Pacifying Missions: Christianity, Violence, and Empire in the Nineteenth Century 9004536787, 9789004536784, 9789004536791

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Brill_SCM58.qxp_SPINE=19mm 27-02-2023 17:10 Pagina 1

Contributors to this volume are: Esme Cleall, Joanna Cruickshank, Elizabeth Elbourne, Norman Etherington, David Maxwell, Jane Samson, Bronwyn Shepherd, Amy E. Stambach, and Geoffrey Troughton.

Pacifying Missions

Pacifying Missions provides the first sustained examination of peace and missionary work in the context of the British Empire. It interrogates diverse missionary projects from Africa and the Pacific region, unfolding a variegated world of ideas, discourses, and actions. The volume yields compelling evidence for a reconsideration of peace as a vital focus for analysis in the history of Christian mission. It also reveals a landscape of peace that was plural, dynamic, and contested, worked out in specific contexts, and deeply entangled with understandings and experiences of violence.

Pacifying Missions Christianity, Violence, and Empire in the Nineteenth Century

edited by Geoffrey Troughton scm [58]

brill.com/scm

isbn 978-90-04-53678-4

*hIJ0A4|VTWXYu

Geoffrey Troughton (Ed.)

Geoffrey Troughton, Ph.D. (2008), Massey University, is Associate Professor and Programme Director of Religious Studies at Victoria University of Wellington. His major publications include New Zealand Jesus (2011), Saints and Stirrers (2017), and Pursuing Peace in Godzone (2018).

studies in christian mission [58]

studies in christian mission [58]

issn 0924-9389

BRILL

BRILL

Pacifying Missions

Studies in Christian Mission Editor in Chief Peggy Brock (Edith Cowan University) Editorial Board James Grayson (University of Sheffield) Pedro Feitoza (University of Edinburgh, UK) David Maxwell (University of Cambridge)

volume 58

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/scm

Pacifying Missions Christianity, Violence, and Empire in the Nineteenth Century

Edited by

Geoffrey Troughton

leiden | boston

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at https://catalog.loc.gov

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 0924-9389 isbn 978-90-04-53678-4 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-53679-1 (e-book) Copyright 2023 by Geoffrey Troughton. Published by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau, V&R unipress and Wageningen Academic. Koninklijke Brill NV reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents

Preface vii Notes on Contributors xi

1

Missions, Peace, and Empire in the Nineteenth Century 1 Geoffrey Troughton

2

Peace, Genocide, and Empire: The London Missionary Society and the San in Early Nineteenth-Century Southern Africa 24 Elizabeth Elbourne

3

Te Ngara’s Journey: The Gospel of Peace and the Melanesian Mission 55 Jane Samson

4

Māori Christianity, Missions, and the State in New Zealand Wars of the 1860s 87 Norman Etherington

5

Not Peace but a Sword: Missionaries, Humanitarianism, and Slavery in Late Nineteenth-Century Central Africa 107 David Maxwell

6

John Mackenzie’s “True Vision of the Future”: Imagining Peace in Nineteenth-Century Southern Africa 130 Esme Cleall

7

“In the Interest of Peace, the Society Yielded”: Mission Growth and Retreat in Moshi-Kilimanjaro 155 Amy E. Stambach

8

Missionaries, Peacemaking, and the “Meeting of Laws” in Australia 174 Joanna Cruickshank and Bronwyn Shepherd

9

Missions and Peace in Prospect 199 Geoffrey Troughton



Index 205

Preface Everyone loves peace. After all, who does not aspire to comfort and security, for themselves, their families, and their communities, to be unrestrained by threats to live in a world free from violence? Such desires are commonly held across time and space. They are also powerful drivers of human behaviour. Nevertheless, peace can also arouse scepticism, not least owing to the apparent plasticity of the term and the varied (and frequently dubious) ends and means to which peace is often applied. As the sociologist and principal founder of the discipline of peace and conflict studies Johan Galtung long ago observed: “Few words are so often used and abused”. Claims to ‘peace’, he noted, often serve as a way of justifying policies and projects, even if they seem rather tenuously related to the peace that they claim. They are also especially used as a method for obtaining verbal consensus. Thus, he concluded, “it is hard to be all-out against peace.”1 Galtung’s observation is that peace is a slippery term, bound up in questions of power, and capable of serving diverse political and discursive ends. It may therefore be generally desired but also hard to take seriously. Such considerations help to explain the relatively limited historical research on peacemaking and some of the challenges associated with it. In connection with the history of Christian mission specifically, the well-known entanglements of mission with histories of race, colonial expansion, and violence are also salient. In this context, peace may be less than benign, and appear more akin to coercive pacification. Taken together, these factors might be assumed to render nineteenthcentury missions a thoroughly unpromising site for encountering peace, much less examining its contours. This volume contends otherwise. Indeed, it demonstrates that ideas and practices of peace abounded within this context, and that interrogation of them can enrich our understanding on a range of fronts. These understandings relate to the book’s core themes of missions, empire, violence, and peacemaking, but also connect with associated areas of historical and contemporary concern—religion and politics, Christian ethics, humanitarianism, and the ethics of encounter, to name a few. Pacifying Missions is not an apologia for the essential peacefulness of Christian missionary activity, or of Christianity as such, and should not be misread in these terms. Rather, it takes the question of peace to be just that: a genuine question to be probed. The volume employs the theme as a frame for exploring missionary activity. It takes as axiomatic that missionary claims for peace are decidedly contested and contestable—for historical observers and 1 Johan Galtung, “Violence, Peace, and Peace Research,” Journal of Peace Research 6, no. 3 (1969): 167.

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contemporary interpreters alike. Such contestation, supple deployment of peace discourse, and the inherent ambiguities of ‘peace’ all present challenges. In wrestling with histories of Christianity and peace in recent years, I have come however to regard these features as integral to the intrigue and fruitfulness of working with peace as a focus for inquiry. I trust that others will find the studies in this volume similarly stimulating and rewarding to think with. This volume builds upon recent research on peacemaking in Christian mission, notably research on the New Zealand missions as well as on Christianity and the Pacific. My own interest in these questions arose initially through reflection on New Zealand, where missionary peacemaking was once widely venerated, reflecting to a considerable extent missionaries’ own characterisation of their achievements. Uncritical adulation withered dramatically in the postcolonial era, yet if any fondness for earlier missionaries remained it was often connected to aspects of their humanitarian activism and contributions to intertribal peacemaking. Despite this, I have previously noted that no sustained examination of nineteenth-century missionaries’ ideas about peace, or applications of it, had ever been undertaken in New Zealand or elsewhere.2 The support of a Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Grant subsequently enabled exploration of some aspects of the New Zealand story.3 Pacifying Missions deliberately extends that research, bringing it into conversation with cases from further afield, in the Pacific region and in Africa. It seeks to explicate the place of peace in nineteenth-century missionary Christianity and its contexts, yielding fresh insights into the missionary projects of that era in the process. The volume’s immediate genesis lies in a memorable workshop, “Messengers of Peace? Global Perspectives on Peace, Conflict, and Nineteenth-Century Missions”. This was held at Victoria University of Wellington in July 2018. The workshop’s title alluded to two significant landmarks in the history of mission in the Pacific. The first relates to the most famous of all European missionaries to the region, the pioneer London Missionary Society (LMS) missionary John Williams. Williams initially landed at Ra’iatea near Tahiti in 1817, but soon after moved with Tahitian converts to the Cook Islands. It was in Rarotonga that he 2 Geoffrey Troughton, “Missionaries, Historians and the Peace Tradition in New Zealand,” in Te Rongopai 1814 ‘Takoto te pai!’: Bicentenary Reflections on Christian Beginnings and Developments in Aotearoa New Zealand, eds. Allan K. Davidson, Stuart Lange, Peter J. Lineham, and Adrienne Puckey (Auckland: General Synod Office, Anglican Church in Aotearoa New Zealand and Polynesia, 2014), 228–45. 3 See Geoffrey Troughton, ed., Saints and Stirrers: Christianity, Conflict and Peacemaking in New Zealand, 1814–1945 (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2017); Geoffrey Troughton and Philip Fountain, eds., Pursuing Peace: Christianity and the Peace Tradition in New Zealand (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2018); Geoffrey Troughton, “Scripture, Piety and the Practice of Peace in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand Missions,” Studies in World Christianity 25, no. 2 (2019): 128–44.

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conspired to take the gospel to Samoa. When the LMS was unable to supply funds for this project, Williams pressed ahead anyway. In the space of fifteen weeks, he built a small ship for this purpose, naming it the Messenger of Peace. It was this ship that Williams subsequently used in his famous voyages to other Polynesian and southern Melanesian islands, powerfully framing the new religion in terms of a “gospel of peace”. This framing was symbolically important for the original Pacific mission and reverberated through subsequent Christian imaginaries in the region. A second Pacific allusion relates to Niel Gunson’s seminal work on mission in the “South Seas” in the years from 1797 to 1860. Gunson’s book, a version of his doctoral thesis, was entitled Messengers of Grace.4 This title reflected Gunson’s observation that missionary activity in that time and place was largely undertaken by evangelical Protestants, and that their approach was profoundly influenced by Calvinistic revivalism. As Gunson put it, “true conversion” was the principal object of all the evangelical missionaries. Their vocation was to convince people of their innate depravity, their need for a saviour, or mediator with God, and of belief in the atonement and consequent salvation of believers. Their central message, Gunson suggests, was the evangelical doctrine of Grace. Whereas Gunson presented his title forthrightly as a statement, our workshop deliberately posed peace as a question to be tested and probed in a broader range of locations. How central, or important, were notions of peace for the missions, and in what ways exactly? Each of the chapters that follow were originally presented as papers to the workshop and reflect the agenda it laid out. Contributors shared initial drafts prior to gathering to listen, discuss, and critique each other’s work before settling down to revisions. The occasion was a marvellous model of rigorous collegiality, and I extend my thanks first and foremost to the contributors along with all others who participated, especially our discussants Philip Fountain, Allan Davidson, Bernardo Brown, and Peggy Brock, who provided incisive commentary and were superb conversation partners. Aliki Kalliabetsos and Annie Mercer generously assisted with practical arrangements. The support of the Royal Society of New Zealand made the workshop possible. Ongoing conversations with colleagues at Victoria University of Wellington have stimulated, sharpened, and challenged my thinking on these issues, and I am especially grateful to Philip Fountain, Paul Morris, and Chris Marshall in this regard. I also gratefully acknowledge the support of the publishing team at Brill, the series editors, and the generous and helpful comments of the anonymous peer reviewer. Finally, it is impossible to explain this immediate background to the volume without paying special tribute to our friend and colleague Jeffrey L. Cox 4 Niel Gunson, Messengers of Grace: Evangelical Missionaries in the South Seas, 1797–1860 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1978).

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(1947–2020), an enthusiastic contributor to the “Messengers of Peace?” workshop who sadly passed away while still working on his intended chapter for this volume. Regretfully, his work was never completed. Jeff’s scholarship made a profound contribution in the fields of mission history and British history, notably through major works such as The English Churches in a Secular Society, Imperial Fault Lines, and The British Missionary Enterprise since 1700.5 The influence of this writing is evident in numerous chapters in this volume. In addition to his scholarship, Jeff was a political activist committed to progressive principles. Departing from the Southern Baptist Christianity of his upbringing, he joined the Society of Friends (Quakers) in the 1980s, remaining active throughout his life in a tradition renowned for a “peace witness” that accorded with his own convictions. This volume is dedicated to his memory. Geoffrey Troughton Bibliography Cox, Jeffrey. The British Missionary Enterprise since 1700. London: Routledge, 2008. Cox, Jeffrey. The English Churches in a Secular Society: Lambeth, 1870–1930. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982. Cox, Jeffrey. Imperial Fault Lines: Christianity and Colonial Power in India, 1818–1940. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. Galtung, Johan. “Violence, Peace, and Peace Research,” Journal of Peace Research 6, no. 3 (1969): 167–91. Gunson, Niel. Messengers of Grace: Evangelical Missionaries in the South Seas, 1797– 1860. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1978. Troughton, Geoffrey. “Missionaries, Historians and the Peace Tradition in New Zealand.” In Te Rongopai 1814 ‘Takoto te pai!’: Bicentenary Reflections on Christian Beginnings and Developments in Aotearoa New Zealand, edited by Allan K. Davidson, Stuart Lange, Peter J. Lineham, and Adrienne Puckey, 228–45. Auckland: General Synod Office, Anglican Church in Aotearoa New Zealand and Polynesia, 2014. Troughton, Geoffrey. “Scripture, Piety and the Practice of Peace in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand Missions,” Studies in World Christianity 25, no. 2 (2019): 128–44. Troughton, Geoffrey, ed. Saints and Stirrers: Christianity, Conflict and Peacemaking in New Zealand, 1814–1945. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2017. Troughton, Geoffrey, and Philip Fountain, eds. Pursuing Peace: Christianity and the Peace Tradition in New Zealand. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2018. 5 The English Churches in a Secular Society: Lambeth, 1870–1930 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982); Imperial Fault Lines: Christianity and Colonial Power in India, 1818–1940 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002); The British Missionary Enterprise since 1700 (London: Routledge, 2008).

Notes on Contributors Esme Cleall is an historian of the British Empire who works at the University of Sheffield. Her first book, Missionary Discourses of Difference: Negotiating Otherness in the British Empire, c. 1840–1900 (2012), was published with Palgrave Macmillan, and her second, Colonising Disability: Impairment and Otherness Across Britain and its Empire, c. 1800–1914 (2022), by Cambridge University Press. Her interests lie in the construction of difference, including the differences of race, gender, religion, and disability, in colonial discourse. Joanna Cruickshank is an Associate Professor in History at Deakin University, Victoria, Australia. She has published widely on the history of missions in Australia, most recently co-authoring (with Patricia Grimshaw), White Women, Aboriginal Missions and Australian Settler Governments: Maternal Contradictions (2019). Earlier volumes include Pain, Passion and Faith (2009) and Evangelists of Empire? (2011), edited with Amanda Barry, Andrew Brown-May, and Patricia Grimshaw. She is currently one of the Chief Investigators on an Australian Research Councilfunded project examining the history of Indigenous leadership in conducting lawful relations in Australia. Elizabeth Elbourne is an Associate Professor in the Department of History and Classical Studies, McGill University. Her publications include Empire, Kinship and Violence: Family Histories, Indigenous Rights and the Making of Settler Colonialism, 1770–1842 (2022), Blood Ground: Colonialism, Missions and the Struggle for Christianity in Britain and the Cape Colony, 1799–1853 (2002) and Sex, Power and Slavery (2014), co-edited with Gwyn Campbell. Her current research, from which the chapter in this volume draws, is a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada-funded project on the British and hunters in the early nineteenth century. Norman Etherington is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Western Australia. His many books include Preachers, Peasants and Politics in Southeast Africa (1978), The Great Treks (2001), Missions and Empire (2005), Mapping Colonial Conquest (2007), Theories of Imperialism (2015), and Imperium of the Soul (2017). His articles include contributions in the American Historical Review, The Journal of African History, Church History, History in Africa, Itinerario, and the Journal

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of Southern African Studies. He is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, the Royal Geographical Society, and the Royal Historical Society. In 2013 he was made a member of the Order of Australia (AM) for service to the discipline of history and the community. David Maxwell is Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Emmanuel College. He is author of Christians and Chiefs in Zimbabwe: A Social History of the Hwesa People c.1870s–1990s (1999) and African Gifts of the Spirit: Pentecostalism and the Rise of a Zimbabwean Transnational Religious Movement (2006). With Patrick Harries he co-edited The Spiritual in the Secular: Missionaries and Knowledge about Africa (2012). He was long-time editor of The Journal of Religion in Africa. His third monograph, Religious Entanglements: Central African Pentecostalism, the Creation of Cultural Knowledge, and the Making of the Luba Katanga, was published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 2022. Jane Samson is Professor of History at the University of Alberta, and a specialist in Pacific history, missions, British colonialism, and Indigenous Pacific Christianity. She is the author of Imperial Benevolence: Making British Authority in the Pacific Islands (1998), and Race and Redemption: British Missionaries Encounter Pacific Peoples, 1797–1920 (2017). Her current publications include volume two of the Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean, which she is co-editing with Anne Hattori, and biographies of Indigenous clergy in the Melanesian Mission. Bronwyn Shepherd recently completed her Ph.D. at Deakin University, Victoria, Australia. Her thesis is titled “Making a Mission Space: Milingimbi Methodist Mission, 1923–1943”. She is a member of the Contemporary Histories Research Group at Deakin and her research contributes to the scholarship outlining the complex history of Indigenous-settler relations in settler colonial contexts. Her co-authored chapter (with Joanna Cruickshank) on Methodism at Milingimbi is forthcoming in The Inventions and Reinventions of Methodism: Sect, Church and Radical Movement (2023). Amy E. Stambach is Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Visiting Fellow at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in South Africa. She has held appointments at the University of Toronto and Soka University and a professorial post at the University of Oxford.

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Her most recent book, co-authored with Aikande C. Kwayu, is Pragmatic Faith and the Tanzanian Lutheran Church: Bishop Erasto N. Kweka’s Life and Work. (2020) Geoffrey Troughton is Associate Professor and Programme Director of Religious Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He is author of New Zealand Jesus: Social and Religious Transformations of an Image, 1890–1940 (2011), and editor of several works including two volumes on Christianity and peacemaking in New Zealand: Saints and Stirrers (2017) and, with Philip Fountain, Pursuing Peace in Godzone (2018). He has published widely on the history of Christianity in New Zealand and the Pacific region. His research focuses especially on issues related to religion in society, the politics of religion, and contemporary religious change.

Chapter 1

Missions, Peace, and Empire in the Nineteenth Century Geoffrey Troughton 1 Introduction On 30 November 1854, the Reverend John Whiteley proposed a motion to the Anniversary Public Meeting for the local Wesleyan Missions district in ­Auckland, New Zealand. The content was standard fare for this context, and so it was with no hint of controversy that the motion was duly carried: “That, as the Missionary enterprise is so intimately connected with the peace and happiness of the world, with its progress in all that is great and good, and especially with its conversion to Christ, most earnestly and devoutly renews its devotion to the interests of Christian Missions.”1 Such ready alignment of Christian missions with the “peace and happiness of the world” may seem remarkable, even controversial, in the contemporary world. Yet to those who gathered in meetings like this one in Auckland it evidently was not. Rather, the association of missions with peace was thoroughly consistent with common ways of representing the wider missionary enterprise, as well as the reputed ends of missionary activity in New Zealand and further afield.2 Whiteley’s apparently straightforward assertions about peace belie a rich range of meanings and references within the world of nineteenth-century missions. Amid this variety, three notable types of peace were evident. These may be characterised as imperial peace, subversive peace, and proselytising peace. Imperial peace closely aligned the peace of Christianity with the extension of the British Empire. It tied the advance of the gospel to the growing reach of empire and European civilisation, with both understood as mediators of peace. This was missions operating in priestly mode, as celebrant of empire 1 “Wesleyan Missionary Meeting,” New Zealander, 9 December 1854, 3. 2 Geoffrey Troughton, “Missionaries, Historians and the Peace Tradition in New Zealand,” in Te Rongopai 1814 ‘Takoto te pai!’: Bicentenary Reflections on Christian Beginnings and Developments in Aotearoa New Zealand, eds. Allan K. Davidson, Stuart Lange, Peter J. Lineham, and Adrienne Puckey (Auckland: General Synod Office, Anglican Church in Aotearoa New Zealand and Polynesia, 2014), 229–3o. © Geoffrey Troughton, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004536791_002

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and its gifts. By contrast, subversive peace entailed a willingness to challenge empire, remonstrating over its vice and violence and the turmoil that travelled with it. This was missions as prophetic critic of empire and its depredations. Proselytising peace also operated as a voice of critique but focused squarely on Indigenous ideas and customs that were deemed to be deficient. It was bound up in the logics of Christian evangelisation, with its two-step diagnosis of ‘need’ and subsequent presentation of a ‘cure’ through the offer of salvation. These three types offered distinctive visions of peace, each with their own ethical imperatives. As the examples in this volume demonstrate, they were not mutually exclusive, nor only held independently of each other by individual missionaries, but were expressed in many ways within the variegated contexts of missionary action. Two features arising from this typology are especially important. First, these three kinds of peace highlight how utterly interconnected peace is with ­questions of power. While it may be more usual to think of power in relation to violence, coercion, and forms of political domination, peace turns out to be similarly implicated. In its imperial, subversive, and proselytising forms, missionary notions of peace were embroiled in claims to power and in wrangling over authority. Peace entailed clashes and alignments—affirmations of certain sources of power and critique or repudiation of others. The powers at odds could be this-worldly or spiritual, but missionary peace inevitably had political ramifications. Second, and relatedly, these forms highlight that peace is profoundly ­disruptive. Ostensibly, peace promises harmony, security, and stability. In practice, it entails rejection and negation—criticism of existing realities and norms, and challenge to a status quo, alongside whatever else may be affirmed. Peace operates in the spaces of contest between powers, requiring negotiation of interests in conditions that are often highly fraught. It therefore demands disturbance. Recognising these features provides an essential grid for navigating accounts of missionary engagements with peace in this volume, especially as visions of peace were worked out in the contexts of empire. That missionary institutions and supporters envisioned a close relationship between mission and peace is not altogether surprising. Peace has after all been a significant theme for Christians. They have long reverenced Jesus as the prince of peace and frequently cast their faith as peace-bringer and peacemaker. Furthermore, social and political projects of many kinds are apt to promise peace as one of the fruits of desired transformation—and mission is determinedly a project of transformation. Nevertheless, the existence of such claims, and the extent to which they were deployed by missionary proponents,

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is intriguing.3 It also renders a relative paucity of scholarly interrogation curious. Historians, like others, have generally been better at studying war than peace.4 Even still, historical studies specifically addressing the place of peace in Christian missions have been extraordinarily limited. Where present, they have focused primarily on the twentieth century—notably in connection with the rise of post-war humanitarianism, peace movements, and postcolonialism, and simultaneously of “a postmodern paradigm” of missions.5 In this respect, missions-focused studies have followed the broader field of peace research, which arose in response to the rolling crises of the twentieth century, and attempted in that context to displace the centrality of war in history and international relations.6 The nineteenth century, often dubbed the “great century” of missions, has with few exceptions evaded attention.7 Pacifying Missions provides the first sustained analysis of peace in the context of nineteenth-century missionary Christianity. It explores the ­ theme of peace via a series of case studies of missionary activity in Africa and the Pacific region, focusing on evangelical Protestant missions in the British Empire. The volume does not take the existence of missionary peace claims 3 This framing was common in the nineteenth century, but persisted, for example in works like Caroline Atwater Mason’s apologia for the history of missions as one of peaceful “conquest”. Her account was written in the light of the First World War, with the outbreak of calamitous violence among Christian nations. See Mason, World Missions and World Peace: A Study of Christ’s Conquest (West Medford: Central Committee on the United Study of Foreign ­Missions, 1916). 4 Nick Megoran, “War and Peace? An Agenda for Peace Research and Practice in Geography,” Political Geography 30, no. 4 (2011): 178. 5 On the idea of an emergent “postmodern paradigm” in this era see David J. Bosch, ­Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991). For an example of twentieth-century historical work focused on North American mission see Stephen G. Craft, “Peacemakers in China: American Missionaries and the Sino-Japanese War, 1937–1941,” Journal of Church and State 41, no. 3 (1999): 575–91. 6 On the development of peace studies see Peter Wallenstein, ed., Peace Research: Achievements and Challenges (London: Westview Press, 1988); and Peace Research: Theory and P­ ractice (London: Routledge, 2011). 7 Kenneth Scott Latourette notably referred to the nineteenth century as “The Great C ­ entury” in his landmark seven-volume work; three volumes (vols. 4–6) were dedicated to the ­nineteenth century alone. See A History of the Expansion Christianity, 7 vols. (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1937–1945). Exceptions include studies addressing what came to be known as the historic peace churches—the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), Mennonites, and the Church of the Brethren—and recent work on New Zealand. On New Zealand, see Troughton, “Missionaries, Historians and the Peace Tradition”; “Scripture, Piety and the Practice of Peace in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand Missions,” Studies in World Christianity 25, no. 2 (2019): 128–44; Troughton, ed., Saints and Stirrers: Christianity, Conflict and Peacemaking in New Zealand, 1814–1945 (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2017).

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as an indication of either their veracity or falsehood, nor of the peacefulness or otherwise of Christianity within this context. Rather, it receives them as an invitation to analysis. Through a series of focused, fine-grained studies, it tests and probes the nature of missionary engagements with peace, exploring framings of Christianity as peacemaker and peace-bringer, and more generally the shape, extent, and practical significance of peace within the global missionary project. It considers meanings of peace, rhetorically and in practice, as well as the ways that peace was mobilised, under what conditions, and to what effect. In short, this is a book about missionary ideas concerning peace and the work that such ideas did, as well as missionary efforts to enact the work of peace. The remainder of this chapter introduces the rationale and agenda of this volume as well as the studies it contains through an exploration of key discourses and practices, and tensions and ambiguities that were evident in nineteenth-century missionary engagements. It also considers notable ideas, repertoires, and contributions to thinking about peace arising from the missions. In considering these issues, it draws especially from cases relating to New Zealand and the Pacific. Seven chapters follow, including four that focus on Africa with a further three addressing the Pacific region. Emphasis on the latter in this chapter balances the regional focus within the volume. More importantly, the emphasis is offered by way of illuminating a nascent argument concerning geographical variation. While the studies in this volume indicate a range of common dynamics, they also suggest the Pacific to be a particularly rich and productive site of missionary imaginations of peace during the long nineteenth century of missions.8 Whether and why that may be so are matters that lend themselves to further analysis. 2

Gospels of Peace

Textured understanding of missions requires a reckoning with peace. For while it may never have been the dominant theme, and at times was strikingly absent, notions of peace were nevertheless evident and arguably permeated the nineteenth-century missionary landscape. Peace featured in missions symbolism, 8 The naming of the Pacific as such dates to the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, who in 1520 referred to the calm waters he encountered as “Mar Pacífico” (peaceful sea), thus describing what he imagined to be a feature of physical rather than human geography. Other names already existed: Māori referred to Te Moana Nui a Kiwa, Hawaiians to Moananuiākea, for example. The precise dimensions of the Pacific region have been conceptualised in ­different ways historically. In this volume, Australia and New Zealand are included within its bounds.

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for example, and was variously commended as a justification, means, and end of the work of British Protestant mission societies that emerged from the late eighteenth century. As Elizabeth Elbourne highlights in this volume, symbols of peace were adopted early by the London Missionary Society (LMS), and annual sermons of the Society frequently emphasised the power of the gospel to bring peace to the world. On “the mission field”, John Williams, the famous LMS pioneer in the Pacific, flew a blue flag with a white dove on his vessel the Messenger of Peace, which he built and sailed from Rarotonga.9 White flags, explicitly understood as emblems of peace, were also used in places by missionaries and new Christians to mark the Sabbath, while the longstanding Church Missionary Society (CMS) missionary Richard Taylor described the Society’s beginnings in New Zealand as unfurling “the banner of the Prince of Peace”.10 Commissioning charges to departing LMS and CMS missionaries often urged them to “live at peace” among their brethren, and “the heathen”, and to resist coercive means. There is limited evidence that such appeals to peace were expressions of absolute pacifism in the modern sense. Yet pacifistic commitments were more common and occasionally strongly held, including among notable leaders in the first half of the century. The celebrated Baptist missionary William Carey did adhere to a robust pacifism, though this was sublimated according to Jeffrey Cox’s interpretation into “a vision of global equality and peace in the Kingdom of God”.11 David Bogue, whose Gosport Academy was a crucial training institution for LMS candidates, contended that universal disarmament was “the only truly Christian policy” on the basis that “the religion of the New Testament is a religion of peace”.12 CMS missionary Henry Williams was a lieutenant in the Royal Navy prior to becoming a missionary. His experience serving during the Napoleonic Wars reputedly influenced his distaste for war, and repudiation of it, and his decision to enter the ministry. Williams subsequently became

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Jeffrey Cox, The British Missionary Enterprise since 1700 (London: Routledge, 2008), 134. See Geoffrey Troughton, “Samuel Marsden and the Origins of a New Zealand Christian Peace Tradition,” in Saints and Stirrers, 29–46; Richard Taylor, Te Ika a Maui; or New ­Zealand and its Inhabitants (London: Wertheim and Macintosh, 1855), 281. 11 Cox, British Missionary Enterprise, 99, citing Eustace Carey, Memoir of William Carey, D.D. Late Missionary to Bengal; Professor of Oriental Languages in the College of Fort William, Calcutta (London: Jackson and Walford, 1836). 12 Peter Brock, Pacifism in Europe to 1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), 377; see also David Bogue, On Universal Peace, being Extracts from a Discourse Delivered in October 1813 (London: J. Hatchard, 1819).

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renowned as a mediator in intertribal conflicts and a servant of the “gospel of peace”.13 If these invocations show that peace had attained a certain currency in the early nineteenth century, they also indicate that diverse usages circulated within Protestant missionary imaginaries and discourse. Indeed, even explicit references to a “gospel of peace” conveyed several possible meanings, including assorted articulations of social and spiritual peace. The New Zealand archive, for example, reveals a distinctive repertoire in which five motifs were particularly common. These related peace to salvation, death, the Sabbath, and domestic life, as well as opposition to violence and war. Peace could thus refer to: a settled heart and mind, liberated from spiritual turmoil, experienced existentially as a blessing of salvation; equanimity in the face of death, for those whose “end was peace”; the rest and order of the Sabbath; settled domestic life, expressed in matters such as marital harmony, agreeable manners, and industrious economic activity; and finally, opposition to physical acts of aggression, especially of violent retribution, and promotion of reconciliatory ethics. There were also other usages. The gospel of peace was even deployed occasionally as a sectarian moniker, differentiating true from false religion, Protestant Christianity from Catholicism. As the Wesleyan missionary Thomas Buddle complained with reference to a war party he had been attempting to dissuade from violence, “they were the same party that had been threatening to burn down my house professors of the Religion not of the Gospel of Peace but of the Pope.”14 Such disparate usages are notable for a range of reasons. They illustrate the ways in which missionary usage drew upon common emphases within contemporary British evangelicalism. These include a proclivity for rendering peace in highly personal terms, locating it in affective spirituality, and in the intimate and domestic spaces that cultural and postcolonial historians have highlighted as central to the workings of empire.15 Diverse articulations of 13 14 15

Hugh Carleton, The Life of Henry Williams, Archdeacon of Waimate, 2 vols (Auckland: Upton and Co., 1874–1877). Thomas Buddle to the Secretaries, 2 March 1842, MS39, Box 4, Folder 16, Methodist Church of New Zealand Archives, Christchurch, New Zealand. For example, Ann Laura Stoler, ed., Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006); Philippa Levine, ed., Gender and Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton, eds., Moving Subjects: Gender, Mobility and Intimacy in an Age of Global Empire (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009); Vanessa Smith, Intimate ­Strangers: ­Friendship, Exchange and Pacific Encounters (Cambridge: Cambridge ­University Press, 2010).

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a gospel of peace also highlight the importance of contextual specificity, as well as the more general significance of discourse, including discourse associated with moral economies of salvation.16 Finally, these expressions of peace capture tensions, paradoxes, and contradictions that run through specifically Christian understandings as well as through more general ones. Christian approaches have frequently conceived of peace as a gift to receive and enjoy, but also as a moral imperative to be enacted.17 Peace researchers have similarly distinguished between diverse modes and conceptions; for example, between everyday conviviality and active peacemaking, positive and negative peace.18 The studies in this volume do not attempt to arbitrate on definitions, or on the purity or otherwise of specific ideals or practices. Nor do they assume the existence of fixed understandings of peace or universal norms. Rather, they parse out the meanings that missionaries attached to peace in their specific circumstances. In other words, they historicise missionary conceptions and engagements with peace over the course of the nineteenth century, in disparate though comparable and often connected situations. 3

Tensions of Violence and Peace

Notwithstanding the term’s broad semantic range, this volume does pay special heed to peace in its dynamic relation with violence, recognising that both concepts are highly contextual and thoroughly entangled.19 Reckoning with peace does not permit denial of violence, therefore, though it does relocate 16

17 18 19

For reflections on the shape of postcolonial and discursive analysis in empire historiography, and notions of moral economy, see: Dane Kennedy, The Imperial History Wars: Debating the British Empire (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), esp. 7–22, 39–56; Norbert Götz, “‘Moral Economy’: Its Conceptual History and Analytical Prospects,” Journal of Global Ethics 11, no. 2 (2015): 147–62. Geoffrey Troughton and Philip Fountain, “Pursuing Peace in Godzone,” in Pursuing Peace in Godzone: Christianity and the Peace Tradition in New Zealand, eds. Geoffrey Troughton and Philip Fountain (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2018), 24. Megoran, “War and Peace,” 178–89; Johan Galtung, Peace by Peaceful Means: Peace, ­Conflict, Development and Civilization (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1996). On different ways of understanding violence, and the need to also historicise them, see Philip Dwyer and Joy Damousi, “General Introduction: Violence in World History,” in The Cambridge World History of Violence, Volume I: The Prehistoric and Ancient Worlds, eds. Garrett G. Fagan, Linda Fibiger, Mark Hudson, and Matthew Trundle (Cambridge: ­Cambridge University Press, 2020), 1–18; Nick Megoran, “Violence and Peace,” in The Ashgate Companion to Critical Geopolitics, eds. Klaus Dodds, Merje Kuus, and Joanne Sharp (London: Routledge, 2016), 189–207.

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and reimagine it. A focus on peace in such dialectical terms departs from a common emphasis on religion’s reputed role as a notable producer of ­conflict and violence—the so-called myth of religious violence.20 In the ­context of n ­ ineteenth-century missions, this emphasis has often been expressed in ­relation to complicity with empire and the ravages of colonialism: that is, missionary activity envisaged firmly within the frame of imperial peace. Whereas prior to the mid-twentieth century missionary histories tended to be institutionally focused, and celebrate European missionary agency, success, and beneficence, from the 1970s a more characteristic emphasis concerned missionary entanglement in colonial processes. As Joel Cabrita and David Maxwell have noted, with the turn to “colonial encounter” missionaries were increasingly cast as “handmaids of colonialism” mediating the ideas, values, and structures of empire to local converts.21 Subsequent scholarship demonstrated more diverse interactions between the “bible and the flag” than the handmaids theory allowed.22 Yet the problem of violence remained. Indeed, critiques of violence have continued to be central to ongoing analyses of empire, particularly in the postcolonial era, with profound implications for conversations about missions and peace. Philip Dwyer and Amanda Nettelbeck argue emphatically that violence has “always been central to the long, complex history” of modern empires and colonialism, and have expounded the argument extensively.23 Themes of missionary complicity in colonial ­violence have also remained salient in this context.24 As David Abernethy’s analysis of European imperial expansion has observed, the rise to prominence of Protestant missionaries was one of the notable features of “Phase 3” of this 20 21

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For a seminal critique, see William T. Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). Joel Cabrita and David Maxwell, “Relocating World Christianity,” in Relocating World Christianity: Interdisciplinary Studies in Universal and Local Expressions of the Christian Faith, Theology and Mission in World Christianity, no. 7, eds. Joel Cabrita, David Maxwell, and Emma Wild-Wood (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 6. Critical works reframing the missions and empire debate in this way include Brian ­Stanley, The Bible and the Flag: Protestant Missions and British Imperialism in the ­Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Leicester: Apollo, 1990); Andrew Porter, Religious Versus Empire? British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004); Norman Etherington, ed., Missions and Empire, The Oxford History of the British Empire, Companion Series (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). Philip Dwyer and Amanda Nettelbeck, “‘Savage Wars of Peace’: Violence, Colonialism and Empire in the Modern World,” in Violence, Colonialism and the Modern World, Cambridge Imperial and Post-colonial Studies, eds. Philip Dwyer and Amanda Nettelbeck (Cham: Springer International Publishing AG, 2017), 1. Patricia O’Brien, “Empires and Indigenous Worlds: Violence and the Pacific Ocean, 1760 to 1930s,” in The Cambridge World History of Violence, Volume IV, 21–40.

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process from 1824 to 1912—the same phase, he argues, in which high levels of inducement and coercion were both in particular evidence.25 Abernethy’s interpretation suggests strong connections between mission and coercive power, but also that such power and violence could take various forms, overt or subtle, openly belligerent or seemingly more benign. Other recent accounts of colonial violence have teased these dynamics out further, not simply through detailing the martial violence of state power, but also through expressions of social and cultural violence meted out in quotidian forms and settings, and in which religion was deeply enmeshed.26 In Jean and John Comaroff’s words, even where colonialism “proceeded in an entirely noncoercive manner, the threat of violence was always immanent in it.”27 Such analyses have obvious implications for discussion of missionary peace, and the spectre of violence features throughout this volume. A key feature of recent studies relates to the inherent tensions between contributions to peace and to the structural violence of colonialism. These tensions are evident in the history of humanitarianism, whose roots scholars have decisively traced to the expansion of evangelical missions in the nineteenth century.28 S­ eminal works by Didier Fassin and Michael Barnett have highlighted the civilising m ­ ission that lies at the heart of “humanitarian reason”, suggesting that humanitarianism is riven by tensions—including between pacific and coercive impulses. As Barnett notes, “humanitarianism is defined by the paradox of emancipation and domination”.29 Influenced by missionary informants, nineteenth-century evangelical humanitarians were clearly identifiable as proponents of subversive peace. They were at times staunch advocates for the ‘protection’ of Indigenous peoples from European settler violence, as famously illustrated in the landmark House 25

David B. Abernethy, The Dynamics of Global Dominance: European Overseas Empires, 1415– 1980 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 81–103. 26 For example, Penelope Edmonds and Amanda Nettelbeck, eds., Intimacies of Violence in the Settler Colony: Economies of Dispossession around the Pacific Rim, Cambridge Imperial and Post-colonial Studies (Cham: Springer International Publishing AG, 2018); Amanda Nettelbeck and Lyndall Ryan, “Frontier Violence in the Nineteenth-Century British Empire,” in The Cambridge World History of Violence, Volume IV, 1800 to the Present, eds. Louise Edwards, Nigel Penn, and Jay Winter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 227–45. 27 Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff, Of Reason and Revelation, vol. 1: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 313. 28 See Didier Fassin, Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present (Berkeley: ­University of California Press, 2011); Michael Barnett, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2011). 29 Barnett, Empire of Humanity, 11.

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of Commons Select Committee on Aborigines (British Settlements) of the mid-1830s, which has been analysed in detail elsewhere in relation to ­missions, humanitarianism, and empire, and highlighted by Elbourne and Maxwell in this volume.30 Their chapters on southern Africa confirm the moral ambivalences that others have identified within evangelical humanitarianism, and the limitations of the humanitarians’ pacific vision—demonstrated through connections between humanitarianism, empire, and violence.31 As Alan Lester and Fae Dussart have shown further elsewhere, when humanitarian concepts of ‘protection’ and ‘civilisation’ were subsequently incorporated into colonial policies and governance via concepts of assimilation and amalgamation the consequences were consistently devastating.32 Thus, even for Australian ­Quakers who contributed to contributed to the humanitarian ‘­propaganda war’ in the 1830s, “supporting humanitarian principles and exerting violence were not mutually exclusive.”33 Evidently, subversive peace was not immune from violent or coercive logics. Discourses of peace may mask such violence, or even serve as a strategy of obfuscation. Writing of the North American context, Jennifer Graber has shown that the so-called Peace Policy inaugurated by United States President Ulysses Grant in the post-Civil War era concealed far more brutal realities in the treatment of American Indians.34 The policy cloaked aggressive domination under a guise of kind and humane intervention thereby redefining violence 30

31 32 33 34

As Alan Lester has noted, the Select Committee’s report captured decisively the ­ umanitarian perspective on colonialism, highlighting issues of recurring concern for h nineteenth-century British administrators. See Alan Lester, Imperial Networks: Creating Identities in Nineteenth-Century South Africa and Britain (London: Routledge, 2001). For further influential analyses of the Committee, see Elizabeth Elbourne, The Sin of the ­Settler: The 1835–36 Select Committee on Aborigines and Debates Over Virtue and ­Conquest in the Early Nineteenth-Century British White Settler Empire,” Journal of ­Colonialism and Colonial History 4, no. 3 (2003), https://muse.jhu.edu/article/50777; Zoe Laidlaw, “‘Aunt Anna’s Report’: The Buxton Women and the Aborigines Select Committee,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 32, no. 2 (2004): 1–28. See the various articles in a special issue edited by Penelope Edmonds and Anna Johnston on “Empire, Humanitarianism and Violence in the Colonies” for the Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 17, no. 1 (2016), https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/33312. Alan Lester and Fae Dussart, Colonization and the Origins of Humanitarian Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). Eva Bischoff, “Arms & Amelioration: Negotiating Quaker Peace Testimony and Settler ­Violence in 1830s Van Diemen’s Land,” Settler Colonial Studies 7, no. 2 (2017): 253. Jennifer Graber, “‘If a War It May Be Called’: The Peace Policy with American Indians,” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 24, no. 1 (2014): 36–69; and The Gods of Indian Country: Religion and the Struggle for the American West (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), esp. chapters 4–6.

