Whites Writing Whiteness Reading List
Missions, Missionaries and South Africa
Liz Stanley
Please reference as: Liz Stanley (2020) ‘Missions, Missionaries and South Africa’, https://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/publications/reading-lists/missionaries-and-south-africa/ and provide the paragraph number as appropriate when quoting.
1. Introduction
A great deal has been written about missionaries in general and missions and missionaries in southern Africa specifically, so that it is not possible to give more than a flavour of the breadth and depth of coverage in this reading list. The ‘missions and missionaries’ literature includes the publications of the main missionary societies and a large array of ‘narratives,’ journals and other writings by the missionaries who worked for them, as well as a very large number of academic discussions, including some in-depth investigations of particular mission societies, periods of time, countries, and of course missionaries themselves. As well as books and edited collections, there are in addition many pertinent journal articles; however, again because of the scale of the sources available, only a few of these have been included, and the bibliographies in the academic books referenced can be used to provide an in-road into the journal literature.
The focus in what follows is (i) the period from the 1790s (when the LMS presence in southern Africa started) to the ‘winds of change’ of the 1970s, and (ii) South Africa, although some material is included on southern Africa more broadly, for the boundaries were fluid over much of this time.
2. Key reading
* Andrew Porter (2004) Religion Versus Empire? British Protestant Missions and Overseas Expansion 1700-1914 Manchester: Manchester University Press.
The best place to start for newcomers to this literature is with this even-handed well-researched and wide reaching discussion of Protestant missions, covering a more than 200 year period. Porter’s book takes seriously the religious beliefs of the people concerned along with their usually genuine conviction that they were acting on the side of, as well as on behalf of, the people they lived among, whilst also not losing sight of issues of race and racism. It successfully problematises homogenising ‘imperialism’ and ‘missionary’ interconnections through its detailed look at particular times, places and people. It also includes interesting discussion of the range of missionary societies, including the London Missionary Society’s presence in South Africa.
See also readings below preceded by *, which are those particularly recommended.
3. Research-based monographs
Henry Bredekamp & Robert Ross (eds, 1995) Missions and Christianity in South African History Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.
Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff (1991) Of Revelation and Revolution, Volume 1: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Comaroff and Comaroff have a very definite position, advanced through both volumes of their ‘Revelation and Revolution’ work. Their particular version of a postmodermist historical anthropology is accompanied by an over-determined interpretation of the missionary presence, with the insistent voice this is articulated in making it hard for readers to assess the evidence (little of this) and arguments (a lot of this) for themselves.
John Comaroff and Jean Comaroff (1997) Of Revelation and Revolution. Volume 2: The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
See comment on Comaroff and Comaroff (1991) above.
Ivor Cox (2008) The British Missionary Enterprise Since 1700 London: Routledge.
Martin Daunton and Rick Halpern (eds, 1999) Empire and Others: British Encounters with Indigenous Peoples, 1600-1850 Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Useful collection focusing around the making of identities. The contribution by Andrew Bank (‘Losing faith in the civilizing mission: The premature decline of humanitarian liberalism at the Cape, 1840-60’ pp.364-83) gives a seemingly precise ‘moment’ for the claimed decline of humanitarian liberalism and thinks his view ought to be incorporated into ‘standard chronology’. Much other work (including as referenced in this) has suggested something more nuanced, and acts as a reminder that caution in making sweeping generalisations is called for.
* Elizabeth Elbourne (2008) Blood Ground: Colonialism, Missons and the Contest for Christianity in the Cape Colony and Britain 1799-1953 Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
A broad sweep overview, as per its sub-title, Blood Ground is underpinned by detailed scholarship concerned with how both Christianity and whiteness were shaped. This is in particular with reference to the Khoikhoi and emergent forms of Christianity between the first LMS arrivals in 1799 to the end of the 1850-53 Frontier War, with the focus being the Eastern Cape.
