an attempt to recoup some of the prestige lost through evacuation was involved. The BMS asserted that events had ultimately shown that withdrawal would be "premature" and that work needed intensifying. In 1929, the CIM decided to call for two hundred new missionaries to go to China, and this had been achieved by 1931. Theoretical writers stressed that there was still a place for missionaries

16. Marsden. "Missionary Hindrances". Chinese Recorder (CR) (December. 1928), pp. 976-77; R. B. Whitaker, "A Missionary Confession", CR (January, 1929), pp. 7-14; K. A. Baird, "Missionary Mistakes", CR (July, 1929), pp. 460-61; M.S. Stewart, "Call to the Simple Life", CR (March, 1930), pp. 153-60. 17. E. M. Rainey, "The Missionary as Neighbour", CR (September, 1928), pp. 554-58, CR (February, 1929), p. 125; E. M. Dixon, "On the Problem of Servants", CR (August, 1931), pp. 502-506. 18. See, for example C. H. B. Longman to Hawkins, 20 September 1931 and 23 November 1931, CWM North China Box 29; Revd Hope Moncrieff to P. 1. Maclagan, 1 June 1927, EPMA South Fukien Box 19. 19. See London Missionary Society. China Mission. Report by Mr. Hawkins on his visit to China as special deputation from the Directors. August 1927 to March 1928 (London, 1928) and W Parker Gray and C. E. Wilson [BMS] Report of a Visit to China 1929, both in SOAS CBMS EITIChina 15, Mission Reports, and the file on the Quakers' "China Deputation 1929-30", FSC CHIlO.

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in China, and, in principle, most Chinese Churches and Union organisations wanted them to stay.20 It was clear, however, that the old ways of life and structures were no longer tenable. The years since 1925 had seen crude propagandist attacks on missions, sustained intellectual criticisms of their position, and frequent physical attacks on missionaries. This criticism came from both Chinese nationalists, from Chinese Christians and secular organisations such as the National Christian Council of China [NCe) and YMCA, and from the foreign business community, which tended wildly to blame mission education for the phenomenon of nationalism and often identified the NCC as a communist organisation. Support for the mission enterprise was waning in some British circles. Both the spread of liberal theological ideas, and wider secular intellectual change caused this decline. It was most apparent among more progressive Christian groupings (such as the Quakers, many of whom were loath to even use the word "mission,,).21 Lack of support was also apparent from the funding difficulties many societies faced; CMS income, for example, reached a high-point of £651,610 in 1920 but by 1934 had sunk to £391,676. This problem was long-term and only partly exacerbated by the world depression after 1929. The chaos in China also made funds more difficult to raise there, both from wealthy Chinese and from foreign and Chinese companies. Cutbacks necessitated by this decline also encouraged speedier sinification as missions, like British businesses, realised that Chinese employees were cheaper. 22 For a variety of reasons then, missionary societies were faced with the fact that the tone and structure of their presence in China was no longer tenable as it stood. If missions were to stay in China they would have to reform themselves, and the attitudes of their mission personnel, especially their foreign personnel, and their relations with the Chinese churches.

Reforms: Foreign Staff Many societies, from the start of the evacuation in 1926-27 and throughout the whole process of return and into the early 1930s, weeded out those they felt had become unsuitable, or whose unsuitabilities had come to be perceived as unhelpful, and those that Chinese mission 20. Rattenbury to Andrews, 19 March 1928, MMS Hupeh fiche 389; BMS Annual Report 1928, p. 15, BMSA; China's Millions (15 March 1929); CIM Archives, London Council Minutes, 9 December 1931; L. C. Smythe, "The Place of the Missionary in China", CR (October, 1931), pp. 618-23. 21. W H. Davidson to H. T. SiIcock, I3 December 1927, FSC/CH. 22. Gordon Hewitt, The Problems of Success: A History of the Church Missionary Society 1910-1942, vol. I (London, 1971), pp. 481, 485; on funding problems see, for example, Rattenbury to Andrews, 14 November 1929, MMS Hupeh fiche 400; Hewitt, Problems of Success, vol. 2, pp. 266-67.

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workers intimated, or stated, were no longer welcome. Missions responded to similar criticisms of their personnel by Chinese workers as were directed against British businesses. This was not a phenomenon unique to British organisations, many North American missionaries did not return. 23 Many others in all societies resigned from ill-health or because of the trying experiences of the revolutionary years. A proportion of these missionaries were replaced. This infusion of new workers was an opportunity for missions to adapt to changes at a greater pace and with greater ease and they were widely aware that their new workers should be prepared to work on different terms with the Chinese than formerly. The Methodist Synod Chairman in Hunan warned London that: "Any attempt to introduce a colour bar is unChristian and offensive, and I do not think I could advise you to send anyone out to China under any such disability." The BMS announced the need for "fraternal" relations to replace "paternal" ones. There were problems integrating this new wave of idealists, some of whose principles led to friction within the missions. One such couple fell out with the Central China District of the LMS in 1930 (they "misunderstood distinctions that sometimes had to be made but do not indicate any failure in Christian grace"). Established patterns of mission socialisation could not quickly adapt, nor could the institutional and physical structures of mission life be expected to change quickly enough to accommodate progressive idealists. Henry Marsden, for example, who had outraged his colleagues with his criticisms of their relations with the Chinese, was said to "not have appreciated the meaning of team-work". The dictates of mission solidarity were strong and Marsden left the LMS in 1929. 24 It was apparent that mission work could no longer be targeted largely at the villages of China and the Chinese peasantry. This historical solution to the steadfast opposition of the Chinese bureaucratic elite was inadequate on two counts. Firstly, the Chinese elite was now more Westernised than ever before and also stronger and more successfully anti-imperialist than ever before. For the mission enterprise to continue it needed to reach an accommodation with those elites at national and local levels and to accelerate and modernise the educational work it had 23. Clifford M. Stubbs, circular letter, 23 January 1928, FSC CH /13; A. 1. Austin, Saving China: Canadian Missionaries in the Middle Kingdom 1888-1959 (Toronto, 1986), pp. 219-20. 24. Gibson to Andrews, 23 December 1927, MMS Hunan fiche 212; BMS Annual Report and Statement of Accounts for the 137th year ending March 31st 1929, p.14, BMSA; T. Cocker Brown to Hawkins, 29 March 1930; Sparham to Hawkins, 28 December 1928, CWM Central China Boxes 46, 45; Norman Goodall, A History of the London Missionary Society. 1895-1945 (London, 1954), p. 611.

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begun in the early years of the century. For their part the "better educated classes" were felt by some to show a greater willingness and openness to Christian work than was historically the case. 25 Missionaries who would have been suitable "fifty-years ago" for 'muscular' work in the villages were now expected to interact intelligently with educated Chinese. Explicit inability to do this caused some to be eased out of mission work. 26 Conversely however, the economic plight of the Chinese peasant was leading some societies to commit workers and funds to "social" goals, such as the work of John Lossing Buck (initially of the American Presbyterian Mission, North) and his co-workers at Nanjing. This was accompanied by work with those caught up in China's industrial centres, such as that of Dame Adelaide Anderson and others dealing with industrial conditions in Shanghai. Both of these themes were debated over and over in the leading mission journal, the monthly Chinese Recorder, which gave much space to the Social Gospel view, the importance of which also reflected the interest taken in it by Chinese organisations such as the Chinese YMCA and the NCC and, it was felt, by Chinese students in general. After 1927, of course, the dictatorial National Government considered radical political or social work politically suspect and this may have caused an increased interest in Christian social work?? Sinification: Union Organisations The development of Chinese control of union (that is inter-denominational) organisations initially worried many British observers who were concerned about their involvement in what were seen as purely political affairs. Some conservatives felt that they were unrepresentative bodies, in thrall to Nationalist politics and too influential with Home Mission Boards?8 As tempers cooled in the aftermath of the Revolution it

25. Dawson to Hawkins, 22 January 1931, CWM North China Box 28. 26. Bickers, "Changing British Attitudes", pp. 222-23. 27. Cocker Brown, Decennial Report 1930, CWM Central China Reports Box 11; Buck directed the important survey work which appeared as Chinese Farm Economy (Nanjing, 1930) and Land Utilisation in China (Nanjing, 1937); Adelaide Anderson, Humanity and Labour in China: An Industrial Visit and its Sequel. (1923 to 1926) (London, 1928); see also, for example, the articles on "The Chinese Christian Espouses Social Evangelism" in CR (May, 1931), passim.; see also Shirley Garrett, Social Reformers in Urban China: The Chinese YMCA. 1895-1926 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1970), passim. 28. The CIM withdrew from the NCC and the Chinese YMCA, partIy for theological reasons but also because of their opposition to what they considered to be the politicisation of these organisations, National Christian Council Bulletin (June, 1926), p. 19, SOAS CBMS EfT China 4.

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became apparent that sinification was unstoppable. The necessity of sending good foreign delegates was soon realised. 29 The Chinese element in the NCC was strengthened in 1927, and in the following year there was a reorganisation after which both missionary and Chinese delegates were to be elected by the Chinese Churches. This strengthened the Chinese character of the NCC and it had the apparent virtue, for more hostile foreign observers, of strengthening the moderate presence in an organisation which had been set up, some felt, merely in order to act as a safety valve for Chinese Christians?O Changes in other bodies, such as the Nurses' Association of China and the China Christian Education Association shifted the balance of control into the hands of the Chinese majority membership. Some of this sinification was literally nominal. The China Mission Year Book became the China Christian Year Book in 1926, and the previous year the China Medical Missionary Association had become the China Medical Association. These changes were, none the less, symbolic, and did reveal shifts in emphasis from foreign mission to Chinese institution?