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as peace. According to Graber, this peace framing erased moral ­questions, enabling the acquiescence of potential critics—including Quaker missionaries, whose association and support lent legitimacy to the policy thereby aiding wider acceptance. Esme Cleall’s chapter in this volume argues that similar dynamics could be found in the context of late nineteenth-century British missions. Her reading of peace in the writings of noted missionary and colonial administrator John Mackenzie locates him as a thoroughgoing advocate of imperial peace. She argues that peace must largely be understood in his thinking as a version of Pax Britannica—the contemporary myth which held that a peaceful British Empire would facilitate peace wherever it went. Missionaries were thus thoroughly bound up in a process that recast a violent colonial enterprise as a “harbinger of peace”. Yet Mackenzie was no ordinary missionary, and as Amy Stambach illustrates in her chapter that follows, peace was not only ever associated with success, advance, and expansion. In the case of the CMS mission in the Kilimanjaro region, at least, it was deployed as a rationalisation for closure and withdrawal. Peace could be a language of victimhood, solace, and lament. It was as salient to vulnerability and weakness as it was to celebration and conquest. 4 Pacifications This volume’s focus on peace in opposition to violence partly reflects a significant strain in missionary proselytising that construed conflict, fighting, and war as endemic marks of unredeemed humanity which required a gospel solution. As Cruickshank and Shepherd show in the present volume, along with others, this approach frequently overstated the extent of violence among non-Christian peoples, misreading its functions, and minimising or rationalising the existence of violence within Christian nations. The approach was also often premised on notions of civilisation, broadly confirming Oliver Eberl’s contention that “The notion that peace is the achievement of the civilized is one of the great narratives of European history.”35 Nevertheless, such teaching 35

Oliver Eberl, “The Paradox of Peace with ‘Savage’ and ‘Barbarian’ Peoples,” in Paradoxes of Peace in Nineteenth Century Europe, eds. Thomas Hippler and Miloš Vec (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 219. Eberl’s point is that European powers utilised claims to their own civilisation as a basis for imposing violence upon supposedly “savage” and “barbarous” rivals, though for a more subtle account accounts of civilisation thinking within missionary discourse see Sarah Dingle, “Gospel Power for Civilization: The CMS Missionary Perspective on Maori Culture, 1830–1860” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Adelaide, 2009).

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established a discourse of proselytising peace pitted against violent cultural practices that became woven into missionary articulations of the Christian gospel, also influencing Indigenous reception. It has sometimes been asserted that the promise of peace was one of the ‘pull’ factors leading to conversion of Indigenous peoples, notably in New ­Zealand and elsewhere in the Pacific. This claim is frequently connected with the interruption and diminution of intertribal fighting. As a feature of Pacific historiography, the claim is particularly remarkable for its ubiquity in a region that, following an initial calamitous LMS mission from 1797, became renowned as the great success story of nineteenth-century missions.36 The order and nature of causality between reduced warfare and embrace of Christianity in the region has been much debated, but understandings of a tight association between Christianity and peace did become characteristic in many places. As Margaret Jolly has observed, in Vanuatu and elsewhere Indigenous Pacific narratives of societal conversion often refer to a transformation “from the time of darkness to the time of light”.37 In these, the sharp, simple contrasts that Western missionaries and others drew were taken up by local Christians who continued to differentiate the darkness of “ancestral violence, killing and cannibalism” from the light of Christian “peace, love and togetherness”. This could be true even in places where Christianity was associated with changed norms guiding the prosecution of warfare, rather than its abandonment, or in the construction of new Christian polities through coercive means.38 It is now generally understood, if it was not previously clear, that ­expansion of Christianity worldwide was largely a consequence of Indigenous ­evangelisation.39 Though Indigenous evangelists were seldom described 36

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For overviews of the history of Christianity in the region see Kenneth R. Ross, Katalina Tahaafe-Williams, and Todd M. Johnson, eds., Christianity in Oceania, Edinburgh Companions to Global Christianity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021); Geoffrey Troughton, “Australia, New Zealand, and Oceania,” in History of Global Christianity, Vol. III: History of Christianity in the 20th Century, eds. Jens Holger Schørring, Norman A. Hjelm, and Kevin Ward (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 422–43; John Garrett, To Live among the Stars: Christian Origins in Oceania (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1982). Margaret Jolly, “‘Woman Ikat Raet Long Human Raet O No?’ Women’s Rights, Human Rights and Domestic Violence in Vanuatu,” Feminist Review no. 52 (1996): 177. On the complex process of changes to warfare practices, and their relation to peace and conciliation, see, for example, Hirini Kaa, Te Hāhi Mihinare | The Māori Anglican Church (Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2020), 38–40; also, Monty Soutar, “Ngāti Porou ­Leadership—Rāpata Wahawaha and the Politics of Conflict: ‘Kei te ora nei hoki tātou, me tō tātou whenua’” (Ph.D. thesis, Massey University, 2000), 96–132. The scholarship on this theme is now vast and growing, including, notably: Peggy Brock, “New Christians as Evangelists,” in Missions and Empire, 132–52; Raeburn Lange,

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formally as ‘missionaries’ by Europeans, their missionary activity was nevertheless critical. The ways that they understood, received, and enacted notions of Christian peace therefore reveals much about the contours of peace in ­missionary teaching and practice more generally, as well as the translation of peace gospels into new Christian communities.40 Several of the chapters in this volume illustrate these dynamics, including two that directly address the Pacific region. Jane Samson’s study focuses on Eruera Te Ngara, a Māori convert whose recently uncovered journal provides detailed observations of a journey to the Pacific in connection with the Melanesian Mission. Samson’s careful reading reveals Te Ngara’s commitment to a distinctly Christian peace ethic. Crucially, it also clarifies the significance of his cultural location and intercultural fluency, which enabled different perceptions of threat and therefore relationality with the Pacific peoples he encountered compared with European observers. There are many accounts of convert missionaries accepting the critique of proselytising peace, adopting it, and translating it into practice in various ways. Anaru Eketone notes that the Wesleyan convert Wiremu Pātene first encountered missionary Christianity in New Zealand on observing the Methodist John Whiteley standing between warring iwi (tribes), advocating for peace.41 Pātene was subsequently challenged by another Wesleyan, James Wallis, about his own violence after Wallis nursed a man whom Pātene had shot with a musket back to health. Subsequently converted, Pātene became an evangelist and Methodist minister, and was known in this context for his commitment to peacemaking. On occasions he stood with colleagues between well-armed warring factions persuading them against violence, just as Whiteley had earlier done. At the village of Karakariki on the Waipā River, he sought in the early 1860s to persuade Waikato Māori against participating in conflict against the

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Island Ministers: Indigenous Leadership in Nineteenth-Century Pacific Island Christianity (­Christchurch, NZ: MacMillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, 2005); Peggy Brock, Norman Etherington, Gareth Griffiths, and Jacqueline Van Gent, Indigenous Evangelists and ­Questions of Authority in the British Empire 1750–1940, Studies in Christian Mission, vol. 46 (Leiden: Brill, 2015). On the broader historiographical issues raised by new covert readings and interpretation see Peggy Brock, “Setting the Record Straight: New Christians and Mission Christianity,” in Indigenous Peoples and Religious Change, Studies in Christian Mission, vol. 31, ed. Peggy Brock (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 110; Cabrita and Maxwell, “Relocating World Christianity,” 7. For this account of Pātene see Anaru Eketone, “Wiremu Patene and the Early Peace ­Movement at Karakariki,” in Revolutionary Nonviolence: Concepts, Cases and Controversies, eds. Richard Jackson, Joseph Llewellyn, Griffin Manawaroa Leonard, Aidan Gnoth, and Tonga Karena (London: Zed Books, 2021), 181–99.

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Crown, even as the Crown contemplated extending warfare from Taranaki into the Waikato itself. Pātene’s effective advocacy was a double-edged sword. By persuading Waikato Māori against active resistance through conflict, he effectively contributed to a weakening of defences which were exposed when the Crown prosecuted war in the Waikato from 1863. Pātene faced choices that were shared by other new Christians who wrestled, often painfully, with the demands of peace and justice during wartime in the new dispensation. Te Ngara was among them since he also remonstrated with his own people on these matters. So, too, was Wiremu Tāmihana Tarapīpipi. Norman Etherington’s chapter in this volume discusses Tāmihana in the context of the collapse of European missionaries’ promises of peace into a decade of uninterrupted armed conflict. This context was also marked by a folding of most European missionary admonitions to peace into calls for loyalty to the British Crown—the triumph of imperial peace at the expense of subversive peace, which had at earlier points been more evident and greatly emphasised. The setting generated sharp challenges for interpreting and embodying a peace ethic. It also led, relatedly, to profound religious reconfiguration, including the emergence of numerous Māori religious movements, influenced by Christianity, in which ethics of violence and peace were worked out in a range of ways.42 Analysing his responses elsewhere, Lyndsay Head notes that Tāmihana variously opted for non-violent and then armed resistance, before finally settling for the mana (authority) of peace.43 Like Te Ngara, Tāmihana’s reputation suffered in the eyes of those Māori who considered that his decision signalled compromise and capitulation. Dynamics of peace, and the stakes of peace, were therefore evidently affected by the parties involved. When missionary peace entailed opposition to forcible resistance of colonial power it could look more suspiciously like an instrument of pacification. Such ways of understanding the effects of missionary peace have become increasingly influential. The characterisation invites investigation, but also points to the disruptive quality of peace. As Thomas

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For a reading of these dynamics in relation to Riwha Tītotokowaru and the Pai Mārire faith, see Carl Bradley, “Syncretic Religion and War Leadership: Titokowaru, Peace and Violence in Southern Taranaki,” in Tutu te Puehu: New Perspectives on the New Zealand Wars, eds. John Crawford and Ian McGibbon (Wellington: Steele Roberts, 2018), 339–59. See Lyndsay Head, “Wiremu Tamihana and the Mana of Christianity,” in Christianity, Modernity and Culture: New Perspectives on New Zealand History, eds. John Stenhouse and G. A. Wood (Adelaide: ATF Press, 2005), 58–86.

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Hippler and Miloš Vec have argued, “peace is intrinsically polemical and contentious”, representing as it does the competing claims of different interests.44 5 Theologies Disruptions and contestations ran through missionary thinking, strategy, and action. Missionary peace was plural rather than singular, compiled from various strands of theological imagination and commended in any number of practical measures. Certain ideas and practices predominated at times, but all were under dynamic negotiation in the shifting landscapes of empire and local politics, as well as more mundane vicissitudes. As subsequent chapters highlight, techniques and technologies of peace were informed by a suite of ideas, claims, and interests. Aspects of the missionary peace repertoire were improvised, and missionary action was subject to many contingencies. Yet the nature of mission work, and missionaries’ social and religious worlds, also provided distinctive frameworks for thinking about peace. Theologically, Elbourne notes that early missionaries among the ‘San’ in southern Africa emphasised personal conversion as the pathway to peace. Knowledge of the Christian gospel and relationship with God, it was assumed, would lead naturally to repudiation of violence as well as the positive pursuit of what William Ellis elsewhere called “the love and the culture of peace”.45 This vision was never completely abandoned. Yet, as Maxwell also notes, changing theologies, related for example to differing millenarian viewpoints, led to ­conflicting convictions regarding whether, how, and when societies, other collectives, and indeed the whole human family might experience peace under the reign of Christ. Different understandings and changing circumstances stimulated new models of mission, with ensuing tensions between emphasis on evangelisation alone and on institution-building and societal transformation. Providence has been identified as a critical religious theme, perhaps the most important notion to shape missionary master narratives as well as the larger British imperial story during the long nineteenth century.46 The 44 45 46

Thomas Hippler and Miloš Vec, “Peace as a Polemic Concept: Writing the History of Peace in Nineteenth Century Europe,” in Paradoxes of Peace, 4. William Ellis, Polynesian Researches during a Residence of Nearly Six Years in the South Sea Islands, 2. vols (London: Fisher, Son and Jackson, 1829), 2: 518. Jeffrey Cox, “Master Narratives of Imperial Mission,” in Mixed Messages: Materiality, T ­ extuality, Missions, eds. Jamie S. Scott and Gareth Griffiths (New Yok: Palgrave ­Macmillan, 2005), 4–7; Stewart J. Brown, Providence and Empire: Religion, Politics and Society in the

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i­ nfluence on both projects highlights the dynamic relationship between them. In the context of missions, Providence was often explicitly tied to notions of civilisation, and specifically to the advance of peace through Christian civilisation.47 Yet the idea was also sufficiently supple that it could underscore an assorted range of projects—from evangelisation to institution-building during the mid-century period of Christianity, Civilisation, and Commerce, as well as to other projects at other times. Specific theologies of reconciliation were present and emphasised through forgiveness and love of enemies as dimensions of proselytising peace. Significantly, theologies of reconciliation were most frequently articulated in relation to peace with God, rather than as social reconciliation, following the model of the Pauline injunction in 2 Cor. 5.20: “be ye reconciled to God.”48 6 Enactments In addition to discourses and ideas, this volume is also concerned with enactment of peace as an ethical practice. Such practices could include preaching and teaching as modes of inculcation, alongside tangible acts of forgiveness, mediation, or conciliation, of which we have abundant accounts. Specific technologies of practice extended to new modes of sociality and economy, which were sometimes explicitly encouraged as expressions of pacifying mission. Settled agriculture, for example, was commended as a mark of civilisation, and a productive alternative to habitual warfare in literal fulfilment of the biblical vision of “swords into ploughshares”.49 Schools and education were also touted as peacemaking institutions, since they made it possible to instil the “peaceful arts” of civilisation through new learning, literacy, and socialisation.50 They have also been interpreted as powerful mechanisms of transformation, imposed upon ‘native’ populations once they had been rendered subservient, their resistance to empire suppressed.51 United Kingdom, 1815–1914, Religion, Politics and Society in Britain (London: Pearson Longman, 2008). 47 See for example Ellis, Polynesian Researches, 2: 76, 546. 48 For the context of this quote within the “ministry of reconciliation”, see 2 Cor. 5.7–21; also notably Rom. 5.1: “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ”. Bible quotations are taken from the King James Version. 49 Isa. 2.4; Mic. 4:3; Troughton, “Scripture, Piety, and the Practice of Peace,” 136–37. 50 See CMS Missionary Register (1834), 511–12. 51 Gananath Obeyesekere, The Buddha in Sri Lanka: Histories and Stories (Abingdon: ­Routledge, 2018), 46–47.

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Law provided another critical domain, with British law frequently promoted as a tempering force that could restrain violence. Head has argued that Christian law, which dispensed the customary requirement for payback for wrongdoing without recourse to war, appealed to many new converts in New Zealand. Law, she suggests, provided “a model of governance where peace was protected by law, and where revenge was the responsibility of the state”.52 As Cruickshank and Shepherd note in this volume, however, such law could also be a means of colonial dispossession, and was a decidedly limited conveyer of peace.53 Thus, while missionary critics in the Aboriginal missions initially repudiated ‘payback’ and ‘fighting’, which entailed the use of controlled violence as punishment to contain violence, some later questioned their o­ pposition— doubting especially whether European law, in practice, was ultimately less pernicious than payback. These realisations were enabled, however, by proximity to Aboriginal communities and the appreciation of different cultural formations and consequences of new legal regimes that this afforded. Finally, visions of peace wove through a range of experiments in social and political organisation. The establishment of new political entities such as ­ unified kingdoms and little theocracies, for example, often reflected ­missionary commendations rationalised via promises of peace. Mission stations were set up for a variety of reasons, sometimes by choice as a matter of conviction or strategy, at other times more by necessity. In either case, they can be interpreted within a framework of peace: they were contexts in which it was preached, nurtured through rituals of prayer and worship, and enacted in various ways. Some convert evangelists deliberately developed new villages to enable life under Christian law as exemplars of the Christian way. Numerous such communities were established in New Zealand, for example, including by Wiremu Tāmihana and some of the prophet movements Etherington discusses.54 In these, negotiations of Christianity and tikanga (Māori custom and 52

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Head, “Wiremu Tamihana,” 103. On the close association of Christianity and Law in ­ issionary communication and Māori interpretation, and its implications, see Lachy m ­Paterson, “Māori ‘Conversion’ to the Rule of Law and Nineteenth-Century Imperial ­Loyalties,” Journal of Religious History 32, no. 2 (2008): 216–33. On this theme see C. A. Bayly, “The British and ‘Indigenous’ Peoples, 1760–1860: Power, Perception and Identity,” in Empire and Others: British Encounters with Indigenous Peoples, 1600–1850, eds. Martin Daunton and Rick Halpern (UCL Press: Philadelphia, 1999), 34–35; also Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World, 1780–1830 (London: Longman, 1989). Lachy Paterson, “Rēweti Kōhere’s Model Village,” New Zealand Journal of History 41, no. 1 (2007): 27–44; Danny Keenan, Te Whiti O Rongomai and the Resistance of Parihaka (­Wellington: Huia Publishers, 2015).

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protocols) entailed wrestling with questions of conflict and peace, and the traditions and structures that supported them. Missionary attempts to create or utilise mission stations as safe zones for protective sanctuary also occurred in many places, as Elbourne, Maxwell, and Stambach each discuss in relation to African missions. In these settings, children, women, and freed slaves were all the focus of protective initiatives at different times. So, too, were missionaries themselves. The fates of those sanctuaries provide salutary insights into the insinuating realities of violence, and the fraught entanglements of conflict and peace. 7 Conclusion This chapter has highlighted the existence of diverse conceptions and ­practices of peace within the world of nineteenth-century missions, noting especially the significance of imperial, subversive, and proselytising peace as well as ­tensions, interplays, and shifting emphases on these types. It has also argued that peace was thoroughly enmeshed in dynamics of power and ­invariably ­disruptive. Peace was therefore messy. It was worked out in the spaces between lofty imagination and gritty reality. Understandably, exploring missionary engagements with peace therefore reveals captivating stories as well as harrowing ones, and a variety of orientations towards peace. Neither this chapter nor the volume as whole suggest that missionaries were as a class exceptionally peaceable, or that the m ­ issionary project was unambiguously peaceful. Indeed, while they both affirm the importance of peace as a prominent motif, they also identify a complex range of interactions with it. The volume suggests however that diversity is not merely a fact but should be interpreted with special consideration to the affordances, constraints, and contingencies of missionary roles and locations. Some of these were internal, related for example to theologies and traditions, social imaginaries, and understandings of how social and religious change happens. Others reflected opportunities and constraints imposed by larger forces, many of which were outside missionary control, or to which missionaries were ­ultimately subject. The studies that follow should be understood as soundings rather than a comprehensive map. Even within this volume’s regional and temporal parameters, opportunities to ply out the ideas, practices, and technologies of peace within further contexts abound. A broader range of missionary organisations and institutions, representing different theologies and traditions—including of peace and of relationships with state power—would doubtless yield further

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comparative insights. So, too, would exploration of other geographical regions, enabling testing of possible regional variation and the constellation of factors affecting it. Whatever future work reveals, this volume suggests that examination of missionary engagements with peace provides a fruitful way of exploring values and negotiations of power within missionary worlds. These are matters that contribute substantially to crucial debates about religion, violence, and empire as well as the history of missions. They also connect with concerns that are inevitably thoroughly contemporary. Bibliography Abernethy, David B. The Dynamics of Global Dominance: European Overseas Empires, 1415–1980. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. Ballantyne, Tony. Entanglements of Empire: Missionaries, Māori, and the Question of the Body. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2015. Ballantyne, Tony, and Antoinette Burton, eds. Moving Subjects: Gender, Mobility and Intimacy in an Age of Global Empire. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009. Barnett, Michael. Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism. Ithaca and ­London: Cornell University Press, 2011. Bayly, C. A. Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World, 1780–1830. London: Longman, 1989. Bayly, C. A. “The British and ‘Indigenous’ Peoples, 1760–1860: Power, Perception and Identity.” In Empire and Others: British Encounters with Indigenous Peoples, 1600– 1850, edited by Martin Daunton and Rick Halpern, 19–41. UCL Press: Philadelphia, 1999. Bischoff, Eva. “Arms & Amelioration: Negotiating Quaker Peace Testimony and Settler Violence in 1830s Van Diemen’s Land.” Settler Colonial Studies 7, no. 2 (2017): 241–59. Bogue, David. On Universal Peace, being Extracts from a Discourse Delivered in October 1813. London: J. Hatchard, 1819. Bosch, David J. Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. ­Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991. Bradley, Carl. “Syncretic Religion and War Leadership: Titokowaru, Peace and Violence in Southern Taranaki.” In Tutu te Puehu: New Perspectives on the New Zealand Wars, edited by John Crawford and Ian McGibbon, 339–59. Wellington: Steele Roberts, 2018. Brock, Peggy. “New Christians as Evangelists.” In Missions and Empire, The Oxford History of the British Empire, Companion Series, edited by Norman Etherington, 132–52. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

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Brock, Peggy. “Setting the Record Straight: New Christians and Mission Christianity,” in Indigenous Peoples and Religious Change, Studies in Christian Mission, vol. 31, edited by Peggy Brock, 107–28. Leiden: Brill, 2005. Brock, Peggy, Norman Etherington, Gareth Griffiths, and Jacqueline Van Gent. Indigenous Evangelists and Questions of Authority in the British Empire 1750–1940, Studies in Christian Mission, vol. 46. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Brock, Peter. Pacifism in Europe to 1914. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972. Brown, Stewart J. Providence and Empire: Religion, Politics and Society in the United Kingdom, 1815–1914, Religion, Politics and Society in Britain. London: Pearson ­Longman, 2008. Buddle, Thomas. Letter to the Secretaries, 2 March 1842. MS39, Box 4, Folder 16. ­Methodist Church of New Zealand Archives, Christchurch, New Zealand. Cabrita, Joel, and David Maxwell. “Relocating World Christianity.” In Relocating World Christianity: Interdisciplinary Studies in Universal and Local Expressions of the Christian Faith, Theology and Mission in World Christianity, n0. 7, edited by Joel Cabrita, David Maxwell, and Emma Wild-Wood, 1–44. Leiden: Brill, 2017. Carey, Eustace. Memoir of William Carey, D.D. Late Missionary to Bengal; Professor of Oriental Languages in the College of Fort William, Calcutta. London: Jackson and Walford, 1836. Carey, Hilary, ed. Empires of Religion. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Carleton, Hugh. The Life of Henry Williams, Archdeacon of Waimate. 2 vols. Auckland: Upton and Co., 1874–1877. Cavanaugh, William T. The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. CMS Missionary Register. 1834, 511–12. Comaroff, Jean, and John L. Comaroff. Of Reason and Revelation, vol. 1: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Cox, Jeffrey. The British Missionary Enterprise since 1700. London: Routledge, 2008. Cox, Jeffrey. “Master Narratives of Imperial Mission.” In Mixed Messages: Materiality, Textuality, Missions, edited by Jamie S. Scott and Gareth Griffiths, 3–18. New Yok: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Craft, Stephen G. “Peacemakers in China: American Missionaries and the Sino-­ Japanese War, 1937–1941.” Journal of Church and State 41, no. 3 (1999): 575–91. Dingle, Sarah. “Gospel Power for Civilization: The CMS Missionary Perspective on Maori Culture, 1830–1860.” Ph.D. thesis, University of Adelaide, 2009. Dwyer, Philip, and Joy Damousi. “General Introduction: Violence in World History.” In The Cambridge World History of Violence, Volume I: The Prehistoric and Ancient Worlds, edited by Garrett G. Fagan, Linda Fibiger, Mark Hudson, and Matthew ­Trundle, 1–18. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.

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Dwyer, Philip, and Amanda Nettelbeck, “‘Savage Wars of Peace’: Violence, Colonialism and Empire in the Modern World.” In Violence, Colonialism and the Modern World, Cambridge Imperial and Post-colonial Studies, edited by Philip Dwyer and Amanda Nettelbeck, 1–22. Cham: Springer International Publishing AG, 2017. Edmonds, Penelope, and Anna Johnston, eds. Special Issue: Empire, Humanitarianism and Violence in the Colonies. Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 17, no. 1 (2016). https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/33312. Edmonds, Penelope, and Amanda Nettelbeck, eds. Intimacies of Violence in the Settler Colony: Economies of Dispossession around the Pacific Rim, Cambridge Imperial and Post-colonial Studies. Cham: Springer International Publishing AG, 2018. Eketone, Anaru. “Wiremu Patene and the Early Peace Movement at Karakariki.” In Revolutionary Nonviolence: Concepts, Cases and Controversies, edited by Richard Jackson, Joseph Llewellyn, Griffin Manawaroa Leonard, Aidan Gnoth, and Tonga Karena, 181–99. London: Zed Books, 2021. Elbourne, Elizabeth. “The Sin of the Settler: The 1835–36 Select Committee on Aborigines and Debates Over Virtue and Conquest in the Early Nineteenth-Century British White Settler Empire.” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 4, no. 3 (2003). https://muse.jhu.edu/article/50777. Ellis, William. Polynesian Researches during a Residence of Nearly Six Years in the South Sea Islands. 2. vols. London: Fisher, Son and Jackson, 1829. Etherington, Norman, ed. Missions and Empire, The Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Fassin, Didier. Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present. Berkeley: ­University of California Press, 2011. Galtung, Johan. Peace by Peaceful Means: Peace, Conflict, Development and Civilization. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1996. Garrett, John. To Live among the Stars: Christian Origins in Oceania. Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1982. Graber, Jennifer. “‘If a War It May Be Called’: The Peace Policy with American Indians.” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 24, no. 1 (2014): 36–69. Graber, Jennifer. The Gods of Indian Country: Religion and the Struggle for the American West. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Hall, Catherine. Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination, 1830–1867. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Head, Lyndsay. “Wiremu Tamihana and the Mana of Christianity.” In Christianity, Modernity and Culture: New Perspectives on New Zealand History, edited by John Stenhouse and G. A. Wood, 58–86. Adelaide: ATF Press, 2005. Hippler, Thomas, and Miloš Vec, eds. Paradoxes of Peace in Nineteenth Century Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Jolly, Margaret. “‘Woman Ikat Raet Long Human Raet O No?’ Women’s Rights, Human Rights and Domestic Violence in Vanuatu.” Feminist Review no. 52 (1996): 169–90.

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Kaa, Hirini. Te Hāhi Mihinare | The Māori Anglican Church. Wellington: Bridget ­Williams Books, 2020. Keenan, Danny. Te Whiti O Rongomai and the Resistance of Parihaka. Wellington: Huia Publishers, 2015. Kennedy, Dane. The Imperial History Wars: Debating the British Empire. London: Bloomsbury, 2017. Laidlaw, Zoe. “‘Aunt Anna’s Report’: The Buxton Women and the Aborigines Select Committee.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 32, no. 2 (2004): 1–28. Lange, Raeburn. Island Ministers: Indigenous Leadership in Nineteenth-Century Pacific Island Christianity. Christchurch, NZ: MacMillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, 2005. Latourette, Kenneth Scott. A History of the Expansion of Christianity. 7 vols. New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1937–1945. Lester, Alan. Imperial Networks: Creating Identities in Nineteenth-Century South Africa and Britain. London: Routledge, 2001. Lester, Alan, and Fae Dussart. Colonization and the Origins of Humanitarian ­Governance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Levine, Philippa, ed. Gender and Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Mason, Caroline Atwater. World Missions and World Peace: A Study of Christ’s Conquest. West Medford: Central Committee on the United Study of Foreign Missions, 1916. Megoran, Nick. “Violence and Peace.” In The Ashgate Companion to Critical Geopolitics, edited by Klaus Dodds, Merje Kuus, and Joanne Sharp, 189–207. London: Routledge, 2016. Megoran, Nick. “War and Peace? An Agenda for Peace Research and Practice in ­Geography.” Political Geography 30, no. 4 (2011): 178–89. Obeyesekere, Gananath. The Buddha in Sri Lanka: Histories and Stories. Abingdon: Routledge, 2018. Paterson, Lachy. “Māori ‘Conversion’ to the Rule of Law and Nineteenth-Century ­Imperial Loyalties.” Journal of Religious History 32, no. 2 (2008): 216–33. Paterson, Lachy. “Rēweti Kōhere’s Model Village.” New Zealand Journal of History 41, no. 1 (2007): 27–44. Porter, Andrew. Religious Versus Empire? British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700–1914. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004. Ross, Kenneth R., Katalina Tahaafe-Williams, and Todd M. Johnson, eds. Christianity in Oceania, Edinburgh Companions to Global Christianity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021. Smith, Vanessa. Intimate Strangers: Friendship, Exchange and Pacific Encounters. ­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Soutar, Monty. “Ngāti Porou Leadership—Rāpata Wahawaha and the Politics of ­Conflict: ‘Kei te ora nei hoki tātou, me tō tātou whenua.” Ph.D. thesis, Massey ­University, 2000.

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Stanley, Brian. The Bible and the Flag: Protestant Missions and British Imperialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Leicester: Apollo, 1990. Stoler, Ann Laura, ed. Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. Taylor, Richard. Te Ika a Maui; or New Zealand and its Inhabitants. London: Wertheim and Macintosh, 1855. Troughton, Geoffrey. “Australia, New Zealand, and Oceania.” In History of Global C ­ hristianity, Vol. III: History of Christianity in the 20th Century, edited by Jens Holger Schørring, Norman A. Hjelm, and Kevin Ward, 422–43. Leiden: Brill, 2018. Troughton, Geoffrey. “Missionaries, Historians and the Peace Tradition.” In Te ­Rongopai 1814 ‘Takoto te pai!’: Bicentenary Reflections on Christian Beginnings and Developments in Aotearoa New Zealand, edited by Allan K. Davidson, Stuart Lange, Peter J. Lineham, and Adrienne Puckey, 228–45. Auckland: General Synod Office, Anglican Church in Aotearoa New Zealand and Polynesia, 2014. Troughton, Geoffrey. “Scripture, Piety and the Practice of Peace in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand Missions.” Studies in World Christianity 25, no. 2 (2019): 128–44. Troughton, Geoffrey, ed. Saints and Stirrers: Christianity, Conflict and Peacemaking in New Zealand, 1814–1945. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2017. Troughton, Geoffrey, and Philip Fountain, eds. Pursuing Peace in Godzone: Christianity and the Peace Tradition in New Zealand. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2018. Wallenstein, Peter, ed. Peace Research: Achievements and Challenges. London: ­Westview Press, 1988. Wallenstein, Peter, ed. Peace Research: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge, 2011. “Wesleyan Missionary Meeting.” New Zealander. 9 December 1854, 3.

Chapter 2

Peace, Genocide, and Empire: The London Missionary Society and the San in Early Nineteenth-Century Southern Africa Elizabeth Elbourne 1 Introduction1 In the 1790s and 1800s, British Christians forged a wave of new evangelical Protestant missionary societies dedicated to the Christianisation of the world, including the Baptist Missionary Society, founded in 1792, the interdenominational London Missionary Society (LMS) in 1795, and the Church ­Missionary Society (1799).2 Amid the often terrifying global turbulence of the French ­Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, these societies sought to bring peace to a battered world. British missionary societies promoted cultural particularity, with all its potential for conflict and imperial domination. It was, ­however, precisely because of what they believed was their capacity to effect both ­personal and collective transformation, in keeping with God’s plans, that missionary societies centrally saw themselves as agents of world peace and global ­harmony. The LMS was no exception. Perhaps not surprisingly, however, what might loosely be termed a m ­ issionary ‘peace movement’ often proved both fragile and contentious. Indeed, the difficulty of pursuing peacemaking from a position of political weakness would ultimately provide a tempting argument for a missionary ­alliance with empire, once the earliest years of tensions between missions and imperial establishments had been navigated. This chapter explores, however, some of the early complexities and indeed tragedies of a missionary peace movement from 1799 to 1820, before the later period of stronger ties with empire, through an examination of the LMS’s efforts to bring ‘peace’ to the San in early nineteenth-century 1 This chapter is drawn from a project on the British and hunters in the early nineteenth ­century funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, whose support is gratefully acknowledged. 2 See Jeffrey Cox, The British Missionary Enterprise Since 1700 (New York and London: ­Routledge, 2008). The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, also an Anglican society, had been in existence since 1701, but only began to send missionaries to areas without pre-existing British settlement in large numbers from the nineteenth century. © Elizabeth Elbourne, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004536791_003

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southern Africa. These hunter-gatherers, often loosely termed ‘San’ today, were caught up in warfare with a number of groups, among whom white settlers were the most destructive. They were widely victimised by genocidal attacks and by the enslavement of their children, often through capture in warfare. If missionaries frequently saw themselves as bringing peace as nations moved closer to one another through a common adherence to Christianity, how did nomadic hunter-gatherers, at the furthest extreme from being a ‘nation’ in the British imagination, fit into the picture? I will argue that there were both external obstacles that restricted missionaries’ ability to broker peace between farmers and hunter-gatherers, and internal contradictions in their approaches. LMS agents vacillated between seeing the San as intrinsically violent because of their supposed savagery, and perceiving them primarily as victims of violence. In both cases, LMS agents tried to bring peace, whether through ‘pacifying’ the supposedly ‘wild’ San through conversion and cultural change, or through undertaking political activity and institution-building to protect them. One strategy, espoused by the African Superintendent of the LMS, John Philip, in the 1820s was to describe the San as a ‘nation’ with a bounded territory, within which they ought to be secure from outside aggression. On this basis, Philip sought to make the plight of the San legible to a humanitarian audience in Britain. In another more tangible effort to bring peace through institutionalisation, the Society founded mission stations that were designed both to pacify hunter-gatherers through assimilation and to protect them from other groups. These stations were short-lived, however, proving vulnerable to official opposition, attacks by outsiders, efforts by other groups to take the stations over to use their resources, and San resistance to acculturation. In the meantime, similar LMS attempts at state-building among other scattered groups sometimes provided these communities with the weapons to attack San hunters rather than bringing peace. Some missionaries and mission assistants proved predatory themselves, or at least passive participants in violence. Efforts to curb commandoes against the San often aroused anger and resistance among both white Dutch-speaking settlers and other African groups that the LMS sought to convert. In sum, it proved difficult to navigate among competing groups at a time of intense conflict over resources. The efforts of the LMS to make the San legible to evangelical and colonial audiences were relatively ineffective, even as they probably did violence to San self-conceptions. Records also hint (despite enormous difficulties in accessing San perspectives, particularly from my own subject position) that at least some San people did actually at times see the mission station as a possible protection against intense violence, even if many were deeply distrustful of missionaries. The fact that white farmers and Griqua

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and Kora pastoralists tried to block San access to mission stations or to seize the stations for themselves at various points suggests that the stations did have some potential for protecting members. Despite such nuances, challenges to the missionary peace-keeping vision became rapidly apparent. Such frustrations made an appeal to empire all the more appealing to the LMS. 2

Peace, Missions, and the Coming Reign of Glory

The emblem of the LMS was a dove, a Christian symbol of peace. Propagandists for the Society in the 1790s and early 1800s frequently claimed that the gospel would bring an end to conflict between nations, even if the averred aim of the missionary society was to save individual souls through bringing converts to knowledge of Jesus. While missionaries might preach that all that mattered was eternal salvation and that converts needed to be focused on the life to come, not short-term material benefits, in reality missionaries often conflated Christianity with the linked outcomes of prosperity and peace. The LMS held large annual ‘May meetings’ at which up to four ‘annual sermons’ would be preached by invited speakers and then published to the ends of publicity and fundraising. Designed to rally the faithful, these sermons are a revealing source for understanding the thought of the men who founded the interdenominational London Missionary Society in 1795. One frequently articulated belief was that knowledge of the gospel and a relationship with God would lead converts to abjure past violence and seek peace. “Peace is the very nature and design of the Gospel, and when men imbibe its true spirit, the tranquility which they feel in themselves will make them peaceable towards all men”, proclaimed the Reverend Joseph Cockin in 1798.3 Individual sinfulness caused conflict, which could be ended as Christianity made individuals virtuous. In addition to making arguments about individual transformation, sermons also sometimes reflected millenarian beliefs. In an optimistic post-­millenarian perspective, the end of days would be hastened by missionary activity to convert the entire world, which in turn would usher in a long period of earthly peace. In the 1790s and early 1800s, LMS supporters seem to have thought that the reign of peace might come fairly quickly. The hope for peace was 3 Joseph Cockin, “God’s Declared Designs a Motive to Human Endeavours,” in Joseph Cockin, J. Brewer, Robert Balfour, and George West, Four Sermons, Preached in London at the Fourth General Meeting of the Missionary Society, May 9, 10, 11, 1798, vol. II (London: T. Chapman, 1798), 79.

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thus bolstered by prophecy. Scottish minister John Snodgrass preached in 1796, for example, that the world would be united under Christ after Christ had ­punished sinners and that this would be hastened by missionisation. “The voice of the oppressor shall then no more be heard. Nation shall no more lift up the sword against Nation, and the knowledge of war shall only be learned in the dismal history of its devastation, and of its horrors”.4 As this suggests, many in the early LMS believed that God acted through collectivities. Millenarianism, adherence to prophecy, and belief in Satan’s earthly power all contributed to arguments that Christianity would bring earthly peace, in part because it would affect nations as a whole. In the early days of the LMS, at least some missionaries thought that Satan literally ruled in the lands of the heathen, creating conflict. “[T]he man that goes there must carry his life in his hand,” the missionary James Read observed about the lands where he hoped to establish a mission among the Tswana, since “the Divil [Devil] rejoices there without control […]”.5 True Christianity would chase away Satan, forcing him to ease his grip on a suffering land. Peace would be brought about by defeating Satan—arguably creating the paradox of a militaristic struggle for peace. At the same time, millenarian beliefs interacted with Enlightenment ­assumptions that might also point to missions as bringers of peace, albeit from a different intellectual starting point. In 1796 in Paisley, George Lambert ­preaching on the blessings of the gospel attested that the gospel tended to make “one nation a blessing to another,” even if “[i]n the present state of things, which is a state of horrid war and devastation, nations are far from proving blessings to each other”.6 However, “in proportion as the truth of this Gospel comes to enlighten the understanding, its power to penetrate the hearts, and its grace to influence the minds and meliorate the actions of the inhabitants of the different nations, its harmonizing and inviting effects will

4 John Snodgrass, Prospects of Providence Respecting the Conversion of the World to Christ: A ­Sermon, Preached Before the Paisley London Missionary Society on Friday, June 10th, 1796 (­Paisley: J. Neilson, 1796), 23–24. 5 James Read to LMS, Bethelsdorp, 7 August 1816, London Missionary Society, South Africa, Incoming Correspondence, 6/4/A, Council for World Mission Archives, School for Oriental and African Studies (archive hereafter annotated as LMS-SA). 6 George Lambert, “The Gospel the Greatest of Blessings, both in its Nature and Effects,” in George Lambert, Thomas Pentycross, William Jay, and David Jones, Four Sermons Preached in London, at the Second General Meeting of the Missionary Society, May 11, 12, 13, 1796 (London: T. Chapman, 1796), 35.

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become manifest.”7 The gospel united “the hearts of men to one another,” and promoted “mutual intercourse among the nations”.8 Lambert’s comments about the value of “mutual intercourse among the nations” underscore that missionary propagandists shared some assumptions with Enlightenment theorists about the benefits to world peace of the spread of contact across the world, knitting people together, perhaps through self-­ interest derived from trade, or through converging culture. If scholars have ­cautioned that Adam Smith did not simplistically see commerce as a harbinger of world peace, it is still the case that, as Lisa Hill has argued, he broadly thought that the trend of world history was towards greater peace as nations became linked through mutual interest, including trading relationships.9 Smith is only one example of the widespread belief among late eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinkers that the possibility of peace between states was increasing with the spread of common interests or shared characteristics, such as the growth of commercial society or decline of despotism.10 The ministers who supported the LMS might not have shared all of the assumptions of thinkers such as Smith or Kant, nor of course held such worked-out systemic theories, but they did generally adhere to a progressive conception that increased contact and growing similarity between peoples would promote peace. Many also seem to have shared the contemporary assumption, articulated by social contract theorists such as John Locke but also widely held as a shibboleth, that hunter-gatherers were at the lowest stage of human development and were more likely to be violent than settled commercial societies. Once missionaries were in the field, these kinds of a priori intellectual commitments provided an interpretive lens through which to view peace and conflict but were necessarily supplemented or modified by more local political concerns that might look more ‘secular’.11 The large missionary societies tended to become less millenarian and more involved in imperial politics over time, for example. This was in fact what happened in South Africa, where, as I and others have explored elsewhere, the activist head of the LMS in the 1820s 7 Lambert, Gospel, 36. 8 Lambert, Gospel, 37–38. 9 Lisa Hill, “Adam Smith on War (and Peace),” in British International Thinkers from Hobbes to Namier, Palgrave Macmillan History of International Thought, eds. Ian Hall and Lisa Hill (London: Palgrave Macmillian, 2009), 71–89. 10 See, for example, Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795), in H. S. Reiss, ed., Kant: Political Writings, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 11 Michael A. Rutz, “Meddling with Politics: The Political Role of Foreign Missions in the Early Nineteenth Century,” Parliamentary History 27, no. 1 (2008): 109–118.

