Missionary Labours and Scenes in Southern Africa

Abstract

Robert Moffat, Scottish missionary and linguist, arrived in South Africa in 1817 under the aegis of the London Missionary Society. He pioneered missionary activity among the Tswana people and became deeply influential in South Africa, helping to open up the 'missionary road' north of the Cape and later criticising the Afrikaners and becoming an advocate of British imperial rule in the region. He was also the first transcriber of the Setswana language. Missionary Labours and Scenes in Southern Africa (1842) is an autobiographical account of Moffat's time as a missionary and contains, as he states in the preface, a 'faithful record of events which have occurred within the range of his experience and observation' that 'supplies much that may serve to illustrate the peculiar attributes of African society.' Missionary Labours was hugely popular with the Victorian readership and became a classic narrative of missionary activity in Africa.

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