If I were writing this book for dramatic effect and less with a view to historical sequence, I should have been disposed to put this chapter next to the one dealing with the slave trade, as an effective pendant; for if Europe has dealt wickedly in enslaving Africa, she has sent thither a high-minded army of men and women, who, acting nearly always from noble and unselfish motives, have raised the African from a callous ignorance to a distinctly higher stage of civilization. And whether or not Britain was a greater sinner than other white peoples in the thoroughness with which she prosecuted the slave trade, she at any rate deserves credit for a degree of missionary effort far surpassing that attributable to any other nation.
The Portuguese were the first European nation to send missionaries to Africa. Their zeal was great, and, with one or two exceptions, wholly praiseworthy. Portuguese priests and Jesuit fathers accompanied most of the early expeditions to Africa; in fact hardly any explorer or conquistador sailed without chaplains in his company, who raised the cross and preached Christianity as soon as they set foot on shore. In the chapter on the Portuguese in Africa I have touched upon the introduction of Christianity into Congoland in 1491. But any race of purely negro blood accepts and loses Christianity with great facility. The Negro (unless he be Muhammadanized) is easily converted, and as easily relapses into gross superstition or a negation of all religion, including his former simple but sound ideas of right and wrong. In order that Christianity may become permanently rooted in a negro race it is necessary for it to be maintained by a European power for a long period as the religion of the State. If the negro kingdoms which remained independent retained their Christianity it was in an unrecognizable form. It is not so with Muhammadanism, the explanation being that Muhammadanism as taught to the Negro demands no sacrifice of his bodily lusts, whereas Christianity with its restrictions ends by boring him, unless and until his general mental condition, by individual genius or generations of transmitted culture, reaches the average level of the European. As instances of the former, one might mention some ten or a dozen individuals living at the present time, who are priests and deacons of Christianity in Africa; while for examples of permanently rooted Christianity as the result of inheritance it is only necessary to point to the two or three millions of really good negro men and women to be found in the United States, the West Indies and Cape Colony. Portugal, however, never attempted to rule the Kingdom of the Congo till the last quarter of the 19th century; so after more than three centuries of propaganda[134] the Ba-kongo fell away from Christianity, and in less than a hundred years had absolutely relapsed into Heathenism, when once more, against their wishes, missionaries returned to Western Congoland.
Jesuit priests also accompanied Portuguese conquerors to the Zambezi and the south-east of Africa. Here they met with relatively little success, though they left their traces on Zambezia in the most marked manner by founding a settlement at Zumbo high up the Zambezi and even establishing stations beyond in the little known Batoka country, where their presence is attested to this day by the groves of fruit trees descended from those they introduced. Tete, the modern capital of Portuguese Zambezi, also began as a missionary station. Elsewhere, in Portuguese East Africa, the priests had very little success, as Muhammadanism had already got a hold. Indeed the first missionary explorer of Zambezia, who visited the court of the King of Monomotapa, was martyred there at the instigation of the Arabs[135].
Portuguese priests also travelled over Abyssinia during two centuries after the Portuguese discovery of that country at the end of the 15th century. Christian Abyssinia—the most probable origin of the myth of the Kingdom of Prester John—attracted a good deal of attention from Portugal since she commenced her exploration of the outer world. But the Portuguese priests were quite unsuccessful in converting the Abyssinians from their debased form of Greek Christianity to the Roman Catholic Church; and after bitter quarrels with the native clergy these missionaries had been either killed or expelled from the country by 1633.
The French traders who frequented the Senegal coast between 1550 and 1650 nearly always took a missionary chaplain with them.
Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian priests vainly attempted at different times to convert the Moors of North Africa. Finding this a hopeless task, they directed their efforts towards relieving the sufferings of the unfortunate Christian captives of the Barbary pirates, and practically continued this work down to the French occupation of Algeria.
The Protestant peoples did little in the way of missionary work in Africa till quite the end of the 18th century; though the good Huguenots, who went out to South Africa, endeavoured, somewhat to the surprise of the Dutch, to treat the Hottentots as fellow men fitted for baptism; and the Moravians, attracted by the Hottentots, began evangelizing work at the Cape of Good Hope in 1732, but were soon checked in their efforts by the Dutch Company.