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and 30s, John Philip, was closely tied to leading Whig politicians, and argued in a savvy manner for legal and political reform.12 Even before John Philip, however, the LMS made political claims in southern Africa about their capacity to bring peace. These a priori claims became a justification for their presence, particularly in conflict zones. Whatever the strategic approach, however, the LMS mission to San hunter-gatherers in southern Africa rapidly put optimistic assumptions about peacemaking to the test. 3 “The Most Savage and Ferocious of all the People who are Known in This Country” The first four missionaries from the LMS to land in what is now South Africa were the Dutchmen J. T. van der Kemp and J. J. Kicherer, the Welshman John Edmonds, and the Englishman William Edward. They arrived in 1799 in Cape Town, the major settlement in the Cape Colony, which had been recently taken over by the British from the Dutch East India Company. This was only the ­second mission launched by the young society; the other was its inaugural mission to the South Seas. Southern Africa was ethnically diverse and wracked by conflict. White Dutch speakers dominated the Cape Colony although they would be challenged by the incoming British. Enslaved people, trafficked from across the Indian Ocean World, toiled in Cape Town and in the rural regions of the western Cape. In the meantime, many Khoekhoe and San people worked as coerced labourers on white farms, particularly in the Eastern Cape. Since the late seventeenth century, white farmers had been pushing outwards to new lands to the north and to the east of existing colonial boundaries. They fought frequently with San hunter-gatherers on the northern frontiers of the colony and with isi-Xhosa speaking farmers in the Eastern Cape, even as they also coexisted in some ways. To the south east new African kingdoms were rising, contributing to regional disruption. In regions beyond the northern frontier, there were also new polities, competing with the local San, Khoekhoe, and Tswana people;

12

Elizabeth Elbourne, Blood Ground: Colonialism, Missions and the Contest for ­Christianity in Britain and the Eastern Cape, 1799–1853 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen ­University Press, 2002); Tim Keegan, Dr Philip’s Empire: One Man’s Struggle for Justice in Nineteenth-Century South Africa (Cape Town: Zebra Press, 2016); Andrew Ross, John Philip (1775–1851): Missions, Race and Politics in South Africa (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1986).

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these included armed groups who had migrated away from the Cape Colony, among whose members were many people escaping servitude to whites.13 The San were the most evident losers in the shatter zones of colonialism and the linked expansion and breakdown of political communities in southern Africa.14 Having once inhabited a large swathe of territory, they were being progressively pushed further back into more arid lands to the north. The term ‘San’ in reality encompasses diverse groups speaking relatively different languages, with defined territories within which they lived and hunted;15 the term was not used by people themselves at the time (indeed, a variant of San may have been an insulting term for people without land in the Cape Khoekhoe language). Many groups today use the term San in preference to ‘Bushmen’ but also affirm the importance of being called by their original group names. The community at the Cape were the /Xam. Overall trends were, however, similar: genocidal or quasi-genocidal warfare against San groups was carried out by farmers and cattle herders, as game became less abundant, pushing the San to raid cattle for food, and as groups competed for land. Colonial raids often killed San men and sometimes women while frequently ‘sparing’ children who were traded across a wide-ranging market in child labourers.16 As Jared ­McDonald 13 14

15 16

Martin Legassick, The Politics of a South African Frontier: The Griqua, the Sotho-Tswana and the Missionaries, 1780–1840 (Basel: Basler Afrika Bibliographien, 2010). Allan Greer argues that nascent colonial states consistently generated “shatter zones” on their peripheries, in which colonial military technologies and violence, often exacerbated by the spread of disease and food insecurity, helped accelerate the break-down of existing authorities and create violent power vacuums. See Allan Greer, Property and Dispossession: Natives, Empires and Land in Early Modern North America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); also Robbie Ethridge, “Introduction: Mapping the Mississippian Shatter Zone,” in Mapping the Mississippian Shatter Zone: The Colonial Indian Slave Trade and Regional Instability in the American South, eds. Robbie Etheridge and Sheri M. ShuckHall (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009), 2, 42–43. For example, Karel Schoeman, “Die Londense Sendinggenootskap en die San: Die Stasies Toornberg en Hephzibah, 1814–1818,” South African Historical Journal 28, no. 1 (1993): 226, note 21. Nigel Penn, The Forgotten Frontier: Colonist and Khoisan on the Cape’s Northern Frontier in the 18th Century (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2006); Pippa Skotnes, ed., Claim to the Country: The Archive of Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2007); Mohamed Adhikari, The Anatomy of a South African Genocide: The Extermination of the Cape San Peoples (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2011); Elizabeth Eldredge and Fred Morton, eds., Slavery in South Africa: Captive Labour on the Dutch Frontier (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1994); Lance van Sittert and Thierry Rousset, “‘An Unbroken Line of Crimes and Blood’: Settler Militia and the Extermination and Enslavement of San in the Graaff-Reinet District of the Cape Colony, c. 1776–1825”, in Civilian-Driven Violence and the Genocide of Indigenous Peoples in Settler Societies, ed. Mohamed Adhikari (London and New York: Routledge, 2019), 86–113.

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argues, the capture and assimilation of San children was a crucial part of ­genocidal practices, helping to explain the collapse of San societies.17 Cashpoor Dutch-speaking farmers in the frontier districts of the Cape Colony with limited access to enslaved labours from international markets were ­particularly avid consumers of the coerced labour of war captives, as Susan Newton-King shows, whether captured in local commandoes or acquired through trade.18 These Dutch-speaking farmers killed staggering numbers of San people as they carved out new settlements, but they were not the only participants in war against the San. Furthermore, although San genocide tends to be associated most closely with the Dutch period, more people were killed under the British than under the Dutch East India Company, as Nigel Penn argues.19 When the LMS arrived in southern Africa they were not planning to work with the San. Their arrival in Cape Town coincided, however, with that of three men who were described as “Boschesman Captains,” Vigilant, Slaparm, and Orlam.20 According to the Transactions of the LMS, the importuning of the three ‘captains’ persuaded Kicherer and Edwards to proceed to San territory, while Van der Kemp and Edmonds turned towards the Xhosa to the east of the Cape Colony. This might be seen as the intervention of Providence. As Nigel Penn demonstrates, however, the missionaries were also being drawn into complex regional politics of which they were, at least at first, only dimly aware.21 The frontier farmers of the northern Cape had long been at war with the San, in a conflict that extended back to the first settlements of the region. In the late 1790s, the incoming British administration, influenced by the passionate criticism of British official John Barrow of commandoes against the San and the enslavement of women and children, decided to try to broker peace.22 17

18 19 20 21 22

Jared McDonald, “‘Like a Wild Beast, He Can be Got for the Catching’: Child Forced Labour and the ‘Taming’ of the San Along the Cape’s North-Eastern Frontier, c.1806–1830,” in Genocide on Settler Frontiers: When Hunter-Gatherers and Commercial Stock Farmers Clash, ed. Mohamed Adhikari (New York: Berghahn, 2015), 60–87. Susan Newton-King, Masters and Servants on the Cape Eastern Frontier, 1760–1803 (­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Nigel Penn, “The British and the ‘Bushmen’: The Massacre of the Cape San, 1795–1828,” Journal of Genocide Research 15, no. 2 (2013): 183–200; John Philip, Researches in South Africa, 2 vols (London: James Duncan, 1828). “South African Mission,” Transactions of the London Missionary Society, vol. 1 (London: Bye and Law, 1804): 325. Nigel Penn, “‘Civilizing’ the San: The First Mission to the Cape San, 1791–1806,” in Claim to the Country, ed. Skotnes, 90–117. Penn, “‘Civilizing’ the San”; John Barrow, An Account of Travels into the Interior of Southern Africa, in the Years 1797 and 1798, vol. 1 (2nd ed., London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1806), 227–30, 242–49.

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In the meantime, some among the farmers themselves also sought to make peace. Penn argues convincingly that in the context of the steady diminishment of the game on which hunter-gatherers depended, the farmers were ­trying to get the San to adopt a ‘civilised’ lifestyle that would involve working for farmers. Government and local settlers had converged on a policy of giving the San gifts and attempting to persuade them to become sedentary; more controversially, the colonial government also tried to create a boundary between the colony and ‘Bushmanland’ and to forbid settlers from crossing the line without official permission. Part of the peace process involved i­ dentifying leaders with whom the colony could negotiate; in order to accomplish this, the colony had in fact been creating ‘captains,’ or chiefs, where it is possible none existed, in an attempt to make the San political system legible. The three ­captains were in Cape Town to support the peacemaking agenda, but they probably did not actually fill this hierarchical position in San society. This peace was predicated on the view that the San were wild and required taming. A Christian mission would help with this objective, it was believed by administrators and (some) farmers—other farmers opposed the mission altogether, although that is another story. In an account published in the 1804 Transactions of the London Missionary Society, Kicherer affirmed that the visit of the Boschesman Captains to the Cape followed the efforts of Floris Visser, a farmer and local official who had managed to “contract a peace” with some of the nearest San and seems to have worked as a cultural middle-man to his own advantage. This suggests that the missionaries were aware that their presence was in part a product of this peace treaty.23 Edwards and Kicherer arrived at Zak River in force. They came laden with gifts from the Dutch farmers, who gave them multiple oxen, sheep, cows, and birds. According to Kicherer’s account, the missionaries were accompanied by “thirteen christians [whites], twenty Hottentots and Slaves, five waggons, thirty-four horses, and upwards of sixty oxen, and men of seven different nations”: this was a peace mission but in some ways it was also an invasion.24 The LMS presented the San as intrinsically violent. This doubtless reflected the views of farmers and local officials, as well as missionaries’ own preconceptions. If John Barrow had argued that the San had only become violent in response to settler attacks, Kicherer reported that the “Boschmen have ­heretofore occupied themselves in little else but murdering and stealing. They are a people accounted the most savage and ferocious of all the people who are 23 24

See: “South African Mission,” in Transactions of the London Missionary Society, vol. 1. Transactions of the London Missionary Society, vol. 1: 327.

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known in this country”.25 At the same time, there was some room for ambiguity. Kicherer also described the San as generous, for example: “[t]he unanimity and benevolence, which takes place in a particular manner amongst them, must shame not only nominal but real Christians”.26 The overall message, nonetheless, was that the missionaries were to bring peace by civilising the San. This reflected the aim of the 1798 proclamation made by then-Governor McCartney on frontier policy, the first article of which affirmed that “[i]t appears that one of the first steps toward civilizing and conciliating the Boshesmen, would be to impress them with a sense of the benefits arising from permanent property, preferably to casual and predatory supplies”.27 Once the group arrived, they immediately set about to make a garden: they clearly saw the site as ideal for a sedentary settlement, in keeping with ideas about how to civilise nomadic people. The missionaries also began to try to teach the San European languages. Kicherer created a Dutch settlement and Edwards an English one, several miles apart, until Edwards answered Van der Kemp’s call for additional help among the Xhosa. Kicherer founded a station called Blyde Vooruitzicht; in 1800 he moved the station to Zak River, in the face of threats from another San community at Groot Kraal. Penn’s history of the mission suggests that a number of obstacles eventually led to the closure of the mission by 1806. These included the fact that Kicherer left the mission for an extended period of time to tour Europe with three Khoekhoe converts.28 There were also systemic issues, notably ongoing hostility from some San groups and from some white farmers, both of whom saw the mission as a threat. The colonial government tried to use the missionaries as agents to ­control the frontier and to prevent famers from crossing into ‘Bushmanland,’ but the missionaries did not have the authority to do this. Instead, the missionaries ended up trying to call out a commando themselves, in complicated circumstances, against one of the original San captains. As Penn shows, this captain had killed one of the other captains and threatened the mission, but

25 Barrow, Travels into the Interior, 247–48; Transactions of the London Missionary Society, vol. 1: 331. 26 Transactions of the London Missionary Society, vol. 1: 333. 27 The proclamation continued “and to make a free gift to them of such a quantity of Cattle, as may be sufficient for their immediate subsistence, and for a provision by the natural increase of the same, to relieve their future wants”. Cited by Penn, “Civilizing the San,” 94–95, from Archives of the Western Cape, BO 174 (Original Placaat Book), 24 July 1798, 80–82. 28 Karel Schoeman, J. J. Kicherer en die vroeë sending, 1799–1806 (Cape Town: South African Library, 1996).

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he was in turn protected by an alliance with a powerful white farmer, who was in his turn embedded in conflict with other farmers. In sum, the mission was only one among several regional players and relationships were complicated. Severe environmental problems exacerbated regional conflict in a climate of competition for limited resources. When the mission could no longer feed the San in large numbers it ran into serious problems, even as mission resources became a tempting target for attacks. In 1806 Kicherer made things worse by accepting a position as minister at GraaffReinet, and shortly thereafter the mission collapsed. 4

Missions and Commandoes in the Transgariep Region

Similar structural issues dogged such LMS outreach to the San as existed in the relatively arid region beyond the Gariep River (Orange River in the colonial period) across the northern frontiers of the Cape Colony (today the N ­ orthern Cape and Free State provinces), as well as broader efforts by the society to prevent commando raids on San settlements, in the context of extensive violence in the region. In this area new groups formed, reflecting what historians increasingly argue was the relative fluidity of ethnogenesis in the southern African interior.29 The region that would become Griqualand was dominated by people of Khoekhoe background, including local groups, but also people moving away from the ambit of the colony, including many of shared Khoekhoe and white background who would come to be called Griqua.30 Migrants brought guns and horses, enabling them to establish regional domination. Missionary records suggest the presence of the occasional San person in these communities, while San war captive children had certainly been more silently assimilated into “Khoekhoe” populations. Further to the east, there were powerful Tswana groups. The LMS created mission stations among the Griqua, at Klaar Water (later Griqua Town), and among the Tswana at Lattakoo (later Kuruman). In the meantime, they also maintained their core missions within the colony itself to people of Khoekhoe descent, who had been dispossessed and largely forced into working for farmers. There were numerous family ties 29

30

Paul Landau, Popular Politics in the History of South Africa, 1400–1948 (Cambridge: ­ ambridge University Press, 2013); Carolyn Hamilton and John Wright, “Moving Beyond C Ethnic Framing: Political Differentiation in the Chiefdoms of the KwaZulu Natal Region before 1830,” Journal of Southern African Studies 43, no. 4 (2017): 663–79. Robert Ross, Adam Kok’s Griquas: A Study in the Development of Stratification in South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).

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between the Griqua and the colonial Khoekhoe, while Khoekhoe people also played key roles in spreading Christianity, including working on new stations both in conjunction with LMS missionaries and as missionaries themselves. In the 1810s, the LMS saw itself as bringing peace to this turbulent region beyond the colony through helping to build more stable polities and creating foci of power in mission stations. This was predicated on the assumption that Christianity was a stabilising force. In practice, however, the missionaries proved dependent on local support, which in turn was tied to their capacity to provide access to guns through colonial connections. This complicated efforts to protect the San. The self-understanding of the LMS was reflected in attempts to create what the missionaries saw as civil society among the diverse migrants to the region, following classic Scottish Enlightenment precepts. In 1814, for example, visiting director John Campbell, who was on a tour of inspection of southern African missions, urged the diverse community at the missionary station of Klaar Water to call themselves ‘Griqua’ rather than the more disreputable ‘basters,’ or bastards. Campbell tried to persuade the group to remain in one place and to separate out believers and unbelievers in different living areas.31 He also persuaded the community to draw up a formal law code, on the assumption that they did not previously have laws. The rule of law was presumed to be the marker of civilisation that would in turn create the necessary conditions for social and spiritual advancement. As Saliha Belmessous has argued, the rule of law was conceived of by some British colonial actors in the early nineteenth century as intrinsically an instrument of assimilation.32 Campbell later recalled how in a town meeting he “endeavoured to explain to them the necessity and design of laws for the government of every society”. Without laws “all would be anarchy and confusion”.33 Under the guidance of the resident missionaries and of the Griqua Captains, the community agreed to the creation of a magistracy and to the institution of a relatively harsh law code that included an automatic death penalty for “wilful murder”. “The execution to be always public,” the code added, “either by hanging or shooting”.34 This law code was crafted to have an impact on commandoes against the San. The punishment was to be the same for murdering a “Bushman, Coranna, 31

Linda Waldman, The Griqua Conundrum: Political and Socio-Cultural Identity in the ­ orthern Cape, South Africa (Bern: Peter Lang, 2007), 63. N 32 Saliha Belmessous, Assimilation and Empire: Uniformity in French and British Colonies, 1541–1954 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 33 John Campbell, Travels in South Africa: Undertaken at the Request of the Missionary Society (London: T. Rutt, for the author, 1815), 350. 34 Campbell, Travels in South Africa, 351.

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or any stranger” as for murdering a Griqua. Furthermore, “going upon a commando for plunder” was to be punished by a term of labour, and the stolen property had to be returned to its owners.35 The introduction of a written law code was accompanied by the creation of currency (or at least the promise that people could apply to Britain to have currency minted). The coins, minted in 1815, bore the emblem of the LMS, a dove with an olive branch in its mouth, symbolizing peace—though they were not in fact ever widely circulated (a loose facsimile was reissued in 2015, however, to commemorate South ­Africa’s first coinage).36 Whether intentionally or not, the introduction of coinage recalls John Locke’s argument in the Second Treatise on Civil Government, a notable handbook for colonialism, that the invention of money spurred the retreat of man from the state of nature through permitting the accumulation of property: introducing money was a step on the road to peace.37 Whatever its theoretical stance, the LMS had difficulty imposing itself in practice. This is particularly clear from the opposition from all sides to the missionary policy of trying to halt commandoes against the San—and indeed from the fact that men associated with the LMS occasionally even participated in commandoes themselves. The Tswana under Mothibi at Lattakoo had initially encouraged the possibility of a mission before (temporarily) rejecting it.38 An embassy to Lattakoo of Evans, Corner, and Robert Hamilton in 1816 was turned back with the argument, in Evans’ words, that “[t]he people must hunt, prepare skins, herd the cattle, go on commando. Moreover we have many customs among us as a nation: such as Circumcision, painting the bodies; the people will not be so inclined”.39 Griqua Town missionary William Anderson noted that Coenraad de Buys, fugitive from the colony and local power broker, had been visited by Mothibi, who had invited him to “assist him upon his commandos”.40 The Kora (or Korana), a semi-nomadic Khoekhoe group that had also trekked into the area with guns and horses in the late eighteenth century,

35 Campbell, Travels in South Africa, 352. 36 Campbell, Travels in South Africa, 354; South African Mint, “In the News – New R5,” http:// www.samint.co.za/news-new-r5/ (accessed 12 August 2020). 37 John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge ­University Press, 1961 [1689]), Book II, 5.37. 38 Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, vol. 1: Christianity, ­Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). 39 Evan Evans, Robert Hamilton, and William Corner to LMS directors, Griqua Town, 27 May 1816, LMS-SA 6/3/C. 40 William Anderson to George Burder, Griqua Town, 19 April 1816, LMS-SA 6/3/C.

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rejected an LMS mission at the same time, although the reasons are less clear. The Kora were, however, deeply involved in the raiding economy. Meanwhile the newly-named Griqua were infuriated by government efforts to use the missionaries to conscript into the colonial militia. They also resisted attempted controls on their military activities and on access to guns and ­gunpowder. At Griqua Town, head missionary William Anderson bore the brunt of Griqua concerns about his efforts to prevent commando raids and to control ammunition supplies. Anderson may have been unpopular for other reasons as well. In a long letter in mid 1816 in which he discussed resistance to his rule, Anderson also recounted his struggles with Khoekhoe evangelist Cupido Kakkerlak, who had come north from the colonial mission station of Bethelsdorp and served as an interpreter with the San. Kakkerlak held loud revivals all night long, of which Anderson complained bitterly. “I told our ­people I had nothing against singing but why must it be done in the Night – I have had much to do to put a stop to it”. Cupido said, however, that these practices had occasioned an ‘awakening’ at Bethelsdorp, and complained privately that he had been greatly abused.41 Anderson confronted a more serious problem in the shape of a breakaway ­ faction whom historians have called the Hartenaars. Following a long-­established pattern of discontented factions moving to new lands, the Hartenaars left to create a new settlement by the Harts River. According to Anderson, the Hartenaars expressed their political independence through rejection of Christianity and Dutch culture: They had given [up] all religious worship, had Meattings [sic] for the purpose of introducing such things as might tend to testify to their aversion to it, they had bound themselves not to speak Dutch nor ask after each other’s welfare &c &c one was heard to say “talk no more of instruction to save the Soul, my Soul is for the Hell to Burn to Burn”. Struggles over this group’s defection illustrate both missionary fragility and links between the politics of Christianity and struggles over guns. Barend ­Barends led an armed group from Griqua Town to investigate the Hartenaar settlement. This party brought some of the ‘rebels’ back at gunpoint. At a meeting the following day with Barends’ men and Griqua captains, Barends 41

William Anderson to George Burder, Griqua Town, 19 April 1816, LMS-SA, 6/3/C; Cupido Kakkerlak to James Read, Griqua Town, 29 May 1816, LMS-SA 6/3/C (translated extract, possibly forwarded to LMS directors by James Read). See also: V. C. Malherbe, “The Life and Times of Cupido Kakkerlak,” The Journal of African History 20, no. 3 (1979): 365–78.

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reported that the Hartenaar leader A. N. Kok had ordered Barends “to tell me [Anderson] in my face yes not to forget to do it that I was the cause of all the evil among them”. Barends claimed the Hartenaars planned to unite with other disaffected people at Griqua Town, attack the mission station, shoot Anderson and Griqua leader Adam Kok, and “become masters of the Gunpowder”. “Adam the Captain said I can do nothing, I know not who to depend upon, I have long heard of the threatening of your life and wished you safe away since I cannot protect you”. The less threatened subordinate missionary Helm shortly thereafter held a public meeting, however, at which he learned that discontent arose from the head missionary’s refusal to provide gunpowder and to “sanction the Commandoes against the poor Boschesmans”. Helm told them no missionary would support commandoes and warned of the consequences of sending Anderson away. The crisis, only one in an ongoing series, was temporarily resolved when the people decided to allow Anderson to stay and those who had threated to kill Anderson were forcibly removed from the station.42 None of this suggested a missionary capacity to broker peace. Instead, the missionaries needed protection themselves. And paradoxically, Griqua groups needed missionaries in order to remain in the relatively good graces of the c­ olony which was, legally or illegally, their primary source of guns and ­ammunition. It is perhaps ironic that William Corner, who was at Griqua Town as these events unfolded, commented to the home society that “[l[ately a commando went out in quest of the Rabbles [rebels] and brought them home”.43 Missionaries had, therefore, to fight hard to control their supposed followers, on whom they were frequently dependent. The pressures were even ­stronger on the mostly Khoekhoe people from the Cape Colony, such as ­Kakkerlak, who formed the backbone of missions in the region beyond the Gariep and often worked as evangelists themselves; this group included the 29 men and women from the colonial mission station of Bethelsdorp who accompanied the missionary James Read to found a mission to the Tswana. Examples from the diary of Kuruman missionary Robert Hamilton, which I have discussed in greater detail elsewhere, illustrate not only the ubiquity of San cattle raiding and of Griqua and Tswana commandoes in response but also the involvement of the mission itself in conflict, even as the missionaries tried

42 43

William Anderson to George Burder, Griqua Town, April 19 1816, LMS-SA 6/3/C. William Corner to Burder, Griquatown, 24 April 1816, LMS-SA 6/3/C.

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to broker peace.44 There was a mounting environmental and political crisis in the wider region, food was scarce and the Tswana and the San were competing for land and resources. Hamilton’s diaries indicate that sometimes he helped provide men for commandoes to get back cattle (despite acrimonious conflict on this point) and that the mission itself sponsored commandoes when their own cattle were stolen. Khoekhoe inhabitants of the mission station were sometimes pressured by the Tswana chief Mothibi to bring their guns to bear during military attacks on San cattle thieves, perhaps particularly after head missionary James Read was recalled to the Cape Colony to be disciplined for the sin of adultery. On a second tour of inspection of LMS missions, LMS director John Campbell visited Kuruman in March 1820. Mothibi and other Tswana claimed that they had abandoned “commandoes against their neighbour to capture their cattle” as a result of missionary influence; Mothibi bargained instead for guns to kill game as a result of diminished access to cattle. This did not mean that violence against the San had ceased. During his visit, Campbell also recorded his observations of a six-day expedition against the San to recover stolen cattle, including LMS property, in which most of the men of the village participated, including Khoekhoe men associated with the mission.45 Later that year, in August, when he was the only white male missionary on the station, Hamilton refused Mothibi’s request to send “some of our men” on a “commando against the Boshesmen”. He tellingly stated that he would “abide by our first determination which was to preach the Gospel only, and to have nothing to do with their Government or Commandos, that we would assist them in going after their Cattle when taken, but to assent to go to kill all without exception, I could not assent to”.46 This was at times a relatively fine distinction, however, given the death rates on commandoes to get back cattle. Other entries in Hamilton’s diary in fact show the difficulty of making that distinction. In August 1818, Khoekhoe evangelists Andries Stoffels and Jan Hendriks accompanied a commando in quest of cattle stolen from Hendriks. Hamilton wrote that Hendriks and Stoffels tried to mitigate the violence of the attack on a cave in which the San were living, including protecting women

44 45 46

See Elizabeth Elbourne, “Violence, Moral Imperialism and Colonial Borderlands, 1770s–1820s: Some Contradictions of Humanitarianism,” Journal of Colonialism and C ­ olonial History 17, no. 1 (2016): doi:10.1353/cch.2016.0003. John Campbell, Travels in South Africa Undertaken at the Request of the London Missionary Society, Being a Narrative of a Second Journey in the Interior of that Country, vol. 1 (London: Francis Eestley, 1822), 74, 87–88. Journal of Robert Hamilton, Kuruman, 1820: 15 August 1820, LMS-SA Journals, Box 3.

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and children, but were unsuccessful in persuading the commando to spare the lives of two wounded men: Tyso the Betchauna [Tswana] Captain wished to kill one of them. John refused and said that the Cattle were his and that he had a right to do with the Boshesmen what he pleased. But nothing would restrain them, they fell upon them and killed them both. Mothibi and his men responded furiously to what they saw as insubordination. “Much discontented”, they threatened to move the town away from the missionaries altogether. Shortly thereafter, Mothibi called a meeting before which men paraded through the town in battle gear before going through the “action of war” at Mothibi’s homestead. After listening to a lengthy harangue in which Mothibi insisted on his authority and forced “the Dutch” to sit down and listen to him, the mission party finally agreed to accept that the attacks on the San were matters of internal policy.47 Access to guns facilitated the mission’s presence but also created pressures to participate in, or at least sanction, raids against the San. A later example from Griqua Town further illustrates the difficulty of finessing commandoes. In April 1820 Hamilton recorded that “Short Adam Kok”, the “captain” at Griqua Town, had sent out two commandoes against San cattle raiders with instructions not to kill them but to bring thieves back for public trial in the Cape Colony. “The first Commando shot two Boshemen [sic] after having retaken all the cattle, the second Commando murdered 5 men 6 women and 2 children by beating out thire [sic] brains with stones, after they had given themselves up as prisoners, five of those men were Church Members who are to be excluded from the church”.48 This suggests that Griqua leaders themselves could not always control their men. Hamilton’s diaries also give insight into the diplomatic efforts of colonial official Andries Stockenström, the landdrost, or district administrator of the colonial frontier district of Graaff Reinet in the Eastern Cape, to broker his own form of peace. In mid August 1820, a deputation including Stockenström (as well as “Miss Stockenström” and “many other gentlemen”) arrived to meet with Mothibi’s Tswana. Stockenström encouraged the Tswana to kill only men in raids against the San. In Hamilton’s account, Mothibi replied that children would grow up to steal as well. Stockenström replied that “if they would bring 47 48

Journal of Robert Hamilton, Kuruman, 8 April 1818–30 April 1819: 5–10 August 1818, LMS-SA, Journals, Box 3, file 68. Journal of Robert Hamilton, Kuruman, 1820: 30 April 1820, LMS-SA, Journals, Box 3.

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them to him in the Colony he would pay them for it and they should trouble them no more”. Later, when Mothibi again bargained for, among other things, horses, guns, powder, and lead, Stockenström said “that if they would not kill women and Children of the Boschesemen that he would speak to the governor, about what they asked, which they at last consented to”.49 Stockenström’s offer is of particular interest because of the light it sheds on a possible slave trade into the Cape Colony, albeit one that might be seen by some participants as humanitarian.50 This would become all the more complicated in the 1820s and 30s. The LMS’s consistent support of Griqua factions as agents of peace was founded on the conviction that strong local authorities would help impose peace, but the policy was in many respects unrealistic and contradictory, strengthening the hand of the Griqua against the San, as Edward Cavanagh and Norman Etherington have argued. As Etherington puts it, John Philip’s continued support for the “Griqua strategy” increasingly placed him in an “embarrassingly false position”. To cite Etherington further: “On the one hand, he condemned the Boers’ commandoes, sale of captured children and use of forced labour. On the other, he ignored the Griqua’s employment of the same policies, trusting that the gospel would eventually make them agents of peace and justice”.51 Ultimately, it was to be the British empire that would look like the more reliable state builder and guarantor of stability to Philip, particularly as migrant Afrikaners flooded into the region. 5

Killing Grounds: Missions to the San

It was in this tense and violent environment that the LMS created two new stations to the San, Toornberg in 1814 and Hepzibah in 1816, in territory that lay in what John Philip would later term ‘Bushmanland’, beyond the eastern

49 50

51

Journal of Robert Hamilton, Kuruman, 1820: August 1820, LMS-SA, Journals, Box 3. The extent of a covert colonial slave trade has been one of several key issues in extensive scholarly disputes about the overall sources and meaning of conflict in southeastern Africa in the early nineteenth century. See: Carolyn Hamilton, ed., Mfecane Aftermath: Reconstructive Debates in Southern African History (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 1995) Norman Etherington, The Great Treks: The Transformation of Southern Africa 1815–1854 (Harlow: Longman, 2001), 94; Edward Cavanagh, “‘We Exterminated Them, and Dr. Philip Gave the Country’: The Griqua People and the Elimination of San from South Africa’s Transorangia Region,” in Genocide on Settler Frontiers, ed. Adhikari, 88–107.

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frontiers of the colony.52 The two ‘bushman’ stations were headed by Erasmus Smit, a Dutch-speaker who would later become a minister to the trekboers, and William Corner, who was from Demerara (Guyana) via Britain and had formerly been enslaved. It is revealing, however, that once again these m ­ issions were embroiled in regional politics and were subject to competition. Corner informed the LMS directors in 1816 that he had had to abandon an earlier projected mission to the San at “Makoon’s”, because “some of Mr. Anderson’s People” from Griquatown had gone and “took possession of the place”. The ­missionaries therefore decided that the mission could not proceed until the interlopers were expelled, “As Bosjesmen and Oorlams, or civilised ­Heathens, would never agree together! Especially while they have so ill treated the Bosjesmen!”53 A small collection of letters from missionary perspectives suggest that once Corner did establish a station, he was popular with the San and that his adherents were at least initially responsive. “They are constant attenders to the word and seem to take a delight in hearing it they sit with Eyes and Mouths open! and I hope their hearts are opened and shall still more effectually be opened! Yea I say they sit with tears in their Eyes!” wrote Corner in 1816.54 “There is general concern among the Bushmen and everywhere they are heard praying at least in this neighbourhood”, affirmed James Read from Toornberg in late 1816.55 Indeed, some community members continued to pray after the Cape government shut down the mission stations in 1817. In 1818, Robert Hamilton’s wife and fellow missionary Ann Hamilton travelled by the abandoned stations. At “Poor Hephsibah”, she observed, “we found a few who sang & prayed notwithstanding they have no Missionary say they are determined to pray till the lord again sends his word among them”.56 Smit’s mission was less successful, and the San rapidly left him. Mission records also suggest that even in the 1810s San populations were rapidly falling. Jared McDonald makes a convincing argument concerning the final concerted LMS efforts at a “Bushman” mission station in the region from 1828 to 1833, that at least some San people were interested in experimenting with new economic and cultural forms and that San people cannot be seen as monolithic or inherently static.57 Given the paucity 52 53 54 55 56 57

Schoeman, “Die Londense Sendinggenootskap en die San: Die Stasies Toornberg en Hephzibah, 1814–1818.” William Corner to Hardcastle, Graaff Reinet, 2 September 1816, LMS-SA 6/4/A. William Corner to John Campbell, Hepzibah, 12 October 1816, LMS-SA 6/4/C. James Read to LMS, Grace Hill [Toornberg], 17 September 1816, LMS-SA 6/4/B. Ann Hamilton to LMS Directors, 24 September 1818, LMS-SA 7/5/B. Jared McDonald, “Encounters at ‘Bushman Station’: Reflections on the Fate of the San of the Transgariep Frontier, 1828–1833,” South African Historical Journal 61, no.2 (2009): 372–88.

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of records it is difficult to generalise. It is plausible, however, that the extraordinarily difficult situation of the San by the 1810s may have made the temporary shelter of a mission station attractive, while some may well have been interested in new sources of spiritual power. Be that as it may, and despite the potentially pro-imperial impact of these missions, in 1817 the conservative-aligned governor Lord Charles Somerset ordered the stations to be closed and the missionaries to return to the colony. The closure came in the context of anxiety about missionary radicalism, complaints from settler farmers about restrictions on access to labour, and security concerns. There is a much larger story to be told here about the overall history of the LMS in South Africa and the explosion of tensions in 1817 around both political struggles and the enmeshing of the missionaries in a series of sexual scandals. The primary motivation of farmers in fighting to shut down the missions seems to have been, however, to continue to have access to San labourers. It is also important that the internal collapse of the LMS, and possibly the fact that the San missions were largely staffed by non-white people of relatively low status, made it difficult for the Society to resist. Corner and Smit were summoned to Graaff Reinet, within the colony, to await a meeting with the Governor Lord Somerset himself, only to be kept cooling their heels for two months. The formerly enslaved Corner wrote to his London superiors that the “Boer” farmers wanted to force the San into their service, even though the San were technically free. “That the Bosjesmen are compelled in service of the Boers, and are sufficiently held in slavery is true and seems to be countenanced by Government in favour of the Farmers. That the Missionaries should deliver the Bosjesmen to the Boors whether they are willing to go or not, therefore compulsion must be used, is the real sentiment of Government”.58 Revealingly, Corner combined his concerns with mission stations being forced to turn San over to farmers with concerns over stations beyond the colonial boundary also being expected to return escaped slaves, including sending out armed commandoes to recapture escaped slaves. Somerset informed Corner that he could have a new mission station within the colony. Stockenström, privately told Corner after the Governor’s departure, however, that if he established a “second Bethelsdorp or Theopolis” (LMS missions to the Khoekhoe that were seen as politically troublesome and morally lax) “that he shall be obliged to write to Government not only to abolish the Mission but to root it out by its root […] and take every man bound to Graaff

58

William Corner to LMS, Bethelsdorp, 26 July 1817, LMS-SA.

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Reinet”.59 This underscores the extent to which even the nominally free inhabitants of mission stations were seen as essentially slaves. Corner also obtained copies of letters between Stockenström and Somerset, in which Stockenström reported that Smit was asking to relocate because his mission to the San at Toornberg had failed: “that the Boosjesmen, after having declared their suspicions, that the missionaries were only come among them, to betray them into the hands of the Colonists, at length left the School, saying that they never could understand what he Mr S pretended to teach them, and returned soon after, with apparent signs of hostile intention”.60 Stockenström argued that the San would be initially attracted by food but that Smit would not have the means to maintain the food supply without assistance from the farmers, “who are not likely to contribute much towards an establishment which deprives them of servants without which they cannot carry on their business”. Without food, the San would leave again but refuse to enter the service of farmers and “resort to their former vagabond life and rob for their subsistence”. It would be more beneficial for the missionary to travel from farm to farm and stay at each for several months at a time, instructing both farmers and labourers.61 Somerset responded warmly to this suggestion, commenting that Smit should indeed instruct “Bosjesman” farm workers in situ rather than drawing together “the Labourers of that thinly inhabited Country to the great injury of the Settlers.”62 The clear implication of these discussions is that government officials at both the central and local level saw the San as coerced labourers who should not be allowed to leave farms. This reflected the treatment of Khoekhoe labourers in the colony, but went a step further in a­ ccepting the jurisdiction of farmers over San brought to the colony from outside its borders. Unexpressed was the question of where these San labourers came from in the first place. Another implicit assumption was that the San would be civilised through farm work. 6

Child Trading and the Ambivalences of Humanitarianism

LMS peace policy towards the San was thus in constant interaction with colonial realities, imperial policy, and the shifting approaches of Cape administrators, 59 60 61 62

William Corner to LMS, Bethelsdorp, 26 July 1817, LMS-SA 7/2/B. William Corner to LMS, Bethelsdorp, 26 July 1817, LMS-SA 7/2/B. Andries Stockenström to Lt. Col. Bird, Deputy Colonial Secretary [date not given], copied in William Corner to LMS, Bethelsdorp, 26 July 1817, LMS-SA 7/2/B. Cited in William Corner to LMS, Bethelsdorp, 26 July 1817, LMS-SA 7/2/B.

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some of whom also attempted reforms. These dynamics were evident in a further example, relating to child theft by Jacob Theron and his tangling with Graaff-Reinet landdrost Andries Stockenström. This case shows the prevalence of a colonial trade in children. It also reveals the way that humanitarian attitudes to the San were complicated by would-be humanitarian claims by farmers that they too cared for the San, in terms that mimicked paternalistic missionary languages about assimilation. In 1818, Jacob Theron, a farmer and ‘hawker’, or itinerant trader, wrote in indignation to the Colonial Secretary complaining that two San children had been seized from him by Stockenström. He stated that he had “procured in a kraal thro’ the medium of two Inhabitants each named Britz two Bosjesmans children intending to bring them to Cape Town for such further purposes as Memorialist might find their Services adapted”, only to have them seized by Stockenström. Your Memorialist in praying Your Lordship to cause these two Bojsemans children to be restored begs humbly to represent that it was without the very slightest cause whatever that these two Bosjesmans children were even by violence seized and taken from your memorialist and on a day too, which every Christian is supposed and ought to devote to his creator “The Sabbath!” – If there exists a power in this country that can at discretion make an individual its victim, that can invade the most sacred and private property and with impunity can inflict the most grievous injuries, and to a [?] of any feeling the most galling torture, then do British ­subjects grossly deceive themselves in fondly considering their boasted constitution and their established laws as a firm Bulwark against the ­lawless attacks of arbitrary power.63 Theron was banished from the Cape Colony as a result of a series of conflicts, including this clash with Stockenström. He travelled to London and petitioned to have his banishment overturned. The documents that made their way to the Colonial Office, including the Cape Fiscal’s report on Theron’s complaints and lengthy correspondence with Stockenström, suggest that Theron was indeed trying to trade the children, due to a number of inconsistencies in his story. Two points emerge with particular clarity. The first is that Stockenström distinguished between an honourable and dishonourable form of interaction with San children. Theron was cruel and the children had to be taken from 63

Memorial of Jacob Theron to Lord Charles Somerset, 15 June 1818, CO 3912, Archives of the Western Cape, South Africa.

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him. They were given, however, to a worthy and humane ‘protector’, the undersheriff Londt. The children “became so much attached to him, his wife and children that when he left his situation in 1820 and the Girls remained undisposed of it would have been cruelty to have separated them”. The family was now in Stellenbosch, where it would doubtless be possible to find the “Girls with him and happy, most likely apprenticed to him according to law”. Later in the file the girls’ indenture papers were indeed produced: Lys, aged 11, and Flora aged 10 had both been ‘apprenticed’ to serve Londt without pay until the age of 20 years old.64 A second point is that Stockenström nonetheless outlined the practice of enslaving and trading San children with great clarity and suggested a system of indentureship that would parallel the treatment of Khoekhoe children raised on white farms. This letter would be partially published in parliamentary papers pertaining to the treatment of the San in the mid-1830s, in the context of the Select Committee on Aborigines and of parliamentary debate about the treatment of Indigenous peoples. The second half that gave details about slave trading was, however, omitted from this publication. The example illustrates the availability of a paternalistic language about the ‘protection’ of vulnerable children that was relatively widespread, and indeed influential in some missionary circles as well. In 1818, in part as a result of Stockenström’s representations, Lord Somerset issued a proclamation that limited the conditions under which ‘inhabitants’ might receive Bushmen children, with a number of significant loopholes. The proclamation then went on to codify apprenticeship laws for Bushmen children in parallel with those applicable to Khoekhoe children within the colony: in exchange for maintenance of an infant or young child for a certain amount of time, an inhabitant might apprentice the child for ten years; should the inhabitant not be able or willing to finish the apprenticeship, the landdrost might transfer the apprenticeship to another “humane person within his district”. This broad legislative regime would be taken by Afrikaner farmers into the interior and used well into the nineteenth century. Jan C. A. Boeyens shows, for example, that in the short-lived trekboer republic of Zoutpansberg, deeds of child apprenticeship were transferred with the children across long distances and used as a fig leaf for slave trading; he further demonstrates that the acquisition of children continued to be carried out through commando raids.65 64 65

“Case of Jacob Theron,” CO48/99, Colonial Office Records, British Archives, Kew, United Kingdom. Jan C. A. Boeyens, “The Indenture System and Slavery in Zoutpansberg,” in Slavery in South Africa, eds. Eldredge and Morton, 187–214.