Richard H. Elphick (2012) The Equality of Believers: Protestant Missionaries and the Racial Politics of South Africa Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
Starting with recognition that initially many missionaries had a universalist and egalitarian set of convictions that albeit uneasily led them to problematise racial hierarchies, Elphick perceives a twentieth century change in which egalitarianism gave way to racialised ideology, segregated churches and starker views of the relationship of black people to whites.
Richard Elphick and Rodney Davenport (eds, 1998) Christianity in South Africa London: James Currey.
* Norman Etherington (ed, 2005) Missions and Empire Oxford: Oxford University Press.
A useful collection with contributions from some leading figures in the field. Its focus is the relationship between Christian missions and various parts of the British Empire from the seventeenth century to the 1960s and is organised thematically. Its chapters include an overview (Andrew Porter), humanitarianism (Alan Lester), missionaries and converts (Gareth Griffiths), women and cultural exchanges (Peggy Grimshaw and Peter Sherlock) and medicine (Etherington himself).
Stephen Gray (1999) ‘Missionary Researchers and Researching Missions: A South African View of Cultural Colonisation at the Millennium’ in Gerhard Stilz (ed, 2001) Colonies, Missions, Cultures in the English-Speaking World: General and Comparative Studies Tubingen: Stauffenburg Verlag, pp.111-122.
John de Gruchy (ed, 1999) The London Missionary Society in Southern Africa: Historical Essays in Celebration of the LMS in Southern Africa 1799-1999 David Philip: Cape Town.
An extremely interesting collection exploring different facets of the London Missionary Society’s presence in South Africa, and required reading on the LMS. Particular gems are the contributions on Robert Moffat, on the Jane and John Philip partnership, and on the 1842-3 Grahamstown schism.
Mary Taylor Huber and Nancy Lutkehaus (eds, 1999) Gendered Missions Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Tim Keegan. 2016. Dr Philip’s Empire: One man’s struggle for justice in 19th-century in South Africa. Cape Town: Zebra Press. Keegan sees Philip as providing an inroad into the early liberal and humanitarian missionary presence and changes in this over time. He makes amazingly good use of the sources that remain, and explores why Philip was so controversial in his day, and still now.
Martin Legassick (2010) The Politics of a South African Frontier. the Griqua, the Sotho-Tswana and the Missionaries, 1780-1840 Basel: Basler Afrika Bibliographien.
Legassick’s ‘frontier thesis’ article regarding South Africa has been very influential over a 30 year period. This is his finally published PhD thesis, from which the article derived. Its content is more frontier and less missionaries, but it does touch interestingly on John Philip, Robert Moffat and LMS policy towards the Griqua and in particular the disputes etc between Moffat and Philip.
* Emily Manktelow (2013) Missionary Families: Race, Gender and Generation on the Spiritual Frontier Manchester: Manchester University Press.
The first work to focus on the working unit as the missionary couple and not just the man who was the direct employee of a missionary society. Its overall aim is ‘to prove that the intimate and the personal should not be obscured by a focus on the public in history, and that missionary history can be reshaped by attention to the role of the family therein’ (p.207). It contains useful discussion of among other things the Moffats, Livingstones and Prices. Its coverage also includes the South Seas as well as southern Africa. Converted, at points not entirely thoroughly, from a PhD thesis, but still extremely useful.
Andrew May and Patricia Grimshaw (eds, 2010) Missionaries, Indigenous Peoples and Cultural Exchange Brighton: Sussex Academic Press.
* Andrew Porter (ed, 2004) The Imperial Horizons of British Protestant Missions 1880-1914 Grand Rapids, Michigan: William Eerdmans.
An edited collection from an important conference, with a range of helpful contributions concerned with how missions redefined their purposes and activities over the time-period of 1880 to 1914. Chapters by MacKenzie and Gaitskell are particularly interesting on South African matters.
* Andrew Porter (2004) Religion Versus Empire? British Protestant Missions and Overseas Expansion 1700-1914 Manchester: Manchester University Press.
See Key Reading.
Richard Price (2008) Making Empire Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Chapter 6 ‘The closing of the missionary mind’, pp.127-52.