Wesleyan missionary work was begun at Sierra Leone coincidently with the establishment of that place as a settlement for freed slaves in 1787. The London Missionary Society was founded in 1795, and the Edinburgh Missionary Society in 1796; the Glasgow Missionary Society soon afterwards. By the end of the 18th century these three bodies had sent out missionaries to Sierra Leone and the adjoining Susu country. In 1821 the Glasgow Missionary Society sent the first Presbyterian missionaries to South Africa. The Church Missionary Society was founded in 1799. It furnished missionaries for Sierra Leone, and after a long interval extended its operations to Lagos and the Niger Delta, where it is still the leading Christian mission. In 1830 this mission sent its first agents to teach Protestant Christianity in Abyssinia, and began to consider the possibility of evangelizing East Africa. In common with other English missionary societies at that time, and for reasons not altogether clear, it preferred to employ German evangelists, though from the results achieved few can find fault with the choice made. The Church Missionary Society introduced to us men of the stamp of Krapf and Rebmann. Dr Ludwig Krapf is justly a great name in African exploration, African philology, and African Christianity. Despatched by the Church Missionary Society to prospect Abyssinia in 1834, he was obliged to decide in 1842 (in Shoa), after disappointing experiences, that there was no field there for Protestant Christianity, and therefore directed his steps to the Zanzibar coast. Being a tactful man, and meeting with kindness at the hands of Sayyid Sa’id, the ‘Sultan’ of Zanzibar[136], he established himself at Rabai, near Mombasa, and there founded the work of the Church Missionary Society, which endures and prospers to this day. Dr Krapf will also be referred to in the chapter on explorers. The Church Missionary Society educated the first Protestant negro bishop[137] in the person of Samuel Crowther of the Niger. Its work met with some success on the West Coast of Africa as regards the number of adherents; but, like most Christian missions, it has not achieved rapid progress in more or less Muhammadanized East Africa. This mission stands out conspicuous for the magnificent philological work done by its agents in Africa; especially notable among whom have been Dr S. W. Koelle, Mr Reichardt, the Rev. James Frederic Schön, Bishop Crowther, Krapf, Rebmann, and J. T. Last.
The Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society was founded in 1813, and devoted its first efforts to South Africa, Namakwaland, and Kaffraria. The Primitive Methodist Society was started in 1843, and continued the evangelization of Fernando Pô, which had been carried on by the (British) Baptist mission from 1844 to 1859. They also went at the same time to South Africa. The prospects of this mission in Fernando Pô were affected by the resumption of the administration of that island by the Spanish Government, which at that time discountenanced Protestant missions in its territory. Some arrangement was come to, however, and the mission still continues to work there, and to work at the present time without any very marked restriction.
The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel became a distinctly missionary body in 1821, and worked chiefly in South Africa.
The British Baptists organized a missionary society early in the 19th century, and sent out missionaries as far back as 1840 to Fernando Pô. Owing to their expulsion from the island by the Spanish Government, they moved across to the Cameroons, where they established the flourishing settlement of Ambas Bay, and made English almost the second language of the Cameroons people. The splendid work of this mission in the Cameroons was chiefly done under the late Edward Saker, whose name is still venerated on the Cameroons river for the great good that he did to the country by spreading the knowledge of many useful arts and industries and educating the Duala people to a remarkable degree. From the Cameroons the mission, under the guidance of the Rev. Thomas Comber and the Rev. Holman Bentley, moved on to the Congo[138], where this Baptist mission now has numerous stations. One of its missionaries, the Rev. George Grenfell, made himself famous by discovering the great Mubangi river, the most important of the Congo tributaries, and known in its upper waters as the Wele, besides making a remarkable survey of the main Congo and several of its leading tributaries, thus earning the Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society and a number of other distinctions. Though several times offered posts of responsibility under the Congo Government he preferred remaining a missionary till his death in 1906. The linguistic work done by this Baptist mission was important, and included an illustration of the language of Fernando Pô by Mr John Clarke, a like service rendered to the Duala language of the Cameroons by Mr Saker, a valuable Congo dictionary and grammar by the Rev. Dr H. Bentley, and work of far-reaching interest and importance by the Rev. W. H. Stapleton.
Roman Catholic missions entered North Africa soon after the conquest of Algeria. Lyons, in France, became a great centre of missionary activity. It is the head-quarters at the present day of a powerful French Roman Catholic Missionary Society—that of the Holy Ghost and of the Sacred Heart of Mary—which of recent years has been doing a good work in Portuguese Angola and on the coast region of the Congo, and also in Senegambia and German East Africa. In 1846 missionary enterprise in Roman Catholic Austria decided to take advantage of Muhammad Ali’s conquest of the Sudan to push its way into the heart of Africa through Egypt. In 1846 these Austrian Catholic missionaries chose Cairo as their starting point, and this mission continued to work in the Egyptian Sudan until the uprising of the Mahdists. Most of the readers of this book have heard of the adventures of Father Ohrwalder and the nuns who escaped from the clutches of the Khalifa in 1896. This mission, amongst other philological studies, illustrated the interesting Bari language of the upper White Nile, and did excellent work in countries so remote as Kordofan and Sennār. Italian priests—before the disasters which befell the colonial enterprise of Italy in 1896—worked amongst the Galas of Abyssinia. Roman Catholic missions (French) had been begun in Tigré (N. Abyssinia) about 1830. In 1847, at the request of the Prince of Shoa, Pope Pius IX sent a Roman bishop-missionary, Monsignor Massaia, to Shoa, who remained there some years, and may be said to have started Italian mission work in that field.