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It is instructive to contrast a glimpse of the life of another San child available in the letters of James Read, as he worked to create a mission to the San in 1816. In addition to Cupido Kakkerlak, the mission had a second interpreter, a boy about fourteen years old. Two years ago, Read reported, the boy was among the “wild Bushmen”. Having no parents, he “was given to a farmer for sheep (a practice very common behind Sneeuwberg and of which I intend to give information to Government), in a year he acquired the Dutch Language and ran away to Br Smith his Master fetched him back, and used different means to keep him but he constantly ran away, so that his master at last desisted fetching him and thus he has remained”. Missions provided an alternative to servitude, as I and others have argued elsewhere, but it must be underscored that children such as this boy, and indeed ‘Lys’ and ‘Flora’, had very limited options. 7

John Philip and Researches in South Africa

In 1828 the crusading African superintendent of the London Missionary S­ ociety, John Philip, who had replaced the disgraced James Read, published a book in London, Researches in South Africa, which attacked colonial abuses. In a section on the “Bushmen”, which got less traction than his exposure of legal abuses of the Khoekhoe, Philip argued that the colonial government was aware in 1818 when it closed the San mission stations that farmers were capturing children in order to enslave them and that famers opposed missions for that reason. He also claimed that more San had died under the British than under the Dutch. If commandoes were no longer as large, it was because the colonial conquest and settlement of San territory had destroyed the power of the San and made it unnecessary to send out large commandoes to capture slaves. “Our ­Bushmen missions were put down in 1818; and since that period, the country has been cleared of the natives as if they had been wild beasts […] Can Englishmen any longer declaim against Dutch inhumanity? Can we any longer hold up the Spaniards to execration for their conduct to the nations of South ­America?”66 Philip went on to argue that what he described as the colonial government covering up abuses had wider implications, including for the possibility of reform in Britain itself. “Let us not suppose, because the Bushmen country measuring 48,000 square miles, is now in the possession of the farmers, that the work of death and destruction in South Africa is now done”, he observed. 66 Philip, Researches in South Africa, vol. 1, 286–87.

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[…] Since the English took possession of the colony of the Cape of Good Hope, we have deprived the Caffers [Xhosa] of the finest parts of their country; we have, according to the testimony of the Commissioners of Inquiry, added to it 48,000 square miles of Bushman country. And we shall proceed, if the present system is continued, till, having treated all the Caffer tribes as some of them have been treated, and the ­Bushmen have been dealt with, we come to fix the boundary of the colony at ­Delagoa Bay, and then we shall order out our commandoes against the inhabitants of Mosambique.67 In 1834, Philip reported in a memorial to the governor of the Cape (later deposited as evidence before the House of Commons Select Committee on Aborigines (British Settlements)) that on a 17-day journey through this territory he “found the country occupied by the boors, and the Boschmen population had disappeared, with the exception of those that had been brought up from infancy in the service of the boors.” On his entire journey he met with “two men and one woman only of the free inhabitants, who had escaped the effects of the commando system, and they were travelling by night, and concealing themselves by day, to escape being shot like wild beasts. Their tale was a lamentable one: their children had been taken from them by the boors, and they were wandering about in this manner from place to place, in the hope of finding out where they were, and of getting a sight of them.”68 It is striking here that Phillip played up the concept of Bushmanland as a bounded place occupied by a nation. In the flux of early nineteenth-century frontiers, to be able to claim nation status was to be able to defend oneself against invasion and land grabbing. Phillip was attempting to create just such a stable identity for the Bushmen, despite problems mapping this statist vision on the reality of hunter-gatherer lives. While these debates were taking place among members of the British elite, warfare continued between the San and the settlers. If Graff Reinet was relatively quiet, the newly settled area of Beaufort saw San attacks on cattle and on herders. In 1829, the Civil Commissioner Van Reynveldt based at Graaff Reinet wrote urgently to the Cape administration enclosing letters from the 67 Philip, Researches in South Africa, vol. 1, 287–78. 68 John Philip to “His Excellency” [Benjamin D’Urban], Cape Town, 13 March 1834, in Appendix No. 1, “Papers Delivered in by the Rev. John Philip, D.D., and Referred to in his Evidence of 15 June 1836”, Report from the Select Committee on Aborigines (British Settlements), Together with the Minutes of Evidence, Appendix and Index, British Parliament, House of Commons Papers, no. 538, 1836, 694.

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magistrate at Beaufort reporting that the San were launching large-scale cattle raids and that inhabitants feared that they were about to be invaded and wished to defend themselves. Van Reynveld wrote back: “It is certainly much to be regretted that this unfortunate race should continue to lead a life such as they have hitherto done, by which means bloodshed is so often the result and nothing would give me more satisfaction than to find out some method of putting a final stop to it”. In the meantime, however, he felt he needed to leave it to the discretion of local officials to determine how best to respond. He subsequently travelled to the district and wrote a report to his colonial superiors stating that it was impossible to get near the Bushmen; they had fled but had poisoned all the water wells behind them. Nonetheless, two children had been left behind. To his great relief, it had proved possible to find the mothers and return the children. This story is murky—why would fleeing San have abandoned their children?—but it surely enabled the worried Van Reynveld to cast himself in the eyes of London as a humane custodian of child welfare.69 The debates of the 1810s and 20s had arguably produced this rhetorical need, even if productive outcomes were relatively few. 8 Conclusions This chapter has examined the efforts of the London Missionary Society to act as peacemakers towards the San in the first two decades of the nineteenth century and the challenges they confronted, despite the optimism with which they began, the desire of other people in the region to broker peace, and some signs of genuine San interest in the uneasy bargains offered by mission stations. There would be further attempts at creating missions to the San by the LMS in the 1820s and early 1830s, but these too proved similarly fragile. The San were increasingly destroyed. Furthermore, the central contradiction ­persisted that the LMS tried to bolster the Griqua, whom Philip continued to see as potential agents of ‘civilisation’, at the expense of the San. The missionaries at the San stations, in addition, were of relatively low status in the colonial racial hierarchy. In the early 1820s, new ‘Bushmen’ stations were opened by K ­ hoekhoe and Griqua ‘native agents’ at Ramah, Konnah, and Philippolis. These stations either closed or were incorporated by the Griqua by 1828. For example, Piet Sabba allowed the Griqua to take over the San mission at Ramah entirely.70 In 1828, 69 70

W. C. van Ryneveld to John Bell, Graaff Reinet, 15 July 1829, CO 2715, Archives of the ­Western Cape. Karel Schoeman, “Die Londense Sendinggenootskap en die San: Die Stasies Ramah, Konnah en Philippolis, 1816–1828,” South African Historical Journal 29 (1993): 132–52.

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the last missionary to be placed at Philippolis, James Clark, withdrew because he felt the station was too dominated by the Griqua. He founded a new station further into San territory; in 1833, however the LMS handed it over to the Paris Missionary Society, which turned it into a mission for baThlaping refugees. In the meantime, emigrant white farmers were completely taking over Bushmanland in addition to capturing, enslaving, and trading San c­ hildren. At this point, the San were almost all dead or incorporated through violence or hunger into the colonial labour force. The violence perpetrated against hunter-gatherers across southern Africa was remarkable. The LMS response was in many ways to try to make the San both rhetorically and in practice into a nation that might be fit into an overall narrative about the peace between nations brought by the gospel. They also sought to civilise the San. This required the creation of settled space, most acutely symbolised by the mission station and its efforts to make nomadic hunter-gatherers sedentary. This fit into a prior commitment by the LMS, as was the case with so many other missionary societies, to make nomadic peoples into settled and civilised communities. At the same time, LMS agents tried unsuccessfully to persuade Tswana, Griqua, and Afrikaner groups not to attack the San indiscriminately, even as they themselves supported commando attacks to retrieve stolen cattle that often ended in killing and the theft of children. On an imaginative level, then, the LMS also promoted the San, in LMS literature and in representations to governments, as in possession of their own territory, termed Bushmanland by John Philip. This was a move that would allow the San to become recognisable in a nascent version of international law. To be disorganised was to be unrecognisable and vulnerable. To be a nation was to have a claim to territory. This strategy of course did not work in the face of the inexorable forces of violence and labour coercion at work in southern Africa where the San were subject to genocide, to adopt a modern term. Nor could it withstand the processes of competition for resources in which the missionaries themselves were often complicit. I have suggested that outside the protections of a colonial state, the LMS depended on relationships with local power brokers, and its agents were in practice relatively vulnerable to local resistance in the 1800s and 1810s. It may not be surprising that Philip, among others, would eventually look to an alliance with the imperial centre against the many local enemies of peace—in this respect the LMS was not the last humanitarian agency to gamble on centralised power as way to bring peace. Although hunter-gatherers fought for many years, they did not control sufficient resources, as game dwindled in the face of settlement, to be able to defend their lands or ways of life. In the process, they were consistently

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defined as wild, uncivilised, and violent. Missionaries’ ideas about peacemaking in some respects entrenched this image. None of this is to assume, however, that San people themselves had no interest in innovating to make peace, as fragments of evidence from LMS papers suggest. Such fragments hint, for example, at San interest in prayer, participation in negotiations, and decisions to stay at least temporarily at mission stations. It might be inappropriate to fill in too many of the blanks these papers leave. Nonetheless, it is also important to stress that San people were not in fact outside the realm of politics and regional cultures, despite deadly conflict between hunters and pastoralists, but were embedded in multiple ways. These were encounters in a deadly environment that transformed all involved, but rarely in ways missionaries had imagined in advance. Bibliography Adhikari, Mohamed. The Anatomy of a South African Genocide: The Extermination of the Cape San Peoples. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2011. Barrow, John. An Account of Travels into the Interior of Southern Africa, in the Years 1797 and 1798, vol. 1. 2nd ed. London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1806. Belmessous, Saliha. Assimilation and Empire: Uniformity in French and British Colonies, 1541–1954. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Boeyens, Jan C. A. “The Indenture System and Slavery in Zoutpansberg.” In Slavery in South Africa: Captive Labour on the Dutch Frontier, edited by Elizabeth Eldredge and Fred Morton, 187–214. Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1994. Campbell, John. Travels in South Africa: Undertaken at the Request of the Missionary Society. London: T. Rutt, for the author, 1815. Campbell, John. Travels in South Africa Undertaken at the Request of the London Missionary Society, Being a Narrative of a Second Journey in the Interior of that Country, vol. 1. London: Francis Eestley, 1822. Cavanagh, Edward. “‘We Exterminated Them, and Dr. Philip Gave the Country’: The Griqua People and the Elimination of San from South Africa’s Transorangia Region.” In Genocide on Settler Frontiers: When Hunter-Gatherers and Commercial Stock Farmers Clash, edited by Mohamed Adhikari, 88–107. New York: Berghahn, 2015. Cockin, Joseph. “God’s Declared Designs a Motive to Human Endeavours.” In Joseph Cockin, J. Brewer, Robert Balfour, and George West. Four Sermons, Preached in London at the Fourth General Meeting of the Missionary Society, May 9, 10, 11, 1798, vol. II. London: printed for T. Chapman, 1798. Colonial Office Records, CO48. British Archives, Kew, United Kingdom. Colonial Office Records, CO 2715, CO 3912. Archives of the Western Cape, South Africa.

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Comaroff, Jean, and John L. Comaroff. Of Revelation and Revolution, vol. 1: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Cox, Jeffrey. The British Missionary Enterprise since 1700. New York and London: ­Routledge, 2008. Elbourne, Elizabeth. “Violence, Moral Imperialism and Colonial Borderlands, 1770s– 1820s: Some Contradictions of Humanitarianism.” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 17, no. 1 (2016): doi:10.1353/cch.2016.0003. Elbourne, Elizabeth. Blood Ground, Colonialism, Missions, and the Context for Christianity in the Cape Colony and Britain, 1799–1853. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2002. Eldredge, Elizabeth, and Fred Morton, eds. Slavery in South Africa: Captive Labour on the Dutch Frontier. Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1994. Ethridge, Robbie, and Sheri M. Shuck-Hall, eds. Mapping the Mississippian Shatter Zone: The Colonial Indian Slave Trade and Regional Instability in the American South. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009. Etherington, Norman. The Great Treks: The Transformation of Southern Africa 1815–1854. Harlow: Longman, 2001. Greer, Allan. Property and Dispossession: Natives, Empires and Land in Early Modern North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Hamilton, Carolyn, ed. Mfecane Aftermath: Reconstructive Debates in Southern African History. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 1995. Hamilton, Carolyn, and John Wright. “Moving Beyond Ethnic Framing: Political ­Differentiation in the Chiefdoms of the KwaZulu Natal Region before 1830.” Journal of Southern African Studies 43, no. 4 (2017): 663–79. Hill, Lisa. “Adam Smith on War (and Peace).” In British International Thinkers from Hobbes to Namier. Palgrave Macmillan History of International Thought, edited by Ian Hall and Lisa Hill, 71–89. London: Palgrave Macmillian, 2009. Keegan, Tim. Dr Philip’s Empire: One Man’s Struggle for Justice in Nineteenth-Century South Africa. Cape Town: Zebra Press, 2016. Lambert, George. “The Gospel the Greatest of Blessings, both in its Nature and Effects.” In George Lambert, Thomas Pentycross, William Jay, and David Jones. Four Sermons Preached in London, at the Second General Meeting of the Missionary Society, May 11, 12, 13, 1796. London: T. Chapman, 1796. Landau, Paul. Popular Politics in the History of South Africa, 1400–1948. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Legassick, Martin. The Politics of a South African Frontier: The Griqua, the Sotho-Tswana and the Missionaries, 1780–1840. Basel: Basler Afrika Bibliographien, 2010. Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961.

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London Missionary Society, South Africa, Incoming Correspondence. Council for World Mission Archives, School for Oriental and African Studies, London, United Kingdom. Malherbe, V. C. “The Life and Times of Cupido Kakkerlak.” The Journal of African H ­ istory 20, no. 3 (1979): 365–78. McDonald, Jared. “Encounters at ‘Bushman Station’: Reflections on the Fate of the San of the Transgariep Frontier, 1828–1833.” South African Historical Journal 61, no.2 (2009): 372–88. McDonald, Jared. “‘Like a Wild Beast, He Can be Got for the Catching’: Child Forced Labour and the ‘Taming’ of the San along the Cape’s North-Eastern Frontier, c.1806–1830.” In Genocide on Settler Frontiers: When Hunter-Gatherers and Commercial Stock Farmers Clash, edited by Mohamed Adhikari, 60–87. New York: Berghahn, 2015. Newton-King, Susan. Masters and Servants on the Cape Eastern Frontier, 1760–1803. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Penn, Nigel. “The British and the ‘Bushmen’: The Massacre of the Cape San, 1795–1828.” Journal of Genocide Research 15, no. 2 (2013): 183–200. Penn, Nigel. “‘Civilizing’ the San: The First Mission to the Cape San, 1791–1806.” In Claim to the Country: The Archive of Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd, edited by Pippa Skotnes, 90–117. Cape Town: Jacana Media, 2007. Penn, Nigel. The Forgotten Frontier: Colonist and Khoisan on the Cape’s Northern ­Frontier in the 18th Century. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2006. Philip, John. Researches in South Africa, Illustrating the Civil, Moral, and Religious ­Condition of the Native Tribes. 2 vols. London: James Duncan, 1828. Reiss, H. S., ed. Kant: Political Writings, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Report from the Select Committee on Aborigines (British Settlements), Together with the Minutes of Evidence, Appendix and Index. British Parliament, House of Commons Papers, no. 538, 1836. Ross, Andrew. John Philip (1775–1851): Missions, Race and Politics in South Africa. ­Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1986. Ross, Robert. Adam Kok’s Griquas: A Study in the Development of Stratification in South Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976. Rutz, Michael A. “‘Meddling with Politics’: The Political Role of Foreign Missions in the Early Nineteenth Century.” Parliamentary History 27, no. 1 (2008): 109–118. Schoeman, Karel. “Die Londense Sendinggenootskap en die San: Die Stasies Ramah, Konnah en Philippolis, 1816–1828.” South African Historical Journal 29 (1993): 132–52. Schoeman, Karel. “Die Londense Sendinggenootskap en die San: Die Stasies Toornberg en Hephzibah, 1814–1818.” South African Historical Journal 28, no. 1 (1993): 221–34.

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­ frican Schoeman, Karel. J. J. Kicherer en die vroeë sending, 1799–1806. Cape Town: South A Library, 1996. Skotnes, Pippa, ed. Claim to the Country: The Archive of Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2007. Snodgrass, John. Prospects of Providence Respecting the Conversion of the World to Christ: A Sermon, Preached Before the Paisley London Missionary Society on Friday, June 10th, 1796. Paisley: J. Neilson, 1796. South African Mint. “In the News – New R5”. http://www.samint.co.za/news-new-r5/ (accessed 12 August 2020). Transactions of the London Missionary Society, vol 1. London: Bye and Law, 1804. Van Sittert, Lance and Thierry Rousset. “‘An Unbroken Line of Crimes and Blood’: ­Settler Militia and the Extermination and Enslavement of San in the Graaff-Reinet District of the Cape Colony, c. 1776–1825”. In Civilian-Driven Violence and the Genocide of Indigenous Peoples in Settler Societies, edited by Mohamed Adhikari, 86–113. London and New York: Routledge, 2019. Waldman, Linda. The Griqua Conundrum: Political and Socio-Cultural Identity in the Northern Cape, South Africa. Bern: Peter Lang, 2007.

Chapter 3

Te Ngara’s Journey: The Gospel of Peace and the Melanesian Mission Jane Samson 1 Introduction Led after 1861 by Bishop John Coleridge Patteson, the Melanesian Mission was unique among the Pacific missions of the nineteenth century. Conceptualised as a mission to facilitate the rapid growth of a fully Melanesian church, it focused on the education of Melanesian children for ministry to their own people by bringing them from various islands to a central school in New ­Zealand. There it enlisted the help of Christian Māori teachers, including ­Eruera Karaka Te Ngara.1 I recently uncovered the handwritten journal of his voyage to the Melanesian islands in 1862: a rare Indigenous voice concerning other ­Indigenous peoples.2 Te Ngara’s voice invites an alternative perspective on the hostility or amity shown to Bishop Patteson and other members of the mission staff during the voyage, especially when read alongside Patteson’s own account of the voyage. It gives us a rare non-European reflection on prejudice against Melanesians, and includes formerly unknown details about the fate of Mene, an Eromangan teacher who survived the violent 1861 attack on the Presbyterian mission station there. Analysis of the journal also provides insight into the discursive power of peace in framing the mission by contrasting non-Christian violence with peace in Melanesian Christian communities, and in Patteson’s personal exhibition of peacefulness. This is a familiar distinction in European accounts of mission work in this era, but Te Ngara approaches the distinction differently. Finally, the journal gives us insight into a Māori’s man’s anguish at the descent of his people into war in New Zealand.

1 This is the name with which he signed his journal; later in life, he used the name Eruera Hurutara [Te] Ngara. 2 Eruera Karaka Ngara, “Maori Journal of a Voyage to the Melanesian Islands with Bishop ­Patteson,” 1862. GNZMMS 143, Grey New Zealand Maori Manuscripts, Auckland Central City Library. Hereafter Te Ngara, Journal. © Jane Samson, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004536791_004

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Te Ngara and the Melanesian Mission

The genesis of the Melanesian Mission is well known: George Selwyn, the first Bishop of New Zealand, founded it in 1849 by taking advantage of a clerical error in the description of his see. Intended to cover only New ­Zealand, his ­authorisation extended far into the southwest Pacific islands. It also ­covered existing New Zealand missions established earlier by the evangelical Church Missionary Society (CMS) and, in Melanesia, the London Missionary Society (LMS). Sailing each year up the chain of islands from the Loyalty group to the New Hebrides, Banks, and Reef Islands (now in Vanuatu), and to the Santa Cruz and Solomon Islands (now in Solomon Islands), the Melanesian Mission recruited students for St. John’s College, located in Auckland since 1844, and a satellite school on Lifu in the Loyalty Islands. Later, the New Zealand school would move to warmer quarters on the beach at Kohimarama, near Auckland. Experience on the annual cruise provided the mission’s European staff and kaiwhakaako (Māori teachers) with training in primary evangelism, and it also honed Māori translation skills. Groups of Polynesian language-speaking peoples were scattered throughout Melanesia: the so-called “Polynesian outliers.” They and Māori could understand one another. Te Ngara is not mentioned by name in any of the European primary sources for the voyage; Patteson tells us only that there was “one New Zealander” aboard in 1862 in addition to the Europeans and Melanesians.3 He also remains unknown to those few who have studied the Melanesian Mission’s Māori staff.4 Nevertheless, preliminary research has revealed a few details. He was born in the Waikato region, and several obituaries state that he was about 98 years old when he died in 1919, suggesting a birth date in the early 1820s.5 Those were 3 Report of the Melanesian Mission, For the Years 1861–1862: To Which Are Added a Sermon and a Letter by the Right Rev. Bishop Patteson; Together with a Statement of the Accounts of the ­Mission for the Years 1861–1862 (Kohimarama: Melanesian Mission Press, 1863), 30. 4 Allan K. Davidson, “The Interaction of Missionary and Colonial Christianity in Nineteenth Century New Zealand,” Studies in World Christianity 2, no. 2 (1996): 145–66; Raeburn Lange, “Indigenous Agents of Religious Change in New Zealand, 1830–1860,” Journal of Religious H ­ istory 24, no. 3 (2000): 279–95; Raeburn Lange, Island Ministers: Indigenous Leadership in Nineteenth Century Pacific Islands Christianity (Canberra: Pandanus Books, 2005); Jenny Plane Te Pa’a, “Maori and the Melanesian Mission: Two ‘Sees’ or Oceans Apart?,” in The Church of Melanesia 1849–1999, ed. Allan K. Davidson (Auckland: College of St John the ­Evangelist, 2000), 77–85. 5 Based on obituary estimates of Te Ngara’s age of 98 at his death, the Blain Biographical ­Directory of Anglican Clergy in the South Pacific estimates his date of birth c. 1821. See: http:// anglicanhistory.org/nz/blain_directory/directory.pdf (accessed 8 May 2019).

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early days for the CMS outside Northland; Te Ngara’s parents might have been early converts, or among those who simply wanted their children to benefit from the new mission education. They were Pipiriki, of the Ngāti Patutokotoko, a hapū of Te Āti Haunui-a-Pāpārangi, originating from the area near Lake Taupō and Whanganui.6 This means that if Te Ngara was born in the Waikato area, he would have been born outside of his tribal area. He (and his parents) may have been war-captives, or there may be a different reason for his birth there that will be revealed by further research By the time of his decision to join the Melanesian Mission, Te Ngara was a senior pupil at Rev. Benjamin Ashwell’s school at Taupiri in the Waikato. ­Ashwell himself had gone on a voyage with the Melanesian Mission in 1860 for reasons that remained unknown until the discovery of Te Ngara’s journal. We now know that Ashwell was considering joining the mission to serve at a new station in the Banks Islands where in 1862 “One child from here was acquired, from the village destined for minister Ashwell of Taupiri, Waikato.”7 Meanwhile, the mission’s vessel Southern Cross had wrecked in a storm on the homeward voyage in 1860; all hands survived, including Ashwell and one of his Māori teachers, Taniera.8 The story of Taniera’s heroic swim to shore, before the storm had fully abated, must have made an impression on Te Ngara and all the other students and teachers at the school. The following year, Te Ngara “offered himself as a Candidate for Missionary work in the Melanesian Islands – Our first Maori Missionary to these Cannibal Brethren, he has been accepted by Bishop Patteson and I trust that God may bless the day of small

6 Te Ngara’s iwi (tribal grouping) has given me formal permission to translate, quote from, and eventually to publish his journal. My collaborator, Robert Eruera, former head of the Grey New Zealand Maori Manuscripts in the Sir George Grey Special Collection at the Auckland City Library, has transcribed the journal and created a preliminary translation into English. This is the translation to which I will be referring to in this chapter, but page references are to the original journal, which is available online: http://www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/dbtw-wpd /msonline/images/manuscripts/GNZMMS/PDFs/GNZMMS_143.pdf (accessed 8 May 2019). I am grateful to Lachy Paterson for providing invaluable clarifications about Te Ngara’s whakapapa (genealogy). 7 Te Ngara, Journal, 10 October 1862, 25. Evacuated from the Waikato along with almost all other European missionaries, Ashwell never pursued his plan to join the Melanesian ­Mission; see: Bryan Gilling, “Caught Between the Mere and the Musket: B. Y. Ashwell and the Waikato War,” in Mission and Moko: Aspects of the Work of the Church Missionary Society in New Zealand, 1814–1882, ed. Robert Glen (Christchurch, NZ: Latimer Fellowship, 1992), 179–92. 8 B. Y. Ashwell to CMS Secretaries, 6 July 1860, “Ashwell, Benjamin Yate 1810–1883: Letters and Journals,” vol. 3, qMS-0089, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. This ­journal-letter is reproduced in B. Y. Ashwell, Journal of a Visit to the Loyalty, New Hebrides, and Banks’ Islands (Auckland: W. C. Wilson, 1860).

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things.”9 It was the reporting from both Ashwell and Taniera about Polynesian teachers working for the LMS in the Loyalty Islands that decided him: “he has been with me Ten Years and expressed a wish to follow the example of the Rarotonga Teachers.”10 Te Ngara’s work on the 1862 voyage must have impressed Bishop Patteson because he continued to teach at the mission school, became a lay reader in the Waikato district, was ordained deacon in 1874, and priested in 1886. His journal helps us to address Allan Davidson’s challenge concerning “The little recognized importance of New Zealand’s missionary involvement overseas,” and especially, I would argue, the importance of Māori involvement.11 It also contributes to the burgeoning literature on Māori in the Pacific world generally, and the ways that Christian missions drew them into the webs of empire, while also providing them with unprecedented opportunities for travel, learning, networking, and activism. 3

The Gospel of Peace

The scriptural link between Christianity and peace had been carried to New Zealand from the time of the first evangelical Anglican mission under Rev. Samuel Marsden in 1814. Evangelical Anglicanism had not been much influenced by contemporary pacifist movements, drawing instead on scriptural references and evangelical theology generally so that “the notion of a peace gospel permeated much missionary discourse” on the CMS mission stations.12 This meant a missionary crusade against utu: the principle of recompense/ vengeance that underlined relations and justice-making processes between Māori. Some of the more scholarly-minded missionaries saw parallels with the Old Testament: Richard Taylor declared that utu embodied the principle “an eye for an eye,” recording instances where Māori would carefully weigh the

9 10 11 12

B. Y. Ashwell to CMS Secretaries, 31 December 1871. B. Y. Ashwell to CMS Secretaries, 2 April 1862. Allan K. Davidson, “History Changes: Critical Reflections on New Zealand and Pacific Religious History,” Stimulus: The New Zealand Journal of Christian Thought and Practice 19, no. 2 (2012): 24. Geoffrey Troughton, “Samuel Marsden and the Origins of a New Zealand Peace Tradition,” in Saints and Stirrers: Christianity, Conflict and Peacemaking in New Zealand, 1814–1945, ed. Geoffrey Troughton (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2017), 39; Sarah Dingle, “­Gospel Power for Civilization: The CMS Missionary Perspective on Maori Culture, 1830–1860” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Adelaide, 2009), 131–48.

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number of shots fired, and the rank of the injured or killed, when deciding whether or not utu had been satisfied.13 The impact of scripture also permeated Māori understandings of peace and peacemaking. The Christian emphasis on forgiveness was challenging, but ­provided a framework for ending what had appeared to be an endless cycle of vengeance including warfare, ritual cannibalism, and “bewitching” (whaiwhaiā).14 As Monty Soutar emphasises, “It is difficult to appreciate what impact this sudden termination had on a society that for generations had not been able to conceive of any course to halt these practices, and had accepted the customs as an inevitable way of life.”15 Although the Waikato district of the North Island remained volatile well into the missionary era, even here “the search for peace led many Māori to adopt Christianity.”16 Te Ngara was one of these, winding up by 1852 at Rev. Benjamin Ashwell’s CMS station on the Waikato River, under the patronage of the great Christian chief Wiremu Tāmihana. We need to emphasise that Māori society had its own traditions of peacemaking following conflict, and these Indigenous traditions shaped ­ the practice of peacemaking among Māori Christians. When two Māori, Te Mānihera and Kereopa, were killed in 1847 on an evangelising mission to the Lake Taupō region, Rev. Richard Taylor met with chiefs there to make peace by agreeing to formal, reciprocal visits by high-ranking Ngāti Ruanui to Ngāti Tūwharetoa. This took two years, at the end of which Taylor was able to preach from the new church at Poutū that the mission of Mānihera and Kereopa had succeeded at last.17 But by the time Te Ngara left on his 1862 voyage, violence was increasing in his homeland once again. The government had prosecuted war in Taranaki in 1860–61, and this would soon be extended, engulfing much of the North Island. At the time of missionary contact with New Zealand in the early nineteenth century, observers noted what they believed to be an endemic state of warfare between different groups of Māori, and Marsden emphasised education as the 13 14 15 16 17

Dingle, “Gospel Power for Civilization,” 136. Monty Soutar, “He Iwi Piri Pono—Loyalty to the Crown, an Iwi Perspective,” in Tutu te Puehu: New Perspectives on the New Zealand Wars, eds. John Crawford and Ian McGibbon (Wellington: Steele Roberts, 2018), 297. Soutar, “He Iwi Piri Pono,” 297. Peter Lineham, “Te Waharoa’s War,” in Saints and Stirrers, 58. Stuart Lange, “Te Mānihera, Kereopa and Christian Peacemaking among Māori,” in Saints and Stirrers, 67–75. See also: Allan K. Davidson, “Völkner and Mokomoko: ‘Symbols of Reconciliation’ in Aotearoa, New Zealand,” in Retribution, Repentance, and Reconciliation, eds. Kate Cooper and Jeremy Gregory (Woodbridge: Boydell Press for the Ecclesiastical History Society, 2004), 317–29.

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best means to undermine what he believed to be an endemic disposition to violence among them.18 Meanwhile, missionaries, traders, and early settlers had all written often about “a reputed love of war and proclivity for retribution” among the pre-Christian Māori.19 It was in the CMS’s interest to draw a striking contrast between Christianised Māori in order to demonstrate how “a people formerly addicted to war had been transformed.”20 Historians have revised this picture to show that “Peace was the Maori measure of civilization,” and the peacemaking toolkit of the new Christian faith enhanced, rather than contradicted, Indigenous traditions.21 The widespread success of the CMS meant that the Melanesian Mission was launched amid triumphant stories of the gospel of peace and its transformation of Māori culture. What was its own missiology? David Hilliard, who ­pioneered the academic study of the mission in the 1970s, is correct to say that “The written records of the Melanesian Mission reveal much less than might be expected about its missionaries’ views of the God they worshipped and the religious ideas they conveyed to the Melanesians.”22 However, when we include Indigenous observations like those of Te Ngara, we can take a deeper look at “their daily work in the islands, the services and school classes they conducted, and their journeys around their districts on foot and by canoe”. 18

19 20 21

22

One experiment featured a seminary across the Tasman Sea in New South Wales, where hand-picked, high-ranking Māori men were taught by Marsden himself 1815–27 and then returned to New Zealand to change attitudes among their own people; see: ­Malcolm Prentis, “A Thirst for Useful Knowledge: Samuel Marsden’s Māori Seminary at Parramatta, 1815–1827,” in Te Rongopai 1814 ‘Takoto te pai!’: Bicentenary Reflections on Christian Beginnings and Developments in Aotearoa New Zealand, eds. Allan K. Davidson, Stuart Lange, Peter J. Lineham, and Adrienne Puckey (Auckland: General Synod Office, ­Anglican Church in Aotearoa New Zealand and Polynesia, 2014), 139–52; Alison Jones and Kuni Jenkins, Words Between Us—He Kōrero: First Māori-Pākehā Conversations on Paper (­Wellington: Huia, 2011), 131–42. Geoffrey Troughton, “Missionaries, Historians and the Peace Tradition in New Zealand,” in Te Rongopai 1814, 234. Troughton, “Missionaries,” 235; also see: Lineham, “Te Waharoa’s War,” 50. Lyndsay Head, “Wiremu Tamihana and the Mana of Christianity,” in Christianity, Modernity and Culture: New Perspectives on New Zealand History, ed. John Stenhouse (Adelaide: ATF Press, 2005), 68; also A. P. Vadya, Maori Warfare (Wellington: The Polynesian Society, 1960); Angela Ballara, “The Role of Warfare,” Journal of the Polynesian Society 85, no. 4 (1976): 487–506; Angela Ballara, Taua: ‘Musket Wars’ ‘Land Wars’ or Tikanga? Warfare in Māori Society in the Early Nineteenth Century (Auckland: Penguin, 2003). David Hilliard, “The God of the Melanesian Mission,” in Vision and Reality in Pacific ­Religion: Essays in Honour of Niel Gunson, eds. Phyllis Herda, Michael Reilly, and David Hilliard (Canberra, ACT: Pandanus Books, 2005), 195.

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Material culture, emotional affect, changing gender relations, and general behaviour can disclose a great deal and exemplify the usefulness of what theologian ­Kathryn Tanner describes as “an anthropological approach to theology as a context-specific activity”.23 From the beginning of his school for Melanesians at St. John’s College, Bishop George Selwyn sought to discourage conflict by setting an example of mutual servanthood. Patteson and the other Europeans of his generation followed the same model, and so eventually did the mission’s Māori and Melanesian teachers. Reflecting on the distinctive ambiance of both Kohimarama and the later school on Norfolk Island, Rev. C. H. Brook highlighted the way that black and white are turned out together to hoe the corn or plant the kumara … I have seen Bishop Patteson guiding the plough … John Palmer, Joseph Atkin, Bice and I always went to work with the native lads, till the welcome sound of Bell tuwale--first bell--bade us leave off.24 Such practises were deliberately disruptive, meant to challenge current social and racial hierarchies in favour of a more egalitarian, Christian model. A sermon by Patteson, preached not long after his consecration as Bishop of Melanesia, spoke of what a child educated at Kohimarama would be able to transmit to family and friends after returning home: “a comparison of their own wild, lawless life with the peace and order of the strangers’ mode of life will be instituted – new thoughts will work their hearts; a new power is recognized in their land.”25 This was the ideal, at least. Before these processes could do their work, the Melanesian Mission was preoccupied by questions of war and violence in the islands that it visited each year. It feared for the safety of its workers, and there is no doubt that its position was precarious. At the time of Te Ngara’s 1862 ­voyage, no European member of the Melanesian Mission had yet been killed by violence; disease was the main threat to life. However, the region already featured a famous martyr, Rev. John Williams of the LMS, who had been killed on Eromanga in 1839. Later, just one year before Te Ngara’s voyage, Rev. and 23 24 25

Kathryn Tanner, Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), 69. C. H. Brook, Reminiscences, extracts from The Southern Cross Log, English edition (June 1923–December 1924), 147. Project Canterbury: http://anglicanhistory.org/oceania/brooke _reminiscences.html (accessed 20 May 2019). Italics original. Report of the Melanesian Mission, 1861–1862, 20.

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Mrs. James Gordon had been killed at Dillon’s Bay on the same island. Patteson explained to his uncle that Melanesia was still dangerous: But I must not forget that I have some islands to visit in the next month or two where the people are very wild…. The real anxiety is in the making up my own mind whether or not I ought to lower the boat in such a sea way [sic]; whether or not I ought to swim ashore among these fellows crowded there on the narrow beach, &c.… Yet I could enumerate, I dare say, five-and-twenty which we have not visited at all, or not regularly, and where I must be careful, as also in visiting different parts of islands already known to us in part.26 Two of the mission’s teachers, Edwin Nobbs and Fisher Young, died of tetanus following arrow wounds sustained at Santa Cruz in 1864, and Patteson himself would lose his life during an attack on his landing party at Nukapu in 1871. Like the early CMS missionaries to New Zealand, Melanesian Mission staff understood the dangers of cultural misunderstanding and transgression, as well as their own dependency on Indigenous land, food, water, and political protection. However, one of Patteson’s objectives at Kohimarama was to try to counter common stereotypes about Melanesian “savagery.” Regular newspaper coverage of “outrages” against Europeans in the Melanesian islands was extensive, both in New Zealand and in overseas presses in Australia and ­Britain. After his return from the 1862 voyage, Patteson told a friend that “when some strangers ride round from Auckland” they see “only a curious specimen of a woolly-haired Papuan: his ears are pierced; he is an interesting savage? And I don’t wonder at this. How can people be expected to see anything but the outside?”27 Yet Patteson also contributed to the common misconception that Melanesians were constantly at war; his abbreviated 1862 report stated that “No man on Mota walks about now with bow and poisoned arrows, without which they scarcely stirred from their huts a few months ago.”28 Most Melanesians did not use “poisoned arrows” in the way commonly understood at the time; instead of chemical substances, such as the famous curare poison used by Indigenous peoples in south America, Melanesian arrows were usually

26 27 28

J. C. Patteson to J. T. Coleridge, 11 September 1861; cited in Charlotte Mary Yonge, Life of John Coleridge Patteson: Missionary Bishop of the Melanesian Islands, vol. 1 (London: ­Macmillan, 1875), 539. Cited in Yonge, Life of John Coleridge Patteson, vol. 2, 81. Report of the Melanesian Mission, 1861–1862, 7.

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laden with spells and the mana of their human bone tips.29 Deadly as tetanus could be in the tropics following a puncture wound, the stereotypical savage with poisoned arrows was a Victorian myth. Patteson effectively acknowledged as much in a revealing comment to his readers: “you want stories about wild savages, and dangerous reefs, and adventures by sea and land.”30 Patteson’s assumptions about the degree of contrast between violent islanders and peaceful missionaries therefore needs to be questioned. Analysing material from New Caledonia, historian Bronwen Douglas noted that detailed accounts by traders or missionaries, those who spent longer in the islands, ­usually challenged “the later conventional wisdom that ‘all these diverse tribes are almost constantly at war, for mutual plunder and devastation’.”31 Patteson was contrasting his own example of peace with an exaggerated presumption of the danger. This is likely one reason for Te Ngara’s powerful observation that “those dangerous islands of the past, now, I don’t see them like that as I did in those days gone by, as some places appeared to be fine during this year.” He added “this is the reason for this presentation so you know the truth of my story.”32 Whatever he had heard “in those days gone by” had not always squared with his own direct observations. 4

Te Ngara’s Journal

Te Ngara’s journal consists of 32 handwritten pages in a school exercise book. This must be carefully scrutinised with a postcolonial eye: the Māori language had no written form until the introduction of the Roman alphabet and a ­printing press by the CMS. The Victorian fondness for the phrase “reducing the language” (to written form) reminds us that there were unequal power ­relations involved in the choice of orthographies, and in the introduction of European genres such as journal and letter-writing. Dating Te Ngara’s manuscript presents a number of challenges. It was ­common for missionaries to write up a fair copy of their journals either in the form of journal-letters for colleagues, family, and friends, or as stand-alone 29

30 31 32

Jane Samson, “Poisoned Arrows and Poisoned Ethnographies from Victorian Melanesia,” in South Seas Encounters: Nineteenth-Century Oceania, Britain, and America, eds. Richard Fulton, Peter Hoffenberg, Stephen Hancock, and Allison Paynter (New York: Routledge, 2018), 37–60. Report of the Melanesian Mission, 1861–62, 25. Bronwen Douglas, “‘Almost Constantly at War’? An Ethnographic Perspective on Fighting in New Caledonia,” Journal of Pacific History 25, no. 1 (1990): 23. Te Ngara, Journal, 27.

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documents. Since we have no other manuscript than this, it is impossible to know whether or not Te Ngara edited the journal when he copied it. There are signs that the document was added to after Te Ngara’s return to Kohimarama, suggesting an edited fair copy, rather than the original journal notes. Near the end of the manuscript, Te Ngara states “These are the islands visited by the Bishop in this year of 1862.”33 This suggests that Te Ngara made his fair copy shortly after the return of Sea Breeze to Kohimarama on 7 November that year. However, just before the final valediction, he included these comments concerning his journal’s purpose: “It is only a recollection of this place written about, to show the activities of these numerous islands, my major concern is the wrongs of the Maori people of the past. One area still the same is the killing and the eating of people.”34 If this is a reference to cannibalism in parts of Melanesia, or a lingering practice between Māori, we can still date the manuscript to late 1862; however, if he is referring to a revival of cannibalism involving Europeans, the fair copy must have been completed later. The first evidence of such a revival comes from February, 1865 when Rev. Carl Völkner was killed, and his eyes ritually consumed, at his Ōpōtiki mission station in the Waikato.35 If Te Ngara’s emphasis on cannibalism is referring to this incident, the final writing-up of his journal must have taken place in 1865 at the earliest. Incidents of cannibalism in Taranaki occurred even later.36 The scholar of African missions J. D. Y. Peel has described Indigenous teachers and clergy as “the quintessential cultural middlemen, adapting Christianity and transforming … identity in a single seamless process.”37 How “seamless” this was is called into question by Pacific scholarship. Writing about the Pai Mārire religious movement, Paul Clark published an early rejection of the idea that Māori moved between only two poles on a line of culture change 33 34 35 36

37

Te Ngara, Journal, 27. Te Ngara, Journal, 30. Paul Clark, ‘Hauhau’ The Pai Marire Search for Maori Identity (Auckland: Auckland ­University Press, 1975), 29. See the published narrative of Kimble Bent, defector to the Māori cause, who observed cannibalism at various points during the Taranaki conflict, but not before 1868; James Cowan, ed., The Adventures of Kimble Bent (Wellington: Hazell, Watson and Viney, 1975), and Kelvin Day, Contested Ground Te Whenua I Tohea: The Taranaki Wars 1860–1881 (­Wellington: Huia Publishers, 2010), 64, 209. J. D. Y. Peel, Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba (Bloomington: I­ndiana University Press, 2000), 8. Africanists pioneered the study of Indigenous mission ­ ­narratives and identities; Peel’s book discussed the methodological challenges thoroughly and it contains an extensive bibliography. The nearest equivalent for the south Pacific is Raeburn Lange, Island Ministers: Indigenous Leadership in Nineteenth Century Pacific Islands Christianity (Canberra: Pandanus Books, 2005).