Price perceives a late 1840s watershed as having occurred among missionaries, from an earlier more egalitarian ethos, to, as his chapter-title has it, ‘the closing of the missionary mind’. Much other work indicates something more complicated, more lumpy, and at other time-periods.
* Andrew C. Ross (1986) John Philip (1775-1851): Missions, Race and Politics in South Africa Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press.
Detailed insightful investigation, using the remaining sources, of Philip’s key role as LMS Superintendent in South Africa, which brings out the radicalism of many of Philip’s views and policies in the historical context he was working in. Such a pity that the John Philip Papers did not escape the fire many years ago in the Library at the University of Witwatersrand, which destroyed so many of them.
Rhonda Semple (2003) Missionary Women: Gender, Professionalism and the late Victorian Idea of Christian Mission Woodbridge: Boydell.
One of the few studies to focus on women.
* Brian Stanley (1990) The Bible and the Flag: Protestant Mission and British Imperialism Leicester, UK: Apollos.
Influential book, among the first academic studies to take seriously the religious commitments of missionaries and mission societies, and thus problematising the ‘imperialism’ and ‘missionary’ connection as being simply a ‘religious arm of Western imperialism’ interpretation.
* Brian Stanley and Alaine Low (eds, 2013) Missions, Nationalism, and the End of Empire Grand Rapids, Michigan: William Eerdmans.
Good collection that shakes up the ‘religious arm of Western imperialism’ standpoint by exploring the role of missionaries and missions in bringing colonial empires to an end. Contributions from Richard Elphick, John Stuart, and Deborah Gaitskell, are of direct relevance to South Africa.
* John Stuart (2011) British Missionaries and the End of Empire: East, Central and Southern Africa 1939-1964 Grand Rapids, Michigan: William Eerdmans
Interesting exploration of British Protestant missionary between 1939 and 1964 which focuses on Botswana, Zambia, Malawi, and Kenya (with asides on South Africa), indicating the complicated, uneven and changing relationship between Protestant missionaries, Britain, and African nationalists. Different missionaries sometimes supported empire, sometimes criticised it, sometimes worked against it, with many eventually coming to terms with its formal end and working in the independent African states.
4. Articles
Cleall, Esme. “Missionaries, Masculinities and War: The London Missionary Society in Southern Africa, c. 1860–1899.” South African Historical Journal 61, no. 2 (2009): 232-253.
Cooper, Jennifer. “The invasion of personal religious experiences: London Missionary Society missionaries, imperialism, and the written word in early 19th-century southern Africa.” African Historical Review 34, no. 1 (2002): 49-71.
Elphick, Richard. The equality of believers: Protestant missionaries and the racial politics of South Africa. University of Virginia Press, 2012.
Gifford, Paul. “The vanguard of colonialism: missionaries and the frontier in Southern Africa in the nineteenth century.” Constellations 3, no. 2 (2012).
Hughes, Rebecca C. “‘Science in the Hands of Love’: British Evangelical Missionaries and Colonial Development in Africa, c. 1940–60.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 41, no. 5 (2013): 823-842.
Rüther, Kirsten. “Through the Eyes of Missionaries and the Archives They Created: The Interwoven Histories of Power and Authority in the Nineteenth-century Transvaal.” Journal of Southern African Studies 38, no. 2 (2012): 369-384.
Wells, Julia C. “The suppression of mixed marriages among LMS missionaries in South Africa before 1820.” South African Historical Journal 44, no. 1 (2001): 1-20.
5. Missionary Letters and Journals
Godfrey Callaway (1995) The Re-Appearing Moon: Letters of a Missionary Priest in Pondoland 1892-1942 (ed. Anne R. Kotzé) Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.
George Champion (1967) Journal of the Rev. George Champion, American Missionary in Zululand 1835-9. Cape Town: Struik.
L. Cope (ed.) (1977) The Journals of the Rev T. L. Hodgson: Missionary to the Seleka-Rolong and the Griquas 1821-1931 Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.