Sinification: Church structures Indigenisation was, of course, a major theme in mission and Chinese Christian debate before 1925. The ideal of the missions had always been to foster self-governing, self-financing and self-propagating churches. The 1922 China National Christian Conference (the first with a majority of Chinese delegates and a Chinese chairman) had built on previous slow progress and created the National Christian Council, which was intended to help Protestant missions work towards sinification. 32 It also set in motion the formation of a Church of Christ in China [Ccq (Zhongguo jidujiaohui), which held its first general assembly in 1927. This was an interdenominational body mainly composed of Presbyterian and Congregationalist Churches. The crisis of 1925 to 1927 prompted many other groups to join or to contemplate joining,

29. H. 1. P. Anderson to Mac\agan, 22 February 1929, BMSA South Fukien Box 11; A. W. Hooker to E. Dewstoe, 30 January 1930, MMS South China fiche 587. 30. CCYB 1928, p. 72; CCYB 1929, p. 225; Hewitt, Problems of Success, vol. 2, p.215. 31. Nurses' Association of China: Report of Conference 1928 (Shanghai, 1928), p. 18; Educational Review [ERJ (April, 1928), p. 220; ER (October, 1931), p. 517; CMYB 1925, pp. 301-302. 32. F. Rawlinson, ed., The Chinese Church as Revealed in the National Christian Conference Held in Shanghai. Tuesday. May 2. to Thursday May 11. 1922 (Shanghai, 1922), Opening addresses, pp. 30-40; K. S. Latourette, A History of Christian Missions in China (London, 1929), pp.796-98.

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sometimes in great haste. 33 Other boards, suspicious of the politics, or opposed to the theology of the CCC, contemplated, enacted or accelerated transfers of power from their missions to their churches. The Shanghai Council of the CIM, for example, announced the need for "more speedy carrying out of the original policy of the Mission to establish self-supporting and self-propagating churches" in 1928. By 1931 the key aim of its "forward movement" was said to be the "rapid transfer to Chinese leadership of the pastoral care and oversight of the Chinese Churches.,,34 The Anglican Church in China was formally recognised as an independent "constituent member" of the Anglican Communion in 1930 whilst at diocesan levels the direction of missionary labour and the handling of funds was transferred region by region to diocesan, that is Chinese Church, boards. 35 The devolution of authority to Chinese churches involved many thorny issues: the ownership of church property, the control of mission funds and the final control of the direction of mission efforts and the place of the mission in general. Sinification often meant the merging of church and mission structures and the subordination of missionaries to the authority of the Chinese church. Transferring mission property to the Chinese church symbolised in concrete form the state of relations between Church and Mission and for these reasons was requested by the CCC in 1928. 36 The role of the mission councils in China was questioned by some Chinese Christians but missionaries, unsurprisingly given the nature of the missionary vocation, were unwilling to abolish their own jobs and anxious to stress their continued usefulness. 37 These issues and the nature of relations between Britons and Chinese within the Churches and missions, were often influenced by perceptions of the Chinese character and abilities, and the expectations raised by 33. London Missionary Society: Report of the Eighteenth Meeting of the Advisory Council for China held at Shanghai. February 20th - March 2nd 1928 (Shanghai, 1928), Appendix II "First General Assembly of the Church of Christ in China", pp. 76-78; A. L. Warnshuis, "Changes in Missionary Policies and Methods in China: North American Boards", IRM, 17 (April, 1928), pp. 306-308. 34. CIM London Council Minutes, 1 February 1928; China's Millions (July, 1931), p. 120. 35. Hewitt, Problems of Success, vol. 2, pp. 219, 225, 280, 286. 36. Maclagan to Anderson, 6 June 1928, EPMA Fukien South Box 11; "Memorandum from the FFMA China Council on the Question of Transference of Mission Property to the Chinese Church" 1927, FSC China Committee Minutes, vol. VI, pp. 137-38; A. R. Kepler to Secretary of the FMC of the EPM, 19 April 1928, EPMA Box 60a. 37. "Minutes of the Amoy Mission Council, January 26th to February 2nd 1929" in Anderson to Maclagan, 22 February 1929, BMSA South Fukien Box 11; Secretary, Mission Council to All Councils, 22 July 1929, EPMA South Fukien, Box 11.

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missionary lifestyles. Such points involved questions of financial and doctrinal distrust. There was a grave danger, thought the CIM's London Council, that "power may fall into the hands of unspiritual men, as the true spiritual leaders do not necessarily come to the front." H. F. Wallace of the EPM foresaw "endless suspicions and slanders and faction feuds" resulting from the devolution of financial responsibility. Some feared that their" dramatic instinct" would sweep Chinese Christians into evangelistic excesses if there was no doctrinally consistent restraint from foreign supervisors. Such charges and fears are often absent from published accounts which gloss over the tensions caused by such reforms. 38 Many of these reservations were, of course, part of the long term debate about the process of conversion and the propagation of Christian churches. Christianity in China was still fairly recent and Chinese society was not Christian. It was in this context that the events of the 1920s unfolded. The problems of "indigenisation" acquired new political urgency and needed radical short-term solutions if the missions were not to lose their work altogether.

Sinification: Staff The appointment of Chinese to staff mission educational and medical posts was the most visible aspect of sinification. The BMS announced that they were happy to appoint qualified Chinese leaders in all areas of Church work but stressed that this was not a process of replacement (which implied a responsibility on the part of the mission society to pay for them, or to pay for them at the same rate as foreign workers) but was a transference of all responsibilities. Chinese church officials were, naturally, not always happy with this insistence but during the period of the evacuation Chinese Christians, if it was politically possible or expedient, generally got on competently with Church affairs themselves. Some were independent (or "bolshevised") enough to demand only the return of missionary "advisors". "They have managed so splendidly on their own initiative that I ... am very often not even asked to join in things" was one plaintive missionary response.39 38. CIM London Council Minutes, 2 January 1929; H. F. Wallace to Maclagan, 30 June 1927, EPMA Lingtung Swatow Box 44; "Wukingfu Girls School Report for 1931 ", EPMA Hakka Box 28; H. M. Moncrief to Maclagan, 11 September 1928, EPMA South Fukien Box 19. 39. BMSA China Sub-Committee Minutes, vol. 10, 31 May 1927, 28 July 1928; see the description of a "terrific fight" over the matter of financial authority at the Wu-chang District Synod of the WMMS in 1929, Rattenbury to Andrews, 14 May 1929, MMS Hupeh Correspondence, fiche 197; Gibson to Andrews, 23 December 1927, MMS Hunan fiche 212; Mrs Geller to Hawkins, 22 July 1929, CWM North China Box 11.

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There was another aspect to indigenisation. This was a necessary process of sinification of what were specifically mission or mission support posts, especially in medical and educational areas. Social and intellectual changes were such in China that within the BMS it was thought that "a third class of mission worker ... the Chinese worker with a foreign training" would have to be recognised.4o This led to debates about the best way of finding and retaining Chinese workers which were also common in debate in British business circles in China. In the LMS it was pointed out that there was now no need for clerical missionaries, as so much work was being devolved into Chinese hands; this was especially true for nursery and primary schools where more administrative and teaching work could be done by Chinese teachers.41 Getting suitable staff for schools and hospitals would also mean having to pay them more than Chinese staff had been paid before, paying them at the rates for comparable work outside the missions and, in some cases, almost on Western lines. It had been stated before, and was reconfirmed, that they would need to be given "a better status, more opportunity and more responsibility".42 Societies did begin to appoint more Chinese staff to mission educational and medical positions as well as to positions on joint organisations. In 1931, for the first time, the LMS in North China had ordained Chinese mission workers in its employ. By 1928 in the Hupeh District of the WMMS had a Chinese minister in every Circuit or one on trial. In 1931 at the Hupeh Synod there were even three "pukker Chinese Deaconesses". The CIM aimed to train up Chinese evangelists more rapidly while the Amoy Mission Council of the EPM voted to appoint itinerant Chinese pastors instead of missionaries for "station visitation and the direction of the evangelistic enterprise in the country districts.,,43 Such appointments certainly brought problems in their wake as Chinese

40. BMSA China Sub-Committee Minutes, vol. 10, 20 July 1928. 41. "For which we may be devoutly thankful", E. H. Clayton, "The Place of the Foreigner in Secondary Schools", ER (January, 1928), p. 41; L. G. Philips to Hawkins, \3 July 1931, enclosing "Minutes of Fukien District Committee, July 1931 ", CWM China Fukien Box 16. 42. Rattenbury to Andrews, 20 April 1928, MMS Hupeh Correspondence, fiche 389; Miss Gwenfrom Moss to Hawkins, 9 November 1931, CWM North China Box 29; Visitation of the Work of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society in China, 1920. By Revd Andrews, B.D., (General Secretary) and Dr. F. Percy Wagfield (Medical Secretary). Report of the Deputation [London, 1920], p. 33. MMS 43. E. S. Box, "Annual Report 1931 ", CWM North China Reports Box ll; Rattenbury to Andrews, 14 February 1928, MMS Hupeh fiche 388; Dorothy Hill to Hornby, 3 May 1931, MMS WW Hupeh fiche 132; China's Millions (July, 1931) p. 120; "Minutes of the Amoy Mission Council January 26th to February 2nd 1929", Anderson to Maclagan, 22 February 1929, EPMA South Fukien Box n.

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and Europeans struggled to adapt their attitudes and expectations, but the character of mission and church institutions, and patterns of responsibility tangibly changed. Education There had been debate within mission circles about the direction and nature of mission education before 1927. The 1921-22 China Educational Commission recommended greater integration of schools with the Chinese national and provincial educational systems. Many schools were seriously disrupted by their Chinese students, and sometimes staff, as a result of the political disturbances after 1924. By 1928 when mission schools and colleges were starting to reopen, it was realised that an "entirely new situation" was facing mission educationalists in which "the foreigner has no business in a position that could be occupied creditably by a Chinese associate".44 In 1928, as part of its consolidation of political control, the Nationalist Government enacted educational legislation requiring the registration of all schools. To be registered it was necessary for schools to have Chinese heads and predominantly Chinese boards of governors or trustees. This aspect of registration was widely accepted, and carried out, by mission societies; it was, after all, a "wise thing to do", and some schools had already devolved such authority.45 Most were happy with the results, which in some cases seem to have improved relations with Chinese staff, and restored discipline among rebellious students in ways no longer possible for foreign principals in the still politicised educational atmosphere.46 However, the continued mission presence in schools made for awkward relationships, especially as they affected missionaries who had previously worked in more leading roles, and it was expected that the strain of the new subordinate relationship would be too much for some. New recruits were preferred, such as Mr Monro at Medhurst College, Shanghai, who had "the right attitude towards the new regime

44. Jessie Lutz, China and the Christian Col/eges, /850-/950 (Ithaca, New York, 1971), pp. 232-70; E. W. Wallace, "The Outlook for Christian Education in China", IRM, 17 (January, 1928), p. 211; ER (January, 1928), p. 6. 45. Lutz, China and the Christian Col/eges, 255-70; S. K. Laird, Report, 21 January 1930, MMS South China fiche 204. 46. E. M. Bolton to Miss Hunter, I January 1927, MMS WW Hupeh Correspondence, fiche 122; Eva Spicer to Hawkins, 1 January 1929; C. W. Knott to Hawkins, 25 April 1929, and enclosures, CWM Central China Boxes 44, 45; Mira Cumber to Mr Butler, 8 June 1928, FSC CH/6; James Watson to C. E. Wilson,14 July 1927, BMSA CH/67.

