»Die Polygamie bedeutet einen Krebsschaden für die deutschen Kolonien.«

In its African colonies, the German colonial authorities of ten encountered marriages among the colonized population that did not correspond to the European bourgeois ideal of monogamous marriage. Colonial government and Christian missions saw polygamy as an obstacle to their colonial or missionary project. Using files from the German colonial administration in Cameroon, documents from the archive of the Basel Mission, and texts from missionary and colonial magazines, the article examines what precisely the colonial government and missions saw as the dangers of polygamy and what challenges arose in dealing with it. Overall, it is shown how essential monogamy was for the self-definition of the German colonial power. Criticism of polygamy served to distinguish Germany from the colonial other and to devalue its culture. Polygamy was considered non-Christian, non-European, non-civilized. In practice, however, this clarity blurred in the face of diverse challenges, so that missions and the colonial government tended to seek pragmatic and temporary solutions.

Constructing global missionary families: Absence, memory, and belonging before World War I

The separation of parents and children was a quite common imperial family constellation before World War I. Many children left the respective colonial or mission territories at the beginning of their seventh year. They were sent to their parents’ regions of origin in Europe to spend their childhood and youth in the households of relatives or in missionary boarding schools specially set up for them. This article examines German-speaking missionary families in the imperial context of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and focuses on letter communications between parents and children as an expression of family construction at a distance. I will mainly focus on two families (Kaundinya, Nommensen) in order to examine from a micro-historical perspective, the construction of missionary families in a transimperial framework. Rooted in the pietistic milieu of German-speaking missionaries from the Basel Mission and the Rhenish Mission, these families enable us to compare the results of imperial and missionary family historiography, which has developed over the last 20 years within the British context, with empirical material from other national and imperial contexts.

Writing and Reading about Death

This chapter considers the transformation from a culture of speaking about death to one which included writing and reading about death. It spotlights the final quarter of the nineteenth century, from the creation of the British Crown Colony of the Gold Coast in 1874 to its expansion with the formal incorporation of Asante and the savanna hinterland to the north in 1901–2. The chapter focuses on literacy and print culture as they developed on the Gold Coast littoral, a process which would extend into Asante and beyond only in the twentieth century. This print culture comprised both vernacular African languages and, with the departure of the Dutch in 1872, the language of the remaining colonizing power: English. The former was particularly associated with the Basel Mission, whose European and African agents pioneered the transcription of Ga and Twi as written languages and produced the first vernacular printed texts: prayer books, primers, dictionaries, the gospels and, by the 1860s to 1870s, compete translations of the Bible. The Bible, of course, has a great deal to say about mortality and the ends of life, however, the chapter concentrates on a different, secular medium of entextualized discourses about death: newspapers, which, as in Europe, 'accorded mortality new openings.'

Intertwining Christian Mission, Theology, and History: A Case Study of the Basel Mission among the Thiyyas and Badagas of Kerala, 1870–1913

For centuries, various denominations of Christian missionaries have contributed in a larger way towards the spread of Christianity among the people of Indian sub-continent. Each Church had its own principles of preaching the word of God and undertook welfare activities in and around the mission-stations. From establishing schools to providing medical aids, the Christian missionaries were involved in constant perseverance to improve the ‘indigenous’ societies not only in terms of amenities and opportunities, but also in spiritual aspects. Despite conversion being the prime motive, every Mission prepared ground on which their undertakings found meanings and made an impact over people’s lives. These endeavours, combining missiological and theological discourses, brought hope and success to the missionaries, and in our case study, the Basel Mission added to the history of the Christian Mission while operating in the coastal and hilly districts of Kerala during the 19th and the 20th centuries. Predominantly following the trait of Pietism, the Basel Mission emphasised practical matters more than doctrine, which was evident in the Mission activities among the Thiyyas and the Badagas of Malabar and Nilgiris, respectively. Along with addressing issues like the caste system and spreading education in the ‘backward’ regions, the most remarkable contribution of the Basel Mission established the ‘prototype’ of industries which was part of the ‘praxis practice’ model. It aimed at self-sufficiency and provided a livelihood for a number of people who otherwise had no honourable means of subsistence. Moreover, conversion in Kerala was a combination of ‘self-transformation’ and active participation which resulted in ‘enculturation’ and inception of ‘modernity’ in the region. Finally, this article shows that works of the Basel Mission weaved together its theological and missiological ideologies which determined its exclusivity as a Church denomination.

Languages, Castes and Hierarchy: Basel Mission in Nineteenth-Century Coastal Karnataka

In the former South Kanara or south coastal Karnataka region, the presence of overlapping languages, mainly Tulu and Kannada, posed prolonged dilemmas in the nineteenth century for the Basel Mission. The choice of language was important for their evangelical work, supported by important language-related activities such as dictionary making, grammar writing and translations. Since language use was intertwined with caste hierarchy, this raised issues over the position of lower castes, mainly Billavas, for the native elites and upper castes. This article argues that the prioritisation of Kannada, and relegation of Tulu to a secondary position, was an outcome not only of missionary perceptions of the larger Kannada context, but also more importantly can be traced back to elite representations regarding the subaltern Tulu culture and lifeworld. As missionary intervention in education and native language use challenged the status quo of social hierarchy among local communities, this sparked efforts by the native elites to reclaim and restore the earlier hierarchy. In the process, the native elite representations of Tulu language and culture became at the same time an effort at dismissal and appropriation.

Sixty years of teacher education in Ghana: Successes, challenges and the way forward

This paper was a presentation made at the launching of the 60th Anniversary Celebration and the Annual Graduation Ceremony of Peki College of Education, on Friday, 13th June 2014. The paper examined the history of the development of initial teacher training institutions in Ghana since 1835 when the first (i.e. Presbyterian Training College [PTC]) was established by the Basel Mission at Akropong in the Eastern Region. It explains that currently there are 38 public and 3 private colleges of education in the country producing teachers for basic schools. It argues that even though the 41 colleges of education have been elevated to tertiary status to offer programmes leading to diploma in basic education, they are still being run like the old missionary teacher training schools. These and several other factors had led to concerns about the quality of the products of the colleges in terms of the generic and subject-specific competences as well as the capacities of the institutions to meet the increasing demand for basic school teachers. It is therefore suggested that the boarding system in the Colleges of Education be scrapped, and instead, few (about 10) of the colleges selected for development and upgrading into Teacher Education Universities. It is further suggested that special incentives are introduced to attract the top candidates to the colleges of education and also the institutions should review their programmes and study modules to ensure pre-service teachers develop practical skills in teaching the core competencies in basic education.