* James Kitchingman (1976) The Kitchingman Papers: Missionary Letter and Journals, 1817-1848 (eds Basil Alexander Le Cordeur and Christopher C. Saunders). Johannesburg: Brenthurst Press.
A well-edited collection providing many interesting letters written by a wide array of other missionaries and sent to the respected Kitchingman.
D.J. Kotzé (ed.) (1951) Letters of the American Missionaries, 1835-1838 Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society.
* David Livingstone (1959) Family Letters, 1841-1848, and 1849-1856 (2 volumes, ed. and intro. I. Schapera) London: Chatto & Windus.
Interesting aspect of the Livingstone corpus, this contains letters to his own and his wife Mary’s family members. However, a division between ‘family’ and ‘missionary’ letters barely exists, except that Livingstone’s ‘missionary’ letters (see below) are those to the relevant LMS Directors (Freeman and Kidman) in London.
David Livingstone (1960) Livingstone’s Private Journals, 1851-1853 (ed. and intro. I. Schapera) London: Chatto & Windus.
David Livingstone (1961) Livingstone’s Missionary Correspondence, 1841-1856 (ed. and intro I. Schapera) London: Chatto & Windus.
Livingstone’s letters to the LMS Directors in London. These are interesting letters, although as the editor notes they are very different from most other letters by LMS missionaries to the LMS Directors, mainly because of the sense that Livingstone is always driving home a point.
David Livingstone (1963) African Journal 1853-1856 (ed. I. Schapera) London: Chatto and Windus.
Like all Livingstonia, well-written, ascerbic, detailed, interesting…
* Una Long (ed, 1956) The Journals of Elizabeth Lees Price written in Bechuanaland, Southern Africa 1854 – 1883, with an Epilogue: 1889 and 1900 London: Edward Arnold.
Elizabeth aka Bessie Price was the daughter of missionaries Robert Moffat and Mary Smith Moffat, and married to Roger Price, also a missionary. Mainly family letters and reminiscences written in the form of long letters, these ‘journals’ make interesting reading and show something of her changing views over time. Her letters are part of Whites Writing Whiteness research.
John Smith Moffat (1885) Lives of Robert and Mary Moffat London: T. Fisher Unwin.
Dutiful account that is also packed full of extracts from letters and so is an extremely useful source for the Moffat parents.
* John Smith Moffat, Emily Moffat and others (1945) The Matabele Mission: A Selection from the Correspondence of John and Emily Moffat, David Livingstone and others, 1858-1878 (ed J.P.R. Wallis) Chatto & Windus, 1945. (Oppenheimer series no. 2). [NB. The dust-jacket of this book has a different title from that on the more accurate frontispiece – The Matabele Mission of John & Emily Moffat]
John Smith Moffat was the surviving eldest son of Robert and Mary Moffat. Initially a missionary of a different style from his parents, whose approach he somewhat sniffily drew his distance from, he later became an administrator working for the British government and through this had dealings with the Rhodes empire and its grubby workings. These letters concern the activities in the Inyati and Makololo area of the younger missionaries of the following generation to Robert and Mary Moffat: John Moffat and his wife Emily Unwin Moffat, David Livingstone (married to Mary Moffat the younger), and Roger Price (later married to Elizabeth aka Bessie Moffat). At points nail-biting, and always interesting.
* Robert Moffat (1945) The Matabele Journals of Robert Moffat. 1829–1860. (ed. J.P.R. Wallis) Salisbury: National Archives of Rhodesia, 2 vols (Oppenheimer series no 1).
Robert Moffat was one of the first missionary presences in what was then called Matabeleland (now Zimbabwe), travelling to it and staying for five extended periods because of his friendship with its then-ruler, the great Moselikatse (aka Mzilikazi). His journals largely take the form of extended letters to Mary Moffat, sending them to her in Kuruman when opportunity arose. Surprisingly riveting.
* Robert Moffat and Mary Moffat (1951) Apprenticeship at Kuruman: Being the Journals and Letters of Robert and Mary Moffat 1820-1828 (ed. I. Schapera) London: Chatto & Windus (Oppenheimer series no 5).