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of Chinese control in the college, and towards Chinese students [had] a feeling of intelligent sympathy".47 A further aspect of registration was the formal banning of religious education as part of the curriculum. This caused some resignations as societies opted to secularise the formal curriculum and concentrate more broadly on Christian education. The CIM was not happy about registration. but the BMS Home Committee accepted it in 1931. Fearful of registration but also fearful of losing pupils the CIM in London stressed to opponents of the process in China the pragmatic necessity of continuing to teach "secular subjects to secure pupils".48 Medicine Sinification of healthwork involved two basic processes; firstly, the provision of better-paid opportunities and more responsibilities for Chinese doctors; secondly, the devolution of control of medical missions to the Chinese churches. Both processes were intimately tied up with a third, the improvement of the standard of medical work. Despite such obvious exceptions as the Peking Union Medical College [PUMC] the 1922 Christian Occupation of China had revealed an appalling overall picture of medical work. 49 The situation in some hospitals - as regards standards of hygiene - often appalled doctors and new recruits fresh from Britain: "Our large upper wards have no bathroom, closets, or baggage room or pantry attached to them. A patient has to go out of the building for a bath. An insanitary covered pail is under each bed."so It was also widely recognised that the prevailing general standards threatened the continuation of medical work, especially if the National 47. Jeannie Ewing to Miss Moore, 5 January 1928, Ewing to Miss Johnston, EPMA WMA South Fukien Reports; Sparham to Hawkins, 28 June, 1928; Catherine M. Robertson to Hawkins, 29 May 1928, CWM Central China Boxes 44,43. 48. H. W. Burdett to Wilson, 27 July 1927, BMSA CH/56; H. H. Rowley to Wilson, 22 September 1927,4 January 1929, BMSA CH/64; CIM London Council Minutes, 2 January 1929, 10 December 1930; H. R. Williamson, British Baptists in China, 1845-1952 (London, 1957), p. 136. 49. The Christian Occupation of China: A General Survey of the Numerical Strength and Geographical Distribution of the Christian Forces in China made by the Special Committee on Survey and Occupation, China Continuation Committee 1918-1921 (Shanghai, 1922), pp. 429-41; see also Harold Balme, China and Modern Medicine: A Study in Medical Missionary Development (London, 1921), pp. 104-106. 50. "Plan of Suggested Alterations in WMA Hospital Swatow", in Dr Winifred Heyworth to Miss Mitchel, 19 October 1926, EPMA Lingtung Swatow Box 34. E. H. Scott, "First Impressions of the Swatow Hospitals", 17 February 1931, EPMA Lingtung Swatow Box 38.

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Government chose to register teaching hospitals and nursing schools as it had educational establishments. The longer-term threat, however, lay in the inability of mission hospitals, as generally constituted and run, to appeal to bourgeois Chinese patients (Rattenbury's "compradore class") whose expectations of standards of cleanliness and comfort had greatly increased, in sickness, as in health, as steamship companies were realising. Improvements were aimed at this class, who would thereby be subsidising the more charitable aspects of hospital work and making up for the shortfall in funds from abroad. The medical missionary establishment in China had overreached itself and was far too large to be supported from Britain. This was, of course, a historical legacy, and one arising from the basic contradiction of medical work, its attempt to engage in medical and evangelical work in tandem. It also led to another basic problem of professionalisation which tended to dilute the evangelical aspect of medical work; comments about the "heavy drinking" and "public frequenting of cabarets and other places" by "irreligious" professionals on the PUMC staff, for example, were common. 51 The 1922 survey identified the "crux" of the problem as staff, and urged an increase in foreign numbers to make up for the shortfall in Chinese doctors, who were also not impressed by mission standards, in their case of pay and accommodation, and, traditionally, of status. Increasing foreign staff numbers was no longer economically or politically affordable by the end of the decade. Unfortunately for missions, Chinese doctors, even those trained by missions, were still unwilling to work in mission hospitals. Some efforts were made to arrange foreign salaries for suitable candidates, or salaries which competed with the rates they would receive elsewhere in China. This was not always possible, but more Chinese doctors were employed and at market rates. 52 By 1932 the EPM was planning to have Chinese workers appointed by "a Chinese body" and

51. H. Ross and W. Heyworth to Maclagan, 26 April 1926, EPMA Lingtung Swatow Box 34; "Chuanchow Womens' Hospital Report 1929" in Anderson to Maclagan, 3 October 1930, EPMA South Fukien Box 12; H. D. Fraser, H. R. Watt, Campbell Gibson and G. Burt to Maclagan, 25 July 1930, EPMA Lingtung Swatow Box 38; Hewitt, Problems of Success, vol. 2, pp. 274-75; R. Worth, "Swatow Women's Hospital Annual Report, 1929", EPMA Lingtung Swatow Box 34; E. C. Lobenstine to Hawkins, 19 June 1929, CWM Central China Box 43. 52. Christian Occupation of China, p. 429; Balme, China and Modern Medicine, pp. 201-202; C. H. Wilson, "China Reports", 16 April 1929, BMSA CHI 12; Gibson to Andrews, 30 March 1929, MMS Hunan fiche 215; H. M. Byles, "Decennial Report 1930", CWM Central China Box 11; Maclagan to Anderson, 25 July 1930, EPMA South Fukien Box 12; E. H. Scott, "Report on a tour of the Hospitals in the Yangtsze Valley, Shanghai and Canton Districts", September 1931, EPMA Lingtung Swatow, Box 38, p. 25.

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"orientated" towards the Chinese church or the institution they worked for, rather than the mission. By sinifying the appointments procedure, the mission also intended to suppress salary demands based on foreign rates by distancing itself from the process. 53 Patterns of responsibility, however, could be changed. One LMS doctor, for example, found himself "working with, indeed under, a Chinese Doctor". This did not always prove easy as British doctors usually felt that their own standards of medical hygiene were better than those of their Chinese colleagues.54 In a thorough report in 1928, an Inter-Council Conference of the EPM condemned its existing hospitals. It recommended a series of improvements, including organisational measures which would thoroughly anchor their hospitals into the communities they served by allowing the Chinese Churches and public, through Guilds and Chambers of Commerce, to join in their management. The EPM undertook to build a new hospital in Shantou with local Chinese financial contributions and in agreement with the Mayor. The level of sophistication and complexity of business required the appointment of a business manager. Traditionally most hospitals were administered by the foreign doctors themselves but this was no longer sensible or possible. 55 By 1932 they were planning with a view to "ultimate devolution" of the hospitals to the Chinese Church and a board of trustees, in line with a 1926 plan of the China Medical Association Missionary Division which also interested the LMS. Familiar doubts about "practical problems of ethics and religion" in handing over control to a "local heathen community" were raised by Rattenbury in Hankou. However, where the CMS handed over control to a Chinese Medical Superintendent it was noted that the work flourished, and relations with the local community and authorities were good. 56 Physical Structures The proper sinification of personnel and institutional structures also 53. "Inter-Council Conference, 8th-12th February 1932", EPMA Lingtung Swatow Box 12. 54. Sparham to Hawkins, 29 September 1928, CWM Central China Box 44; Dr G. C. Dorting, Tientsin Mackenzie Memorial Hospital, "Annual Report for 1930", CWM North China Reports Box 10. 55. "Inter-Council Conference on Mission Work, 17th-20th November, 1928"; Campbell Gibson to Maclagan, 17 November 1931; E. H. Scott letter, 9 October 1930, EPMA Lingtung Swatow Boxes 34, 38, 43a; Christian Occupation of China, p. 429. 56. "Inter-Council Conference, February 1932", EPMA Lingtung Swatow Box 12; "Minutes of the Central China District Council, January-February 1928", CWM Central China Box 44; Rattenbury to Andrews, 14 February 1928, MMS Hupeh fiche 388; Hewitt, Problems of Success, vol. 2, P. 260.

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required changes in physical and social structures. To attract sufficiently qualified Chinese professionals, indeed to retain those trained in mission hospitals and colleges, it was realised that the housing traditionally allotted such Chinese staff was inadequate. In some cases Chinese staff, ministers and doctors, allowed to occupy foreign-style mission houses to deter looting or military requisition, were unwilling to leave. 57 Missions' foreign-style buildings themselves created problems. They symbolised the essential foreignness of the mission institutions, and perhaps, of their message. William Sewell was "tempted to wonder if a few plaster houses put up by the Chinese themselves would not have been really better" than the "magnificent buildings" of the West China Union University in Chengdu. Foreign-style mission homes were accused of fostering social isolation and segregation, while the provision of homes along racial lines had prolonged racial divisions. Large churches or educational buildings also sent misleading messages about mission society wealth. Their maintenance costs stretched the resources of the societies and were often cited as examples of the insupportable burdens that devolution would place on Chinese Churches. 58 Foreignstyle buildings were conspicuous and often arrogantly and uncompromisingly foreign, the achievement of a smaller-scale fusion of the two increasingly became the aim of Church and educational architecture. The Fitch Memorial Church in Shanghai, completed in 1928, was felt to be a good example of this fusion. 59 The geography of building was also important. In 1928 the South China District Committee of the LMS decided to build a new residence in Kowloon rather than on Hong Kong island in order to disassociate themselves from its secular, colonial society by showing the Chinese that "we are in earnest and desire to be placed in the place where we consider work is to be done".6o

57. Parker, Gray and Wilson, BMS: Report of a Visit to China 1929, CBMS E/T China 15, Mission reports, Box 361; Rattenbury to Andrews, 14 May 1929,14 June 1929, MMS Hupeh, fiche 392. 58. Sewell, journal letter, 5 May 1928, SOAS PP MS 16/3; Phillip West, Yenching University and Sino- Western Relations, 1916-1952 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1976), pp. 120-21; Andrews to Rattenbury, 25 March 1928, MMS Hupeh fiche 389; Andrews to E. Dewstoe, 4 April 1928, MMS South China fiche 575. 59. North China Herald, 13 October 1928, p. 63; 1. L. Rawlinson, Rawlinson, The Recorder and China's Revolution: A Topical Biography of Frank Joseph Rawlinson (Notre Dame, Indiana, 1990), p. 579. 60. C. Dixon Cousins to Hawkins, 25 July 1928, CWM South China Box 25.