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and development, replacing “one set of traditional beliefs [with] European, Christian ones.”38 Historians have also emphasised the complexity of Māori engagement with reading, writing, and publication. Te Ngara’s own education and journal-keeping form part of a larger story of how “literacy changed nineteenth-century Māori society but was also adapted to their own need and understandings.”39 Furthermore, recently, cosmopolitanism theory has cast Indigenous mission teachers and other travellers in a new light. Drawing on the work of David Chappell and Nicholas Thomas, Coll Thrush believes that they “actively engaged with and helped create the world we call modern”.40 Instead of middlemen between two cultural poles, they were forging something new: an Indigenous modernity. Drawing on these ideas, I believe that Te Ngara represented a new Māori identity: modern, cosmopolitan, drawing upon both European and Indigenous cultural influences in the challenging context of settler colonialism in New Zealand. During his time with the Melanesian Mission, Te Ngara corresponded with the New Zealand colonial government, providing it with intelligence about the intentions of various Waikato tribes. One surviving letter provides a list of names of Waikato chiefs presumed loyal to the British crown; another, written later, endorsed Governor George Grey’s transfer of land in the Whanganui region where Te Ngara himself owned land.41 Māori missionaries like Te Ngara had their own vision of modernity; as we will see, he never ceased to try to bring his vision about, even after war had alienated many of his own people from the church he loved. Te Ngara’s journal forms part of a familiar genre: most modern mission ­societies required their staff to keep detailed journals to assist with the production of annual reports and other materials, some of which might be selected for publication in mission periodicals in Europe and the United States. Pacific missions led the world in their extensive use of Indigenous agents and teachers, and a growing field of scholarship has been translating, editing, and

38 Clark, Hauhau, 7. 39 Lachy Paterson, “Māori Literacy Practices in Colonial New Zealand,” in Indigenous ­Textual Cultures: reading and Writing in the Age of Global Empire, eds. Tony Ballantyne, Lachy ­Paterson, and Angela Wanhalla (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2020), 81. 40 Coll Thrush, Indigenous London: Native Travelers at the Heart of Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 14. Also see: David Chappell, Double Ghosts: Oceanian Voyagers on Euroamerican Ships (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1997), 41, 165; Nicholas Thomas, Islanders: The Pacific in an Age of Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 296–97. 41 Te Ngara Karaka Hurutara Te Ngara to George Grey, [1863], GNZMA 211, Grey New Zealand Maori letters – Nga Reta Māori, Auckland Public Library, Auckland, New Zealand.

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analysing Indigenous Islander journals and other narratives.42 After years of mission schooling, following in the wake of other Māori from Ashwell’s school, Te Ngara would have been familiar with how information was shared, formatted, and communicated between indigenous converts, European missionaries, and the readers of mission publications in New Zealand, Australia, and ­Britain. The flyleaf of his own journal bears the name of “Benjamin Y. Ashwell” and whether Ashwell signed the book before or after Te Ngara’s voyage, the ­presence of his name reminds us that sources like this do not represent unmediated Indigenous voices. In the following sections of this chapter, I will treat Te Ngara’s journal and its account of his movements through Melanesia with the same critical care as I do the European records. I will often be comparing Te Ngara’s journal with P ­ atteson’s own accounts. Produced in an unusually truncated form, Patteson’s official 1862 report contains almost no detail about that year’s voyage. ­Fortunately, author and mission supporter Charlotte Yonge published a posthumous biography of Patteson containing extensive quotations from his private correspondence. Thanks to this, and to a publicly printed letter of ­Patteson to his friend and mentor Rev. John Keble, we can piece together a narrative of the voyage from the Bishop’s perspective.43 The following year, Patteson resumed his usual detailed reports for publication in New Zealand and Britain, but for the 1862 voyage, Te Ngara’s account provides crucial detail that cannot ­otherwise be known. 5

Mota: Haven of Peace

Each year, the mission vessel usually called at Mota at least twice. A small island in the Banks group, in the northern part of what is now Vanuatu, Mota 42

43

Modern academic examples include R. G. and Marjorie Crocombe, The Works of Ta’unga: Records of a Polynesian Traveller in the South Seas, 1833–1896 (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1968); Semisi Nau, The Story of My Life: The Autobiography of a Tongan Methodist Missionary who Worked at Ontong Java, ed. Allan K. Davidson (Suva: Institute of Pacific Studies for the University of the South Pacific, 1996); Vincent ­O’Malley, Haerenga: Early Maori Journeys Across the Globe (Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2015); and Te Maire Tau, ed., I Whānau au ki Kaiapoi: The Story of Natanahira Waruwarutu as Recorded by Thomas Green (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2011). Patteson’s father died the previous year and, in his grief, Patteson was no longer keeping his usual detailed journal, nor was he able to the usual multiple reports of each annual voyage. In 1862 he chose only to send a report to his immediate family and they forwarded it to Keble. See: John Patteson to John Keble, 26 June, 1862; AD 1/116/2, Keble College Archives, Oxford, United Kingdom.

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had become the mission’s second island station in 1861. Having agreed that the Loyalty Islands were in the LMS orbit, Selwyn and Patteson had sought another site for an island school, and many of their favourite students were from the Banks. Images and experiences from Mota would bracket Te Ngara’s experience on the 1862 voyage. A portable house was now in place and the school there well attended when they arrived, but Te Ngara was struck by something else. On 30 July the ship sailed to nearby Vanua Lava where “about 300 people, consisting of women and children” were on the beach to greet the Bishop.44 There was no regular potable water supply on Mota, so trips to Vanua Lava were a regular occurrence. Here we see Te Ngara’s emphasis on the gender of those who greeted the ship: an absence of armed men and the presence of women and children. As we will see, the normal reception outside areas of mission influence would be a beach party consisting only of armed men. This reflected the cultural significance of bearing of arms as a mark of adult manhood. The initiation of Melanesian boys was a complex process and the details varied widely between culture areas and at different levels of social rank. Nevertheless, one of the most ubiquitous features of manhood in Melanesia was the privilege of carrying weapons. These items would rarely leave the side of their owners and were often housed indefinitely in the gamal, or men’s house, after their owner’s death. Quite simply, weapons were an integral part of a man’s identity and status. Carrying them was not of itself a sign of imminent violence. This ritual and personal significance carried on after the introduction of European muskets, and then rifles, into Melanesia. Well into the twentieth century, visitors reported seeing elderly men who proudly continued to carry handmade bows and arrows, despite the availability of much more effective weapons.45 At issue was the man’s ontological identity, not his hostility. Anthropologists studying the process of religious and social change in ­Vanuatu can shed light on Te Ngara’s observations. His journal confirms anthropologist Craig Lind’s analysis: “missionaries encouraged islanders to banish activities that, among other things, were associated with male prominence and rank, or that emerged as such in these encounters.”46 Te Ngara’s observations support a picture of changing gender relations. Defence and war were men’s business. At non-Christian islands before and after this one, as 44 45 46

Te Ngara, Journal, 5. Samson, “Poisoned Arrows.” Craig Lind, “Henry has Arisen: Gender and Hierarchy in Vanuatu’s Anglican Church,” TAJA: The Australian Journal of Anthropology 27, no. 2 (2016): 230. Also: Annalise ­Eriksen, Gender, Christianity and Change in Vanuatu: An Analysis of Social Movements in North Ambrym (Basingstoke: Ashgate, 2008).

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we will see, only men appeared on the beach when the ship drew near: men armed with weapons, creating the precariousness discussed in the previous section. Here in the northern Banks, however, women and children came out onto the reef to greet the vessel. There were men nearby: the landing site at Vanua Lava provided regular employment for men willing to carry heavy water barrels from the nearby river to the ship. There were also men running the new mission on Mota. Following the construction of the mission house, the European missionaries returned to New Zealand. Some would stay on Mota from time to time, but it would be George Sarawia, and his brothers Charles Wolig and Edward Wogale, who did the most to teach and lead the new Christian community.47 Te Ngara’s emphasis on the presence of women helps to verify their prominence in the new Christian society taking shape on Mota and Vanuatu where “women played a pivotal role in establishing new Christian communities throughout Vanuatu, and churches continue to provide an important basis for organising women’s activities today.”48 The gospel of peace was disruptive, not only in the obvious sense of diminishing traditional warfare, but also in its transformation of gender relations. 6

The Ghosts of Santa Maria

On 5 August the Bishop and Thomas Kerr went ashore with a number of ­Melanesian pupils at the island of Santa Maria, and Te Ngara observed that “On their arrival, the people came with their weapons.”49 The contrast with the Christianising Mota and Vanua Lava population was pointed, and appears to reflect a longstanding practise of taking the presence or absence of weaponry to be a sign not only of peaceful or violent intentions, but also as markers of the warlike nature of non-Christian Melanesian societies. In his brief 1862 report, Patteson related the observations of one of the mission’s students, Marauvelau of Santa Maria. Marauvelau had joined the school because he remembered how, four years earlier, Selwyn and Patteson had given him a fish hook during an encounter on the beach “when the Bishop of New Zealand and [Patteson] were standing on the beach with 300 naked men (of which he was one) about us.” Patteson explained what happened next:

47 48 49

George Sarawia, They Came to my Island (Siota: St. Peter’s College, 1968). Lind, “Henry has Arisen,” 228. Te Ngara, Journal, 6.

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I can see the Bishop now as he took a bow out of a man’s hand and drew a line on the beach, making signs that no one was to step across it. There we stood close to the sea, the boat some hundred yards off, the Bishop holding these 300 wild fellows in check by the very dignity of his ­presence.50 There is no doubting the bravery of the two bishops and their companions, and Marauvelau’s presence at Kohimarama indicated the success of repeated visits. There must be doubt, however, about whether Patteson’s peaceful example and force of personality were wholly responsible for holding “300 wild fellows in check.” The Melanesians held themselves in check for a variety of reasons, of which the hope of more fishhooks was likely one. Meanwhile, by 1862, the mission had obtained several students from this island and Patteson was now returning them to their homes as promised. This was when things took a puzzling turn. Te Ngara’s journal is our only source of information about this important example of culture contact. Having greeted the landing party with weapons in hand, as the Santa Maria men took a closer look at their visitors, they became frightened and retreated and were pursued, having fled into the scrub, they were pursued by the Bishop and the children taken from there in the past, and eventually catching up with some of them. Then they returned when they saw these children. They then knew, and those people gathered about the Bishop and some wept for their family members with the parents of those children.51 Able to translate for their parents and friends after a year at Kohimarama, the students explained to the Bishop that their families believed them to have died. They had been away for so long that the islanders thought they were ­seeing possibly dangerous ghosts on the beach.52 The appearance of men with weapons was understandable in this context, and the tears suggest that the boys’ families had feared the worst and were expressing fear and grief, rather than hostility.

50 51 52

Report of the Melanesian Mission, 1861–1862, 28. Te Ngara, Journal, 6. Darrell Whiteman, Melanesians and Missionaries: An Ethnohistorical Study of Social and Religious Change in the Southwest Pacific (Pasadena: William Carey Library, 1983), 68–69; G. W. Trompf, Melanesian Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 39, 43–44.

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Te Ngara had not been allowed to join the shore party, so he must have heard this detailed account from Patteson or Kerr after they returned to the ship. Both men had been there the previous year, and were the likeliest to be ­recognised. However, as Te Ngara tells the story, being recognised created its own problems: were they and the students human beings or ghosts? There is a different problem for historians. In his account of proceedings, forwarded by the family to John Keble, Patteson made only a stereotypical reference to ­violence at Santa Maria, “which till this year we never visited without being shot at.”53 But if the mission had never visited before without being shot at, how did they obtain the students they were now trying to return to their homes? Possibly Patteson meant a different part of the island: in most of Melanesia, islands feature more than one language and culture area. Patteson tells us that he “walked for four or five hours far inland wherever I pleased, meeting great crowds of men all armed and suspicious of each other – indeed actually fighting with each other – but all friendly to me.”54 He was right to think that the mission, particularly the students returning to their homes, were altering opinions and behaviour. He had indeed secured his own safety, but these particular Melanesian lives themselves remained embedded in their Indigenous political and social arrangements. It is important that assumptions in the historical record about warlike hordes shooting at landing parties, or about the automatic recognition of missionaries as men of peace, not obscure the fact that Melanesians were making their own decisions for their own reasons. 7

The Eye of the Beholder

Te Ngara was also making his own decisions, and his account of the rest of the voyage began to diverge more significantly from Patteson’s accounts. After leaving Mota, the ship proceeded from island to island, possibly making first contact, yet Te Ngara never mentions weapons again. Instead he provides ever richer detail about the languages and cultures he encounters. Some were ­Polynesian like his own. At the island of Vanikoro, Patteson had been carried from the ship’s boat onto the beach: No men have I ever seen so large – huge Patagonian limbs, and great heavy hands clutching up my little weak arms and shoulders. Yet it is not a ­sensation of fear, but simply of powerlessness, and it makes one 53 54

Cited in Yonge, Life of John Coleridge Patteson, vol. 2, 11. Cited in Yonge, Life of John Coleridge Patteson, vol. 2, 11.

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think, as I do when among them, of another Power present to protect and defend.55 Te Ngara was more interested in similarity than difference: “The people of this island have a similar language to Maori, some parts of their speech [are] the same … we returned to the ship, no children were acquired.”56 He did not make observations about physical otherness. At Auki harbour on Malaita in the ­Solomon Islands, Te Ngara wrote his most extensive journal entry and here we do not have an account by Patteson for comparison. After their arrival on 3 September, the crew went ashore where the local people helped them to fill their water casks by forming “a human chain starting from the water source extending to the row boat.” After watering and hunting for birds, the shore party visited the local village and “a certain large house” containing animal and human skeletal remains, figurines, and masks. Te Ngara was fascinated by something else: Also within that house where their musical instruments [were], similar to the Maori drum, four wooden instruments. I asked my companion if I could see those wooden instruments being played, it was requested by my companion. Then people seated themselves at the instruments, three people each at a wooden instrument. Then they played, it was extremely pleasing.57 Perhaps Patteson was elsewhere and didn’t experience this musical performance, or for some other reason did not mention this village. What is significant here is Te Ngara’s ability to communicate with the Auki villagers; his “companion” must have been able to translate from Māori. Te Ngara also found a point of connection through music, notably the drums that he found similar to those of his own people. An impromptu concert resulted, during which he also found an aesthetic connection with Auki musical forms. Patteson, on the other hand, usually emphasised the presence or absence of weaponry and the precariousness of his mission’s safety. After visiting Santa Cruz (today’s Nendo) in the Solomon Islands, he told Keble that he was permitted to go ashore at seven different places in one day, during which I saw about 1,200 men; that in all these islands the inhabitants are, 55 56 57

Yonge, Life of John Coleridge Patteson, vol. 2, 12. Te Ngara, Journal, 12. Te Ngara, Journal, 16.

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to look at, wild, naked, armed with spears and clubs, or bows and poisoned arrows; that every man’s hand is against his neighbour, and scenes of violence and bloodshed among themselves of frequent occurrence.58 Te Ngara seemed better able to appreciate a richer array of cultural elements, rather than focusing first on whether or not the people he encountered were armed. This was no doubt part of the luxury of being a junior member of the expedition. The European missionaries were more preoccupied by the ­possibility of violence, not least because responsibility for the safety of the missionaries lay with their leader, Patteson, and with the ship’s captain. Nevertheless, at Santa Cruz, in the southern Solomon Islands, observations diverged sharply. Where Patteson saw wild, naked men with poisoned arrows, Te Ngara said simply that “the Bishop went ashore on this island five times. The people of this island are attractive. The vessels that approached the ship numbered about 300, laden with many things to trade/sell.”59 Watching from a distance aboard ship, Te Ngara would naturally feel less precarious in terms of personal safety. Perhaps European and Māori aesthetics also differed: Patteson said nothing, even in his retrospective comments to Keble, about the Santa Cruz islanders being attractive. Patteson stressed the first-contact elements of his activities ashore, but Te Ngara’s account of the swarm of canoes, laden with food and goods for trade, indicates that the islanders had dealt with Europeans before. Patteson suggests a perpetually violent society from which he was preserved by divine grace. Te Ngara observed a peaceful encounter from the start. 8

Predisposed Allies at Ysabel?

As the 1862 voyage proceeded northwest through the Solomon Islands, there was another factor to consider: Patteson’s reputation might have preceded him, and not necessarily in the way he realised. Ever since Selwyn’s earliest venture into the Melanesian islands in 1847, the mission’s annual cruise had often met up with, and often assisted, visiting Royal Navy ships.60 Large European vessels bore little resemblance to canoes, and Islanders by no means understood that 58 59 60

Quoted in Melanesian Mission, The Island Mission: Being a History of the Melanesian ­ ission From its Commencement (London: William Macintosh, 1869), 207–208: http:// M anglicanhistory.org/oceania/island_mission1869/18.html (accessed 27 June 2018); and Yonge, Life of John Coleridge Patteson, vol. 2, 2. Te Ngara, Journal, 13. For example, John Elphinstone Erskine, Journal of a Cruise Among the Islands of the W ­ estern Pacific (London: John Murray, 1853), 311.

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they were ships, just as Islanders with little experience of Europeans did not necessarily believe them to be human beings. But by the time of Te N ­ gara’s journey in 1862, connections between the mission and the Royal Navy had been well established: the mission vessel often accompanied a warship’s passage through tricky shoals in uncharted waters. It also accompanied naval ships that, before or afterward, conducted punitive raids on Island villages. The sandalwood trade had brought increasing numbers of European and American vessels to Melanesia and, by the 1860s, the recruitment of Melanesian labourers for plantations in Australia and Fiji was adding to a picture of uncontrolled and sometimes violent interaction. Stories about these clashes might have informed Te Ngara’s admission that “those dangerous islands of the past, now, I don’t see them like that as I did in those days gone by”.61 In 1858, Captain William Loring took HMS Iris to Tanna where, to punish the Islanders for killing three Sydney traders the year before, his crew burned villages and destroyed crops near the supposed location of the attack. Loring had just come from New Caledonia where he had met and sailed with Selwyn; the Bishop had stayed behind to inquire after some former students. Loring then proceeded to Woodlark Island, also in the southern New Hebrides, where he burned more villages in retribution for the murder of the crew of another trading vessel.62 Word spread widely through the region; by 1860, Rev. Benjamin Dudley reported from Mota that “The people have got an idea into their heads that if they do not behave while we are here, a man-ofwar will come and blow up their island”.63 This was hardly surprising; offloading materials for the new mission ­station at Mota earlier that year, Patteson had welcomed the return visit of Commodore Loring. When Loring asked if Patteson would like another visit from his ship later in the season, Patteson disclosed his full awareness of how the islanders’ perceptions of such a visit might differ from his own intentions, telling Loring “that I did not want a vessel to come with the idea of any protection being required, but that a man-of-war coming with the intention of supporting the Mission, and giving help, and not coming to treat the natives in an off-hand manner, might do good.64 But how could Islanders be expected to perceive this nuanced intention? They would see a warship, the same type of ship that had 61 62 63 64

Te Ngara, Journal, 27. Captain William Loring to Admiralty, 6 September 1858; ADM 1/5696, Public Record Office (PRO), Kew, United Kingdom. Rev. Benjamin T. Dudley, Journal of a Winter Spent on Amota Banks Is. (Auckland: ­Melanesian Press, 1860). Yonge, Life of John Coleridge Patteson, vol. 1, 457.

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wrought havoc in other parts of Vanuatu and Solomon Islands. In other words, they would see an iron fist in the velvet glove. We must consider these factors in conjunction with Patteson’s personal commitment never to carry arms or to respond to violence with violence. In 1861, the year before Te Ngara’s voyage, the Southern Cross annual voyage was again led by Patteson, and the mission ship encountered HMS Cordelia in the Solomon Islands.65 Patteson attempted to act as interpreter for Captain Francis Hume while inquiring at Ysabel where an American whaling crew had been murdered the previous year. Neither Patteson nor the students he had with him from San Christoval could understand the language of Ysabel, either at the location where the whaler had been attacked, or further along at Cape Marsh where they tried to ascertain the whereabouts of a kidnapped boy.66 Unlike Captain Loring, Hume chose not to conduct punitive expeditions; the Admiralty had been critical of Loring’s poorly-informed actions and Hume was determined to set a better example “in the cause of humanity.”67 The point here is that the mission’s annual cruise, and both bishops Selwyn and Patteson, had visited a number of islands accompanied by a large man-of-war. Islanders would not have forgotten their impressions of this association, and after Loring’s punitive raids, information about the destructive power of warships would have circulated widely. It is probable that the awe generated by Patteson’s arrival at Santa Maria included fear of his powerful friends. What Patteson interpreted as respectful behaviour due to his unarmed landing, and honourable actions in returning students to their families, may have instead reflected the wariness of islanders well aware of the destructive power of the Royal Navy. We can get another glimpse of this deference from Patteson’s return to ­Ysabel on the 1862 voyage. His truncated official report says nothing about the possible impact of his prior visit in a warship, but in his letter to Keble he notes how at Ysabel the young chief came on board with a white cockatoo instead of a hawk on his wrist, which he presented to me with all the grace in the world, and with an inquiry after his good friend Captain Hume, of H.M.S. ‘Cordelia,’ who had kindly taken me to this island in the winter of 1861.68 65

66 67 68

This appears to have been at Selwyn’s instruction: Patteson had been in poor health and “was recommended” to get away from Mota by joining the Cordelia on her Solomon Islands cruise. He returned to Mota in improved health. See: Melanesian Mission, The Island Mission, 185. Francis Hume to F. Beauchamp Seymour, 7 October, 1861; ADM 1/5760, PRO. Hume to Seymour, 7 October 1861. Cited in Yonge, Life of John Coleridge Patteson, vol. 2, 78.

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It remains unclear to which village Patteson is referring. In his report of proceedings, Captain Hume had noted that the leaders of several villages had “professed the profoundest ignorance” of any attack on a European ship: “this much Bishop Patteson succeeded in making out.”69 Patteson had been too ill to join the next day’s landing party, so the young “chief” with the cockatoo must have been at one of the first villages visited by Cordelia. As for Te Ngara, he might have been ashore during the chief’s visit, or simply uninterested; his journal does not mention it. Instead he records the items being traded by the Islanders: fruit, birds, and shellfish. He also notes that “one child was acquired from this island. We will return [the child] to the island.”70 Clearly the “young chief” had been impressed by Patteson and his naval entourage during the previous year’s visit, and Patteson was himself aware of the connection. Yonge quotes from his journal’s account of their anchorage on Ysabel “where we had found a harbour in H.M.S. ‘Cordelia.’ Hence a lad came away.”71 Patteson’s decisions to land unarmed, at various points in the voyage, were very courageous. These gestures were meant to demonstrate the peaceful fruits of the gospel in sharp contrast to the way the islanders supposedly treated themselves, and to counter their suspicion of mission visits in the past. Patteson attributed his safety to divine providence, telling Keble that Throughout this voyage (during which I landed between seventy and eighty times) not one hand was lifted up against me, not one sign of ­ill-will exhibited; [so] you will see why I speak and think with real amazement and thankfulness of a voyage accompanied with results so wholly unexpected.72 However, the gospel of peace that Patteson sought to demonstrate had p ­ robably been substantially assisted by his prior voyages in a man-o-war, a dissonance he never grappled with. 69 70 71

72

Hume to Seymour, 7 October 1861. Te Ngara, Journal, 22. Yonge, Life of John Coleridge Patteson, vol. 2, 17. Patteson got more than deference and new pupils as a result of the Cordelia connection. The ship’s navigating officer, Lt. Thomas Capel Tilly, pledged himself to the mission, supervised construction of the new mission vessel Southern Cross, and sailed her to Auckland in 1863. He would captain the ship for eight years before becoming agent for the mission for the rest of his life. Already Thomas Kerr, former master of HMS Acheron, was teaching at the mission school and went on the 1862 voyage. See: Ruth M. Ross, Melanesians at Mission Bay: A History of the Melanesian Mission in Auckland (Wellington: Historic Places Trust, 1983), 31, 32. Cited in The Island Mission, 207–208.

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Mene: Embodying Peace

During the homeward voyage the ship called at some of the New Hebrides islands missed on the way north. At Eromanga, Patteson and Kerr went ashore to stay overnight with Andrew Henry, the last of the European sandalwood traders still living in the islands. Te Ngara stayed on board, where he encountered one of the most remarkable Melanesian lay evangelists of the era: Mene of Eromanga. Te Ngara’s journal goes into some detail here: Some of the people I did not know, some were good. We saw the axes which were used to beat Te Korena [Gordon] and his wife. His companion [Mene] returned amongst the people who beat him. Great was the compassion of that person, Kamene was his name, this person is good, two of his nights he slept aboard.73 These few comments provide precious new information about a remarkable man. We know from Raeburn Lange’s research that Mene had travelled with LMS (Congregationalist) missionaries from Eromanga to Samoa in 1849, where he learned Samoan and trained as a mission teacher along with three other companions. After completing his training at the Samoan seminary at Malua, Mene returned to Eromanga in 1852 where he assisted the LMS mission station at Dillon’s Bay.74 After an agreement by the LMS to leave the southern islands to the New Hebrides Mission, Mene and Joe joined the Gordons’ station, and Mene was still present when the couple were murdered in 1861. Lange tells us that “nothing further has been located about these four” but, thanks to Te Ngara, we now have much more information.75 Crucially, we now know that after the Gordons’ deaths, Mene chose to live with the people who had committed the murders. By doing so, Mene exemplified the ethics of reconciliation, love for enemies, and rejection of “payback” that were central features of the peace teaching promoted in the New Zealand missions and beyond. His commitment evidently had a profound impact upon Te Ngara. He praised Mene’s character (“This person is good”), going into more detail about Mene than any other person he encountered on this voyage, even 73 Te Ngara, Journal, 24. 74 Lange, Island Ministers, 255–56. Lange renders his name as “Mana.” Te Ngara spells his name “Mene,” possibly because in Māori (and other Austronesian languages) mana is the ubiquitous word for power/authority/influence and is not normally used as a proper name. It is also possible that Te Ngara’s ear picked up nuances in the pronunciation missed by Europeans. For these reasons, I am following Te Ngara’s spelling. 75 Lange, Island Ministers, 376, footnote 77.

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more than the Rarotongan teachers whose activities had inspired him to join the mission in the first place. On the voyage out, stopping on 16 July at Nengone where the mission’s original island school was located, Te Ngara noted that “There are also some Rarotongans who teach in these islands,” adding that “Those people of Rarotonga have important work to do, to preach the Gospel. Some of us stayed, while the Bishop and others returned to the ship and set sail” on a brief excursion to a nearby island.76 Despite his extended visit with the Rarotongan teachers, Te Ngara says nothing further about them. This is surprising, since Māori and Rarotongan are readily mutually intelligible, and they would have been able to converse easily. On the other hand, Mene spoke Samoan, a Polynesian language much less closly related to Māori. With all respect to Bishop Patteson and his colleagues, here was the voyage’s most potent symbol of the gospel of peace: a humble Melanesian teacher who, after the double murder of his mission patrons, chose to live with their murderers. He still cherished the murder weapons as evidence of his experiences and brought them aboard to show Te Ngara.77 Although a Protestant mission field, Eromanga already attracted pious tourists wishing to visit the beach where Rev. John Williams had been killed in 1839. Now the island had claimed two more European martyrs and their relics. When we look more deeply into Mene’s history at the Eromanga mission, it becomes clear what an heroic role he played. As Raeburn Lange notes, the missionaries were surprised and disapproving when one of their number, George Gordon, preferred not to use ‘native teachers’ at all. Teachers were stationed on Eromanga when Gordon took up residence there in 1857, but after a while they asked to be transferred somewhere else. It seems that the new missionary wanted to train his own teachers from among the Erromangans. Perhaps Gordon had objected to the LMS affiliation of Mene and his colleagues. Although the LMS was mainly Congregational in denominational orientation, and therefore broadly Presbyterian, it was an English mission. Gordon might have preferred to train teachers in the Scottish Presbyterian tradition. Te Ngara, we remember, had sharpened his resolve to join the Melanesian Mission after hearing of the Gordons’ murder, and Te Ngara must have admired his bravery. Mene had deliberately gone among the people who killed them, taking charge of the murder weapons, and attempting to bring the gospel to them. 76 77

Te Ngara, Journal, 3–4. Te Ngara, Journal, 26.

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This commitment was all the remarkable given Gordon’s dismissive attitude to Islander teachers. Te Ngara was deeply impressed: “Great was the compassion of that person”.78 10

Peacemaking at Home

Possibly on the voyage, or more likely while writing up a fair copy of his j­ ournal, Te Ngara penned two direct messages to his readers. He began with a confession: he had started the voyage with a prejudice against Melanesians. “These are the islands visited by the Bishop in this year of 1862,” he wrote, “That is to say, those dangerous islands of the past, now, I don’t seem them like that as I did in those days gone by.”79 We have seen how disparaging notions of ­Melanesia as “constantly at war” were circulating at the time, including in mission circles, and it is no surprise to find that Te Ngara had imbibed these stereotypes. The transformation in his views became clear as the voyage proceeded. At first, he noticed immediately the presence of weapons on the beach when the ship approached a new landing place; later, he stopped mentioning ­weapons altogether, even among the rarely contacted Solomon Islands. At Christianised islands like Mota, Te Ngara was happy to pay tribute to the fruits of the gospel of peace, noting the flocks of women and children who came down to the beach to greet the ship, and the absence of armed men. But as the voyage proceeded, instead of repeating the stereotypes that he tells us were on his mind when he left New Zealand, he gave increasingly nuanced and sympathetic descriptions of what he saw. Back at Kohimarama, Te Ngara would promote peace by helping to create better means of communication between the mission staff and their Melanesian students, and between the students themselves. Patteson reported that “A New Zealander is one of my teachers,” working with Kerr to teach Mota to a group of Austronesian-speaking pupils.80 The mission was in transition from English-only education to the teaching of Mota as a lingua franca because, as Codrington explained in a 1863 lecture, “one character of savage life is that every stranger is an enemy,” and “it is from this cause that languages of the same stock are split up into innumerable dialects.” The mission school would 78 79 80

Te Ngara, Journal, 27. Te Ngara, Journal, 27. John Coleridge Patteson to Warden of St. Augustine’s College, 18 November 1862; in ­Occasional Papers from St. Augustine’s College 70 (8 April 1863), 3, Project Canterbury: http://anglicanhistory.org/oceania/patteson/extracts1863.html (accessed 20 May 2019).

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assist in this “embarrassing multiplicity of tongues” because it would also teach “that neither a stranger nor every man who lives beyond the nearest boundary is, as a rule, an enemy.”81 On his recent voyage, Te Ngara had seen various models of Christian peace in practice, including through Patteson’s example; now he was part of nourishing it in the classroom. It is important to note that he was doing so without a stipend; despite its relatively egalitarian missiology, the Melanesian Mission was typical in its pattern of paying only the European staff. Indigenous teachers received room and board, and possibly small contributions to clothing, but no salary.82 Te Ngara had another even more acute reason for discussing the gospel of peace at the conclusion of his journal. The escalating land war in the Taranaki and Waikato districts, and Te Ngara’s status as a pro-government Māori, meant that he could no go home. In his opinion, home was changing for the worse: “My major concern is the wrongs of the Māori people of the past,” he said, by which he meant the pre-Christian past during which war practices had developed that were now being revived again.83 “One area still the same is the killing and the eating of people,” he lamented.84 We have already discussed this reference to cannibalism, recognising that the journal’s reference could be either to Melanesians or to Māori. Regardless, Te Ngara’s long formation with the CMS and his experience in Melanesia prompted him to undertake his own peacemaking mission to the Waikato in 1874, after the open conflict with British forces was over. One of the areas of New Zealand most hostile to missionaries and clergy of all denominations, the King Country remained “an independent Māori state nearly two-thirds the size of Belgium”.85 Because he had lived there for so long, Te Ngara wanted to attempt a pastoral visit, and a month after his ordination to the diaconate, he departed New Plymouth for the King Country. Technically the Waikato was under the care of Rev. Heta Tarawhiti, but it was clear that the renewal of the Anglican Church 81 82

83 84 85

R. H. Codrington, Lecture on the Melanesian Mission (1863), 11, Project Canterbury: http:// anglicanhistory.org/oceania/codrington_lecture1863.pdf (accessed 21 May 2019). “Treasurer in Account with the Melanesian Mission from July 1, 1862, to December 31, 1863,” Report of the Melanesian Mission (Auckland: Melanesian Press, 1863), 47. It is ­possible that he was being paid by means of “Teachers Extra Expenses” but likelier that he was teaching in exchange for room, board, and occasional expenses only. Despite the mission’s good intentions concerning the development of Indigenous ministry, it was slow to bring about anything resembling pay equity. Te Ngara, Journal, 28. Te Ngara, Journal, 28. James Belich, The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1986), 306.

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(or any other in the region) would depend on Māori agency, and all possible help would be needed.86 When Te Ngara was ordained, there were only nine Māori clergy in the diocese and financial support had dwindled because of the war.87 Nevertheless, shortly after his ordination, Te Ngara intended to walk from New Plymouth to the old mission station at Taupiri where he had pledged himself to the Melanesian Mission over ten years earlier. His journal-keeping habits, learned on the Melanesian voyage, were still with him, and church publications published extracts from it. His new parish was supposed to have been Waihī, near Waitara, but the local Māori objected to his presence, and he was forced to return to New Plymouth after holding services only when “he was allowed to do so by the Hauhaus.”88 Nevertheless, a very important event took place when Te Ngara reached Te Kūiti on 16 May, able to pass the blockaded road through the patronage of King Tāwhiao’s sister Tīria.89 Te Ngara’s purpose was to request the return of two children, Mary Hori and George Toitoi, currently living in the King’s household. George Toitoi was the King’s nephew “On which account he wanted very much to keep the lad,” but Te Ngara made unspecified arguments in favour of letting the children return with him to New Plymouth. “Through my pressing him he let him come away, saying that we must not let his child forget him.”90 The return to Taranaki was very difficult: Te Ngara had to leave the party’s horses at Te Kūiti and was constantly challenged at the carefully guarded roads. He was not allowed to hold services in the King’s territory; however, when he reached Waihi, he was able to baptise five children. His commitment to his own people, so clearly articulated in his journal of the Melanesian voyage, sustained him now through significant danger. The important role played by children in his visit to King Tāwhiao echoes their role in the peacemaking work of the Melanesian Mission also. The fact that Tāwhiao was willing to let the children go, including his own nephew, is significant: he clearly wanted to maintain a meaningful connection with the

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The position of Māori clergy in the region was precarious. Tarawhiti was charged with a­ iding the remaining ‘rebels’ simply because he led prayers in the presence of some ­members of the Kīngitanga; see: Vincent O’Malley, The Great War for New Zealand, Waikato 1800–2000 (Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2016), 487–88. Church Gazette (April 1874), 1. Church Gazette (May 1874), 67. It is not yet clear whether or not this name refers to Te Paea Tīaho or to another sister; O’Malley, Great War for New Zealand, 378. Church Gazette (October 1874), 146. Research continues on the identity of the two ­children. If “Mary Hori” is “Mary Hira,” she was Te Ngara’s own daughter and later the wife of Henare Keremeneta, a priest of Whanganui; Blain Biographical Directory.

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wider Māori church community. Kinship provided a traditional vehicle for promoting peace, and was continuing to do so in a Christian context.91 11 Conclusions In 1863, just after Te Ngara’s return from the Melanesian voyage, the Church Quarterly directly linked his experiences in the islands with the ongoing development of Māori Christianity. “Before the late unhappy disturbances,” it noted, “The first Maori Missionary Eruera Ngara joined Bishop Patteson” and “We may hope that the great test of Christian life, love for souls, will be shewn in a greater degree than hitherto, as the Native Church advances in knowledge and experience.”92 As we have seen, Te Ngara would indeed minister to his own people, enriched by his experience with the Melanesian Mission. As J. D. Y. Peel notes, the journals of Indigenous teachers and clergy are not only literary accomplishments or valuable ethnographies; they are also “the first works of the modern [Indigenous] intelligentsia, which opened up into a diverse literature of cultural self-reflection that continues vigorously down to the present.”93 For Te Ngara, this self-reflection came in part from the cosmopolitanism created by his extensive travels. He wanted his readers to know that he found Melanesians to be more attractive and engaging than he had expected. A close reading of his journal, in comparison with Bishop Patteson’s accounts, has shown his experiences on the 1862 Melanesian voyage to be ­distinctive. The power of peace, and his own cultural background, framed his perceptions of the significance of the presence or absence of weaponry, the public role of Melanesian women, and the great bravery of Melanesian Christian teachers like Mene. His journal also provides us with distinctive cultural readings of peace and its implications, showing us that there could have been more examples of peaceful interaction than the European missionaries perceived. In some cases, Te Ngara has given us the only written account of important encounters in the islands, particularly Mene’s lengthy visit with Te Ngara and the mission ship’s crew. The gospel of peace had also framed European expectations and images of Christian mission in the Pacific. Self-consciously countering contemporary 91

This is consistent with contemporary reports that kūpapa Māori (those who sided with “were part of the tribe, the wider family of Waikato” and “never cut from whakapapa ties”; O’Malley, Great War for New Zealand, 356. 92 Church Quarterly (April 1863), 13. 93 Peel, Religious Encounter, 11.

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racism, Patteson and the other white missionaries made deliberate choices concerning shared chores and meals. On the other hand, Patteson added the power of the Royal Navy to his mission of peace. He may not have intended to exploit the terrifying power of gunboats in order to manipulate islander responses to his activities, but Islanders were quite capable of coming to their own conclusions. Meanwhile, in New Zealand, hostilities were escalating into a civil war, a situation in which the Royal Navy and other British forces would be significantly involved. Both European and Māori missionaries and clergy would find themselves implicated in these hostilities, whether they intended to do so or not, as Te Ngara’s attempted peacemaking in the Waikato demonstrates. No wonder his voyage journal reveals that his deepest concern was the descent of his own people into war. “This is the reason for this presentation,” he had concluded, “so you know the truth of my story”;94 a powerful motive in the cause of peace, then as now. Bibliography Ashwell, Benjamin Y. “Ashwell, Benjamin Yate 1810–1883: Letters and Journals.” vol. 3, qMS-0089, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. Ashwell, B. Y. Journal of a Visit to the Loyalty, New Hebrides, and Banks’ Islands. ­Auckland: W. C. Wilson, 1860. Ballara, Angela. Taua: ‘Musket Wars’ ‘Land Wars’ or Tikanga? Warfare in Māori Society in the Early Nineteenth Century. Auckland: Penguin, 2003. Ballara, Angela. “The Role of Warfare.” Journal of the Polynesian Society 85, no. 4 (1976): 487–506. Belich, James. The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1986. Blain, Michael. Blain Biographical Directory of Anglican Clergy in the South Pacific. 2018 edition. Project Canterbury: http://anglicanhistory.org/nz/blain_directory/directory .pdf (accessed 8 May 2019). Brook, C. H. Reminiscences. Extracts from The Southern Cross Log, English edition, June 1923–December 1924. Project Canterbury: http://anglicanhistory.org/oceania /brooke_reminiscences.html (accessed 20 May 2019). Chappell, David. Double Ghosts: Oceanian Voyagers on Euroamerican Ships. Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1997. Church Gazette (April 1874), 1. 94

Te Ngara, Journal, 27.

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Church Gazette (May 1874), 67. Church Gazette (October 1874), 146. Church Quarterly (April 1863), 13 Clark, Paul. ‘Hauhau’ The Pai Marire Search for Maori Identity. Auckland: Auckland ­University Press, 1975. Codrington, R. H. Lecture on the Melanesian Mission. 1863. Project Canterbury: http:// anglicanhistory.org/oceania/codrington_lecture1863.pdf (accessed 21 May 2019). Cowan, James, ed. The Adventures of Kimble Bent. Wellington: Hazell, Watson and Viney, 1975. Crocombe, R. G. and Marjorie. The Works of Ta’unga: Records of a Polynesian Traveller in the South Seas, 1833–1896. Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1968. Davidson, Allan K. “History Changes: Critical Reflections on New Zealand and Pacific Religious History.” Stimulus: The New Zealand Journal of Christian Thought and P­ ractice 19, no. 2 (2012): 16–25. Davidson, Allan K. “Völkner and Mokomoko: ‘Symbols of Reconciliation’ in Aotearoa, New Zealand.” In Retribution, Repentance, and Reconciliation, edited by Kate C ­ ooper and Jeremy Gregory, 317–29. Woodbridge: Boydell Press for the Ecclesiastical ­History Society, 2004. Davidson, Allan K. “The Interaction of Missionary and Colonial Christianity in N ­ ineteenth Century New Zealand.” Studies in World Christianity 2, no. 2 (1996): 145–66. Day, Kelvin. Contested Ground: Te Whenua I Tohea: The Taranaki Wars 1860–1881. ­Wellington: Huia, 2010. Dingle, Sarah. “Gospel Power for Civilization: The CMS Missionary Perspective on Maori Culture, 1830–1860.” Ph.D. thesis, University of Adelaide, 2009. Douglas, Bronwen. “‘Almost Constantly at War’? An Ethnographic Perspective on Fighting in New Caledonia.” Journal of Pacific History 25, no. 1 (1990): 22–46. Dudley, Rev. Benjamin T. Journal of a Winter Spent on Amota Banks Is. Auckland: ­Melanesian Press, 1860. Eriksen, Annalise. Gender, Christianity and Change in Vanuatu: An Analysis of Social Movements in North Ambrym. Basingstoke: Ashgate, 2008. Erskine, John Elphinstone. Journal of a Cruise Among the Islands of the Western Pacific. London: John Murray, 1853. Gilling, Bryan. “Caught Between the Mere and the Musket: B. Y. Ashwell and the Waikato War.” In Mission and Moko: Aspects of the Work of the Church Missionary Society in New Zealand, 1814–1882, edited by Robert Glen, 179–92. Christchurch: Latimer Fellowship, 1992. Head, Lyndsay. “Wiremu Tamihana and the Mana of Christianity.” In Christianity, Modernity and Culture: New Perspectives on New Zealand History, edited by John Stenhouse, 58–86. Adelaide: ATF Press, 2005.