An interesting mixture of letters and journals, rather too few of which are from Mary Moffat, who has a more edgey and less orthodox style than husband Robert. Provides fascinating detail on life in the important Kuruman mission station. These letters and journals suggest missionaries were a disputatious lot among whom passions ran high. Robert goes in for many ‘poor Basutos’ kinds of comment, while Mary Moffat certainly uses ethnic descriptors, but for everyone, and of a largely non-evaluative kind. Fascinating.
Karel Schoeman (ed.) (1991) The Missionary Letters of Gottlob Schreiner 1837 – 1846 Cape Town: Human and Rousseau.
Gottlob Schreiner was not the most assiduous of LMS employees, and the small number of his letters to its Directors in London are accompanied here by those to his mentors in the Basle Society (in English translation), together with additional material from Schoeman. Schreiner seems a rather mullish and argumentative person, unlike the saint-like figure that some Schreiner biographers have conjured up.
James Stewart (1952) The Zambesi Journal of James Stewart 1862-1863 with a selection from his Correspondence (ed. J. P. R. Wallis) London: Chatto & Windus (Oppenheimer Series No. 6).
Stewart travelled with Livingstone and others on the Zambesi expedition; the highly jaundiced view here was later largely retracted.
Jane Elizabeth Waterston (1983) The Letters of Jane Elizabeth Waterston 1866-1905 (ed. Lucy Bean and Elizabeth van Heyningen) Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society.
Jane Waterson was a missionary in her own right, initially at Lovedale. She then trained as a doctor and worked in that capacity in Cape Town. A sometimes contentious figure, she became a member of the so-called ‘Ladies Commission’ under Millicent Garrett Fawcett that inspected the concentration camps of the South African War (1899-1902).
5. Miscelleny of Missions and Missionary Narratives in Southern Africa
Thomas Arbousset and Francois Daumas (1846) Narrative of an Exploratory Tour of the North-East of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope Cape Town: AS Robertson.
James Backhouse (1844) A Narrative of a Visit to the Mauritius and South Africa London: Hamilton, Adams & Co.
F.R. Baudert (2004) Moravians in the Eastern Cape 1828-1928. (ed, T. Keegan) Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society.
Samuel Broadbent (1865) A Narrative of the First Introduction of Christianity Amongst the Barolong Tribe of Bechuanas, South Africa London: Wesleyan Mission House.
Edgar H. Brookes (1925) A Retrospect and a Forecast: Fifty Years of Missionary Work in South Africa 1875-1925. Swiss Mission to Shangaan Tribes. Lausanne: Mission Suisse Romande.
Tom Brown (1926) Among the Bantu Nomads London: Seeley, Service and Co. He was a long-term presence at Kuruman with the Moffats, later moving to Tigerkloof.
John Campbell (1815) Travels in South Africa London: Black and Parry.
John Campbell (1822) Travels in South Africa…Being A Narrative of a Second Journey London: Francis Westley.
Eugene Casalis (1861) The Basutos Cape Town, London: James Nisbet.
Eugene Casalis (1889) My Life in Basutoland London: The Religious Tract Society.
Council for World Mission (Great Britain) (1978) Council for World Mission archives: South Africa Zug: Inter Documentation Co.
James Shepard Dennis (1902) Centennial Survey of Foreign Missions New York: Fleming H Revell Co.
Frederick Hale (ed.) (1997) Norwegian Missionaries in Natal and Zululand: Selected Correspondence, 1844-1900 Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society.
Peter Hinchliff (1967) Calendar of Cape Missionary Correspondence 1800-1850 Pretoria: National Council for Social Research, Department of Education, Arts and Science. Publication Series No 27.
Basil Holt (1954) Joseph Williams and the Pioneer Mission to the South-Eastern Bantu Lovedale: Lovedale Press.
Basil Holt (1976) Great Heart of the Border: A Life of John Brownlee King William’s Town: South African Missionary Museum.
Ingie Hovland (2013) Mission Station Christianity: Norwegian Missionaries in Colonial Natal and Zululand, Southern Africa 1850-1890 Boston: Brill.