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Social Structures and Relations Alterations to institutional and physical structures needed to be matched by changes in missionary lifestyles and especially social and business relationships. Critics such as E. R. Hughes felt that in the past these had mitigated against the opportunity for close and intimate relations. The key elements of this change were their subordination to the Chinese Church, a new emphasis on racial equality (and thereby on "colleagueship") and a de-emphasising of the essential foreignness of missions. The latter, of course, involved certain practical difficulties. Although one strain of thought suggested that missionaries should renounce their nationality, this was not popular. In general this de-emphasis meant their not relying on consuls and gunboats in relations and disputes with local Chinese authority.61 The measures taken do seem to have reflected or encouraged changes in patterns of social behaviour at colleges and hospitals, and at conferences. In 1931 the All-China Conference on Religious Education delegates, for the first time, did not divide on racial lines and eat separately. Social relations were never without problems raised by cultural differences, but greater efforts had to be made than had been before.62 This was accompanied and confirmed by a sinification of the language of mission work. Mission councils and institutions voted to provide Chinese language minutes of their meetings. Some societies had already begun this process but were keen to reaffirm it. The LMS also adopted regularised official Chinese names for constituent bodies for the first

61. Hughes to Preston, 19 December 1928, in Preston to Hawkins, 5 January 1929, CWM China Fukien Box 15; A. H. Bray to Andrews, II October 1929, MMS South China fiche 590; Rowley to W. H. Payne, II July 1927, BMSA CHI 64; Hughes, "Annual Report 1927", 20 January 1928, CWM China Fukien Reports Box 5; Rattenbury to Hooker, 12 December 1929, MMS Hupeh fiche 400; [Rattenbury] "Memorandum", [March 1930], MMS Hupeh fiche 401. 62. Janet W. Rees, circular letter, May 1929, MMS South China fiche 585; Robert Rees, "All-China Conference on Religious Education", ER (October, 1931), pp. 377-78; an unfamiliar diet was a problem that defeated Donald Farquharson when he messed with his fellow Chinese doctors, "Report 1928", 16 January 1929, CWM Central China Reports Box ll; Mrs M. Anderson, "Annual Report 1931", 26 February 1932, CWM Central China Reports Box ll.

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time. 63 Such was the sensitivity over this issue that at the 1929 NCC Conference there were "signs of revolt ... at the apparent "English language" domination of the report and findings", although the NCC was officially bilingual and Chinese texts, of minutes, were author itative. 64 The accentuation of these linguistic demands defeated many missionaries, while accommodating the internal shift in institutional life towards educated Chinese activists also affected the style of Chinese learnt. John Foster of the WMMS, for example, developed "into a splendid preacher in [Cantonese] ... his style is of the very modern student type.,,65 "Subordination" and "colleagueship" do appear to have been achieved by some; for example, "oneness" was said to have replaced "cordial relations" among the WMMS in South China. Others rejected the former and concentrated on the latter fearing that subordination of the Mission to the Church was impractical and would reduce it ultimately to the impotent status of a fund raising and transmitting body.66 The new relationship also raised practical difficulties. Indigenisation of control meant accelerating the employment of more Chinese in evangelical and pastoral positions. The CMS set up a new theological college for this reason in 1930, but Chinese evangelists were in short supply. It was considered by the Chinese to be a socially demeaning occupation, and paid too little, whilst graduates were "seriously out of touch with the kind of congregation to which they would be expected to minister". (This was, of course, a problem faced by that other group of intellectuals trying to reach the

63. Gibson to Andrews, 23 December 1927, MMS Hunan fiche 212; "Canton Union Theological College. Minutes of the Quarterly Meeting of the Board of Directors Held in the College Library, 24th June, 1931" enclosed in C. D. Cousins to Hawkins, 24 June 1931, CWM South China Box 26; "Minutes of Central Executive, Sixth Meeting, held at Tung Ch'wan, February 9-14, 1923", "Minutes of the Executive Committee of Sichuan Yearly Meeting Held at Suining, February 8th-10th 1926"; the 1932 minutes were published in Chinese, ibid., 1932, FSC CHI 10; Hewitt, Problems of Success, vol. 2, pp. 247-48. "Report of the 19th Annual Meeting of the China Council of the LMS for the Year 1929", p. 7, in Cocker Brown to Hawkins, 17 April 1929, CWM Central China Box 42. 64. Wilson "China Reports", 20 May 1929, BMSA CHI 12; National Christian Council of China Biennial Report 1929-31 (Shanghai, 1931), p. 129. 65. Despite his years on the NCC Ronald Rees "never really became fluent in Chinese", Life in China (Harrow, 1971), p. 21; Hooker to Bray, 31 March 1930, MMS South China fiche 591. 66. "A General Report of the South China District By the Chairman, January 1931", MMS Synod Minutes fiche 201; Rattenbury to Andrews, 28 March 1928, MMS Hupeh fiche 389.

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Chinese peasantry, the Chinese Communist Party).67 This was a corollary of the usual problem faced by the missions, a problem that was growing more acute. The Chinese doctors and nurses they trained, and the graduates of their universities and theological colleges, were more likely to take work in China's urban centres rather than work for little remuneration for the missions. Theologically-dedicated Chinese graduates were also more likely to either prefer educational positions, or to seek work with Union organisations such as the NCC or the Chinese YMCA; but with the establishment of the Nationalist Government, recruitment also began to become a problem for these institutions.68 This new relationship required patience and commitment on both sides. For the WMMS in the Hupeh District H. B. Rattenbury suggested mutual institutional restraints balancing his "occasionally ... arbitrary" Chairmanship and an inexperienced Chinese Executive Committee. It certainly required equal treatment of foreign and Chinese workers by Church, Mission and Mission Boards. Impatience with their new position left some observers nostalgic for their old authority, or else assuming that it would eventually return: "if China insists on Chinese Principals she must suffer for it".69 This they based on assumptions that the Chinese were, characteristically, not as self-sufficient or as strong as foreigners, especially Britons. They lacked "moral backbone" and the strength of a "Christian tradition" within a "heathen environment". New missionaries who arrived expecting to assume traditional positions of authority in relation to the Chinese were either surprised or even disappointed. One of the combination of factors leading to the quick resignation of Arthur Whitmore from the WMMS in 1929 was his disgust at the "second rate schoolmaster's job" he found waiting for him

67. Hewitt, Problems of Success, vol. 2, p. 219, 281. See also Sewell's replies to a "China Study Area Questionnaire, May 1955", SOAS PP MS 16/ 18; Mac\agan to T. W. D. James, 31 January 1929, EPMA Lingtung, Swatow, Box 43; Fernando Galbiati, P'eng p'ai and the Hai LU-feng Soviet (Stanford, 1985), pp. 92-96. 68. Hewitt, Problems of Success, vol. 2, p. 219; Garrett, "Chambers of Commerce and the YMCA", p. 237. 69. Rattenbury to Andrews, 26 December 1927, MMS Hupeh fiche 387; Gibson, circular letter, 27 February 1928, MMS Hunan fiche 213; Rattenbury to Andrews, 20 April 1928; [Rattenbury] "Notes on an Address delivered at a gathering of Missionaries in St. John's Church, Hankow, June 6th, 1928", MMS Hupeh fiches 389, 390; Jeannie Ewing to Miss M.M. Moore, 5 January 1927, EPMA WMA Box 4; China's Millions (July, 1925), p. 114.

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in China?O The old ways did persist. Britons in the South China District of the WMMS met once a month "for a period of fellowship" . The foreign staff at Canton's Lingnan University also continued to have a weekly meeting and in Hankou the WMMS held a weekly prayer meeting for "foreign workers only". The potential for this type of exclusive meeting to be misunderstood by Chinese co-workers was great?' No amount of subordination to the Chinese Church, or integration with Chinese colleagues, circumvented the need most Britons felt for the company of their fellow nationals and, more importantly, the preference they felt for working with their fellow nationals. Certainly they were never allowed to forget their foreignness. There were continued antiforeign demonstrations or incidents in many places. In times of wider crisis, such as the general evacuation of 1926-27 or the Nanjing incident in March 1927, in which Nationalist troops assaulted foreigners in the city, killing four, (this "even" made "good Quaker blood boil") they were all British, and all foreign, together; and they were all, of course, still protected by extraterritoriality.72 Intellectual Assessment of the Chinese Market The historical legacy of the opposition of the Chinese intelligentsia to Christianity was the focusing of missionary efforts on the countryside and the poor until the beginning of the century. This left the Churches with a "somewhat narrow" reputation which made it difficult for them to tap into the intellectual ferment in China's education represented by the May 4th Movement, or into the new world of the Chinese bourgeoisie.73 An appeal to the educated Chinese could only be conducted through Christian literature in Chinese, but previous efforts to reproduce Chinese books were considered to be too narrowly didactic and lacking an awareness of "modern thinking and perplexities". The Christian Literature Society [CLS] was felt to have failed to produce a

70. Rattenbury to Andrews, 10 July 1928, MMS Hupeh fiche 390; G. B. Barbour to Hawkins, 8 April 1930, CWM North China Box 28; "Memorandum on the Opportunity for Service in the Chinese Church and the Need for Reinforcements for the Missionary Staff", in Anderson to Maclagan, 5 December 1928, EPMA South Fukien Box 11; Anon., "First Impressions ofa Newcomer", CR (October, 1931), p. 613; Whitamore is quoted in Bray to Andrews, 3 December 1929, MMS South China fiche 590. 71. Hilda and William Sewell, journal letter, 9 December 1928, FSC CH May, 194. 72. Sewell Circular Letters, 19 February 1927, 28 April 1927, FSC CH May, 194. 73. John Foster, "Haigh College Report, Year 1928", MMS Synod Minutes 1928, fiche 196; 1. D. Liddell, "Report for 1928", CWM Reports North China Box 10.