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Hilliard, David. “The God of the Melanesian Mission.” In Vision and Reality in Pacific Religion: Essays in Honour of Niel Gunson, edited by Phyllis Herda, Michael Reilly, and David Hilliard, 195–215. Canberra: Pandanus Books, 2005. Hume, Francis. Letter to F. Beauchamp Seymour, 7 October 1861. ADM 1/5760, Public Record Office, Kew, United Kingdom. Jones, Alison, and Kuni Jenkins. Words Between Us—He Kōrero: First Māori-Pākehā Conversations on Paper. Wellington: Huia, 2011. Lange, Raeburn. Island Ministers: Indigenous Leadership in Nineteenth Century Pacific Islands Christianity. Canberra: Pandanus Books, 2005. Lange, Raeburn. “Indigenous Agents of Religious Change in New Zealand, 1830–1860.” Journal of Religious History 24, no. 3 (2000): 279–95. Lange, Stuart. “Te Mānihera, Kereopa and Christian Peacemaking among Māori.” In Saints and Stirrers: Christianity, Conflict and Peacemaking in New Zealand, 1814–1945, edited by Geoffrey Troughton, 63–78. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2017. Lind, Craig. “Henry has Arisen: Gender and Hierarchy in Vanuatu’s Anglican Church.” TAJA: The Australian Journal of Anthropology 27, no. 2 (2016): 226–43. Lineham, Peter. “Te Waharoa’s War.” In Saints and Stirrers: Christianity, Conflict and Peacemaking in New Zealand, 1814–1945, edited by Geoffrey Troughton, 47–62. ­Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2017. Loring, Captain William. Letter to Admiralty, 6 September 1858. ADM 1/5696, Public Record Office Kew, United Kingdom. Melanesian Mission. The Island Mission: Being a History of the Melanesian Mission From its Commencement. London: William Macintosh, 1869. Melanesian Mission. Report of the Melanesian Mission, For the Years 1861–1862: To Which Are Added a Sermon and a Letter by the Right Rev. Bishop Patteson; Together with a Statement of the Accounts of the Mission for the Years 1861–1862. Kohimarama: ­Melanesian Mission Press, 1863. Nau, Semisi. The Story of My Life: The Autobiography of a Tongan Methodist Missionary who Worked at Ontong Java, edited by Allan K. Davidson. Suva: Institute of Pacific Studies for the University of the South Pacific, 1996. Te Ngara, Eruera Karaka Hurutara. Letter to George Grey, [1863]. GNZMA 211, Grey New Zealand Maori letters – Nga Reta Māori, Auckland Public Library, Auckland, New Zealand. Te Ngara, Eruera Karaka. “Maori Journal of a Voyage to the Melanesian Islands with Bishop Patteson.” 1862. GNZMMS 143, Grey New Zealand Maori Manuscripts, ­Auckland Central City Library, New Zealand. O’Malley, Vincent. The Great War for New Zealand, Waikato 1800–2000. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2016. O’Malley, Vincent. Haerenga: Early Maori Journeys Across the Globe. Wellington: ­Bridget Williams Books, 2015.

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Paterson, Lachy. “Māori Literacy Practices in Colonial New Zealand.” In Indigenous Textual Cultures: Reading and Writing in the Age of Global Empire, edited by Tony Ballantyne, Lachy Paterson, and Angela Wanhalla, 80–98. Durham NC: Duke ­University Press, 2020. Patteson, John Coleridge. Letter to Warden of St. Augustine’s College, 18 November 1862. In Occasional Papers from St. Augustine’s College 70 (8 April 1863), 3. ­Project Canterbury: http://anglicanhistory.org/oceania/patteson/extracts1863.html (accessed 20 May 2019). Patteson, John Coleridge. Letter to John Keble, 26 June 1862. AD 1/116/2, Keble College Archives, Oxford, United Kingdom. Peel, J. D. Y. Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. Plane Te Pa’a, Jenny. “Maori and the Melanesian Mission: Two ‘Sees’ or Oceans Apart?” In The Church of Melanesia 1849–1999, edited by Allan K. Davidson, 77–85. Auckland: College of St John the Evangelist, 2000. Prentis, Malcolm. “A Thirst for Useful Knowledge: Samuel Marsden’s Māori Seminary at Parramatta, 1815–1827.” In Te Rongopai 1814 ‘Takoto te pai!’: Bicentenary Reflections on Christian Beginnings and Developments in Aotearoa New Zealand, edited by Allan K. Davidson, Stuart Lange, Peter J. Lineham, and Adrienne Puckey, 139–52. ­Auckland: General Synod Office, Anglican Church in Aotearoa New Zealand and Polynesia, 2014. Ross, Ruth M. Melanesians at Mission Bay: A History of the Melanesian Mission in Auckland. Wellington: Historic Places Trust, 1993. Samson, Jane. “Poisoned Arrows and Poisoned Ethnographies from Victorian Melanesia.” In South Seas Encounters: Nineteenth-Century Oceania, Britain, and America, edited by Richard Fulton, Peter Hoffenberg, Stephen Hancock, and Allison Paynter, 37–60. New York: Routledge, 2018. Sarawia, George. They Came to my Island. Siota: St. Peter’s College, 1968. Soutar, Monty. “He Iwi Piri Pono—Loyalty to the Crown, An Iwi Perspective.” In Tutu te Puehu: New Perspectives on the New Zealand Wars, edited by John Crawford and Ian McGibbon, 290–308. Wellington: Steele Roberts, 2018. Tanner, Kathryn. Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997. Tau, Te Maire, ed. I Whānau au ki Kaiapoi: The Story of Natanahira Waruwarutu as Recorded by Thomas Green. Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2011. Thomas, Nicholas. Islanders: The Pacific in an Age of Empire. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010. Thrush, Coll. Indigenous London: Native Travelers at the Heart of Empire. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016. Trompf, G. W. Melanesian Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

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Troughton, Geoffrey. “Missionaries, Historians and the Peace Tradition.” In Te Rongopai 1814 ‘Takoto te pai!’: Bicentenary Reflections on Christian Beginnings and Developments in Aotearoa New Zealand, edited by Allan K. Davidson, Stuart Lange, Peter J. Lineham, and Adrienne Puckey, 228–45. Auckland: General Synod Office, Anglican Church in Aotearoa New Zealand and Polynesia, 2014. Troughton, Geoffrey. “Samuel Marsden and the Origins of a New Zealand Peace ­Tradition.” In Saints and Stirrers: Christianity, Conflict and Peacemaking in New Z ­ ealand, 1814–1945, edited by Geoffrey Troughton, 29–46. Wellington: Victoria ­University Press, 2017. Vadya, A. P. Maori Warfare. Wellington: The Polynesian Society, 1960. Whiteman, Darrell. Melanesians and Missionaries: An Ethnohistorical Study of Social and Religious Change in the Southwest Pacific. Pasadena: William Carey Library, 1983. Yonge, Charlotte Mary. Life of John Coleridge Patteson: Missionary Bishop of the M ­ elanesian Islands. 2 vols. London: Macmillan, 1875.

Chapter 4

Māori Christianity, Missions, and the State in New Zealand Wars of the 1860s Norman Etherington 1 Introduction By 1860 Christian missions had been operating in New Zealand for more than forty years and were widely recognised as among the most successful on earth. Virtually the whole of the Māori population professed the Christian religion, inter-tribal warfare had largely ceased, and missions had been prominent in defending Indigenous inhabitants against encroachments by land-hungry white settlers.1 Within five years these achievements were called into question as large sections of the North Island were convulsed by war. Most present-day historians agree that British governors provoked the ­conflict, cheered on by settlers keen to crush the Māori King Movement that threatened further alienations of Indigenous land. In 1860 Thomas Gore Browne pushed through the purchase of a plot of land at Taranaki over the vociferous objections of a neighbouring chief. The troops he sent to enforce the ­occupation met resistance which quickly escalated into war. Gore Browne’s successor George Grey revoked the Taranaki land decision but almost immediately antagonised chiefs in the Waikato region in 1863 by sending an armed force into their territory, ostensibly for the purpose of reconnaissance but clearly intended to challenge their authority.2 This widened the theatre of a war that raged for several years. Neither governor made a secret of their object, which was to crush the Māori King Movement which, in their opinion, threatened British sovereignty. Putting aside the rights and wrongs of the war, this chapter aims to show how Māori Christianity was bound up with the coming, conduct, and consequences of the war. The much advertised nature of Christianity as a bringer of peace ran continuously through the discourse of Pākehā missionaries and Māori 1 Eugene Stock, The History of The Church Missionary Society, its Environment, its Men and its Work (4 vols., London: Church Missionary Society, 1899) 1: 428, 431, 436–37, 447. 2 For the wider historical context see Vincent O’Malley, The Great War for New Zealand: Waikato 1800–2000 (Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2016). © Norman Etherington, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004536791_005

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combatants on all sides of the conflict. Christian doctrine also figured prominently in discussions about the propriety and rules of warfare. Missionaries and Māori congregations were deeply conflicted in their attitudes throughout the struggle. Even Māori who broke with formal Christianity spoke from within rather than outside the framework of Christian thought. While the attitudes of Pākehā settlers, British soldiers, and non-missionary clergy were also coloured by Christianity, the focus here is on Christian Māori and the missionaries most deeply involved with them, especially the Anglican, Methodist, and Catholic evangelists. 2

Evangelisation, Settlement, and Land

The Church of England commenced missions to New Zealand in 1814 through the agency of the Church Missionary Society (CMS). By the late 1830s they had been joined by English Methodists (from 1822) and French Roman Catholics (in 1838). Great progress had been made in conversion but the d­ isruptive effects of unrestrained commerce with buccaneering outsiders were ongoing concerns. Guns increased the destructive effects of internecine warfare. Just as the CMS mission was gearing up to make a case for a friendly British annexation as the best way to bring peace and order, E. G. Wakefield’s New Zealand Company presented an unwelcome alternative model of colonisation. Dandeson Coates, lay secretary of the CMS in Britain, mounted a vigorous but ultimately unsuccessful campaign against the Company from the time its plans were first known, especially through his testimony to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Aboriginal Tribes (British Settlements) of 1837. He rightly feared that Māori would be dispossessed of land bought at bargain basement prices and that coexistence with a large population of white settlers would accelerate the decline of a proud people. The Treaty of Waitangi of 1840, which attempted to reconcile the competing interests of colonisation and Māori welfare under the umbrella of the British Crown, failed to deliver all the benefits anticipated by its CMS and Methodist missionary supporters. Within a short space of time reports of dodgy land deals began to pour in. The numerous objections lodged by missions with the governor gave them a r­ eputation as troublemakers. Officials began to refer disparagingly to “the missionary party”, which they viewed the as interfering local arm of the B ­ ritish philanthropic evangelical lobby: “Exeter Hall” in the shorthand jargon of the time. New Zealand was not unique in this respect. Distrust of missionaries

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by settlers and officials was common in colonies of white settlement right around the globe.3 Diligent research by historians of New Zealand Christianity has demolished the myth of a unified “missionary” or “church party”. By the 1860s Pakeha clergy were denominationally, theologically, and politically diverse. Many had never done missionary work and tacitly endorsed the views of their white settler congregations.4 Older CMS missionaries had difficulty coming to terms with the ecclesiastical authority imposed by the appointment of George Augustus Selwyn as Bishop of all New Zealand in 1841.5 Not only did he represent a different strain of Anglicanism but was bound by his position to consider all New Zealanders, Māori and Pākehā, as his flock. Wesleyan Methodists and Roman Catholics likewise ministered to both Māori missions and exclusively white churches. Other denominations had no connections with missions. These nuances were generally ignored by the officials, politicians, and settlers who demonised the “missionary party.” Governor Gore Browne accused Anglican Archdeacon Octavius Hadfield of organising an “anti-land selling league” in the years 1848–49. “Natives”, he said, “openly stated at their Meetings on the subject of land selling, that they had been instructed by the Archdeacon not to alienate any portion of their territory to the Government.”6 When the Māori King Movement emerged in 1857 Gore Browne treated it as a by-product of Hadfield’s alleged anti-land selling league aiming “to embarrass the Government in their operations with the Natives and by his advice and counsel to lead these on to their own destruction.”7 The view taken by missionaries and Māori Christians was more nuanced. Methodist Thomas Buddle could see nothing “directly hostile to the Government … The principal object appears to be the preservation of their lands by a mutual compact that no more shall be alienated but by consent of the King and his Runanga (Council)”. The adherents also aimed to strengthen the authority of 3 Peggy Brock, Norman Etherington, Gareth Griffiths, and Jacqueline Van Gent, Indigenous Evangelists and Questions of Authority in the British Empire 1750–1940 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), Part Four, 205–75. 4 Michael Grimshaw, “‘Fouling the nest’: The Conflict between the ‘Church Party’ and Settler Society during the New Zealand Wars, 1860–1865” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Otago, 1999). 5 Allan K. Davidson, ed., A Controversial Churchman: Essays on George Selwyn, Bishop of New Zealand and Lichfield, and Sarah Selwyn (Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2011). 6 Gore Browne to Newcastle, 2 January 1861. CO209/160, Colonial Office Records, British Archive, Kew (henceforward CO). Hadfield categorically denied the governor’s accusation: Hadfield to Newcastle, 25 February 1861, CO209/161. 7 Gore Browne to Newcastle, 2 January 1861.

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chief and to put down such vices as “adultery, theft, slander and intemperance”.8 The respected Christian Chief Wiremu Tāmihana (William Thompson) Tarapīpipi, a prime mover of the King Movement, contended that the main motivation was to secure peace. Due to quarrels about land: the flow of blood did not cease … I considered therefore how this blood could be made to diminish in this island. I looked into your books, where Israel cried to have a King for themselves to be a judge over them, and I looked at the word of Moses in Deuteronomy … and in Revelations … and I kept these words in my memory through all the years: the land feuds continuing all the time, and blood still being spilt, I still meditating upon the matter. When we arrived … at the year 1857 Te Heuheu called a meeting at Taupo. Twice 800 were assembled there. When the news of that meeting reached me, I said, I will consent to this to assist my work, that the religion of those tribes that had not yet united might have time to breathe. I commenced at those words in the Book of Samuel viii, 5, ‘Give us a King to judge us.’ This is why I set up Potatau in the year 1857. On his being set up the blood at once ceased, and has so remained up to the present year.9 The invocation of Biblical authority in pursuit of peace is striking. The historian of the CMS explains that the Māori “only knew one book—the Bible; and they were wont to apply its words in the most unexpected way to the circumstances of the time. ‘We have heard’, said one, at a tribal meeting [speaking of the Book of Samuel] ‘of Japhet dwelling in the tents of Shem; and we were very willing to receive him … but what we do not like is this: now that Japhet is inside he spurns us.’” The answer to Pākehā aggression should be unity. “Ephraim and Judah, Reuben and Dan, should no longer indulge in tribal disputes: let them stand together. ‘Japhet’ had the Governor and his ministers; let ‘Shem have a king’: and let both acknowledge the Queen as ultimately supreme.”10 Similar appeals to scripture crop up everywhere in Māori discourse on the wars of the following decade. Missionaries were quick to point out the folly of the land seizures at Taranaki in 1860. Henry Williams foresaw dark times ahead:

8 9

Wesleyan Missionary Notices (26 December 1859) 73:8. William Thompson to Gore Browne, 7 June 1861, enclosed in Gore Browne to Newcastle, 6 July 1861, CO209/163. 10 Stock, History of the Church Missionary Society, 2: 627.

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There appears to be a severe trial at hand, in the form of another Maori war, wantonly brought on by the Governor, in the forcing of a disputed claim of land, at Taranaki, or New Plymouth, on the Western Coast.… as the war party gain strength, the missionaries are suppressed, and I am quite prepared to hear that … the [government] grant hitherto allowed for the instruction of the natives in Schools will be disallowed. The language used by the Europeans towards the natives is extremely vile, and I am prepared to expect sad work.11 When his prophecy proved all too accurate, Bishop Selwyn, Archdeacon ­Hadfield, and several other Pākehā churchmen subjected Gore Browne’s policy to a stinging critique in an open letter of 4 July 1861.12 The governor ­counterattacked with the charge that it was through the machinations of the “missionary party” that “the natives have been encouraged to distinguish between Her Majesty’s Imperial Government and the Governor of the C ­ olony, and have been taught to regard the former as their only security against injustices and aggression. This pernicious suggestion is openly approved and defended by many of the agitators against my Government.”13 His contention was that but for missionary interference there would have been no resistance to the Taranaki land dealings and therefore no war. At every point officials denied Māori agency, even when pastors protested in their own names. A petition by Riwai Te Ahu and 23 other Māori ­Anglicans was greeted with scepticism even in the Colonial Office back in London. ­Undersecretary Chichester Fortescue claimed to have had no trouble recognising “in the production the style of the Hadfield school. The ‘Revd Riwai Te Ahu’,” he noted “is Archdeacon H’s Native clergyman.”14 A letter from a Hawkes Bay chief printed in the Wellington Spectator in April 1861 accused Gore Browne in high-flown Māori oratory of having turned savage: Uenuku, the man-eater used to be my god; but when the clergymen came to this land, I was told to put away my god, for the Pakeha God was the true one, Jehovah, the preserver of man, the Creator of heaven and earth. When I accepted your God, I thought all wrongs were to be made the subject of investigation, great wrongs a well as little ones. When 11 12 13 14

Williams to Rev. E. G. Marsh, 1 May 1860, quoted in Hugh Carleton, The Life of Henry ­ illiams, Archdeacon of Waimate, 2 vols (Auckland: Upton and Co., 1874–1877), 2: 336–37. W Printed letter of 4 July 1861, enclosed in Gore Browne to Newcastle, 12 July 1861, CO209/163. Gore Brown to Newcastle, 12 July 1861, CO209/163. Minute of 15 May 1861 on Gore Browne to Newcastle 4 March 1861, CO 209/161.

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it came to this affair, I alone was left to worship his God, whilst he the Governor went off to pick up … my cast away god, Uenuku the cannibal. And now the Governor, the supporter … of Jehovah has stepped forward and c­ arried off Uenuku the cannibal to Taranake [sic] as his god for the destruction of man.15 Even while Gore Browne acknowledged the language was “thoroughly idiomatic” and “doubtless that of the writer”, he insisted this “able letter’” was “but a reflection of the opinions of those who are termed the Missionary Party”; its “ideas are entirely European”.16 By this time the governor had secured a halt to hostilities with a promise for further investigation of the land dispute but without a clear-cut victory for either side. In fact many historians argue that the Māori resistance had defeated an obstinate ruler.17 The Colonial Office seemed to agree when they terminated Gore Browne’s commission in October 1861 and replaced him with George Grey, relying on his supposed profound knowledge of Māori culture to achieve a permanent settlement of the festering land issues. Bishop Selwyn, like many other churchmen, hoped the that a judicial inquiry would demonstrate that Tribal title “does exist at Taranaki, that it is has been understood to exist, and that it has been recognised by former Governments in the acts of their Chief Land Purchase Commissioner.” The war had been waged, he wrote, “upon an unproved assumption”.18 Anglican Bishop William Williams of Waipu, who had arrived in New Zealand as a CMS missionary in 1826, recited a litany of unjust land deals as the reason so many Māori Christians persisted in their support for the King Movement: I am told that at the present juncture the point, which is most desired by the Government, is the abandonment of the Maori King Movement. I know too that I speak correctly when I say, that the desire is equally strong in the hearts of those who are designated ‘Maori sympathisers’, and especially of the body of the Clergy of the Church of England, and a strong effort has been made to induce the Natives to give up this point. But I much doubt whether just at the present time this object will be effected.19 15 16 17 18 19

The Spectator 6 April 1861. Gore Browne to Newcastle, 25 April 1861, CO209/161. James Belich, The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1986), 114–16. Bishop Selwyn to Stafford, Colonial Secretary, 6 May 1861, enclosed in Gore Browne to Newcastle, 7 May 1861, CO209/162. Bishop Williams to Gore Browne, 5 June 1861, enclosed in Gore Browne to Newcastle 29 June 1861, CO209/162.

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Bishop Selwyn and his senior Anglican clergy publicly lamented that the disturbances at Taranaki had aroused resistance in the Waikato district, upsetting its pre-existing tranquility. Although the King Movement had many supporters there, it had to this point done no harm. What was needed to prevent further conflict was a fair and impartial land tribunal.20 Much would depend on how incoming governor George Grey managed the Taranaki land settlement. Grey brought baggage to the task. He had clashed with CMS missionaries during his first governorship (1845–1854). In his opinion they, not the settlers, were the land sharks, having bought large tracts in the 1840s to support their missions.21 Experience inclined him to close his ears to their entreaties. He was equally suspicious of other denominations. He claimed to have discovered since his return to New Zealand “that the Roman Catholic natives were taking a leading part in endeavouring to induce the Natives to join the party of the Maori King.”22 Although appointed as a peacemaker, Grey adhered to Gore Browne’s line that the King Movement spawned by missionary troublemakers was the root cause of hostilities—despite the many missionaries, such as John Morgan and William Williams, who opposed the movement or maintained a judicious silence. He determined to crush it in its Waikato stronghold. After much delay he concluded that Gore Browne had been at fault in the Taranaki dispute and the land should be returned to its rightful owners.23 Before making a public announcement, however, he sent forces to seize Crown Land that the Māori claimants had been holding as security pending the settlement. As Britain’s Colonial Secretary remarked, “It would have been better if the two things had been done simultaneously.”24 A few weeks later Grey sent British forces into the Waikato and all hope of conciliation vanished, significantly on a Sunday, 13 July 1863. Bishop Selwyn, who had previously engaged in numerous attempts to mediate between Māori and settlers and the Crown, now lamented that “The Rubicon is passed and war is declared against New Zealand.”25

20 21

Printed letter of 4 July 1861, enclosed in Gore Browne to Newcastle, 12 July 1861, CO209/163. Keith Sinclair, “Grey, George”, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first published in 1990, Te Ara—The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1g21 /grey-george (accessed 6 August 2020); Stock, History of the Church Missionary Society, 1: 438–41. 22 Grey to Cardwell, 21 November 1864, CO209/185. 23 Grey to Gore Browne, 24 April 1863, CO209/172. 24 Stock, History of the Church Missionary Society, 2: 629. 25 Stock, History of the Church Missionary Society, 2: 629. For Selwyn’s previous attempts at mediation see Davidson, ed., A Controversial Churchman, 59–61.

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Christianity and the Conduct of War

As anticipated, Grey’s aggression met fierce resistance which gave the lie to the charge that Pākehā missionaries were the real force behind the King Movement. This was not just a struggle between British and Māori. It was also a civil war among Māori, a great many of whom fought on the British side. Combatants on both sides appealed to Scripture and prayed that the “God of Battles” would deliver their enemies into their hands. Accustomed to attacks from officials and settlers, missionaries now drew fire from Māori Christians for serving as spies and chaplains to the British ­forces—a charge that gained credence from the many previous occasions on which missionaries had supplied reports to government.26 Warnings began to arrive that missions and missionaries would be attacked. A daughter of the Māori King Pōtatau Te Wherowhero, who had been a mission teacher, was reported to have said they “did not care to send their children to the mission schools” and believed they themselves “could read prayers and preach as well as the missionaries.”27 As fighting continued, warnings and rumours turned into reality. CMS missions in the Waikato were destroyed and Pākehā missionaries fled for their lives.28 When Governor Grey announced that land would be confiscated from the Waikato “rebels”, Bishop Selwyn detected “a bitterness unknown before. The missionary clergy were believed to be agents of the ­Government in a deep-laid plot for the subjugation of the Native people. Our congregations melted away, our advice was disregarded.”29 Methodists lamented that their missions in the strongholds of the King Movement lay in ruins.30 Amid these sorrows the various denominations took some comfort in the fact that no ordained Māori clergy had defected to the anti-British forces.31 Some of them suffered the same fate as Pākehā missionaries, being chased 26

H. W. Monaghan, From Age to Age: The Story of the Church of England in the Diocese of W ­ ellington 1858–1958 (Wellington: Standing Committee of the Diocese of Wellington, 1957), 47–48; New Zealand Spectator and Cook’s Strait Guardian, 9 March 1864, 3. 27 J. E. Gorst to the Native Minister, 23 April 1863, enclosed in Grey to Newcastle, 9 May 1863, CO209/173. 28 Stock, History of the Church Missionary Society, 2: 630, 29 “Fanaticism,” New Zealand Herald, 11 May 1865, 5. 30 “Report of the Wesleyan Missionary Society for the North District,” Daily Southern Cross, 7 November 1865, 5. 31 John Evans, Churchman Militant: George Augustus Selwyn, Bishop of New Zealand and Lichfield (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1964), 76; “Report of the Wesleyan Missionary Society for the North District,” 5; William Williams, Christianity among the New ­Zealanders (London: Seeley, Jackson and Halliday, 1867), 377.

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from their stations.32 No missions north of Auckland and none south of Cook Strait suffered any disruption.33 It was a different story with lay preachers, teachers, and mission assistants, many of whom took up arms against the government. To the amazement of many observers, including missionaries, in the early stages of the war they continued to practice their faith, kept the Sabbath, and endeavoured to wage war in accordance with Christian precepts. Prior to the famous battle at the Gate Pā of Pukehinahina in April 1864 the British received by messenger a list of rules signed by “all the Catholics at Tauranga”. It “offered succour for soldiers who surrendered when wounded or captured, fair treatment for any soldier captured unarmed, guaranteed the safety of combatants who fled to the ‘house of the priest … even though carrying arms’, and promised that ‘unarmed Pakehas, women and children, will be spared’.”34 Despite a bad omen—the first shell fired in the British bombardment felled a lay reader who had just begun an Anglican service—the Māori defenders carried the battle, losing 25 killed to 111 on the other side. In the heat of battle a former Anglican candidate for the priesthood at Bishop Selwyn’s college, performed a well-attested act of Christian chivalry. Hearing a dying English officer cry out for water after nightfall, Hēnare Taratoa reportedly ventured behind enemy lines: close to where English sentries were on duty, filled a calabash with water, and crept back again – but hit, and wounded. Next day the English attacked again, and drove out the remnant of the Maoris, killing most of them as they fought with desperate courage to the last. The wounded Henare fell with the rest, and on his body were found the ‘orders of the day’ for the fight. They began with a form of prayer, and ended with the words, in Maori, ‘If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink.’35 According to Eugene Stock, “the fighting Maoris continued to show noble chivalry in their warfare”, while “all the time fully believing in the righteousness of 32 Wellington Independent, 29 August 1865, 6. 33 Stock, History of the Church Missionary Society, 2: 630. 34 Matthew Wright, Two Peoples, One Land: The New Zealand Wars (Auckland: Reed, 2006), 141. 35 Stock, History of the Church Missionary Society, 2: 636. Back in England as Bishop of Lichfield, Selwyn commemorated Henare’s deed in a window representing King David pouring out the water his men had fetched from the well of Bethlehem. Subsequently this act of Christian charity was attributed to other Māori, in particular Hēni Te Kiri Karamū, though the deed itself is not disputed and Taratoa is acknowledged as having drawn up the code of conduct.

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their cause”. They “prayed and read the Scriptures before fighting and regularly kept their Sunday services.”36 Methodist Thomas Buddle, speaking in Auckland while war still raged to the south, noted that “those who were fighting were still Christians; they appoint chaplains for their fighting men, and they think that they are fighting for their rights, for their liberties and their lands, and that they are perfectly justified for what they are doing in the sight of God.”37 On the government side, Buddle commended the preachers and teachers who carried intelligence of enemy movements. In an attempt to turn their Christianity to account Governor Grey despatched a naval officer to Poverty Bay to “encourage the tribes in every possible way to remain firm in the Christian religion, to keep the peace and to obey the law”.38 Chief Wiremu Tāmihana Tarapīpipi, known to the Pākehā as William Thompson, and renowned as the “Kingmaker” on account of his decisive role in establishing the King Movement, preserved his reputation as a Christian gentleman despite joining the resistance in the Waikato. In 1863 he set out his motivation in a reasoned letter to Grey, causing the governor to remark that a great change has “overtaken even the best of the Natives”.39 Tāmihana kept up the correspondence, regretting that “although our bodies have been separated by evil, love will not cease as says St. Paul”.40 4

Archangels, Prophets, and New Creeds Reframe the War

During the lull between Gore Browne’s truce at Taranaki and Grey’s invasion of Waikato a three-masted steamer, Lord Worsley, ran aground a little to the south of New Plymouth harbour on 1 September 1862. Among those who assisted passengers safely ashore was a Methodist teacher, Horopāpera Te Ua.41 He alone appears to have noticed that the Archangel Michael, the Angel Gabriel, and a

36 Stock, History of the Church Missionary Society, 2: 630. 37 “Missionaries and the Maoris,” Colonist (Nelson), 4 March 1864, 2. 38 Grey to Cardwell 23 May 1865, CO209/190. 39 Grey to Newcastle, 8 Aug. 1863, CO209/174; Grey to Newcastle, 6 Oct. 1863. 40 William Thompson to Grey, 24 Nov. 1864, enclosed in Grey to Cardwell, CO209/185. 41 Horopāpera (Zerubbabel) was Te Ua’s baptismal name, though he later discarded this in favour of Tūwhakararo Tūtawake (Tūtawake being his father’s name). In 1864 he took the spiritual name Haumēne. He was generally named as either Horopapera or Te Ua in documents of the time.

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host of heavenly spirits also came ashore that day.42 In subsequent months Te Ua received amazing revelations and instructions from Gabriel. He acquired superhuman powers that enabled him to break free of locks, bonds, and chains. At God’s command he re-enacted Abraham’s aborted sacrifice of Isaac, breaking his son’s bones and then making him whole again by bathing the boy in the waters of the River Wairau. Impressed by these miracles his neighbours stopped treating him like a lunatic and took his preaching seriously. Soon it became a movement, known to its followers as Pai Mārire (Good and peaceful in some versions, Bide your time, or All-holy in others) or Hauhau, after the mystical word Hau that featured in ceremonies. In conversations with Robert Parris, an Anglican who once worked for Bishop Selwyn, Te Ua claimed to have renounced the King Movement and now wished only for peace. Outside observers were not sure what to think. According to the notes of interviews conducted early in 1864 by magistrate John White of Whanganui some aspects of Pai Mārire were just nutty, such as the erection of peculiar posts and flags.43 Others breathed hostility to Europeans: The priests have superhuman power and can obtain for their followers complete victories by uttering vigorously the word ‘Hau’. The people who adopt this religion will shortly drive the whole E ­ uropean population out of New Zealand. Legions of angels await the bidding of the priest to aid the Maori in exterminating the Europeans. To orthodox denominations Pai Mārire presented itself as a puzzling heresy. It promised believers the protection of the Virgin Mary, but did not mention Jesus. It drew on both the Old and New Testaments, but insisted that: The religion of England as taught by the Scriptures is false. The Scriptures must be burnt. All days are alike sacred and no notice must be taken of the Christian Sabbath. 42

43

The account in this paragraph is drawn from the report to the Colonial Secretary of ­ obert Parris, 8 December 1864, in Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives R of New Zealand, 1865, Session I, E-04 (Wellington: Government Printer, 1865), 5–6. Parris was well qualified for the task, having learned Māori while working as the manager of Bishop Selwyn’s industrial school. Report of John White, enclosed in Grey to Newcastle, 26 May 1864, CO209/180; see also Jesse Page, Among the Maoris or Daybreak in New Zealand (New York: Fleming H. Revell, n.d., ca. 1890), 127–28.

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It rejected monogamy, recommending that men and women “live together promiscuously so that their children may be as the sand of the sea for multitude.” What did the rise of this strange new faith mean for missions? It was evidently an evangelical movement for its apostles spread out in all directions. Many of them had, like the founder, previous association with missions as teachers and preachers.44 The great fear of established missions in the first instance was that their congregations would defect en masse. The more salient question for Grey’s government, as for this symposium, was determining what impact Pai Mārire might have on the war. Te Ua said he wanted peace. His preaching did not encourage direct acts of violence. Rather it promised that the extermination of the Europeans would commence with the arrival of angelic legions. At a parley with a British general at the end of 1864, the representatives of the cult promised “they would never again fight against the Pakeha” and “wished them no ill”. It was “their God [who] would destroy the Pakeha”.45 There were other millenarian expectations, including that teachers from heaven would instruct the Māori in “all the arts and sciences now known by Europeans”, and that Pai Mārire priests would have the power to teach the English language in a single lesson.46 Grey had previous experience of a millenarian movement during his time as High Commissioner for South Africa. During the years 1856–57, Xhosa people destroyed beasts and crops at the behest of a prophet who promised that the slaughter would be the signal for the return of their ancestors with concealed herds of cattle. Thus reinforced they would swiftly sweep the white men from their land. Grey naturally treated the cattle-killing movement as bunkum, but used it as an excuse to push on with his policy of kerbing the power of Xhosa chiefs.47 Grey and his officials took a similar view of Pai Mārire as a bit of hocus-­pocus cynically contrived by his enemy the Kingites to prolong the war by p ­ laying on the superstitious minds and savage passions of the common people. The civil commissioner at Tauranga professed that he had: never looked upon Hauhausim in the light of a religion at all. I have now been, as it were, face to face with the Hauhau fanaticism ever since it 44 45 46 47

Bronwyn Elsmore, Mana from Heaven: A Century of Maori Prophets in New Zealand (­Tauranga: Moana, 1989), 176. Col. H. H. Greer to the General Headquarters, 26 Dec. 1864, enclosed in Grey to Cardwell, 7 Jan. 1865, CO209/188. Report of John White. Jeff Peires, The Dead will Arise: Nongqawuse and the Great Xhosa Cattle-Killing of 1856–7. (Jeppestown, South Africa: Jonathan Ball, 2003), especially 129–37.

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was introduced into these districts, and my belief is confirmed, that it is a cleverly contrived political institution in support of the Maori King. Stronger by far than the old combination, from the circumstance that its inventors have brought to their aid the blind and superstitious belief of their followers. In fact some of their leaders are looked upon with as much reverence and fear as the old Maori Priesthood, and their behests implicitly obeyed. The one common object is ridding the ‘New Canaan of the Samaritans’.48 The movement might have been ignored by officials but for two extraordinary acts of violence committed in its name. On 6 April 1864, a detachment under Captain Thomas Lloyd was ambushed, killed, and decapitated at Taranaki.49 In the months to come Pai Mārire agents carried Lloyd’s head across the war-torn regions. At each stop people listened in amazement as instructions, prophecies, and commands issued from Lloyd’s blackened lips. It was said that once the head had traversed the whole land, the promised legions of angels would descend and commence their work.50 A year later, in March 1865, Anglican priest Carl Völkner was seized by a party of Hauhau who accused him of spying for the government and preaching from false scriptures. After hanging him outside his church at Opotiki they laid his severed head upon the altar. Their leader then plucked out the eyes and ate them.51 In a letter to the governor justifying their actions the marauders pointed to the murder of women by British forces and promised that as long as Māori were crucified they would crucify the Pakeha.52 Whatever its initial character, Pai Mārire had by this point become the creed of warriors. Much has been written about the causes and character of this and other Māori prophetic religious movements. Scholars and churchmen have debated whether they deserve to be classed as varieties of Christianity, new religions, or syncretic amalgams of European and Māori belief. In respect to the ­narrower question of the relationship between Christian missions and peace the facts to note are these. Pai Mārire was from the beginning associated with the 48 49 50 51 52

H. T. Clarke, Civil Commissioner, Tauranga to J. C. Richmond, Native Minister, 24 April 1867, in Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives of New Zealand, 1867, ­Session I, A-20 (Wellington: Government Printer, 1867), 57. Grey to Newcastle, 25 April 1864, CO209/179. Report of John White. Grey to Cardwell, 6 April 1865, CO209/189. Translation of letter: Committee of Ngatiawa, Whakatohea, Urewera and Taranaki to the Office of the Government, Auckland; dated Opotiki, place of Canaan, 6 March 1865, enclosed in Grey to Cardwell, 6 April 1869, CO209/189.

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geography of war. It originated in Taranaki where Gore Browne had launched his war. It spread across regions ravaged by the war Grey instigated in the Waikato but did not take hold in any other part of New Zealand. That indicates that its appeal was not its grounding in Māori culture generally, but the immediate context. Pai Mārire would not have taken the form it did without the rich content and interpretative power of the Bible that missions put into the hands of the Māori. Some have contended that the Old Testament was particularly important in providing a scriptural basis for political resistance. Māori could see themselves in the story of Moses and Pharaoh, David and Goliath, the Babylonian captivity. Yes, they could and did, but the New Testament was also very important. It was said that Te Ua’s favourite book was Revelation.53 The assurance that the trumpet would sound, that the horsemen of the Apocalypse would ride, and that the wicked would be cast into the pit supplied a template for millenarian expectations of deliverance through divine intervention. The Virgin Mary and Gabriel, the angel of the Annunciation, were so ­central to Pai Mārire as to cause hostile observers to suspect that Roman Catholics were its instigators.54 Finally, Pai Mārire could not have spread as it did without the agency of mission-trained evangelists and teachers. Mission Christianity showed how to spread the word, arouse audiences, instil doctrine, and dictate practice—how, in short, to propagate a religion. 5

Tītokowaru, Te Kooti, and the War that Would Not End

Convinced he was on the verge of winning his Waikato War, George Grey ­carried through the Suppression of Rebellion Act and a Confiscation Act in 1863, which aimed to conclude his crusade against the King Movement by breaking up the Māori lands in the Waikato and distributing large tracts to soldiers and settlers. The effect was simply to harden the determination of the resistance. The land grab also created outrage in humanitarian and e­ vangelical circles in Britain. Goldwin Smith, professor of modern history at Oxford p ­ ronounced the acts to be the “doom of the Maori race”. We are “not common marauders”, he wrote sarcastically:

53

Paul Clark, “Hauhau”: The Pai Marire Search for Maori Identity (Auckland: Oxford ­ niversity Press, 1975), 5. U 54 Williams, Christianity among the New Zealanders, 368–69; Stock, History of the Church Missionary Society, 2: 631; Col. Ware, Confidential Report, 24 April 1864, enclosed in Grey to Newcastle, 5 May 1864, CO209/180.

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We duly baptised the Maori race before we murdered it; and we do­ ­everything in the name of Christianity and civilisation. In rapacity and atrocity we have had many equals – perhaps not a few superiors; in pious rapacity and sanctimonious atrocity we may look through history for our peers in vain.55 Already there were more troops engaged in New Zealand than stood ready for the defence of the British Isles. “Of course”, Smith continued “we are told that the colonial war and its expenses are temporary. If colonial wars and their expenses are temporary, what is eternal?” This particular war continued: 1) because land confiscation was not the solution to a conflict about land, and 2) because it had been infused with religious fervour not susceptible to suppression by brute force or legislative acts. The development of Pai Mārire amply demonstrated that. From time to time Grey would announce that he had won the war only to find that the mission was not, after all, accomplished. On 5 February 1864 he wrote that General Duncan Cameron was poised to strike a decisive blow that will “bring this unhappy conflict to a close”.56 More than a year later in May 1865 he wrote that thanks to the submission of William Thompson and the so-called Māori King “the war is virtually terminated”. On 2 September he issued a proclamation through the government gazette that “the War which commenced at Oakura is at an end” and that the governor would take no more lands “on account of the present war”. Only those responsible for the murder of missionary Völkner remained to be captured and punished by loss of land. An exasperated but clearly relieved British Colonial Secretary congratulated Grey while reminding him “that Her Majesty’s Government would not approve the protection by Imperial Troops of Land taken from the rebels”.57 In March the next year he wrote that the last of the “Hau Hau fanatics” had been “entirely subdued”; he saw “every reason to hope that the existing tranquillity will not again be disturbed, and that New Zealand will continue rapidly to progress.” To which the Colonial Secretary replied with the expectation “that the war in N. Zealand may now be considered to be finished and the Native races will enter upon a course of undisturbed tranquillity.” To make sure there would be no further sacrifices of British soldiers, Grey was ordered to arrange for their withdrawal. When it became clear he was procrastinating, he was dismissed from 55 56 57

Goldwin Smith, letter to the editor of the Daily News (UK) 13 February 1864, bound at the end of CO209/185. Grey to Newcastle, 5 February 1864, CO209/179. Cardwell to Grey 27 November 1865, CO209/192.