In 1878 the late Cardinal Lavigerie having created the Mission of the White Fathers, which was to convert the Sudan and all Congoland to Christianity, Pope Leo XIII gave them a rescript directing them to evangelize all Central Africa. They had settled in Tunis (as well as in Algeria), on the Congo, on Tanganyika, and in West Africa (Senegambia), and finally they directed their energies towards Uganda shortly after the Church Missionary Society had established itself in that country. Cardinal Lavigerie was a type of prelate somewhat characteristic of the last quarter of the 19th century, given to sonorous declamation, who posed as the denunciator of slavery and the slave trade without ever making personal acquaintance with its horrors. He endeavoured to obtain in the Roman Catholic world the glory of a Livingstone without going through Livingstone’s hardships. Moreover, hand in hand with his desire to spread religion amongst Arabs, Berbers and Negroes was an equally ardent desire to make them at the same time French or French-protected subjects.subjects. His strong political bias has somewhat discoloured his strenuous efforts for the evangelization of Africa, since his work is now seen to have been by no means disinterested. No doubt—as foreign critics point out—British missionaries often come as precursors to British rule; but they do so unconsciously, and indeed frequently prove inconvenient champions of native independence. But the missionaries of Cardinal Lavigerie’s order aimed in earlier days at advancing the political interests of France almost before they had secured the conversion of their pupils; and this somewhat detracted from their value as missionaries of Christianity. The determined hostility shown by these men to the British protectorate over Uganda provoked a terrible civil war; though since 1898 (when a section of their work was taken up by a British Roman Catholic mission) this political aspect of their work has entirely ceased and they have won hearty commendation from British, German and Belgian administrators. The White Fathers wear an Arab costume—a red fez and a long white cassock tied round the waist with a girdle. Their churches and schools were formerly built in a Moorish style of architecture. It was Cardinal Lavigerie’s idea that an approximation in dress and architecture to the Arabs might induce that people to give a hearing to his propagandists.
About eighteen years ago the Jesuits decided to resume their work on the Zambezi, which had been interrupted for more than a century by native troubles and by the expulsion of the Jesuits from the Portuguese dominions by the orders of the Marquez de Pombal. At first the efforts of the Jesuits resulted in utter disaster. They established themselves on the upper Zambezi, in the Batoka country, near the Victoria Falls, and all those who did not die of fever were massacred by the Batoka. Then they restricted their efforts to the vicinity of the Portuguese settlements at Zumbo and Tete and at Boroma. Near the last-named place they have a most prosperous and well-conducted establishment where a good technical education is given to the negroes of the Zambezi. At the invitation of the Portuguese Government they directed their attention to Nyasaland, but their establishment there being sacked and burned by Muhammadan Yaos, they retired from work in that direction. They have subsequently established mission stations in Mashonaland, besides resuming work in Madagascar.
Roman Catholic missionaries met with but poor success in Madagascar until French influence became dominant there a few years ago. The priests who attempted repeatedly to establish themselves on the coast of Madagascar in the early days of French colonial experiments either died from fever or were killed by the natives. The Jesuits who proceeded to the Hova Plateau during the sixties of the 19th century, and who were maintained there by subsidies granted by the French Imperial Government, met with so little success that they almost abandoned their work. At the present time, however, being strongly supported by the government of this French colony, they are obtaining an ascendancy over the Protestants.
Protestant missionary work, chiefly conducted by the London Missionary Society, and subsequently by the Quakers and the Norwegians, began in Madagascar in 1818. The missionaries of the London Missionary Society met with great success in converting the natives of Madagascar to an undenominational form of Protestant Christianity; but their efforts were suddenly checked by the reactionary policy of Queen Ranavalona I, who persecuted and killed the native Christians, and compelled the missionaries to leave the island in 1836. After various attempts—which proved futile—to come to an understanding with the old heathen queen, the Protestant missionaries returned in full force at her death, and since that time until the French annexation of the island they may be said to have converted the mass of the Hovas to Christianity, and to have established a strong Protestant native Church in friendly co-operation with the Anglicans, who, under a Bishop of Madagascar, became established in the island from 1863 onwards.