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suitable literature "in Chinese with proper Chinese cultural background". It was privately stated, in fact, "that the imprint of the CLS is almost

sufficient to kill the sale of a book,,?4 Transferring the management to a Chinese board was one suggestion for dealing with the similar problems of the Religious Tract Society. However, content not management was the problem. Literary work required that closer investigation and understanding of Chinese culture and society which E. R. Hughes and others felt the mission body had neglected. He and others set out to remedy this by working with the Chinese YMCA to create acceptable Chinese works in a Chinese style. Such work was also being produced at Yenching University?5 Karl Reichelt's mission to the Buddhists, which did much to alter previously hostile Western images by stressing themes purportedly held in common between the two religions, also set out to enlighten foreign missionaries. Having attended a series of lectures William Sewell agreed with those who said "if only they had known of these things before they would never have been so destructive in their approach to Buddhism." Also inspired by Reichelt, the CMS in Hangzhou set aside a building for contact with Buddhists?6 The same principle was applied to Chinese music and Chinese customs. Missionaries, like most foreigners, found themselves unable to appreciate Chinese music which they found "loud, discordant and piercing". Most ignored it; Edith S. Murray had been in China for nine years before she saw her first Chinese opera in 1931. Others realised that attempts would have to be made to "sinify" hymn and psalm singing, which was "aggressively Western" in form, through the writing of Chinese hymns using Chinese music, and some progress was made. The CMS was involved with the CCC and others from 1931 to 1936 in the preparation of a Union Hymnal in which about an eighth of the tunes

74. Andrews to Rattenbury,4 January 1929; Rattenbury to Hooker, 11 February 1930, MMS Hupeh fiches 391, 400; Warnshuis to Hawkins, 19 June 1931, CWM South China Box 26; Sparham to Hawkins, 17 October 1928, enclosing David Z. T. Yui [YMCA] to Sparham, 8 October 1928, CWM Central China Box 44; Warnshuis to Hawkins, 19 June 1931, CWM South China Box 26. 75. G. A. Clayton to Hooker, 22 February 1930, MMS Hupeh fiche 398; Hughes "Annual Report 1931-2", CWM Central China Reports Box 11; J. Leighton Stuart to Hawkins, 17 September 1931, CWM North China Box 29. 76. Holmes Welch, The Buddhist Revival in China (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1968), pp. 238-53; Eric J. Sharpe, Karl Ludwig Reichelt: Missionary, Scholar and Pilgrim (Hong Kong, 1984); Sewell, journalletter, 3 September 1927, FSC CH5t 4; Hewitt, Problems of Success, vol. 2, p. 275.

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and hymns were Chinese.77 Using Chinese opera was also considered. Crowd" could certainly be drawn to plays in rural China although it was found difficult to convert such audiences?8 Reaching an accommodation with indigenous customs and religion was also a prominent theme, as it had been since the first Jesuit missions and the "rites controversy,,?9 Old-fashioned missionaries would still dismiss Confucianism as "backward looking and uninspiring" and Buddhism as "world-weary" or "a terrible admixture of devil worship, priestcraft, and empty ritual", but more liberal individuals were less dismissive. E. R. Hughes made an informal but symbolic personal pilgrimage to Qufu, birthplace of Confucius, in 1931.80 The difficulties provided by the tenacity of local custom, however, had to be faced more pragmatically, W. H. Geller of the LMS suggested a special Christian service to be held on the Chinese festival of Qingming, "giving thanks for Parents, Teachers, Heroes, Patriots and the like", to co-opt some of the strength of such customs. The "mental attitudes" involved were considered to be of potentially "great value". More honestly it was admitted that abolishing the veneration of ancestors constituted "an

77. Clements to Mrs May, 23 June 1933, CWM China Personal Box 13; E. H. S. Murray, circular letter, 7 February 1931; Cocker Brown to Hawkins, II January 1931, CWM Central China Boxes n, 46; Dawson to Hawkins, 22 January 1931, CWM North China Box 27; Hewitt, Problems of Success, vol. 2, p. 216. 78. A. E. Small, "Report 1931", CWM Central China Reports Box n; "East China Clark Evangelistic Band Review of Work 1925-1934", p. 9, CWM Home Personal Box I; there were other problems, Mr Geller caught "a severe chill... while watching the lepers act scenes from the life of Christ" while "the reason the prodigal left home was because he had a trying young wife" in another Chinese-acted biblical play, Mrs Geller to Hawkins, 27 December 1930, CWM Central China Box 48; Winifred Brown, circular letter, 29 December 1930, MMS WW Hupeh fiche 127. 79. On the history of the question see George Minamiki, The Chinese Rites Controversy from its Beginning to Modern Times (Chicago, 1985). The most recent bibliography of the early missionary enterprise is Erik Zurcher, Nicholas Standaert S. 1., and Adrianus Dudink (eds.), Bibliography of the Jesuit Mission in China (ca.1580-ca.1680) (Leiden, 1991). 80. "Report on the Work of F. G. Onley during 1930", CWM Central China Reports Box II; Griffith, "The Mission to the Mongols, 15 September 1929", Scott papers, SOAS; Hughes, "Annual Report 1931-2", CWM Central China Reports, Box n.

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obstacle to people desiring to adopt the Christian faith".8\ It also left missions open to the charge that they cut off Chinese Christians from Chinese national life and deracinated them. 82 The debate on the possibility of reaching a compromise on this topic was a perennial topic in the Chinese Recorder. In a similar way foreign companies started their advertising in China with European scenes and figures, but soon came to realise that the best way to approach the Chinese market was through Chinese scenes and figures recognisable to Chinese customers. 83 In missions and in businesses there were those who failed to realise the value of sinified packaging of their products, and some who objected on principle. Much of this reform of presentation grew out of the wider trends in Mission thinking represented by the 1928 Jerusalem Meeting and the ongoing debate about indigenisation. In general, however, it represented another facet of the dismantling of the "aggressively Western" characteristics of missions and their churches. It signalled a change in attitudes from the contemptuous dismissal symbolised by The Christian Occupation of China to a greater understanding of the integrity of Chinese custom and culture.

Conclusion The result of sinification was that missionaries found themselves generally working with, rather than over, Chinese Christians, in union organisations, in churches, and in mission institutions, and listening at last, rather than dictating, to them.84 It has been shown that this was not an easy change for some to make, that the Chinese were often portrayed as being unready for new responsibilities and insecure in their new posts. Nevertheless many missionaries found the new situation satisfying. Although mission societies, by continuing to exist, still in fact kept the financial structures and the nature of mission intact, the character of the mission enterprise had been changed drastically. 81 Geller, "Decennial report 1930", CWM Central China Reports Box Il; "Minutes of the Standing Committee of China Council of the LMS, Hankow, 18, 19, 24 May, 1931" in Cocker Brown to Hawkins, 28 May 1931, CWM Central China Box 46; Veneration of Ancestors: recommendations of the East China Conference or Leaders of the Christian ising the Home Movement, p. 1, enclosure in Rattenbury to W. A . Grist, 11 February 1931, MMS Hupeh. 82. E. M. Bolton to Miss Hunter, I January 1927, MMS WW Hupeh fiche 122; Lutz, Chinese Politics and Christian Missions, p. 136. 83. Sherman Cochran, Big Business in China: Sino-Foreign Rivalry in the Cigarette Industry, 1890-1930 Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1980), pp. 35-38. 84. H. T. Hodgkin, "Wanted - Listeners", NCC Bulletin, No. II (October, 1924), CBMSA EfT China 4.

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Like the British business community missions were prompted by the Nationalist Revolution into overhauling their staff, structures and attitudes. The political shock was very great. The anti-Christian assault also shocked mission societies into modernising themselves in response to Chinese social change and the rise of the "compradore class". The Chinese bourgeoisie was not, historically, the target of the mission enterprise, nor was it easy to approach, but it became clear that, to stay in China, it would have to be accommodated, if not targeted.85 Missionaries appear to have disliked this class as much as British businessmen, but it was no longer realistic to order business on such likes and dislikes. Furthermore the high profile of Christianity in the Nanjing Government could only benefit missions if they modernised themselves and their attitudes sufficiently. Modernisation meant that secular functions carried out by mission institutions were even more integrated into local life, or else were too complicated to be carried out without employing educated Chinese staff or attempting to get Chinese funds, either institutionally, as in the EPM's Shantou hospital, or individually from wealthy patients or parents. The sinification of the mission presence in China accompanied and characterised its modernisation and professionalisation. Like British businesses and municipal institutions in China, British missionaries were no longer able to rely on the explicit protection of the structures of informal empire. As in those other spheres of the British presence they had to make significant compromises, with the de jure Chinese state, de facto local authorities, and those Chinese they were involved with. as institutions or as individuals. The complacency, encouraged by the post-Boxer decade and the Warlord era, which saw the publication of The Christian Occupation of China was anachronistic. This involved a significant shift in their attitudes towards the Chinese. Justification of fear of Chinese control in schools, for example, was usually expressed as a distrust of Chinese educationalists diluting the Christian character of schools and colleges and generally lowering educational standards. "It had not been realised that in the Christian Church so many competent and responsible Chinese teachers were to be found," recalled H. B. Rattenbury, rather lamely, in 1942.86 This realisation was such a shock because of the prevailing attitudes towards Chinese capabilities and imputed characteristics.

85. 1. D. Liddell, "Report for 1928", CWM North China Reports Box 10. 86. ER (January, 1928), p. 5; "What will Missionaries expect of the New Leaders of Schools and Colleges?" pp. 121-23, ER (April, 1928); "Memorandum on Lutien Anglo-Chinese School, 24 January 1929" in Miss Catherine Robertson to Hawkins, 27 February 1929, CWM Central China Box 43; Rattenbury, Understanding China (London, 1942), p. 63.