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his governorship.58 He sailed away in February 1868 filled with resentment at being denied the reward he deserved for delivering peace. Within a matter of months it became clear that what Grey thought was lasting peace was but an armed truce. Independent of each other two talented Māori generals launched new campaigns. Riwha Tītokowaru of Taranaki ordered an attack on military settlers occupying disputed land on 9 June 1868. A month later Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Tūruki, a prisoner of war held on the distant Chatham Islands, overpowered guards, seized a ship and sailed off with all the prisoners. After landing at Poverty Bay he established headquarters in the hinterland and commenced a guerrilla war.59 Both men grew up grounded in Christianity as a religion of peace but turned away from orthodoxy in wartime and became prophets of variant faiths. As a teenager Tītokowaru joined the Heretoa mission of Methodist John Skevington at Taranaki. Baptised as Joseph Orton after another missionary, he spent ten years immersing himself in the Bible while employed as a monitor. Inevitably he was caught up in Gore Browne’s Taranaki War and may also have done some fighting in the Waikato. He first emerged as a public figure in 1866 when he put aside his baptismal name and became an acolyte of Pai Mārire— not in the guise articulated by Völkner’s executioners but as a movement of peace. After the death of Te Ua in that same year, Tītokowaru appeared to many to have assumed the mantle of the Angel Gabriel’s messenger.60 The next year he proclaimed 1867 to be “the year of our daughters … the year of the lamb”. Astonishingly, he not only talked the talk but also walked the walk. In June he led a delegation of more than 100 men, women and children on a six-week “hikoi, a march of peace and reconciliation”.61 On this, perhaps the first peace march in New Zealand history, he visited Māori villages and British encampments seeking pledges to renounce armed conflict. That did not mean that resistance to land seizures would end. In the face of what has been called “creeping confiscation” Tītokowaru tried passive resistance and only when that failed did he reluctantly return to the battlefield in June 1868. His reported use of quasi-religious ceremonies and gnomic pronouncements suggests the formulation of an organised cult, however it was one that died with its founder in 1888. 58 Belich, New Zealand Wars, 211. 59 Belich, New Zealand Wars, 216–218. 60 James Belich, “Titokowaru, Riwha”, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first published in 1990, Te Ara—the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies /1t101/titokowaru-riwha (accessed 28 July 2020). 61 Memorably recounted by James Belich in the second chapter of I Shall Not Die: ­Titokowaru’s War, 1868–1869 (Wellington: BWB e-Book, 2015).

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Te Kooti, in contrast, founded a religion that endured: Ringatū, now widely recognised as a legitimate branch of Christianity. As a child he joined a CMS mission where he acquired the baptismal name Te Kooti, a Māori form of Coates, in honour of Dandeson Coates who had led the Anglican resistance in England to the Wakefield colonisation scheme. He was a man of broad ­Christian knowledge, having attended The Three Kings Methodist training college before returning to the CMS with the expressed intention of studying for the priesthood. Then, in deference to his Catholic wife, he joined the Roman Catholic Church.62 As late as 1865 Te Kooti was fighting alongside government forces before being accused, perhaps falsely, of being spy and exiled to the Chatham Island prison. While he later admitted to George Grey that he had once attended a Hauhau meeting, he had never embraced their beliefs.63 During a serious illness in February 1867 he was visited by a spirit who comforted him with the news that God had heard his crying. From this vision sprang the revelations that created the Ringatū Christianity he preached to his fellow prisoners in the months leading up to their dramatic escape.64 The swashbuckling raids he made on government forces from his hideouts in the bush spread both his fame and his faith, along with a reputation as boogie man that lasted among Pākehā well into the twentieth century.65 Thanks to Tītokowaru and Te Kooti the more or less continuous conflict that sprang from Gore Browne’s ill-considered actions in Taranaki in 1860 dragged on into the 1870s without any definitive moment of victory or surrender. 6

Messengers of Peace?

In the case of the New Zealand Wars of the 1860s, our response to questions concerning the extent to which nineteenth-century missionaries can be meaningfully interpreted as messengers of peace depends on answers to other questions: which messengers? what message? whose peace? Anglican, Methodist, and Catholic missions all aimed to promote peace in a troubled land. The CMS mission hoped that British sovereignty would end conflict among 62

Judith Binney, Redemption Songs: A Life of Te Kooti Anikirangi Te Turki (Auckland: ­ uckland University Press, 1995), 16–17, 20–22. A 63 Grey interviewed Te Kooti in 1870; see Binney, Redemption Songs, 24. 64 “Papers Relative to the Escape of the Maori Prisoners from the Chatham Islands,” in Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives of New Zealand, 1868, Session I, A-15 (Wellington: Government Printer, 1868). 65 Wright, Two Peoples, One Land, 12.

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warring groups, but set their faces against a colonisation scheme that they believed would generate the perpetual conflict that had afflicted colonies of white settlement almost everywhere. When the predicted conflicts over land did occur, the settlers portrayed missions as interfering troublemakers. British officials who strove to reconcile land selling with the protection of Māori interests promised at Waitangi likewise came to view the missions as the obstacle to peaceful colonisation. No matter that missionaries and other clergy held diverse views on the politics of war, it suited official and settler propagandists to paint them with the same brush. The unexpectedly rapid progress of Christianisation owed more to Māori evangelists than to the small core of foreign missionaries. Their success was in no small part due to Māori interpretations of the Bible which soon cut loose from missionary direction. The New Testament message of peace on earth and heavenly salvation was mixed with readings of the Old Testament that led Māori Christians to identify with captive Hebrews. The King Movement plausibly presented itself as both the bringer of peace to a divided people, and a challenge to the government that would deny them the promised land. Any credit Anglican critics, including some CMS missionaries, gained from condemnation of the Taranaki War in 1860, evaporated in the Waikato where clergymen marched as chaplains with the advancing British troops. Maori Christians fought, prayed, and held services on both sides of the battle line. However, the destruction wrought by war encouraged departures from the Christianity taught in the missions. Prophets, angels, and visions like those depicted in the Bible appeared. People who responded to Te Ua’s Pai Mārire and Te Kooti’s Ringatū formulated their own versions of Just War and ­challenged the settlers’ ideas of what a proper peace would look like. Bibliography Belich, James. I Shall Not Die: Titokowaru’s War, 1868–1869. Wellington: BWB e-Book, 2015. Belich, James. “Titokowaru, Riwha.” Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first ­published in 1990. Te Ara—the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz /en/biographies/1t101/titokowaru-riwha (accessed 28 July 2020). Belich, James. The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1986. Binney, Judity. Redemption Songs: A Life of Te Kooti Anikirangi Te Turki. Auckland: ­Auckland University Press, 1995.

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Brock, Peggy, Norman Etherington, Gareth Griffiths, and Jacqueline Van Gent. Indigenous Evangelists and Questions of Authority in the British Empire 1750–1940. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Carleton, Hugh. The Life of Henry Williams, Archdeacon of Waimate. 2 vols. Auckland: Upton and Co., 1874–1877. Clark, Paul. “Hauhau”: The Pai Marire Search for Maori Identity. Auckland: Oxford ­University Press, 1975. Clarke, H. T. Letter to J. C. Richmond, Native Minister, 24 April 1867. In Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives of New Zealand, 1867, Session I, A-20, 55–57. Wellington: Government Printer, 1867. Colonial Office Records, CO29. British Archives, Kew, United Kingdom. Davidson, Allan K., ed. A Controversial Churchman: Essays on George Selwyn, Bishop of New Zealand and Lichfield, and Sarah Selwyn. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2011. Elsmore, Bronwyn. Mana from Heaven: A Century of Maori Prophets in New Zealand. Tauranga: Moana, 1989. Evans, John. Churchman Militant: George Augustus Selwyn, Bishop of New Zealand and Lichfield. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1964. “Fanaticism.” New Zealand Herald. 11 May 1865, 5. Grimshaw, Michael. “‘Fouling the nest’: The Conflict between the ‘Church Party’ and Settler Society during the New Zealand Wars, 1860–1865.” Ph.D. thesis, University of Otago, 1999. “Missionaries and the Maoris.” Colonist (Nelson). 4 March 1864, 2. Monaghan, H. W. From Age to Age: The Story of the Church of England in the Diocese of Wellington 1858–1958. Wellington: Standing Committee of the Diocese of ­Wellington, 1957. New Zealand Spectator and Cook’s Strait Guardian. 9 March 1864. O’Malley, Vincent. The Great War for New Zealand: Waikato 1800–2000. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2016. Page, Jesse. Among the Maoris or Daybreak in New Zealand. New York: Fleming H. ­Revell, n.d., ca. 1890. “Papers Relative to the Escape of the Maori Prisoners from the Chatham Islands.” In Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives of New Zealand, 1868, ­Session I, A-15. Wellington: Government Printer, 1868. Parris, Robert. “The Assistant Native Secretary, Taranaki, to the Hon. The C ­ olonial ­Secretary.” In Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives of New Z ­ ealand, 1865, Session I, E-04, 5–6. Wellington: Government Printer, 1865. Peires, Jeff. The Dead will Arise: Nongqawuse and the Great Xhosa Cattle-Killing of 1856–7. Jeppestown, South Africa: Jonathan Ball, 2003.

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“Report of the Wesleyan Missionary Society for the North District.” Daily Southern Cross. 7 November 1865, 5. Sinclair, Keith. “Grey, George”. Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first published in 1990. Te Ara—The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies /1g21/grey-george (accessed 6 August 2020). Stock, Eugene. The History of The Church Missionary Society, its Environment, its Men and its Work. 4 vols. London: Church Missionary Society, 1899. Wellington Independent. 29 August 1865, 6. Williams, William. Christianity among the New Zealanders. London: Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday, 1867. Wright, Matthew. Two Peoples, One Land: The New Zealand Wars. Auckland: Reed, 2006.

Chapter 5

Not Peace but a Sword: Missionaries, Humanitarianism, and Slavery in Late Nineteenth-Century Central Africa David Maxwell 1 Introduction The notion of peacemaking had little currency in the Nineteenth Century ­Missionary Movement to Africa. Instead broad ideas about social transformation were organised around the concept of humanitarianism, which had been given such a stimulus by the abolition of the slave trade within the British Empire in 1807 that by the 1840s it had become a defining element of British national and imperial identity. Elements within international civil society engaged in passionate debate about the duties that accompanied the possession of empire. Chief amongst these groups were missionary societies and their allies such as the Aborigines’ Protection Society (APS) which were accorded a semi-formal status as mediators between the British and local peoples and had some success in the defence of the indigenous inhabitants of colonial settler societies. Empire made concerted political action possible, allowing missionaries in a transnational network stretching from Cape Town to New Zealand to influence British legislators in London. By dint of their long service and commitment to liberal and humanitarian values men such as John Philip of the London Missionary Society (LMS) and Samuel Marsden of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in New Zealand and Australia might qualify as peacemakers in their efforts to mitigate the worst effects of cultural encounter on imperial frontiers in the first half of the nineteenth century. Certainly, their model of Christian humanitarian imperialism had its greatest triumphs in this period. However, empire, even the rapidly expanding British version, had its ­limitations and while humanitarian intervention continued in Africa during the latter half of the nineteenth century its achievements were more modest. Imperial parsimony and a reluctance to intervene beyond colonial borders trammelled moral action, restricting its aims and reach. The end of American slavery following the Civil War and the high-profile career of David Livingstone kept humanitarianism on the agenda but the context for missionaries entering © David Maxwell, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004536791_006

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Central Africa was radically different. First, missionaries began to turn away from the imbrication of Christianity, Capitalism, and Commerce, exemplified by the work of John Philip of the LMS, to a simplified programme of evangelism. Secondly, they increasingly moved beyond the bounds of empire. Now working in the African interior, they were politicised by the Indian Ocean and Luso-African slave trades rather than by white setters. Here the activities of missionaries captured public attention from time to time, but they never had the notoriety of their predecessors working in South Africa or New Zealand. It was more important that missionary societies working in Central Africa came to terms with indigenous authorities.1 The penetration of capitalist imperialism into the region had taken an indirect form leading to the emergence of new trading barons-cum-warlords who operated the Indian Ocean and Luso-African slave trade in a climate of extreme violence. These African leaders used missionaries for material and political advantage but proved little interested in the import of their message. What is striking about the missionary encounter with Africa in the late nineteenth century are the limitations, even absence, of missionary visions of peace, and the impact of this lack on effective peacemaking. Beyond a great enthusiasm for evangelism, the desire to eradicate slavery, and a vague notion of civilisation, most missionaries entering Central Africa possessed few ­theological ideas about how to transform the societies they encountered.2 There was certainly little evidence of a non-violent, reconciliatory ethic that underpins the peace idea. Besides a literal reading of the Acts of the Apostles, missionaries styled themselves on heroic figures from literature and drew some of their best and worst missiological models from their understanding of the Christian encounter with medieval Europe where missionaries faced so-called barbarous pagan tribes. These strategies included protective enclaves and the very inverse of peacemaking: crusading. The core of this chapter compares and contrasts two missionary responses to the conditions of late nineteenth-century Central Africa. The first was the Abbey, or mission colony, which was used by the Catholic White Fathers who established themselves in Central Africa in 1885. The second, embodied in faith missions such as the Plymouth Brethren3 who entered Katanga in 1886, involved the repudiation of the message of Christianity, Civilisation 1 John Darwin, The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World System, 1830–1970 (­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 2–47. 2 Adrian Hastings, The Church in Africa, 1450–1950 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 290–92. 3 Many of these missionaries would have described themselves as Open Brethren rather than using the generic label Plymouth Brethren.

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and Commerce in favour of an evangelical simplicity and identification with local societies. The chapter will examine how in their attempts to come to terms with the crisis-ridden societies they encountered both the Plymouth Brethren and White Fathers became embroiled in the slave trade and internal ­slavery and made little headway until colonial occupation, which they both came to accept as the best means of allowing Christianisation. Alliance with colonial ­authorities facilitated the creation of protective enclaves within large mission communities in which social relations could be revised. Faced with insecurity and what they saw as the capricious nature of indigenous leaders they saw the benefits of externally imposed order and took the pragmatic view aptly summarised by Ian Linden that Africans “could only be freed for Christianity by the Sword”.4 2

Christianity, Humanitarianism, and Empire

This essay builds upon recent scholarship, which has begun to nuance the ­triumphal history of abolitionism as a legitimation of British civilising mission and the hallmark of a benevolent imperialism by highlighting the limitations of imperial power and instrumentality of the anti-slavery rhetoric.5 The idea of trusteeship, advanced by Edmund Burke in 1783 to avoid the repetition of abuses committed by the East India Company, appeared to be appropriate for the eighteenth century society where government was limited and the idea of imperial control over other societies was still fairly undeveloped. Nevertheless, the rather limited notion of ‘protection’ that trusteeship entailed persisted as a key plank of the humanitarian approach to empire throughout the nineteenth century. British governments remained keen to limit the expense of direct intervention.6 Missionaries were at times dismayed by the consequences of imperial policies such as the empowerment of traditionalist chiefs or M ­ uslim emirs under indirect rule, or as we shall see, the excesses of white settlers. But on the whole they viewed the existence of the British Empire as part of a divine plan for the evangelisation of the world, turning it to their advantage 4 Ian Linden, The Catholic Church and the Struggle for Zimbabwe (London: Longman, 1979), 9. 5 Derek Peterson, “Introduction. Abolitionism and Political Thought in Britain and East Africa,” in Abolitionism and Imperialism in Britain, Africa, and the Atlantic, ed. Derek R. ­Peterson (Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2010), 4, 6–7; Boyd Hilton, “‘1807 and All That’: Why Britain Outlawed Her Slave Trade,” in Abolitionism and Imperialism, 63–83. 6 Andrew Porter, “Trusteeship, Anti-Slavery, and Humanitarianism,” in The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 3: The Nineteenth Century, ed. Andrew Porter (Oxford: Oxford ­University Press, 1999), 199.

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wherever they could.7 It also made early nineteenth century humanitarian action possible.8 The problem was that the British Empire was not as homogenous or ­rationally organised as its policy makers liked to believe. At times dragged in by adventurers on the spot, or to block foreign rivals, “British expansion”, John Darwin explains, “was driven not by official designs but by the chaotic pluralism of British interests at home and of their agents and allies abroad.”9 The administration and defense of such as vast raft of territories was something of a nightmare and British politicians were sparing in their use of soldiers and gunboats. Inevitably, some regions were deemed more significant than others due to their strategic or economic interest. Until 1900 two thirds of British migrants went to the United States of America while almost all of the rest went to four main settlement zones: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa in the British Empire, and these, along with India, usually took priority. Missionary interests often ran against those of empire when it came to their relations with white settlers. John Philip, the impressive and long serving superintendent of the LMS in South Africa, regarded traders and land hungry farmers as the greatest threat to his organisation’s work. Keen to extend LMS authority over his indigenous neighbours Philip fought a continuous rearguard action against settler groups, blaming them for hindering emancipation, ­evangelism, and the work of civilisation. He became an inveterate traveller, correspondent, and researcher in support of his holistic mission of Christianity, commerce, and civilisation, founded on the equality of all human beings.10 An early victory, stemming from his visit to London 1826, was the permanent status given to Ordinance 50 (1828), which enhanced the freedom of the Khoi. In the Cape he made use of a transnational humanitarian network that ­comprised the Clapham Sect, the anti-slavery Society and the family of T. F. Buxton to pressure the British government to guarantee the rights, freedoms and security of Khoi and Xhosa peoples living on the frontier, feeding in first hand reports of abuses documented by missionaries on the ground. Thomas 7 Hastings, Church in Africa, 409; Brian Stanley, The Bible and the Flag: Protestant Missions and British Imperialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1992). 8 Porter, “Trusteeship,” 202; Andrew Porter, Religion Versus Empire: British Protestant ­Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 117. 9 Darwin, Empire Project, 3. 10 Elizabeth Elbourne, Blood Ground, Colonialism, Missions, and the Context for C ­ hristianity in the Cape Colony and Britain, 1799–1853 (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2002), 243–58.

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Buxton, his wife Hannah, and their daughters played a central role coordinating a web of missionary correspondence, which recorded abuses of indigenous peoples in or on the margins of settler societies.11 In this way parliamentarians were alerted to situations comparable to the South Africa such as New Zealand where Samuel Marsden highlighted the violence associated with arms, drink, and rights over women that accompanied European trade with the region.12 The Report of the Select Committee on Aborigines represented a ­considerable success for Christian humanitarian imperialism. Liberal minded missionaries had exposed the violent underbelly of European expansion and made it a global issue. They were recognised as exceptional and important intermediaries in relations between settlers and indigenous peoples across empire and their combined influence helped move the reluctant British authorities to annex New Zealand in 1840 and Natal in 1843 in order to prevent further depredations.13 But by the end of the decade the movement was ­running out of steam, its optimism replaced by evidence of humanitarian failure and pessimistic views about the possibility of non-European progress. This evidence included: the disaster of the Niger Expedition in 1841; the failure of slave ­emancipation in the West Indies to engender capitalist relations and Christian conversion; the Indian Rebellion (1857–58) and the New Zealand Wars (1845–72); and the persistence of the slave trade along the West African coast. The cumulative effect of shattered liberal expectations was the rise of Social Darwinism and the hardening of racial boundaries.14 Nevertheless, humanitarianism remained on the international agenda, experiencing something of a revival in the 1860s and 70s. Abolitionism was given a boost by the North’s victory in the Civil War (1861–65) while the very public life and death of David Livingstone drew attention to another slave trade in East and Central Africa dominated by Arabs and their Swahili acolytes, ­coordinated from Zanzibar. An icon of Victorian Britain, Livingstone’s biography was rapidly captured in print, turning him into the standard bearer of civility and liberal values. First, his widely publicised travels in East and ­Central Africa stimulated a new missionary impulse into these hitherto ‘unreached’ territories. Secondly, he revitalised the project of Christianity, Civilisation, and Commerce. Doubtless he advocated a civilising mission ideology because it seemed the best means 11 Elbourne, Blood Ground, 282. 12 Alan Lester, “Humanitarians and White Settlers in the Nineteenth Century,” in Missions and Empire, The Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series, ed. Norman Etherington (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 64–68, 76. 13 Porter, “Trusteeship,” 207–209; Porter, Religion Versus Empire, 82–83, 109–29, 139–44. 14 Lester, “Humanitarians and White Settlers,” 80.

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of combatting the Indian Ocean slave trade, though he also had an unwavering belief in the providential ­origin of technology as a powerful manifestation of the gospel’s effects.15 But, ­Livingstone aside, as Andrew Porter observes, the major difference between the 1840s and 1870s was “­humanitarians’ final abandonment of visions of sweeping ­transformations of indigenous societies”.16 3

New Models of Mission

A manifestation of this restricted vision was that elements of the missionary movement lost faith in the liberating potential of Western progress, ­uncoupling Christianity from commerce and civilisation. It accompanied a key theological and eschatological shift in missionary thinking most prominent in new faith missions but also reverberating through established Protestant and ­Catholic missionary work. In the first half of the nineteenth century British Protestant millennial beliefs had drawn force from Enlightenment ideas of progress. ­Missionaries had viewed their task as the conversion of the world which would inaugurate the millennium of peace, happiness, and plenty, at the end of which Christ’s second coming and final judgment would occur. This post-millennialist viewpoint fitted with a reforming mission of Christianity and commerce. The new strain of eschatological thinking was more pessimistic, viewing the world as moving towards its end in the expectation Christ’s imminent return and judgment. Only after Christ’s return would the millennium dawn. For the missionary movement, premillennial thought created the imperative to evangelise with the greatest possible vigour before the Second Coming commenced.17 In political terms, pre-millennial eschatology was a ­logical response to the failure of mid-nineteenth-century social reform and missionary movements to bring about societal change.18 By the 1860s, criticism of established missionary societies had grown fierce and would intensify in the following two decades. Prominent organisations such as the LMS were now were regarded as extravagant and their programmes 15

Lawrence Dritsas, Zambesi: David Livingstone and Expeditionary Science in Africa (­London: I.B. Tauris, 2010), 83–85. 16 Porter, “Trusteeship,” 216. 17 Porter, Religion Versus Empire, 193–94. 18 Timothy P. Weber, Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming: American Premillennialism, 1875–1925 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 38–42; Peter Kay, “Cecil Polhill, The Pentecostal Missionary Union, and the Fourfold Gospel with Healing and Speaking in Tongues: Signs of a New Movement in Missions,” North Atlantic Missiology Project, Henry Martyn Centre, Cambridge, Position Paper no. 20, 1996, 10.

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of Commerce, Civilisation, and Christianity appeared to be reaping diminishing returns. Particular concerns were raised about bloated bureaucracies, churches, and chapel buildings, missionary housing, and the employment of teachers and medical missionaries. Critics demanded simplicity and turned to the Plymouth Brethren for models of governance out of which the faith mission emerged. Missionary societies were to be abandoned in favour of a simpler programme of ‘mission’ and much of the bureaucracy of the home organisation was to be dismantled and replaced with a small committee of wise elders whose main task was to test missionary vocations. The successful were dispatched to the field with little formal training to work under a senior missionary overseer empowered to make decisions based on knowledge of local conditions. Activities linked to commerce and colonial development were to be abandoned in favour of single-minded evangelism conducted by lay preachers, both indigenous and European. The promotion of Western culture with Christianity was to be avoided and missionaries were to assimilate themselves to indigenous modes of living.19 Thus, new faith missions deliberately sought isolated and unfamiliar territory, far from the contaminating influence of European colonialism and pre-existing missions, usually called ‘regions beyond’ in missionary literature. The iconic faith mission was the China Inland Mission (CIM) founded in 1865 by J. Hudson Taylor of Plymouth Brethren background. Adrian Hastings casts Taylor as an extreme advocate of cultural diversity, but his was the first of many faith missions that became increasingly prevalent during the twentieth century as evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity gathered force in the mission fields.20 More importantly here, the CIM was soon followed in ­Central Africa by what became the Garenganze Evangelical Mission founded by another member of the Brethren, Frederick Stanley Arnot. Furthermore, the acceptance of cultural diversity had a wider appeal, finding its way into models of an inculturated indigenous church advanced by Henry Venn, honorary secretary of the CMS, and Rufus Anderson of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. It also expressed itself in the notion of apostolic poverty, advocated by the founder of the Catholic White Fathers Missions to Central Africa, Cardinal Charles Lavigerie, although this commonality with the Brethren was trammelled by more destructive tendencies such as a crusading mentality and the purchase of child slaves.

19

Andrew Porter, “An Overview, 1700–1914,” in Missions and Empire, 54; Porter, Religion V ­ ersus Empire, 191–92. 20 Hastings, Church in Africa, 290.

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Nonetheless, an immediate effect of Livingstone’s much publicised ­lectures in Oxford and Cambridge on the conditions and needs of Central Africa was the founding of a new missionary society in classical mould. This was the Anglo-Catholic Universities Mission to Central Africa (UMCA), which drew some of its earliest and most famous recruits from Oxbridge graduates. The failure and aftermath of the first UMCA mission up the Shire River in 1861 led by Bishop Charles Mackenzie was a presage of things to come. Lasting little more than six months Mackenzie and his band were overwhelmed by a combination of hunger, isolation, and disease, succumbing to malaria and dysentery in January 1862. Beyond the challenge of their conditions came the profound dilemmas thrown up by their encounters with slave caravans. Were they to pass by on the other side or liberate by force? If the latter was the case, by what authority did they fire their guns? How were they to deal with runaway slaves demanding their protection, and how were they to govern freed captives?21 In the event UMCA missionaries chose to challenge Yao slavers and raiders with their firearms, causing disquiet amongst their supporters at home. In 1864 Mackenzie’s successor withdrew the UMCA mission from Magomero on the Shire River establishing a new base on Zanzibar, which had good communications with Britain and provided a secure environment for the training of African leaders. Twelve years later the Mission re-established itself in the African interior on Likoma Island in Lake Malawi. Here the UMCA missionaries fashioned their missionary practice from their own church history, mindful that northern England and Scotland had been initially evangelised from the offshore Islands of Lindisfarne and Iona respectively. Indeed, Livingstone had advocated a similar missionary model in his ­correspondence, endorsing the system of St. Boniface’s mission in the eighth century, which was to plant monastic communities amongst pagan G ­ ermans. While each of these medieval mission communities evangelised, they also founded schools instructing in Latin, and initiated new forms of a­ griculture. Livingstone also expressed his admiration for the mission of the Jesuits in China and Angola, which had sought to promote cultural and economic change as an aspect of the Christian message rather than a narrow short-term concentration on personal conversion.22 This holistic approach represented for Livingstone the most realistic chance of realising his vision of civilising 21 22

Owen Chadwick, Mackenzie’s Grave (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1959); Hastings, Church in Africa, 409. Andrew Ross, David Livingstone: Mission and Empire (London: Continuum, 2002), 122. On Boniface see C. H. Talbot, “St Boniface and the German Mission,” Studies in Church History 6 (1970): 50–51.

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Christianity and the best means of providing mission communities in Central Africa with permanence and security. It also explains his widespread appeal to Anglo-Catholics and Catholics as well as evangelicals. The former Professor of Church History at the Sorbonne, Charles Lavigerie, envisaged a similar model of enclaves to pioneer White Fathers’ mission around the Great Lakes, though such a scheme did not save the White Fathers from embroilment with slavery and the slave trade or eventual need for protection from the colonial state. 4

Mission and Slavery in West Central Africa

West of the Shire Valley in what became the Congo Free State (1885–1908) (present day Democratic Republic of Congo) societies were in profound crisis, caught in a vice-like grip between the Indian slave trade from the west and Luso-African slavers’ trade from the east. The latter inveigled their way into local politics by taking sides in succession disputes, arming one side against the other, causing the collapse of the kingdoms of the savannah. Belgian commercial penetration from 1885 intensified the process, speeding up the destruction of longstanding moral economies. Power was separated from political responsibility and it degenerated into force driven by economic imperatives such as drought, exhaustion of export resources, or declining export prices. Traders repudiated alliances with chiefs, and traditional leaders broke faith with their subjects. Indicative of the changing political circumstances was the transformation of the practice of procuring slaves. Prisoners of war or pawns for debt were still the first to be enslaved but on the forward edge of slaving zones communities enslaved their own in acts of betrayal, or they enslaved their neighbours by means of kidnapping and raiding. As John Springer, pioneering Methodist Episcopal Church missionary to the Lunda, observed, the “stranger unattended or friendless” was particularly vulnerable.23 The balance of power between kings, officers, kinsmen, and citizens was destroyed. Trading barons such as Tippu Tip, Ngongo Luteta, and Msiri ruled without consent through armed plutocracies, which John Lonsdale termed “a single-minded African imperialism of unfree trade”.24 As a means of self-assertion they fashioned themselves into what David Gordon describes as “warrior leaders”, engaging in extreme 23 24

John M. Springer, Pioneering in the Congo, Katanga (New York: Katanga Press, 1916), 170. John Lonsdale, “The European Scramble and Conquest in African History,” in The ­Cambridge History of Africa, vol. 6, eds. J. D. Fage and Roland Oliver (Cambridge: ­Cambridge University Press, 1985), 710–11.

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acts of theatrical violence, involving torture, execution, and display of body parts. Some of the major perpetrators of this violence and their axillaries later found employment in the Congo Free State and were responsible for the mass killings that became known as the Red Rubber Crisis.25 Insecurity ruled the day. Villages were overrun or simply disappeared because they were unable to function. Those that did survive did so through extraordinary measures: agriculturalists lived in stockades, on hilltops, or fled into the forest, living in caves or mobile camps; and fishing communities such as those on Lake Kisale constructed defendable islands of reeds on which to reside, while others dug subterranean hideouts.26 The idea of a secure Christian environment embodied in an abbey certainly made sense as a strategy but missionaries entering the Congo region had ­limited theology for engaging with the societal breakdown around them. Mackenzie’s journal entries for his failed UMCA mission reveal him wavering between submission to Christian martyrdom and obligation to defend his followers before opting for the latter. Missionary writing was replete with Pauline resonances about suffering for the sake of gospel in regions beyond but there were few references to Christ the peacemaker. Indeed, missionary pioneers were just as likely to frame their narratives in heroic genres of the hunter or adventurer drawn from imperial adventure fiction, which in turn drew romantic notions from Arthurian or crusade sources.27 Popular depictions of missionaries in the early nineteenth century as patiently suffering pacifists evolved into more muscular depictions of heroic masculinity.28 To some extent Lavigerie’s adoption of the notion of crusading to underpin White Fathers’ missions to Central Africa reflected a reactionary and romantic vein of the French Church as it sought to counter anti-clericalism and find its roots in the Medieval Era. Nevertheless, Lavigerie did envisage his work as

25 26

27

28

David M. Gordon, “Precursors to Red Rubber: Violence in the Congo Free State, 1885–1895,” Past and Present 236, no. 1 (2017): 145–56. W. F. P. Burton, When God Changes a Village (London: Victory Press, 1933), 2–19; W. F. P. Burton, Honey Bee: Life Story of a Congo Evangelist (Bath: Echoes of Service, n.d.), 7–9; Clément Brasseur, “L’Urua et le Katanga,” Le Mouvement Géographique Troisième Article, Pt. II (Avril 1897): 436–48; Thomas Q. Reefe, The Rainbow and the Kings: A History of the Luba Empire to 1891 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 189–90. Gareth Griffiths, “Popular Imperial Adventure Fiction and the Discourse of Missionary Texts,” in Mixed Messages: Materiality, Textuality, and Missions, eds. Jamie S. Scott and Gareth Griffiths (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 60, and 51–66; Linden, Catholic Church, 11. Clare Rachel Brown, ‘“The Art of Mission: The Role of Visual Culture in Victorian Mission to Southern Africa, 1840–1910” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Glasgow, 2018), 82.

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a crusade against the forces of slavery, Islam, and, for good measure, Protestantism.29 In 1879, troubled by the threats to Catholic missionaries in Central Africa he suggested to Cardinal Simeoni, the prefect of the Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith, that it might be possible to “restore, under new form, elements of the old military orders of chivalry, who rendered such great service to the Church in barbarous times and in similar circumstances”.30 Henceforth, until his death in 1892, he sought various means of creating a band of armed Christian brothers—an Association militaire et religieuse—which would act as auxiliaries to missionary Fathers. Following a series of failed attempts to reconstitute the Order of Malta he founded the Institut des Frères Armés in April 1891. Although this was short lived, and failed to recruit men of sufficient calibre, its militaristic sentiments lived on in Lavigerie’s missionary order.31 The White Fathers who journeyed from Algiers to Mpala and Karema on Lake Tanganyika in 1885 sought to make individual conversions in a manner that they had been forbidden to in the Islamic north. They envisaged a culturally relativist gospel whereby missionaries adapted themselves to all that was compatible with the Christian faith and morals, assimilated to indigenous tastes in matters of food and housing, and taught in Swahili. However, Lavigie’s plans still involved a good deal of social transformation, extending the idea of the religious enclave to that of a Christian Kingdom, governed by an ­African Christian prince, “which would regenerate Africa as abbeys in Medieval Europe had restored a dying continent”.32 Resembling Prussia or Rhodes in the ­Middle Ages, this new-order state in eastern Central Africa would be a haven for escaped slaves, a centre of evangelisation, and a barrier to Belgium’s eastward expansion.33 Disillusioned by the polluting effects of Western modernity Lavigerie instructed that Africans were to be left as they were in their material circumstances but nevertheless wished them to be ‘civilised’ through Catholic instruction and law because there was no civilisation outside of Christian civilisation.34 The gathered community under the protection of the African leader and European missionaries would be economically self-sufficient 29

Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades, Christianity and Islam (New York: Columbia ­ niversity Press, 2008), 51. U 30 F. Renault, Lavigerie, l’Esclavage Africain et l’Europe, 1868–92 (Paris, 1971), 1: 253, cited in Riley-Smith, Crusades, 45. 31 Riley-Smith, Crusades, 45–52. 32 Friedrich Stenger, White Fathers in Colonial Central Africa: A Critical Examination of V. Y. Mudimbe’s Theories on Missionary Discourse in Africa (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2001), 52. 33 Riley-Smith, Crusades, 46–48. 34 Stenger, White Fathers, 51–53; Reuben Loffman, Church, State and Colonialism in ­Southeastern Congo, 1890–1962 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).

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and politically independent from the incipient colonial state. Like many ­nineteenth- and twentieth-century missionaries the White Fathers distrusted European and colonial states and saw mission as a chance to start afresh free from dangerous secularising influences such as socialism and ­freemasonry.35 More pessimistic than Protestant evangelicals, Catholics also tended to view adult Africans as too enmeshed in pagan culture to be open to Christian redemption, preferring instead to begin work with the latest g­ eneration. Thus, their enclaves were to be populated with redeemed slaves, especially children. Reflecting on 55 years of mission work, Lavigerie’s protégé and White Fathers pioneer to the Congo Region, Victor Roelens, observed: “The black heathen is a complete egotist. The purpose of his life is to satisfy all the instincts of his nature corrupted by a secular atavism of barbarity, errors and vices.”36 Drawing force from the recent campaign against slavery in Brazil, the ­Catholic movement for abolition was significant in delivering European ­popular support for colonial occupation, particularly in Belgium, where King Leopold II drew upon multiple authorities, including the Vatican, to legitimate his campaign for a Belgian colony in Central Africa. Like evangelicals, Lavigerie, a leading abolitionist, viewed the redeeming of slaves as a living illustration of Christ’s redemption. On the ground the means and meaning of redemption would prove rather problematic, depicted in the imagery of conquest, spiritual munitions, and the prayers of Catholic supporting troops in the homeland.37 Lavigerie’s missionaries were dispatched from his see in Algiers with a sword, blessed during the service of departure.38 At Mplala they inherited not only a station formerly owned by the Congo Free State and its allies in the International Africa Association, but also a band of Emile Storm’s waungwana military slaves, who presented the Father Superior with a gift of a head and two women and children slaves. Far from disbanding the mercenaries, Lavigerie persuaded former papal Zaouve and model Catholic soldier, Léopold-Louis Joubert, to 35

Allen F. Roberts, “History, Ethnicity and Change in the Christian Kingdom of Southeastern Zaire,” in The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa, ed. Leroy Vail (London: James Currey, 1989), 196–200; David M. Gordon, “Slavery and Redemption in Catholic Missions of the Upper Congo, 1878–1909,” Slavery and Abolition 38, no. 3 (2017): 577–600. 36 Translated from the original: “Le Noir payen est un égoïste complèt. Le but de sa vie est de satisfaire tous les instincts de sa nature corrompue par un atavism séculaire de ­barbarie, ­d’erreurs et de vices.” See: V. Roelens, “Rôle des missions catholiques dite missions ­nationales au Congo Belge,” cited in Stenger, White Fathers, 63. 37 Gordon, “Slavery and Redemption,” 580–85; Vincent Viaene, “Nineteenth-Century ­Catholic Internationalism and its Predecessors,’’ in Religious Internationals in the ­Modern World: Globalization and Faith Communities since 1750, eds. Abigal Green and Vincent Viaene (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012), 104; Stenger, White Fathers, 94. 38 Hastings, Church in Africa, 409.

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lead them. Transforming the fighting men into what Gordon calls a “masculine heroic cult”, Joubert quickly established the missionaries’ authority, demanding a tribute of slaves as an act of submission. And in the absence of a suitable African Prince, Joubert became de facto King of a Catholic sovereignty with its own currency, on the margins of the Congo Free State.39 The supply of labouring subjects for the White Father’s Christian ­Kingdoms was a perennial issue. In his first short-lived attempt to found a mission at Murumbi, Roelens reputedly began the recruitment process with the weight of his boot when a local headman appeared unwilling to apply for a request for 50 workers.40 More significantly, the missionaries utilised the full spectrum of transactions in rights in persons beyond capture to build up their ‘liberated’ enclave: ransoming, debt-enslavement, pawning, and purchase. The latter proved particularly problematic as in practice the Catholic missionaries made little distinction between acheter (purchase) and racheter (redemption). From the viewpoint of those recently redeemed, the distinction was also hard to sustain as they were subjected to a regime of work that probably surpassed that of domestic slaves. The Catholic missionaries pursued the strategy begun by the International African Association whereby forced labour obligations of purchased slaves were slowly reduced over six years, thereby securing profitable labour while fulfilling responsibilities to abolish slavery. The labour value of redeemed slaves was underlined by the fact that runaways were chased down and punished with whippings or on at least one occasion, with the collar. Even the practice of redeeming children allowed the White Fathers to benefit from the slavery. Put to work all day in the fields of their orphanages-­cum-­ agricultural colonies they were educated by means of civilising labour.41 As Gordon observes, “Catholic redemption was an enslavement which implied manumission” and thus had much in common with Islamic slavery, a system of forced conversion it had set out to eradicate.42 Throughout the era of the Congo Free State the White Fathers’ uneasy relations with the colonial authorities slowly evolved towards collaboration.43 The 39

Roberts, “History, Ethnicity and Change,” 196–200; Gordon, “Slavery and Redemption,” 587–88; Loffman, Church, State and Colonialism. 40 Stenger, White Fathers, 61–62. 41 Gordon, “Slavery and Redemption,” 586–90. 42 Gordon, “Slavery and Redemption,” 594. 43 On 2 January 1872 Lavigerie penned a secret memorandum for the Sacred Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith, outlining his views on the International African Association, King Leopold’s vehicle for the colonisation of the Congo region. The document reveals his suspicion of the businessmen, adventurers, and Protestants surrounding the monarch and doubts concerning the integrity of their projected campaign against slavery. R. P.

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missionaries’ first station at Murumbi had lasted only a year in the face of threats from Swahili slavers and continued insecurity threw the Fathers into the arms of the Belgian colonial administration. In return for their silence over abuses on Africans perpetrated by the colonial state and its corporate allies the Catholics received protection, grants of land, tax exemptions, subsidies, and the right to offer practical education to the Congolese. This cluster of privileges was cast in law in the Concordat of 1906 and enshrined Catholic advantage over a growing Protestant threat. In time schools gradually replaced orphanages as the major means of proselytism, allowing for more voluntarism on the part of the Congolese pupils. 5

The Plymouth Brethren and Problems of Conflict and Violence

In 1886, the Plymouth Brethren missionary, Frederick Stanley Arnot, arrived in Bunkeya, Katanga, capital of the polity governed by the trading ­baron-cum-warlord, Msiri.44 At first glance one would assume that the Brethren had little in common with the Catholic White Fathers, but this was not so. Both movements sought to disentangle mission from western civilisation and both shared a suspicion of the state, though in the Brethren case these tendencies were taken to extremes. The radical difference between the two movements was ecclesiological. As leader of the White Fathers’ work in Congo, Roelens was deeply Ultramontane in his inclinations, desirous to act in conformity with directives from Rome. He prepared for his undertaking by studying the 2,317 rules and directives issued by the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith in order to regulate missionary work.45 The Brethren, on the other hand, were a collection of decentralised ‘meetings’, which shunned centralised ecclesiological authorities and any kind of hierarchy. A minimal bureaucracy sustained their missions. Missionary news and needs were publicised by Echoes of Service magazine, which channelled funds to missionaries. As the Brethren missionary enterprise increased in scope so the publications Marcel Storme, Rapports de Père Planque, de Mgr Lavigerie et de Mgr Comboni sur L’Association Internationale Africaine, Académie Royale des Science Colonials, 11 (Bruxelles: n.p., 1957), 16–138. 44 Plymouth Brethren with a missionary outlook were more accurately classified as Open Brethren. Much of the following is taken from Ruth M. Slade, English Speaking Missions in the Congo Independent State (1878–1908) (Brussels: Duculot, 1959), 107–27, 164–67; Robert I. Rothberg, “Plymouth Brethren and the Occupation of Katanga, 1886–1907,” Journal of African History 5, no. 2 (1964): 285–97. 45 Stenger, White Fathers, 70.

