Missionairies in Africa
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Christianity was bounded to the coastal areas of Africa. At this time in Western Africa, there were a total of three missionary societies operating in western Africa. There was the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG), the Wesleyan Missionary Society (WMS), and the Glasaw and Scottish Missionary Society (GSMS). In the southern portion of Africa, the Morovian Missionary and the London Missionary were dominant. There was only one society in eastern Africa and there were none at all in northern Africa. However, by 1840 the number of missionary societies had increased to more than fifteen in western Africa, eleven in southern Africa, five in eastern Africa in 1877 and there were six in northern Africa in 1880. Not only were these societies active in the coastal region of Africa, but they also started stretching inland to lands where they haven't reached before. Around the year 1860, these societies in southern Africa had traveled as far north as present day Botswana, Lesotho and Zambia. (Boahen 15) Famous names of this time include David Livingston and Robert Moffat. (Gordon 285)Maybe it is good to look at how these missionaries
They also began practicing monogamous marriages. Members of African society were split up into two groups. After all, these people knew about African culture and language and the people of Africa would probably listen to someone of their own color before a white European whom they knew nothing about. There were the "school" people, and then there were the "red" people, which mainly comprised of the workers and the poorer citizens of Africa. The missionaries help the colonizers work up treaties that cheated Africa tribes out of their land and their resources. These people were doing quite well without having Christianity in their lives. Catechists were Africans who were mostly untrained and unordained, but preached the gospel and set up Catholic communities all over Africa. A prime example of this is that Europeans supposedly "discovered" Mount Kenya and the river Niger. Even though the people of Africa were given a steady diet of Christianity and Christian doctrine from the missionaries, there were still many that had no intentions of converting. (Rodney 246) Whatever history of Africa that was taught in school only went back as far as they first Europeans landed on the continent. The Missionary Societies also promoted agriculture as well as teaching certain skills such as printing and tailoring. All missionary societies set up elementary schools and some even had training colleges and secondary schools. As far as social Africa goes, the largest impact the missionaries had was "the stratification of African societies into a small educated elite.
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