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British Protestant missions were forced to attempt to transform themselves from "foreign missions" to Chinese Christian Church and to compromise with modernising trends in Chinese society, in Chinese Christianity, and in education and in medicine. Like businesses the missions - to stay put - had to get and keep friends in the Chinese establishment and in related institutions. Unlike Chinese companies many of these institutions (such as the NCC and the Chinese YMCA) were only in the early days of independence, or semi-independence, from foreign control. This process was accelerated by the political situation after the May 30th incident. Like businessmen, missionaries had to prove that their community of interest with these Chinese organisations was strong, both in terms of their ultimate objectives and also defensively, by the fact that both were threatened by any disunity and by central government diktat. It was also recognised that this new government and its bureaucracy, significantly staffed by returned students and open Christians, was approachable directly and via the Chinese Christian organisations. The relationship was one of interdependence. In December 1931, for example, in a foretaste of the Guomindang propaganda campaign during the Pacific War, Chiang Kaishek met Church and mission representatives and asked them for their support during the Manchurian crisis.87 Like businessmen, missionaries had to tailor their organisation and services to the demands of social change which were self-evident in the society of Nationalist China. Their pre-revolutionary response to these changes had been complacently slow. This slowness had helped fuel the fury shown by some Chinese Christians towards the foreign missions. Like businessmen they also had to show both that they were aware of what were now perceived as the injustices of the past, and that those grievances had been dealt with. The private correspondence of the missions gives greater body to the well known story of missions in twentieth century China. Unusual survivals, or unusually accessible material, such as the writings of Sewell or the letters of Marjorie Clements, tell us even more about tensions between Britons and Britons, Britons and Chinese, mission and church, and about such themes as the relationship between professionalisation and evangelism. These archives still tell us only a part of the truth. We have little access to Chinese church materials, and very little in the way of personal memoirs from the Chinese. Most Chinese comments in the archives have been mediated through foreign reports or serve specific purposes. There is a negligible amount of direct correspondence from mission boards to Chinese Christians. This absence, though it obviously

87. Rees to Mr Maclennan, 2 December 1931, MMS South China fiche 593.

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results from the structure of the relationship between Mission, Mission Board and Chinese Church, is still in itself symbolic. The archival silence of the Chinese in the debates about the modernisation and sinification of mission work and religious institutions is unhappily balanced by the fact of the turmoil and hostility facing missions in the 1920s, and after.

APPENDIX ARCHIVAL SOURCES IN BRITAIN FOR THE STUDY OF MISSION HISTORY Rosemary Seton BACKGROUND In 1968 the Group on Records, Libraries and Information set up by the Conference of British Missionary Societies recommended that a survey of the archives of British missionary societies be carried out. The work was undertaken by Rosemary Keen of the CMS, whose Survey of the Archives of Selected Missionary Societies listed in detail the holdings of eighteen major societies. At the time of her survey all the archives listed were in the keeping of the societies themselves. Increasingly, however, societies were finding the task of housing records and servicing researchers too burdensome, and a trend to deposit archives in suitable libraries and repositories began. This process continued in the 1980s as a number of societies found it too costly to maintain expensive premises in central London. Several moved out of London or off-loaded non-current and bulky records. This prolonged period of dispersal has been a confusing and bewildering time for researchers and archivists alike. Particularly hard hit have been overseas visitors, who have tramped familiar streets to fondly remembered doors only to be met with "gone away" notices, or by new owners in occupation. During the last twenty years or so many societies have also changed their names to ones more in keeping with the times, or have merged with other societies. Both home-based and overseas scholars have been baffled and perplexed, and on appealing to librarians and archivists have found them unable to provide accurate and up-to-date information. 1992 SURVEY OF ARCHIVES In the spring of 1992, motivated by a desire to inform and enlighten wouldbe researchers - and ourselves - of the present whereabouts and contents of missionary archives in the United Kingdom, David Arnold (Professor of South Asian History in the University of London) and I began a project to survey the archives of as many British missionary societies as we could locate. This was planned to coincide with a workshop on missionary archives we were organising at the School of Oriental and African Studies in July 1992. We obtained a grant from the Nuffield Foundation to finance the work and appointed a field officer (Ms Emily Naish) to carry

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out the survey. Between April and June survey forms were sent to all organisations or repositories thought to contain materials, and follow-up visits were made to fourteen different locations. In other cases archivists or administrators kindly completed the forms for us, or sent copies of their finding aids. We were not able to trace the present locations of all societies (particularly smaller or more specialised ones) and a tiny minority did not want to be included in the survey. By the time of the workshop we had obtained a listing of the archives of 46 missionary societies, and these we included, with an introduction, in A Preliminary Guide to the Archives of British Missionary Societies, which was distributed to the one hundred or so participants at the workshop. The following summarised list has been extracted from the Preliminary guide, with subsequent additions and emendations. The archives of 48 societies and associated organisations are listed, at 29 different locations in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Many of these are still in London, a significant number having been deposited in the Library of the School of Oriental and African Studies. But others have moved further afield: the immense archive ofthe Church Missionary Society has moved to Birmingham University Library; the archive of the Baptist Missionary Society is at the Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford; the archive of the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel is also at Oxford, at Rhodes House Library, while the Bible Society's archive has been moved to Cambridge University Library. Most of the Scottish Missionary Societies' archives are to be found in the National Library of Scotland, while the Centre for the Study of Non-Western Christianity at New College, Edinburgh contains a range of original and printed missionary materials. NATURE OF THE SOURCES Missionary papers, as distinct from archives, are scattered throughout many libraries and record offices. Papers of 1. H. Oldham, for example, organising secretary of the Edinburgh World Missionary conference of 1910, and editor of the International Review of Missions for many years, are to be found in the Library of New College, Edinburgh, at Rhodes House Library, Oxford and in the Library of the School of Oriental and African Studies. Most records of individual organisations are located at one address, although where the historical archives have been deposited in a library or record office, recent records are usually kept by the society. This is the case with the CMS which does not deposit records until they are forty years old, and even more so with the records of the Bible Society, which has a seventy year closure rule. In the case of most societies records are available for consultation after thirty years from the date of creation. Some records, particularly early ones,

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can turn up in unexpected places. A section of the early home correspondence of the London Missionary Society, for example, is to be found in Dr Williams's Library, London, while some seventeenth century materials from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel are in Lambeth Palace Library. In most cases the missionary archives which survive are the accumulated records of the sending organisations. These are, of course, a most valuable source, containing as they do letters and reports written home to headquarters by missionaries in the field, as well as documents recording the formulation and development of mission policy. However there are often considerable gaps. Many records have been destroyed, either deliberately or through negligence. Others have been lost through enemy action in wartime; others by those eternal enemies: time, heat, damp, and infestation. There are some gaps due to the inherent nature of archives which tend to consist of letters received rather than, unless durable copies are made, letters sent. Copies of instructions to missionaries, for example, can be hard to find. Detailed records created in the field - lists of converts and church members, the records of missionary institutions, the minutes of papers of local mission councils, particulars of itineration work and so on - were not usually sent back to the mission headquarters. Such records, if they still exist, should still be in the mission field, though their survival is questionable and their location often unknown. Their apparent loss, and other gaps in the archives, can sometimes be rectified by recourse to papers of and collected by individual missionaries. The importance of these private collections of letters, journals, photographs and other papers cannot be over-emphasised, particularly when read alongside the official records. FURTHER HELP There is little in the way of a published literature on British missionary society archives. I have included in the list below such guides, catalogues and useful articles as have come my way. I have also included general and regional guides which I think readers might find useful, although a number of these were compiled twenty or more years ago. The central agency for collecting information about manuscript sources in Britain, outside the Public Record Office, is the National Register of Archives which is maintained by the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts at Quality House, Quality Court, Chancery Lane, London WC2A I HP. The search room is open to the public on week days and has personal and subject indexes as well as catalogues, guides and handlists of collections in many British libraries and record offices. Limited enquiries can be answered by post. The NRA is particularly concerned with British history and may not include detailed references

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to overseas work but use of its indexes and lists of sources on religious organisations is recommended.

ABERYSTWYTH NATIONAL LIBRARY OF WALES ABERYSTWYTH DYFED WALES SY23 3BU FOREIGN MISSION OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF WALES. Founded 1840. Worked in France, India, South Africa and Tahiti. Minutes, correspondence, personal files, serials dated c. 1840-1969. Access: prior permission of the Curator of the Historical Society of the Presbyterian Church of Wales. BELFAST PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE OF NORTHERN IRELAND 66 BALMORAL AVENUE BELFAST B1'9 6NY QUA IBO FELLOWSHIP. Founded 1887. Previously known as Qua Ibo Mission. Interdenominational. Correspondence, diaries, reports, and photographs relating to the missions work in Nigeria, 1889-1955. Access: written application to the Missions Council, Room 317, 7 Donegal Square West, Belfast BTl 6JE. BIRMINGHAM UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM LIBRARY PO BOX 363 BIRMINGHAM BI5 2TT CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY. Founded 1799. Anglican. Worked in Africa, Canada, China, India, Middle East, New Zealand, Pakistan, Sri Lanka. Archives, 1799-1949. Extensive series of records covering all aspects of the Society's work; personal papers, photographs. Serial publications include The Church Missionary Intelligencer and The Church Missionary Gleaner.

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Also archives of: LOOCHOW NAVAL MISSION, founded in 1861, merged with the CMS in 1861. Records 1843-57. THE SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING FEMALE EDUCATION IN CHINA, INDIA AND THE EAST. Founded 1834. Interdenominational. Society closed in 1899 and work divided among other missionary societies. Records 1834-99. CHURCH OF ENGLAND ZENANA MISSIONARY SOCIETY. Founded 1880. Amalgamated with CMS in 1957. Records 1881-1949. Access: Bona fide researchers with letter of introduction. 40 year closure period for official archives.