The London Missionary Society, which has done such striking work in Madagascar, and was indeed the pioneer missionary society in South Africa, was attracted to the open field of Tanganyika at the time when the Church Missionary Society, stirred up by Stanley’s appeal, sent its emissaries to Uganda. The first missionaries of the London Missionary Society, crossing Tanganyika from east to west, made their first establishment on the Kavala islet on the west coast. By means of the African Lakes Company of Nyasa, they conveyed a steamer in sections to the waters of Tanganyika, a steamer which has plied successfully on the lake since it was launched in 1885. Subsequently, however, the London Missionary Society retired from those parts of Tanganyika which were under foreign flags, and directed their attention to the south shore of the lake, which was placed under British protection by the author of this book in 1889.
A Swiss Protestant mission was founded at Basel in 1815, and soon afterwards commenced work on the Gold Coast, a work which produced the most remarkable and beneficial results in the industrial training of thousands of Gold Coast natives, enabling them thus to earn good wages and to fulfil many of the tasks hitherto assigned to Europeans. The Basel mission is now also established in the adjoining German territories of Togoland. The Moravian Protestant Missionary Society was founded as far back as 1732, and sent out the first trained Christian missionaries to South Africa. At the present day this mission has flourishing establishments in that part of the continent. The Berlin Missionary Society was founded in 1823, the Rhenish Missionary Society in 1829, and the North German (Bremen) Society in 1836. The two first-named German Protestant missions directed their attentions to Damaraland, and to the Hottentot country in South-West Africa; the Bremen Mission sent its agents chiefly to West Africa. Several of these societies, together with the Moravians, have established mission stations in German Nyasaland, to the north of Lake Nyasa. A Bavarian Roman Catholic mission has commenced work in the coast regions of German East Africa.
The French Evangelical Church began its important missionary work in Africa as far back as 1829. Its agents—noted almost universally for their single-minded earnestness and dissociation from all attempts to procure political influence—have made remarkable progress in Christianizing Basutoland and the adjoining Bechuana peoples in South Africa. Following the Bechuana race movements, they were gradually directed to the Upper Zambezi, and to the Barotse Kingdom. Here, under the distinguished leadership of M. Coillard, they have carried out a work of civilization amongst the Barotse deserving of the highest praise, though they have suffered severe losses among their agents by ill-health. Sweden, not to be behind other Protestant states, founded a missionary society in the early part of this century, which devoted itself to the still unoccupied field of Galaland, attacking this country both from the Abyssinian side and from British territory on the East Coast of Africa, whence it is easier penetrated at the present day. Though the work of this society has resulted in important additions to our philological knowledge, its efforts to propagate Christianity amongst the Galas—who were either obstinate Muhammadans or equally obstinate Pagans—have been unsuccessful. The Swiss Calvinist Church has sent missionaries among the Basuto in South Africa, and at a later date into Angola. The Dutch Reformed Church has done a good deal of missionary work in South Africa, and of late in Nyasaland. The American Presbyterian Church started an African missionary society in 1831 and sent its emissaries to Liberia, where it has many adherents.
British Presbyterians have established several important missionary bodies. The earliest (among existing societies) to commence work was the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, which established a mission at Old Calabar, on the West Coast of Africa, in 1846, and has since made great progress in converting the natives of Old Calabar and the Cross River to Christianity and a certain degree of civilization. It is mainly owing to the work of this mission that Old Calabar has become an important centre for European enterprise, and the capital of the eastern half of Southern Nigeria. The Edinburgh and Glasgow Missionary Societies of the early part of this century, which sent out missionaries to South Africa, were dissolved, and took shape in other forms as the foreign missions of the Free Church of Scotland and the Established Church of Scotland. The former, which was organized in the fifties, established strong missions in South Africa, and there founded the educational establishment of Lovedale, whence many hundreds of South African negroes have gone out into the world with a practical education. When Livingstone had directed attention to the Zambezi, the Free Church of Scotland thought of establishing a mission there, but after the report of its commissioner decided that the time was not come for such an enterprise. But in 1875, after Livingstone’s death, the Free Kirk sent out an expedition to Nyasaland for the establishment of a mission, which now has stations all along the west coast of that lake[139]. The Established Church of Scotland followed suit in 1876, when a settlement was made on the Shiré Highlands, to the south of Lake Nyasa; and the headquarters of the mission was styled “Blantyre” after the little town in Lanarkshire were Livingstone was born. Blantyre is now in many respects the principal town in the Nyasaland Protectorate. The Norwegian Church sent out missionaries to Zululand (1842) and to Madagascar in later years.
