Mission Station Melting Pots as a Factor in the Rise of South African Black Nationalism

Abstract

Since the publication of Roland Oliver's The Missionary Factor in East Africa in 1952, secular historians have built up an impressive library of case studies on the impact of Christianity in Africa, a literature which pays tribute not only to the richness of missionary sources but also to their special usefulness. Insofar as the social history of Africa before 1900 can be written at all from documents, it must be based largely on the missionary record. Alone among the agents of Europe who shared the daily life of Africans, missionaries chronicled that life.l Furthermore, they were in a unique position to record certain kinds of dramatic social change. For many historians the most fascinating change associated with missionary activity has been the growth of African political elites committed to African nationalism. How is the high correlation between missionary training and secular leadership to be explained?2 Most of the available explanations emphasize the efficiency with which missionaries detached Africans from traditional societies and gave to these socially disoriented individuals an awareness of new

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