CAMBRIDGE

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY WEST ROAD CAMBRIDGE CB3 9DR BRITISH AND FOREIGN BIBLE SOCIETY (also known as The Bible Society). Founded 1804. The aim of the Society is to publish editions of the Bible in any language for which there is a readership. outside the USA. Principal series of archives: Minutes of Committee and Sub-Committees 1804-1920 (some gaps), Secretaries' correspondence, departmental records (especially Editorial Department), Agents' books 1819-1931 (some gaps). Special series: Secretaries' notebooks (Black books); George Borrow letters 1833-40, John Paterson papers 1805-80. A considerable quantity of audiovisual materials. Access: Archives opened to bona fide researchers only. Initial approach must be made to The Senior Records Administrator, Bible House, Stonehill Green, Westlea, Swindon, Wiltshire SN5 7DG. A 75 year closure policy operates.

DONCASTER

BAWTRYHALL BAWTRY DONCASTER SOUTH YORKS DNJ06JH ACTION PARTNERS Protestant: Interdenominational. Founded 1904 as the Sudan United Mission. Minutes, correspondence, accounts, audio-visual materials, Annual Reports. Access: appointment essential. 30 year closure policy.

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EDINBURGH CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE NONWESTERN WORLD NEW COLLEGE THE MOUND EDINBURGH EHI 2LU The Centre holds a considerable quantity of printed materials relating to missions and Christianity; collections of the papers of individual missionaries and the following archives. Access: registered readers. Some restrictions on recent records. INTERNATIONAL NEPAL FELLOWSHIP Founded in 1940 as the Nepal Evangelistic Band. Correspondence, minutes, project files 1936-1989. Some restrictions. REGIONS BEYOND MISSIONARY UNION Founded 1878. Until 1900 known as the East London Institute for Home and Foreign Missions and in Africa as the Livingstone Inland Mission, later the Congo Balolo Mission. InterdenominationaL Worked in Africa, India, Indonesia, Nepal and Peru. The archives are not yet catalogued but contain minutes, correspondence and papers c.l880-1991. UNITED MISSION TO NEPAL Founded 1954. InterdenominationaL Project files, photographs and reports.

NATIONAL BIBLE SOCIETY OF SCOTLAND 7, HAMPTON TERRACE EDINBURGH EH12 5XU Founded 1809. Known until 1859 as the Edinburgh Bible Society. Nondenominational. Works worldwide. The Glasgow Bible Society merged in 1861. The archive is in process (1992) of being reorganised and indexed. Access: by appointment. NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND DEPARTMENT OF MANUSCRIPTS GEORGE IV BRIDGE EDINBURGH EHl lEW The National Library of Scotland contains a number of missionary archives of the various Scottish churches. The main finding aid to the missionary collections is Catalogue of Manuscripts Acquired since 1925 vol 6, Scottish Foreign Mission Records (1984). Access: open to serious researchers. Some restrictions on materials less than 25 years old.

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CHURCH OF SCOTLAND BOARD OF WORLD MISSION AND UNITY Founded 1824. Previously known as the Church of Scotland Foreign Mission Committee. Minutes 1851-1963, correspondence with missions in Central African Republic, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, India, China, West Indies. Papers of the Women's Association of Foreign Missions 1885-1964. Large quantity of photographs in all areas from 1890 to present day. Little nineteenth century correspondence survives. FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND FOREIGN MISSIONS BOARD Founded in 1843. Merged with the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland in 1900 to form the United Free Church of Scotland. In 1929 the United Free Church of Scotland merged with the Church of Scotland. Minutes 1843-1928, correspondence with missions in India and Malawi (Livingstonia). Women's Foreign Missions Committee: Papers 1876-1930. Minutes of the Female Society for Promoting Christian Education among Females of India, 1843-1900. SCOTIISH MISSIONARY SOCIETY Founded in 1796 as the Edinburgh Missionary Society. Worked in the West Indies, Jamaica and the Caucasus but work gradually taken over by other mission boards. Correspondence 1796-1851. UNITED FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND FOREIGN MISSIONS Founded in 1900 as a result of the union between the United Presbyterian Church and the Free Church. In 1929 the United Free Church merged with the Church of Scotland. Worked in India and Malawi. Minutes and various papers 1900-29. Includes minutes of the Women's Foreign Mission Committee 1900-29, the Colonial Committee 1843-1929, the Continental Committee 1868-1929, and the Jewish Committee 1838-1929. UNITED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH (SCOTLAND) Founded in 1847. Merged with the Free Church of Scotland in 1900. Minutes of Mission Board 1847-1900 (1900-29 at New College, Edinburgh), letter books 1847-1931

NEW COLLEGE LIBRARY MOUND PLACE EDINBURGH EH12LU Papers of 1. H. Oldham. In process of being organised Access: Written application to Librarian.

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LEEDS WEST YORKSHIRE ARCHIVE SERVICE SHEEPSCAR LEEDS WEST YORKSHIRE LS73AP ARTHINGTON TRUST COLLECTION Robert Arthington (1823-1900) left £1,173,845 which was used to finance missionary enterprises in many parts of the world. The trust was wound up in 1936. Minute books, accounts, legal papers, correspondence 1900-37. Access: to all bona fide researchers. Appointment essential

LONDON AFRICA INLAND MISSION INTERNATIONAL 2, VORLEY ROAD ARCHWAY LONDON N19 5HE Founded in 1895 as Africa Inland Mission. Protestant, Interdenominational. Annual Reports 1906 to present, slides, photographs Access: bona fide research scholars by appointment.

HCMS CROSSLINKS 251, LEWISHAM WAY LONDON SE4 lXF Founded in 1922 as the Bible Churchmen's Missionary Society. Worked in Africa and Asia. Minutes and correspondence from 1922, publications, photographs, films and videos. Access: approved readers.

INTERSERVE 325, KENNINGTON ROAD LONDON SEl14QH Founded in 1852. Previously known as the Indian Female Normal School and Instruction Society, the Zenana Bible and Medical Mission, the Bible and Medical Missionary Fellowship, the BMMF Interserve. Protestant, Interdenominational. Annual Reports of the above, The Indian Female Evangelist 1873-, photographs, films and slides. Access to bona fide researchers by appointment.

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LAMBETH PALACE LIBRARY LONDON SE1 7JU ANGLICAN AND FOREIGN CHURCH SOCIETY Founded 1853. Known as the Anglo-Continental Society until 1904. Worked in Europe and Egypt. Correspondence and papers 1844-1932. See E. G. W Bill A Catalogue of Manuscripts in Lambeth Library (1983). Access: Bona fide readers with a letter of introduction. The Library also holds SPG papers, dated 1701 to 1803, including Archiepiscopal correspondence relating to overseas. See W W Manross, The SPG Papers in the Lambeth Palace Library, Calendar and Indexes (1974).

ORIENTAL AND INDIA OFFICE COLLECTIONS 197, BLACKFRIARS ROAD LONDON SE1 8NG LAKHER PIONEER MISSION Founded in 1905. Work carried out in Lushai Hills, Assam, India. Correspondence, diaries, financial papers 1929-77, The Lakher Pioneer 190578. Access: approved readers.

MILL HILL FATHERS (St Joseph's Society for Foreign Missions) St Joseph's College Lawrence Street Mill Hill London NW7 4JX Founded in 1866. Known as St Joseph's Society of the Sacred Heart for the Foreign Mission until 1896. Roman Catholic. General Papers 1866-1980; subject files on missions in Borneo (1881), Brazil (1974), Cameroon (1921) Caribbean (1912), Chile (1966), Falkland Islands (1952), India (1975), Kenya (1886), New Zealand (1886), Pakistan (1947), Papua New Guinea (1905), Sudan (1938), Uganda (1894), USA (1871), Zaire (1894). Papers of Cardinal Vaughan; large photograph collection; Annual reports 1869-1935. Access by appointment only.

QUAKER PEACE AND SERVICE THE LIBRARY OF THE RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS FRIENDS HOUSE EUSTON ROAD LONDON NW1 2BJ Founded 1868 as Friends Foreign Mission Association, became the Council

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for International service from 1919 to 1927 and the Friends Service Council from 1927 to 1978. Worked in Europe, China, South Asia, Madagascar, Pemba and Syria. Minutes, financial papers, and correspondence. Access: open to members of the Society of Friends and to bona fide researchers with letter of recommendation. 50 year closure rule.

SALVATION ARMY SALVATION ARMY INTERNATIONAL HERITAGE CENTRE 117-121, JUDD STREET LONDON WCIH9NN Founded 1865. The Society has worked worldwide. The archives were not established until 1978 and are in process of reorganisation. Files are being arranged alphabetically within each continent. Access to bona fide scholars by appointment. Some restrictions.

SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES, THORNHAUGH STREET RUSSELL SQUARE LONDON WCI0XG The Library contains the archives of a number of major missionary societies as well as a considerable quantity of the papers of individual missionaries Access: An Archives ticket is available for bona fide readers with letter of recommendation. A 30 year rule applies to most archives. CONFERENCE FOR WORLD MISSION Formerly the Conference of Missionary Societies in Great Britain and Ireland which was founded in 1912, following the World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh in 1910. Minutes and papers of the Standing Committee, the Home Council and its committees, area files, files on literature and medical work and files on contacts with other missionary bodies. CONFERENCE OF BRITISH MISSIONARY SOCIETIES/ INTERNATIONAL MISSIONARY COUNCIL JOINT ARCHIVE ON AFRICA AND INDIA Relates to co-operative endeavour concerning Africa and India from 1910 to 1945. Only the files on Africa have been deposited in SOAS library. There is a microfiche copy of the files on India, the originals of which have been deposited at the offices of the World Council of Churches in Geneva. Correspondence, memoranda, pamphlets and reports. Includes 1. H. Oldham materials. COUNCIL FOR WORLD MISSION Founded 1795. Formerly known as the London Missionary Society, and from 1966 to 1980 as the Congregational Council for World Mission. The archive dates from 1795 to 1970, and concerns pioneering Protestant missionary work