Besides the American Presbyterian mission in Liberia, other American missionaries (Baptists, Episcopal Methodists, and undenominational) settled in the Gaboon and on the coast between the Cameroons and the French colony, on the Congo, in Angola, and, above all, on the highlands of Bihé, behind Benguela. Among the agents of these American missions, remarkable for the linguistic work they have done in African languages, were the Rev. J. L. Wilson, who, together with Preston and Best, wrote on the languages of the Gaboon coast; Dr Sims, who compiled valuable vocabularies of Congo languages; Mr Héli Chatelain, whose work in connection with the Angola language was of exceptional value; and lastly, the Rev. W. M. Stover, who ably illustrated the Bihé language.
Besides the Church Missionary Society, the Anglican Church has been represented in Africa by the well-known “Universities’ Mission,” founded in 1856 as the result of an appeal by Livingstone to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. While the Church Missionary Society is mainly supported by the Evangelical side of the English Church, the Universities’ Mission is the outcome of the missionary enterprise of the High Church party. Its first establishment in Nyasaland under Livingstone was unfortunate, and resulted in the death of Bishop Mackenzie (the first missionary bishop of Central Africa) and most of the missionaries with him. His successor, Bishop Tozer, resolved to suspend work in Nyasaland, and concentrate the efforts of the mission upon Zanzibar, which thenceforward became its principal seat in Africa; but later on, when he was succeeded by Bishop Steere, another and a successful effort was made to reach Nyasa. From the beginning of the eighties to the present day, though at times much harassed by the Muhammadan Yaos, this mission has taken a firm hold in Nyasaland, besides establishing and maintaining a number of mission stations in German East Africa. In Nyasaland it occupies chiefly the east coast of the Lake, and has one station on the west coast, having chosen to work mainly among those populations which have been to some degree under Arab or Yao influence. To this mission is due the erection of a fine cathedral at Zanzibar; and much valuable linguistic work has been done by the late Bishop Steere, Mr Madan, and the late Bishop of Likoma (better known as Archdeacon Chauncey Maples[140]).
The Plymouth Brethren have established a mission in South-Central Africa, across the Zambezi-Congo water-parting.
The Scotch Baptists began a mission to S.W. Nyasaland and also on the Zambezi in 1895. There, also, is the Zambezi Industrial Mission (undenominational), which was founded in 1893, and endeavours to be self-supporting by its industrial work. A few American missionaries, mostly under Bishop Hartzell of the American Episcopal Church, have attempted settlement in the Portuguese possessions on the West and the South-east coasts of Africa; and there are also unattached American missionaries in the Congo basin carrying on work on their own account, without being connected with any special society. Finally, Plymouth Brethren and other English Protestants of different denominations organized a Protestant missionary, enterprise in North Africa as the “North African Mission,” established in 1886. This mission has numerous representatives in Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, Tripoli, and Egypt. As it devotes itself mainly to the conversion of Muhammadans, it has had but slight success at present from the propagandist’s point of view, but it has achieved more than any other a preparation of the Moslem mind for the consideration of Christian ethics, and its educational work of late has been warmly appreciated by the French authorities. This mission has numerous women members who visit the harims for educational and for medical purposes. Its agents have been remarkable for their thorough acquaintance with Arabic and even with the Berber dialects of Morocco and Algeria.
The only Christian state which existed in Africa before the beginning of European colonization was Abyssinia, which is to some degree dependent on the Coptic Church in Egypt, and is in communion with the Greek Church. Christianity is said to have been introduced here in the 4th century. The Abyssinians have usually resented the arrival of Roman Catholic missionaries, and have not shown much greater encouragement to emissaries from Protestant Churches. Abyssinian Christianity is, as might be imagined, so degraded and mixed up with fetishism that it is difficult to recognise it as a branch of the Christian faith which is the religion of so much of Europe and America. Russia in the latter part of the 19th century was much concerned at the spiritual darkness prevailing in Abyssinia, and endeavoured to send thither missionaries from the Greek Church, the domain of which she identifies with her own empire. But these have been propagandists of a singularly military type—wolves in sheep’s clothing, if one may commit oneself to rather a strong metaphor—and hardly to be classed with the unarmed emissaries of Christianity, who, on behalf of the Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches of Europe and America, have striven usually with single-minded motives, almost always with deep personal unselfishness, ever with zeal, sometimes with indiscretion, and not unfrequently with bitter disappointments and cruel sufferings to evangelize Africa. The ultimate effect of their work on the history of Africa will prove to be far-reaching, important, and (I believe) highly beneficial.