William Ireland (1865) Historical Sketch of the Zulu Mission in South Africa as also of the Gaboon Mission in Western Africa Boston: American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.
Roger S. Levine (2011) A Living Man from Africa: Jan Tzatzoe, Xhosa Chief and Missionary, and the Making of Nineteenth Century South Africa (New Directions in Narrative History) New Haven, Connecticut; London: Yale University Press.
Touches on the LMS, James Read senior, James Read Junior, John Brownleee and others.
David Livingstone (1857) Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa London: John Murray.
David Livingstone (1900) The Autobiography of David Livingstone: from 1813 to 1843 Blantyre: Scottish National Memorial Trust.
David Livingstone (1940) Some Letters from Livingstone, 1840-1872 (ed. David Chamberlain; intro. R. Coupland) London: Oxford University Press.
Richard Lovett (1899) The History of the London Missionary Society 1795-1895 (2 vols) Frowde.
John Mackenzie (1871) Ten Years North of the Orange River: A Story of Everyday Life and Work among the South African Tribes from 1859 to 1869 Edinburgh: Edmonston & Douglas.
John Mackenzie (1887) Austral Africa: Losing it or Ruling it London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington.
Douglas Mackenzie (1902) John Mackenzie: South African Missionary and Statesman London: Hodder & Stroughton.
Nathaniel James Merriman (1957) The Cape Journals of Archdeacon N.J. Merriman, 1848-1845 (ed. D. H. Varley and H. M. Matthew) Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society.
John Smith Moffat (1885) Lives of Robert and Mary Moffat London: T. Fisher Unwin.
Dutiful account of his parents.
Robert Moffat (1863) Rivers of Water in a Dry Place. An account of the introduction of Christianity into South Africa, and of Mr. Moffat’s missionary labours, etc. London: no publisher details.
Francis Owen (1926) The Diary of the Rev. F. Owen, Missionary with Dingaan, together with the accounts of Zulu affairs by the interpreters, Messrs. Hully and Kirkman. (ed. Geo. E. Cory.) Cape Town: no publisher details.
Janet Wagner Parsons (1997) The Livingstones at Kolobeng 1847-1852 Gabarone: Botswana Society and Pula Press.
Longer on detail and shorter on standing back and interpreting, Parsons’ book brings under the spotlight Mary Livingstone nee Moffat, and also the mission site at Kolobeng itself, in an overall interesting way.
James Read (1852) The Kat River Settlement in 1851, described in a series of letters published in “The South African Commercial Advertiser.” Cape Town: no publisher details.
Jane Sales (1975) Mission Stations and the Coloured Communities of the Eastern Cape: 1800-1852 Cape Town: A.A. Balkema.
Karel Schoeman (2005) The Early Mission in South Africa (Die vroeë sending in Suid-Afrika) 1799-1819 Pretoria: Protea Book House.
Karel Schoeman (ed, 2005) The Griqua Mission at Philippolis, 1822-1837 Pretoria: Protea Book House.
Anthony Sillery (1971) John Mackenzie of Bechuanaland: A Study in Humanitarian Imperialism Cape Town: A.A. Balkema.
Josiah Tyler (1881) Forty Years Among the Zulus Boston and Chicago: Congregational Sunday School and Publishing Society.
John Widdicombe (1895) In the Lesuto: A Sketch of African Mission Life London: Society for Promoting Knowledge.
Wendy Urban-Mead (2002) ‘Dynastic Daughters: Three Royal Kwena Women and E. L. Price of the London Missionary Society, 1853-1881’, in Allman, Jean, Geiger, Susan and Musisi, Nakanyike (eds.) Women in African Colonial Histories. Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, pp. 48-70.
William Walters (1885) Life and Labours of Robert Moffat, D.D., Missionary in South Africa, etc London: Walter Scott Publishing Co.
Sarah Worden (ed, 2012) David Livingstone: Man, Myth and Legacy Edinburgh: NMS Enterprises Ltd.
Last updated: 28 June 2020