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in the South Seas, China and Madagascar. The Society was also active in South and South East Asia and Southern and Central Africa, and to a lesser extent in North America and the West Indies. Minutes, correspondence, reports, biographical collections including papers of James Chalmers, James Legge, David Livingstone, Robert Moffat, Robert Morrison, John Williams; c.ll,OOO photographs. Also CWM Library, c.l3,000 books and pamphlets, including LMS serials. Also the archive of: COMMONWEALTH MISSIONARY SOCIETY, formerly the Colonial Missionary Society, which worked in Australia, North America, New Zealand, South Africa, and the West Indies. INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR CHRISTIAN LITERATURE FOR AFRICA Founded in 1929 as the Christian Literature Bureau for Africa. In 1953 became part of the International Missionary Council and in 1957/8 its operations were transferred to Africa. Minutes, accounts, correspondence and reports. Sets of the periodicals Books for Africa and Listen, and almost complete sets of titles in the Little Books for Africa and the Africa Home Library series. MELANESIAN MISSION Founded in 1840 to evangelise the Melanesian Islands of the South Pacific, i.e. the Solomon, Santa Cruz and Northern New Hebrides Islands. Minutes, correspondence, photographs dated c.l872 to 1963, and Southern Cross Logs 1895-1970. METHODIST MISSIONARY SOCIETY Overseas work began in 1786. The archives, dated 1798 to 1955, document the work of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, the Primitive Methodist Missionary Society and the United Methodist Society, in Europe, North America, the West Indies, West and Southern Africa, India, Burma, Sri Lanka and Australia. The three societies united in 1933 to form the Methodist Missionary Society. Home minutes, Synod minutes, correspondence, reports and photographs dated c.l804-1955; Biographical collections include papers of Thomas Birch Freeman, David Hill, Samuel Pollard and Edwin Smith. Also, the library of approximately 6,500 books and pamphlets. OVERSEAS MISSIONARY FELLOWSHIP Founded in 1865 as the China Inland Mission. The archives of the British Office of the China Inland Mission, dating from 1872 to 1951, were deposited in the School's Library in December 1992; also deposited were the papers of 1. Hudson Taylor, the founder of the mission. His papers contain some records of the Chinese Evangelization Society. Also, materials relating to the Chefoo schools, founded by Hudson Taylor, including registers of pupils.

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PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF ENGLAND, FOREIGN MISSIONS COMMITTEE AND WOMEN'S MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION The Society was founded in 1847. English Presbyterian Missionaries worked chiefly in mainland China and Taiwan but also in Malaysia and in what is now Bangladesh. The surviving records comprise mainly twentieth century materials: minutes, correspondence and reports. UNITED SOCIETY FOR CHRISTIAN LITERATURE (incorporating the Religious Tract Society) The Society's archives contain the surviving records of the Religious Tract Society, founded in 1799, and the Christian Literature Society for India and Africa, founded in 1858 as the Christian Vernacular Education Society for India. Minutes, letter books, miscellaneous papers, reports. Very little original correspondence survives and there are many gaps in publications held.

SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE HOLY TRINITY CHURCH MARYLEBONE ROAD LONDON NW1 4DU Founded 1698. Anglican. Worked in Australasia, India and USA. Minutes, correspondence and reports. Includes Pitcairn Island Papers (HMS Bounty mutineers). Access: By written application and appointment.

SOCIETY OF CATHOLIC MEDICAL MISSIONARIES 41. CHATSWORTH GARDENS ACTON LONDON W39LP Founded 1925. Also known as Medical Mission Sisters. Works worldwide. The archives include the papers of the founder, Mother Anna Dengel, and of Dr Agnes Mclaren. The papers are in process of being sorted and are not at present open to the public. The Archivist is pleased to help with enquiries.

SOCIETY OF JESUS (BRITISH PROVINCE) 114, MOUNT STREET LONDON W1Y6AH The British Province of the Society of Jesus was founded in 1623. The archives contains material relating to the following countries: Barbados (1857 to present), Belize (1854-94), Guyana (1857 to present), Bengal (1830s and 1840s), Jamaica (1840-94), South Africa (1894-present), USA (Maryland and Pennsylvania until 1776), and the papers of Father Cary-Elwes; substantial photographic collection. Access: by appointment. A 40 year rule applies to all private and administrative papers.

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TRUST SOCIETY FOR THE FURTHERANCE OF THE GOSPEL (MORAVIAN) MORAVIAN CHURCH ARCHIVE AND LIBRARY MORAVIAN CHURCH HOUSE 5-7, MUSWELL HILL LONDON NJO 3TJ Founded 1741. Known until 1923 as Brethren's Society for the Furtherance of the Gospel among the Heathen. Worked in Jamaica, Labarador, Tanzania, Western Himalayas. Archives date from 1768 and include minutes, accounts, some correspondence, chiefly that of C. I. Latrobe (1758-1836) Secretary, SFG. The archive will shortly transfer to the John Rylands University Library, Manchester. Access: Bona fide researchers by appointment only.

NEWBURY

AFRICA EVANGELICAL FELLOWSHIP (SAGM) INTERNATIONAL OFFICE 35, KINGFISHER COURT HAMBRIDGE ROAD NEWBURY BERKS RG14 5SJ Founded 1889 as Cape General Mission. From 1894 to 1965 the society was known as the South Africa General Mission. Correspondence (twentieth century) of the sending councils: America, Australia, Britain, Canada and South Africa; correspondence and papers, c.l896-1990, relating to the mission fields in Southern and Central Africa; films, photographs and tapes. Access: by request with three days' notice.

OXFORD

ANGUS LIBRARY REGENT'S PARK COLLEGE PUSEY STREET OXFORD OX1 2LB BAPTIST MISSIONARY SOCIETY. Founded 1792. Minutes, correspondence, reports, photographs, Carey memorabilia, and serial publications. Also records of the Baptist Zenana Mission, the Girls' Auxiliary, the Medical Mission Auxiliary and the Women's Missionary Association. Access: by appointment to recommended readers. A 30 year rule applies.

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MIDDLE EAST CENTRE ST ANTONY'S COLLEGE OXFORD OX2 6JF JERUSALEM AND EAST MISSION Founded 1841. In abeyance 1881-87. Anglican. Minutes 1895-1966 (gaps); Correspondence: Jerusalem Bishopric 1915-76, Assyrian Mission 1929-73, Cyprus 1919-76, Egypt and the Sudan 1912-68, The Gulf 1937-76, Iran 1957-76, Iraq 1930-76, Jordan 1926-75, North Africa 1921-75, Syria and Lebanon 1890-1975. Available on microfiche from IDC, Leiden, Holland. Access: by appointment and permission from the Church Association. A fee is charged for non-centre members.

RHODES HOUSE LIBRARY SOUTH PARKS ROAD OXFORD OX93RG Access: application in advance required, Bodleian Library rules. UNITED SOCIETY FOR THE PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL Founded 1701. Known as the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts up to 1865. Anglican. Minutes 1702-1965; General correspondence 1702-1985; Correspondence with missions in South, Central and West Africa, North America, Australia and the Pacific, Borneo, Burma, Europe, Hong Kong, India, West Indies. Medical missions 1908-68, Codrington College and estate, Barbados, Committee on Women's Work 1866-1942. Large photographic collection. Pamphlet collection. Also includes archives of: UNIVERSITIES' MISSION m CENTRAL AFRICA Founded 1859, which merged with USPG in 1965. Minutes, correspondence and papers 1858-1964. CAMBRIDGE MISSION TO DELHI Founded 1877, merged with USPG in 1968. Minutes, corespondence, annual reports and the printed reports, 1882-1915, of the Delhi Female Medical Mission. For other USPG papers see entry under Lambeth Palace Library Rhodes House Library also holds papers of 1. H. Oldham, chiefly relating to East Africa.

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TUNBRIDGE WELLS

SOUTH AMERICAN MISSIONARY SOCIETY ALLEN GARDINER HOUSE PEMBURY ROAD TUNBRIDGE WELLS KENTTN23QU

Founded 1844. Previously known as the Patagonian Missionary Society. Worked in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Spain and Uruguay. The archive contains papers of founder, Captain Allen Gardiner, Annual Reports, South American Missionary magazine 1867-1969, photographs. Access: by application to Office Manager.

LIST OF GUIDES Barrow, M., Women 1870-1928: A Select Guide to Printed and Archival Sources in the United Kingdom (London, 1981). Catholic Archives Society, Directory of Catholic Archives in the United Kingdom and Eire, 2nd Edition (Darlington Carmel, 1989). Clendennen, G. W. and Cunningham I. C, David Livingstone: A Catalogue of Documents (Edinburgh, 1979). Craig, C S., The Archives of the Council for World Mission: An Outline Guide, revised edition (London, 1982). Cunningham, I. C, David Livingstone: A Catalogue of Documents, a supplement (Edinburgh, 1985). Foster J. and Sheppard, J., British Archives, 3rd edition (London, 1995). Hutchison, Fabian, Guide to Historical Sources of Missionary Activities in the Pacific Islands held in British Institutions, 2 microfiche (Melbourne, 1984). Keen, Rosemary, A Survey of the Archives of Selected Missionary Societies (London, 1968). Keen, Rosemary, "The Church Missionary Society Archives: Or Thirty Years Work in the Basement", Catholic Archives, 12 (1992), pp. 21-31. Mander-Jones, P., Manuscripts in the British Isles relating to Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific (Honolulu, 1972). Marchant, Leslie, A Guide to the Archives and Records of Protestant Christian Missions from the British Isles to China, 1796-1914 (Nedlands, Western Australia, 1966). Matthews, N., Materials for West African History in the Archives of the United Kingdom (London, 1973). Matthews, N. and Wainwright, D., A Guide to Western Manuscripts and Documents in the British Isles relating to South and South East Asia (London, 1965). Matthews, N. and Wainwright D., A Guide to Manuscripts and Documents in the British Isles relating to Africa (London, 1971).

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Matthews, N. and Wainwright, D., A Guide to Manuscripts and Documents in the British Isles relating to the Far East (London, 1977). National Library of Scotland, Catalogue of Manuscripts Acquired since 1925, Vol. 6, Scottish Foreign Missions Records (Edinburgh, 1984). Pearson, 1., A Guide to Manuscripts and Documents in the British Isles

relating to South and South East Asia: A Supplement to Wainwright and Matthews .... (see above) 2 volumes (London, 1989 and 1990). Pearson, 1., A Guide to Manuscripts and Documents in the British Isles relating to Africa. Volume 1: London; Volume 2: British Isles excluding London (London, 1994). Seton, Rosemary and Naish, Emily, A Preliminary Guide to the Archives of British Missionary Societies (London, 1992). Walne, P., A Guide to Manuscript Sources for the History of Latin America and the Caribbean in the British Isles (London, 1971).