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
The Christian Africans were most successful around the Guinea coast...around Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria. (Gordon 44) In fact, most African Catholics owe their conversion to black catechists. Catechists were Africans who were mostly untrained and unordained, but preached the gospel and set up Catholic communities all over Africa. The Europeans saw the Africans as "uneducated savages" who needed the white mans' help to function as a society. All missionary societies set up elementary schools and some even had training colleges and secondary schools. They also had teacher training colleges, seminars and technical schools. By 1894, the protestant missionaries claimed to have had a total enrollment of 137,000 students attending their schools. (Boahen 16) Even though white missionaries did place pressure on some portions of Africa, take for example southern Africa, there is little doubt that those in the heart of Africa were facing great danger in being subjected to the Zulu, Boers, or Ndebele people and saw the white missionaries as a "savior" and embraced them. (Boahen 16) This could be a reason why the Africans tolerated and welcomed the white man to begin with, when they could have fought them out of their lands. The missionaries certainly had an impact on African society as the standard of living had been changed, for the better and for the worse. Some Africans started wearing European style clothing, and there were also some modern style houses built in Africa. The Africans gained access to modern medicine. They also began practicing monogamous marriages. As far as social Africa goes, the largest impact the missionaries had was "the stratification of African societies into a small educated elite." (Boahen 16) Members of the elite were given jobs such as teacher,
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Approximate Word count = 1295
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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