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office in Bath, England, expanded to coordinate its efforts, taking responsibility for overseas property by means of a limited company. The Brethren lacked the resources, political clout, and international connections of an established Catholic order and its missionaries had little inclination to use their position on the ground to influence the geopolitics of colonial occupation. All of these faith mission tendencies appeared ill suited to the context the Brethren were entering. In England the Brethren had remained aloof from the civil authorities believing that it was the obligation of the state to ­provide peaceful conditions for religious observance in return for their obedience, rather than their Christian duty to work for peace that would end social and political conflict. But as Livingstone, the UMCA, and White Fathers had come to grasp these were neither the conditions in which the church had first advanced in Europe, nor did they represent the context of late nineteenth-­ century Central Africa. The early medieval church had been forced to engage with issues of law and order and social welfare and Arnot’s long-term successor, Dan Crawford, eventually came to accept this reality. Unwilling to seek influence in Msiri’s court, Arnot and his immediate replacements, Charles Swan and William Faulknor, chose to build their house at a distance from the capital. When given the opportunity to assist Vice-Consul Sharpe’s endeavours to expand the British Empire via treaty making Swan refused to help trick Msiri into a signing a treaty, choosing to translate the whole document.46 By acting in this neutral and principled manner they lost the chance to influence the choice of the eventual occupying colonial power of the border region in which Bunkeya was located, seeming to opt for the Belgian status quo. They also ­surrendered opportunities to bring about cultural change in line with their reading of the New Testament. Horrified by the evils of the regional slave trade centred upon Bunkeya, Msiri’s tortures and executions of petty criminals, and more widespread expressions of violence and drunkenness, they were powerless to act.47 Possessing minimal international or transnational connections to the authorities in London, or Cape Town, they were unable to draw upon external influences, as the LMS had done in South Africa. Indeed, Msiri made more use of the Brethren missionaries than they did of him. Whites in his capital not only boosted his status but also diminished the influence of Swahili traders, while their knowledge and contacts helped him maintain his alternative trade 46 47

C. A. Swan, “Difficulties and Dangers in the Early Days,” in A Central African Jubilee, ed. Montague Goodman (London: Pickering & Inglis, 1932), 97–122; Dugald Campbell, B ­ lazing Trails in Bantuland (London: Pickering & Inglis, 1933), 65. Frederick Stanley Arnot, Garenganze: Or, Seven Years’ Pioneer Mission Work in Central Africa (London: Frank Cass, 1969 [1889]), 220–21; Swan, “Difficulties and Dangers,” 108.

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route to the west via Benguela. Swan acted as official scribe, writing letters to the Sultan, checked the waybills of caravans, yet professed no influence over the king. Writing in 1891, British Vice-Consul Sharpe, recorded “The missionaries treat Msiri as a great king; do nothing without first asking his permission, are at his beck and call, and almost his slaves”.48 As in other African contexts the missionaries’ desire to identify with the people reaped few benefits and may have even had a deleterious effects.49 The diet of sorghum porridge mixed with red palm oil did nothing for the missionaries’ constitutions but more generally a regime of virtuous asceticism raised the suspicion that the whites wanted to take rather than give.50 Like many local peoples involved in cultural entanglement, Msiri’s Yeke sought a material advance, which the Brethren were unable to provide. Thus, the missionaries’ evangelical endeavours were largely ignored, their school averaging no more than eight to twelve pupils. Only their medical skills appeared to win them any respect.51 Nevertheless, the Brethren missionaries persisted. Their letters and autobiographies reveal that they believed in a providential God who protected and provided in response to their intercessions. Their suffering and sacrifice were signs of the impending millennium and they looked to the future with hope rather than dwell on the present. Unlike the White Fathers the Brethren never actively engaged in the local slave trade in order to engineer mission communities. One missionary, Dugald Campbell, even broke their quietist mould and campaigned against it.52 Given the impeding millennium there was no time to slowly form a new generation of Christian youth or give up on adults. But while trying their best to deter domestic slavery and the slave trade they were at times implicated, facing the same dilemmas as other missionary groups. Thus, pioneering missionary H. B. Thompson was given a number of Luba slave boys and girls, when visiting Luba territory in 1894—a gift difficult to refuse.53 When encountering slavers en route to the coast the Brethren often felt compelled to redeem children who were then brought up in missionary households to become evangelists and 48

Sharpe to H. H. Johnston, 15 November 1890, in Johnston to Foreign Office, F.O. 84/2114 (1891), Public Record Office, cited in Rothberg, “Plymouth Brethren,” 291. 49 Thomas O. Beidelman, “Contradictions between the Sacred and the Secular Life: The Church Missionary Society in Ukaguru, Tanzania, East Africa, 1876–1914,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 23, no. 1 (1981): 73–95. 50 Arnot, Garenganze, 197. 51 Arnot, Garenganze, 192–93, 216. 52 Campbell, Blazing Trails, 30; Slade, English Speaking Missions, 292. 53 Clarke, Katanga, 25–26. There is mention of Thompson’s 1894 journey in Echoes of Service (December 1900).

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pastors. When the lives of these converts were subsequently celebrated in missionary print as stories of slavery and ‘Christian’ redemption it is clear that they saw their missionaries as yet another set of patrons, albeit more benign ones, to whom they owed loyalty. 54 But even when Brethren missionaries remained scrupulously clear of the trade, their porters could put them in a situation of guilt by association by choosing to spend their wages on slaves. Or indeed, contracted through chiefs, some of the porters themselves were actually slaves.55 The Brethren breakthrough came only after Msiri’s assassination at the hands of a British military officer in 1891. By now, Crawford, the leading B ­ rethren missionary, had relocated the mission station to Luanza, not quite an island but a bluff overlooking Lake Mweru. From there he could make use of Church of Scotland supply lines through stations in Nyasaland to receive mail and supplies. An outspoken advocate of identification—Thinking Black—and critic of those missionaries who rarely ventured beyond the station, Crawford slowly came around to the virtues of working in a stable mission community, where a cohort of pastors and evangelists could be formed before being sent out to build an African church.56 He was much aided by a vast influx of r­ efugees seeking security in the anarchy that followed the breakup of the Yeke ­Kingdom, coming to be known as Konga Vantu—the gatherer of the people. In this violent era of political fragmentation and embryonic colonial state ­formation, Brethren missionaries understood their communities as a “city of refuge” or “cave of Adullam”.57 And rather than being peacemakers they saw themselves as guardians and judges, finding themselves the new big men in the vacuum caused by the collapse of African polities. To their horror they now found themselves devoting precious time to settling African ‘palavers’. Over time, Luanza evolved into a fully-fledged mission community, organised in the usual grid of tree-lined streets around a church and large school.58

54 Arnot, Garenganze, 184, 213; Campbell, Blazing Trails, 31; Editorial, Echoes of Service (January 1901); C. R. Wilding, Echoes of Service (November 1917). Also Campbell, Blazing Trails, 217; Marcia Wright, Strategies of Slaves and Women: Life Stories from East/Central Africa (London: James Currey, 1993), 168; David Maxwell, “Freed Slaves, Missionaries and Respectability: The Expansion of the Christian Frontier from Angola to Belgian Congo,” Journal of African History 54, no. 1 (2013): 79–102. 55 Rothberg, “Plymouth Brethren,” 294; Ian Burness, From Glasgow to Garenganze: Frederick Stanley Arnot and Nineteenth-Century African Mission (Glasgow: Opal Trust, 2017), 321–22. 56 Daniel Crawford, Thinking Black: Twenty-two Years without the Break in the Long Grass of Central Africa (London: Morgan and Scott, 1912). 57 Campbell, Blazing Trails, 68, 69, 81. 58 Slade, English Speaking Missions, 294–95; Robert Dabney Bedinger, Triumphs of the Gospel in the Belgian Congo (Richmond: Presbyterian Committee of Publication, 1920), 48–49.

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Post Script and Conclusion

Within the safety of large mission communities, missionaries achieved what the sociologist of religion, David Martin, termed “peaceability”: an enclosed social space which allows for the revision of consciousness and social practice.59 Here missionaries and Africans could begin to engineer social change, leading to a new class of literate clerks, artisans, pastors, and evangelists and in the process revising social relations in favour of young men. Ex-slave ­converts also proved to be some of the most effective evangelists and church leaders. Having few social attachments and expanded horizons through their capture and transportation, they were more open to the radical change conversion required, and hence they pushed the Christian frontier far ahead of the missionary frontier in what was an African-led movement. On the whole, mass conversion came only after colonial occupation as Africans sought conceptual control over the rapid social and economic changes that accompanied colonialism.60 At the end of our period, on the turn of twentieth century, Christian humanitarianism waxed again, shining considerable light on the atrocities meted out by limited companies on the population of the Congo Basin in the west of the Congo Free State to coerce them to collect Red Rubber—a ­commodity in much demand in the international market. At the centre of the campaign, which eventually led to the end of the Congo Free State as Leopold II’s ­personal fiefdom, was Edmund Morel of the Congo Reform Association. But missionary networks, beginning with Dr Harry Guinness and John and Alice Harris of the Congo Balolo Mission, generated much of the funding and publicity.61 ­American Baptists and Presbyterians, along with Swedish missionaries, also spoke out and with force. These oppositional denominations were not constricted by an imperial heritage and more willing to forego a cosy relationship with a colonial state. The movement’s form was a presage of things to come. Its transnational reach, which eventually drew in the US State Department, its mobilisation of celebrities such as Mark Twain, Arthur Conan Doyle, and 59 60

61

David Martin, Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 286–87. Maxwell, “Freed Slaves”; David Maxwell, “Continuity and Change in the Luba Christian Movement, Katanga, Belgian Congo c.1915–50,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 69, no. 2 (2017): 326–44; Hastings, Church in Africa; David Maxwell, Religious Entanglements: Central African Pentecostalism, the Creation of Cultural Knowledge, and the Making of the Luba Katanga (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2022); Norman Etherington, ‘‘Recent Trends in the Historiography of Christianity in Southern Africa,” Journal of Southern African Studies 22, no. 2 (1996): 201–19. Special Number of Regions Beyond (January–February 1908).

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Joseph Conrad, and its use of new media, photographs, and magic lantern slides, to shock western audiences, made it a powerful forerunner of later twentieth century international human rights campaigns.62 Missionaries have been most effective as peacemakers when working in concert with others. As men and women on the spot, often with years of ­experience, they make authoritative advocates for local peoples. But local ­connections need networks back to the Vatican, Lambeth Palace, or a well-­ connected, organised body of supporters in order that reports are properly disseminated across the metropole and beyond.63 Vincent Viaene and ­Abigail Green usefully draw these forces together into what they argue was a new ­phenomenon in the late eighteenth century, the religious international: “a cluster of voluntary transnational organisations and representations crystallising around international issues, in which both ‘ordinary’ believers and religious specialists could serve as protagonists”.64 Beginning with the German Pietistic and Euro-American Evangelical Revivals they evolved into mass mobilisations. Supporters, donors, and activists, of which the majority were women, were drawn into international civil society, galvanised by missionary expansion and humanitarianism.65 In their attempts to end slavery in Central Africa the White Fathers became slave masters. But their methods were by no means extraordinary relative to other Catholic Orders at work in the Congo Free State.66 The Plymouth 62

63 64 65 66

Special Number of Regions Beyond (January–February 1908); Porter, Religion Versus Empire, 309–10; T. Jack Thompson, “Light on the Dark Continent: The Photography of Alice Seely Harris and the Congo Atrocities of the Early Twentieth Century,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research (October 2002): 146–49, Slade, English Speaking Missions, 238–326. Adrian Hastings, Wiriyamu (London: Search Press, 1974); Diana Auret, Reaching for Justice: The Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, 1972–1992 (Gweru: Mambo Press, 1992). Abigail Green and Vincent Viaene, “Introduction: Rethinking Religion and Globalization,” in Religious Internationals in the Modern World, 1. The Catholic international emerged later in the nineteenth century, initially in defense of the papacy. The White Fathers was not the only Catholic Order deeply implicated with slavery. Jelmer Vos’ study of the Holy Ghost Fathers (Spiritans) in Soyo, West Central Africa, shows how they engaged in slave trading for instrumental rather than humanitarian reasons. Slaves, especially redeemed children, were easier to control than local freemen and necessary for building up mission communities. Because the missionaries used the same markets and paid the same prices for slaves as regular buyers, their buying practices had a strong resemblance to normal slave trading. See Jelmer Vos, “Child Slaves and Freemen at the Spiritan Mission in Soyo, 1880–1885,” Journal of Family History 35, no. 1 (2010): 71–110. The Scheutists also redeemed slave children to build their orphanages-cum-mission farms; Bengt Sundkler and Christopher Steed, A History of the Church in Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 295–96.

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Brethren did stand out but were outliers for a twentieth century movement of faith missions. They did not regard themselves as humanitarians but as pioneering evangelists, driven to seek and save the lost before Christ’s imminent return. What was extreme was the context of profound social crisis that the missionaries encountered. Violence, instability, and isolation had the major determining effect on missionary strategies, undermining aspirations towards identification and cultural diversity. And difference of denomination or national background were of limited significance in the face the warrior leaders who dominated Central Africa prior to violent colonial occupation. In such contexts, humanitarians continue to be overwhelmed by circumstances and face terrible dilemmas, as twentieth century NGO s attempting to deal with the Biafran War or the Rwandan Genocide found to their costs. Bibliography Arnot, Frederick Stanley. Garenganze or Seven Years’ Pioneer Mission Work in Central Africa. London: Frank Cass, 1969 (1889). Auret, Diana. Reaching for Justice: The Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, 1972–1992. Gweru: Mambo Press, 1992. Bedinger, Robert Dabney. Triumphs of the Gospel in the Belgian Congo. Richmond, Va: Presbyterian Committee of Publication, 1920. Beidelman, Thomas O. “Contradictions between the Sacred and the Secular Life: The Church Missionary Society in Ukaguru, Tanzania, East Africa, 1876–1914.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 23, no. 1 (1981): 73–95. Brasseur, Clément. “L’Urua et le Katanga.” Le Mouvement Géographique Troisième ­Article, Pt. II, (Avril 1897): 436–48. Brown, Clare Rachel “The Art of Mission: The Role of Visual Culture in Victorian ­Mission to Southern Africa, 1840–1910.” Ph.D. thesis, University of Glasgow, 2018. Burness, Ian. From Glasgow to Garenganze: Frederick Stanley Arnot and Nineteenth-­ Century African Mission. Glasgow: Opal Trust, 2017. Burton, W. F. P. Honey Bee: Life Story of a Congo Evangelist. Preston: Congo Evangelistic Mission, n.d. (c.1959). Burton, W. F. P. When God Changes a Village. London: Victory Press, 1933. Campbell, Dugald. Blazing Trails in Bantuland. London: Pickering & Inglis, 1933. Chadwick, Owen. Mackenzie’s Grave. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1959. Clarke, J. A. Katanga. Bath: Echoes of Service, n.d. Crawford, Daniel. Thinking Black: Twenty-two Years without the Break in the Long Grass of Central Africa. London: Morgan and Scott, 1912.

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Darwin, John. The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World System, 1830– 1970, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Dritsas, Lawrence. David Livingstone and Expeditionary Science in Africa. London: I.B. Tauris, 2010. Echoes of Service, December 1900. Echoes of Service, January 1901. Echoes of Service, November 1917. Elbourne, Elizabeth. Blood Ground, Colonialism, Missions, and the Context for ­Christianity in the Cape Colony and Britain, 1799–1853. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2002. Etherington, Norman. “Recent Trends in the Historiography of Christianity in S­ outhern Africa.” Journal of Southern African Studies 22, no. 2 (1996): 201–19. Gordon, David M. “Slavery and Redemption in Catholic Missions of the Upper Congo, 1878–1909.” Slavery and Abolition 38, no. 3 (2017): 577–600. Gordon, David M. “Precursors to Red Rubber: Violence in the Congo Free State, 1885–1895.” Past and Present 236, no. 1 (2017): 133–68. Green, Abigail, and Vincent Viaene. “Introduction: Rethinking Religion and Globalization.” In Religious Internationals in the Modern World: Globalization and Faith Communities since 1750, edited by Abigail Green and Vincent Vianene, 1–19. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Griffiths, Gareth. “Popular Imperial Adventure Fiction and the Discourse of Missionary Texts.” In Mixed Messages: Materiality, Textuality, and Missions, edited by Jamie S. Scott and Gareth Griffiths, 51–66. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Hastings, Adrian. The Church in Africa, 1450–1950. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. Hastings, Adrian. Wiriyamu, London: Search Press, 1974. Hilton, Boyd. “1807 and All That: Why Britain Outlawed Her Slave Trade.” In Abolitionism and Imperialism in Britain, Africa, and the Atlantic, edited by Derek R. Peterson, 63–83. Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2010. Kay, Peter. “Cecil Polhill, The Pentecostal Missionary Union, and the Fourfold Gospel with Healing and Speaking in Tongues: Signs of a New Movement in Missions.” North Atlantic Missiology Project, Henry Martyn Centre, Cambridge, Position Paper no. 20, 1996, 1–29. Lester, Alan. “Humanitarians and White Settlers in the Nineteenth Century.” In M ­ issions and Empire, The Oxford History of the British Empire, Companion Series, edited by Norman Etherington, 64–85. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Linden, Ian. The Catholic Church and the Struggle for Zimbabwe. London: Longman, 1989. Loffman, Reuben. Church, State and Colonialism in the Southeastern Congo, 1909–1962. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2019.

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Lonsdale, John. “The European Scramble and Conquest in African History.” In The Cambridge History of Africa, vol. 6, edited by J. D. Fage and Roland Oliver, 680–766. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Martin, David. Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990. Maxwell, David. “Continuity and Change in the Luba Christian Movement, Katanga, Belgian Congo c.1915–50.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 69, no. 2 (2017): 326–44. Maxwell, David. “Freed Slaves, Missionaries and Respectability: The Expansion of the Christian Frontier from Angola to Belgian Congo.” Journal of African History 54, no. 1 (2013): 79–102. Maxwell, David. Religious Entanglements: Central African Pentecostalism, the Creation of Cultural Knowledge, and the Making of the Luba Katanga. Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2022. Peterson, Derek. “Introduction: Abolitionism and Political Thought in Britain and East Africa.” In Abolitionism and Imperialism in Britain, Africa, and the Atlantic, edited by Derek R. Peterson, 1–37. Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2010. Porter, Andrew. “An Overview, 1700–1914.” In Missions and Empire, The Oxford History of the British Empire, Companion Series, edited by Norman Etherington, 40–63. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Porter, Andrew. Religion Versus Empire: British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700–1914. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004. Porter, Andrew. “Trusteeship, Anti-Slavery, and Humanitarianism.” In The Oxford ­History of the British Empire, vol. 3: The Nineteenth Century, edited by Andrew Porter, 198–221. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Riley-Smith, Jonathan. The Crusades, Christianity and Islam. New York: Columbia ­University Press, 2008. Reefe, Thomas Q. The Rainbow and the Kings: A History of the Luba Empire to 1891. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. Regions Beyond, Special Number (January–February 1908). Roberts, Allen F. “History, Ethnicity and Change in the Christian Kingdom of ­Southeastern Zaire.” In The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa, edited by Leroy Vail, 193–214. London: James Currey, 1989. Ross, Andrew. David Livingstone: Mission and Empire. London: Continuum, 2002. Rothberg, Robert I. “Plymouth Brethren and the Occupation of Katanga, 1886–1907.” Journal of African History 5, no. 2 (1964): 285–97. Slade, Ruth M. English Speaking Missions in the Congo Independent State (1878–1908). Brussels: Duculot, 1959. Springer, John M. Pioneering in the Congo, Katanga. New York: Katanga Press, 1916.

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Stanley, Brian. The Bible and the Flag: Protestant Missions and British Imperialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1992. Stenger, Friedrich. White Fathers in Colonial Central Africa: A Critical Examination of V. Y. Mudimbe’s Theories on Missionary Discourse in Africa. Münster: Lit Verlag, 2001. Storme, R. P. Marcel. Rapports de Père Planque, de Mgr Lavigerie et de Mgr Comboni sur L’Association Internationale Africaine. Académie Royale des Science Colonials, 11. Bruxelles: n.p, 1957, 1–170. Sundkler, Bengt, and Christopher Steed. A History of the Church in Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Swan, C. A. “Difficulties and Dangers in the Early Days.” In A Central African Jubilee, edited by Montague Goodman, 97–122. London: Pickering & Inglis, 1932. Talbot, C. H. “St Boniface and the German Mission.” Studies in Church History 6 (1970): 45–57. Thompson, T. Jack. “Light on the Dark Continent: The Photography of Alice Seely Harris and the Congo Atrocities of the Early Twentieth Century.” International Bulletin of Missionary Research (October 2002): 146–49. Vansina, Jan. Paths in the Rainforests: Towards a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa. London: James Currey, 1990. Viaene, Vincent. “Nineteenth-Century Catholic Internationalism and its Predecessors.” In Religious Internationals in the Modern World: Globalization and Faith Communities since 1750, edited by Abigail Green and Vincent Viaene, 82–110. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Vos, Jelmer. “Child Slaves and Freemen at the Spiritan Mission in Soyo, 1880–1885.” Journal of Family History 35, no. 1 (2010): 70–90. Weber, Timothy P. Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming: American Premillennialism, 1875–1925. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1979. Wright, Marcia. Strategies of Slaves and Women: Life Stories from East/Central Africa. London: James Currey, 1993.

Chapter 6

John Mackenzie’s “True Vision of the Future”: Imagining Peace in Nineteenth-Century Southern Africa Esme Cleall 1 Introduction Writing in 1887 in a violently turbulent period of southern African history, the London Missionary Society (LMS) missionary, Rev. John Mackenzie, imagined an “Austral Africa” characterised by peace: Like every true vision of the future, mine ends in peace, and not in war. Assuredly, as England has abolished duelling, and still retains her honour and her self-respect, so will the savage arbitrament of war be discredited and disused the world over, when the thoughts of the victorious Galilean shall have become the code of the world. The contests of men will consist in the noble emulations of literature, art, commerce, and industry; in all of which Austral Africa will have its share. I see these things with the eye of the soul; they will surely come to pass. I pray to be permitted to see some of them with the bodily eye also.1 Such a vision, so at odds with the political climate in the southern Africa in which he was writing, was not just a passing fantasy in Mackenzie’s writing. It was rather the fruit of considered reflection, a way of imagining southern Africa (or as he called it, “Austral Africa”) over which his son claimed he spent many years “brooding, dreaming, praying [and] working”. It was also a theme that appeared repeatedly within his public speeches and published works. Mackenzie’s vision anticipated a trajectory of teleological progress from violent conflict to diplomacy and enduring peace. This movement would be grounded in Christianity, in the exemplary models of Christ’s manhood and the highest ideals of Victorian society. It would reach its full realisation in Britain itself, 1 John Mackenzie, Austral Africa, Losing It or Ruling It, Being Incidences and Experiences in Bechuanaland, Cape Colony and England (2 vols., London: Sampson Low, Marsten, Searle and Rivington, 1887), 1: 503. © Esme Cleall, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004536791_007

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and extend across the southern African sub-continent. In this stadial worldview, ‘savage’ nations, apparently stuck in a more violent present, would follow European nations down this path of progress. This was no idle vision of peace, but evidently one for which Mackenzie longed, prayed for and in which he profoundly believed. It was also profoundly informed by the experience of war and violence that characterised Mackenzie’s time in southern Africa. Taking this vision as a starting point, this chapter seeks to interrogate the meanings of peace, together with violence and war as its relational ­counterparts, in John Mackenzie’s thinking. Mackenzie was a prolific writer, and ­influential in the late nineteenth-century missionary world. He was also a prominent speaker, writer, and thinker in southern African politics, and although he found his political influence frustratingly limited, his many books and speeches circulated widely and played an important role in ­constructing ideas about southern Africa—both in late nineteenth-century Britain and in the colonies themselves.2 As such, Mackenzie provides important insights into missionary thinking about the concept of peace during this period both in terms of his own contribution and in terms of ideas diffused amongst his readership. M ­ ackenzie’s significance partly reflects his sheer ­productivity, the broad ­dissemination of his writing, and the diversity of audiences he reached, which led to unusually wide engagement with his ideas. Though not a typical missionary in many respects, his thinking nevertheless drew upon a wider missionary heritage, and in turn shaped trajectories within contemporary missions. Given his stature and influence, Mackenzie’s repeated ­ruminations on peace therefore enable an exploration of the significance of peace in wider currents of missionary thought. Imperialist loyalties and advocacy were distinctive features of ­Mackenzie’s ideology and career, and included an expressed faith in the peace-making power of the British Empire. This conviction was articulated as a version of what has been dubbed the ‘Pax Britannica’ myth of a British Empire that was not only characterised by peace but also facilitated it. Despite an increasing wealth of research detailing the enslavement, violence, and destruction perpetuated by colonial regimes, including the British Empire, this myth has proved 2 Austral Africa: Loosing It or Ruling It, 2 vols; Austral Africa: Extension of British Influence in Trans-colonial Territories. Proceedings at a Meeting of the London Chamber of Commerce, Assembled on the 14th May, 1888 (London: P. S. King and Son, 1888); Bechuanaland and Our Progress Northward: A Lecture (Cape Town: Murray and St. Leger, Printers, 1884); Day-Dawn in Dark Places: A Story of Wanderings and Work in Bechuanaland (London: Cassell and ­Company, 1883); Ten Years North of the Orange River (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1871); The London Missionary Society in South Africa: Retrospective Sketch (London: London Missionary Society, 1888).

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to be remarkably resilient in British cultural history, persisting even into the twenty-first century.3 Analysis of Mackenzie’s ideas about peace enables an examination of missionary entanglement in the process by which a violent colonial enterprise was recast as a harbinger of peace. My analysis of Mackenzie’s vision of peace is developed in three parts. The first introduces Mackenzie and situates him within his political landscape. The second examines how peace functions in Mackenzie’s writing, focusing ­especially on the work peace does in justifying Mackenzie’s vision for a southern Africa ruled by Britain. The final section explores the racialisation of peace and its corollaries in Mackenzie’s thinking. My central argument is that ­Mackenzie uses ‘peace’ as a euphemism for British rule. In addition, I suggest that the association between Mackenzie and ‘humanitarianism’ that his son and subsequent biographers drew has exerted a powerful though somewhat distorting influence. This image of Mackenzie as humanitarian has emphasised his idealism, and by extension an association with peace, whilst also eclipsing other possible interpretations of him as a much more instrumentalist imperialist. 2

John Mackenzie and His Political Landscape

Born in 1835 in Knockando in the Scottish Highlands, John Mackenzie was the sixth child of a farming father and a deaf mother. He experienced a profound religious conversion as a young man, following which he kept a highly introspective diary which demonstrated his intense engagement with Christian spirituality. After hearing Alexander Williamson (later a missionary to China) preach in June 1854, he determined to become a missionary. His original application to the LMS at the age of nineteen was rejected on account of his youth, his brief connection with a Christian Church, and limited education, but a later application was accepted and he joined the LMS at the age of 20 upon which he studied theology at the Congregational Seminary in Bedford. In 1858 he was ordained, married Ellen (née Douglas) from Portobello, and travelled to southern Africa.

3 For a sample of this literature that both supports and critiques the Pax Britannica thesis, see: Barry Gough, Pax Britannica: Britain and the World (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); James Morris, Pax Britannica: The Climax of an Empire (London: Faber and Faber, 1979); Ali Parchami, Hegemonic Peace and Empire: Pax Romana, Britannica and Americana (London and New York: Routledge, 2009).

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The southern African mission was a diverse and long-running LMS concern reaching from the Cape Colony well into the southern African interior. It was a mission that was considerably shaped by a few individuals including ­Robert Moffat, David Livingstone, and later John Mackenzie himself. Even by the second half of the nineteenth century, when other missions such as the LMS in India had seen the ‘feminisation’ of the mission field, the southern ­African mission remained predominantly male, possibly because it was seen as a ‘dangerous’ and politically turbulent area.4 Accompanied by much violence, formal British rule had also extended sporadically over the large swathes of African territory owned and inhabited by a wide variety of Indigenous groups, some of which were already in conflict with each other. There were also, of course, the Afrikaner settlers, rivalling the British as a colonising power and engaged in their own fraught relationships with African polities. LMS activity occurred both within and beyond the formal colonial frontier. Originally Mackenzie was posted on the notoriously disastrous MaKololo Expedition (1859–60) but, thanks to Ellen’s confinement and the birth of their first son, which separated them from the rest of the group, they escaped probable death from the fever that killed all but three of the expeditionary party. In the following years, Mackenzie worked and travelled extensively in Bechuanaland, particularly amongst the Ngwato, experiences recounted in his popular memoirs Ten Years North of the Orange River and Day-Dawn in Dark Places. This was a time of considerable conflict in this area, not least with the neighbouring Ndebele who were often portrayed as an aggressor tribe in missionary writing. As such, Mackenzie experienced war at first hand, negotiating with perpetrators, sheltering from violence, fleeing missionary stations, and conveying strategic information.5 At 5 foot 11 inches and of large frame, his imposing figure made an impression. He was known amongst the Tswana as ‘Mohibuni’ (meaning ‘Red person’ or ‘Red man’) partly on account of his red beard and sunburned face, and partly because of the symbolic meaning of the colour red in the Tswana worldview which was associated with ambiguous power.6 In the mid-1870s, Mackenzie became increasingly caught up in imperial and colonial politics, particularly concerning the relationship between Bechuanaland and Griqualand West. 4 Esme Cleall, Missionary Discourses of Difference: Negotiating Otherness in the British Empire, 1840–1900 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). For more on the ‘feminisation’ of ­missions, see Susan Thorne, Congregational Missions and the Making of an Imperial Culture in Nineteenth-Century England (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999). 5 See Mackenzie, Ten Years North of the Orange River. 6 Paul Stuart Landau, The Realm of the Word: Language, Gender and Christianity in a Southern African Kingdom (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1995), 13.

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Bechuanaland and Griqualand West were large territories which, when Mackenzie first became acquainted with them in the early 1860s, fell outside the boundaries of formal imperial rule. This was soon to change. The discovery of diamond fields in Griqualand West and the conviction by all that they would yield further riches, placed them at the centre of a power struggle between the two British South African Colonies (Cape Colony and Natal), the Boer Republics (Orange State and Transvaal), individual gold-diggers, fortune-­seekers, and buccaneers, and between different Indigenous groups—particularly the Rrolong, the Ngwatetse, and the Tlhaping. The Portuguese, who it transpired had an earlier claim on the territory, were also involved. Unpicking the events surrounding the annexations, retractions, and re-annexations of these ­different territories is complicated, not least because at every conjecture each party took away a radically different interpretation of any agreement reached. Behind all of these developments lurked the ever-threatening promise of ­violent conflict.7 Mackenzie dreamt of resolving these problems, and those greater yet that followed. Initially, he endeavoured to do so through missionary work, preaching a doctrine he characterised as one of “peace” and “civilisation”. Increasingly, however, Mackenzie sought political solutions. He saw missionary work and imperial politics as complementary and interwoven paths to peace in southern Africa, and hoped they could be knitted together both theoretically and in his own career. Such a position was, however, unpopular with his employers, who were committed to a policy of “political impartiality” (which often implied tacit acceptance of imperial manoeuvres). In 1878, when Sir Bartle Frere offered him the position of Commissioner of Bechuanaland, the LMS refused Mackenzie’s request to allow him to work part-time as a missionary and part-time as a colonial officer, as he had proposed, claiming that “the sanction of the directors of the Missionary Society was not given to such a corporal union of Church and State”.8 At this point, Mackenzie bowed to LMS pressure and refused the position, but he remained committed to the Bechuana cause and endeavoured to get his imperial ideas adopted elsewhere. Mackenzie’s ‘political vision’ was remarkably consistent throughout his career. He was a strong believer both in European expansion, which he saw as 7 Some histories of some of these events include: J. Mutero Chirenje, A History of Northern Botswana 1850–1910 (London: Associated University Press, 1977); Sampson Jerry, History of Botswana: Early History, Government, Economy, People (Adidjan: Sonit Education Academy, 2006). 8 LMS (1879) quoted in Anthony Sillery, John Mackenzie of Bechuanaland 1835–1899: A Study in Humanitarian Imperialism (Cape Town: Balkema, 1871), 57.

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inevitable, and imperial governance, which he was convinced was necessary to manage relations between Europeans and Indigenous peoples. ­Mackenzie thought that areas outside formal British control should be monitored by ­British Residents who would be directly responsible to the Imperial Government rather than to the Colonial Government in the Cape.9 He argued that Indigenous areas should be governed through a system of Territorial Government (a model that had recently been applied by the Colonial Office to a system they had wanted to establish in Basutoland); these areas would be “administered on traditional lines by the tribal hierarchy”, but overseen by the High Commissioner.10 He believed that whilst under Territorial Government, Indigenous people would have an opportunity to be ‘civilised’, whilst the ­Imperial Government would be able to prevent abuses of Europeans upon Indigenous peoples by monitoring the situation and intervening when ­necessary. He argued that this system should be paid for through taxing Indigenous people. This is the basis of a scheme that Mackenzie advocated at various points and (only slightly) modified to different situations ranging from Griqualand West, Ndebeleland, the Transvaal, and Bechuanaland.11 As time went on Mackenzie became increasingly embroiled in imperial politics. He spent his 1882 furlough in Britain campaigning rigorously for the annexation of Bechuanaland—lobbying parliament, business interests, and missionary supporters alike, exerting most notable influence amongst Nonconformists and humanitarians. In 1884, he left the LMS in favour of a Deputy Commissionership in Bechuanaland, and joined the Warren Expedition that sought to assert British sovereignty in the region under the threat of military force. Mackenzie’s office as Commissioner was short and eventful. He resigned in August 1884 after only six months, and despite some success with the declaration of Botswana as a British Protectorate his commissionership was widely recognised to have been a failure.12 The task before him was huge, whilst his instructions were vague and his brief diffuse. According to his albeit sympathetic biographers, his remit was absurd given the resources he was allocated 9 Sillery, John Mackenzie, 52–53. 10 Sillery, John Mackenzie, 53. 11 For articulations of this scheme see for example: John Mackenzie, The High ­Commissionership as Connected with the Progress and Prosperity of South Africa – Further Correspondence Respecting the Affairs of the Transvaal and Sent to Parliament June 1886 (West Minister: Parliamentary Agency, 1886); Mackenzie, Bechuanaland and our Progress Northwards; Mackenzie, Austral Africa: Extension of British Influence in Trans-Colonial T ­ erritories. See also Sillery, John Mackenzie, 51. 12 Andrew Ross, “John MacKenzie,” Dictionary of African Christian Biography, https://dacb .org/stories/southafrica/mackenzie-john2/ (accessed 27 August 2019).

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and the artificial distinctions drawn in official thinking between polities, land, and resources which were impossible to implement on the ground.13 The question as to who owned the land now seemed apparently unresolvable as pseudo-legal agreements designated the same land to multiple parties, whose claims were mutually incompatible. The Cape refused Mackenzie the police force he believed necessary to exert control in Stellaland and Goshen and both the British and Cape Governments grew increasingly anxious about intervening, having no intention to fight for the territories on grounds of cost. In July, the ‘freebooters’ raided Mafeking, killing thirteen people, and a few days later attacked the town again. Mackenzie was recalled to Cape Town and replaced with Cecil Rhodes. From 1890, Mackenzie returned to missionary work and to the Missionary Institution at Hankey, back under the employment of the LMS. He threw himself into his work and became leader of the Congregational Union. Although suffering increasingly bad health, he worked in Hankey with his wife and two of his daughters who taught at the local school. He continued to correspond widely about southern African affairs, which descended into further violence. Rhodes’ South Africa Company absorbed an increasing amount of territory, which incorporated Bechuanaland in the mid-1890s. The Jameson Raid, a failed armed coup against the Cape Government, made the situation still more p ­ recarious. The late 1890s saw famine, rebellion, and war in both ­Bechuanaland and Ndebeleland. Mackenzie died in 1899, eight months before the ­outbreak of the Second South Africa War (formerly known as the ‘Boer War’), a development which would have horrified him.14 Mackenzie’s political career has made him one of the most controversial figures in the complicated historiography of missionaries’ relationship with empire. This historiography has argued from one perspective that missionaries were intimately if unofficially connected with empire as agents of cultural imperialism; from another perspective that there is no “plausible connection” between missionary activity and imperial policy; and from a third perspective that the relationship between missionaries and imperialism was variegated and ambivalent, with different missionaries at times challenging and at other times endorsing, if not ideologically bolstering, the colonial state.15 In some 13 Sillery, John Mackenzie, 87. 14 Mackenzie, John Mackenzie, 544. 15 For one proponent of the view that missionaries and imperialism were firmly connected, see: Arun Shourie, Missionaries in India: Continuities, Changes and Dilemmas (New Delhi: ASA Publications, 1994). For notable contributions to the debate see, for example: ­Norman Etherington, ed., Missions and Empire, The Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Andrew Porter, Religion Versus

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ways Mackenzie was an exceptional figure who straddled the positions of coloniser and missionary more unambiguously than most. Yet in other ways, as Anthony Dachs argues, Mackenzie was less idiosyncratic than his biographers depict him to be, deeply embedded as he was in a longstanding pattern of behaviour and understanding of the world premised on fifty years of LMS relations with the Tswana.16 Those sympathetic to Mackenzie have emphasised Mackenzie’s links with ‘humanitarianism’. For example, Anthony Sillery’s biography John Mackenzie of Bechuanaland is subtitled A Study in Humanitarian Imperialism, and argues throughout that Mackenzie stood for a “humanitarian policy” in southern Africa.17 Part of the evidence for this includes Mackenzie’s own opinion that “the Bechuana question is a humanitarian one”, by which he meant ‘justice’ in the ‘welfare’ of the Tswana people of which he saw himself as the main advocate.18 Sillery does not argue that humanitarian policy was not also a form of imperialism, but his emphasis is certainly on a benevolent rather than an exploitative policy. Åke Holmberg also sees Mackenzie as the “bearer of a humanitarian tradition in South Africa” that he traces back to the famous LMS missionary John Philip, who arrived in the Cape in 1818 and famously fed information into the Select Committee for the Protection of Aborigines.19 Whereas Sillery cast humanitarianism as a benevolent form of imperialism, Holmberg defined Mackenzie’s humanitarianism in decisive opposition to the colonialism represented by other forces in southern Africa—not least Cecil Empire: British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, c. 1700–1914 (­Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004); Ian Copland, “Christianity as an Arm of Empire: The Ambiguous Case of India Under the Company, c. 1813–1858,” Historical Journal 49, no. 4 (2006): 1025–54; Jeffrey Cox, “Were Victorian Nonconformists the Worst Imperialists of them All?,” Victorian Studies 46, no. 2 (2004): 243–55; Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, Volume 1: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Catherine Hall, Civilising ­Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002); Alan Lester, Imperial Networks: Creating Identities in Nineteenth-century South Africa and Britain (London: Routledge, 2001); Amanda Barry, Joanna Cruikshank, Andrew BrownMay, and Patricia Grimshaw, Evangelists of Empire: Missionaries in Colonial ­History (­Melbourne: University of Melbourne, 2008). The quotation is from Brian Stanley, The Bible and the Flag: Protestant Missions and British Imperialism in the Nineteenth and T ­ wentieth Centuries (Leicester: Apollo, 1990), 58–59. 16 Anthony Dachs, “Missionary Imperialism—The Case of Bechuanaland,” Journal of African History 13, no. 4 (1972): 647. 17 Sillery, John Mackenzie. 18 John Mackenzie (November 1883) quoted in Sillery, John Mackenzie, 77. 19 Åke Holmberg, African Tribes and European Agencies: Colonialism and Humanitarianism in British South and East Africa 1879–1895 (Goteborg: Scandinavian University Books, 1966), 12.

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Rhodes, the Cape politician, white supremacist, mining magnate, and enthusiastic exponent of British expansion. Notwithstanding the personal opposition between Mackenzie and Rhodes, Kenneth Hall has argued that the evidence Sillery and Holmberg provide is “inadequate” in establishing that Mackenzie’s view of Tswana society was significantly different to that of his contemporaries.20 In fact, Hall argues, they actually shared important premises about African behaviour, British ‘supremacy’, and the supposed need for British rule. “Not only did Mackenzie subscribe to the assumptions of his counterparts, the proposals he submitted for governing Bechuanaland had the same ends in view”.21 Fidelis Nkomazana and S­ enzokuhle Doreen Setume make a similar point, arguing that “regardless of the claims that the missionaries [in Bechuanaland] considered themselves anti-colonial … it is evident that they were part of the colonial structure”.22 Anthony Dachs, meanwhile, sees Mackenzie’s role in the British annexation of Bechuanaland as a “classic instance of missionary imperialism” with m ­ issionaries using the power of the colonial state to further their agenda of proselytisation and, as such, rendering imperial expansion and missionary practice inextricable.23 “The missionaries”, Dachs argues, “were as much agents of alien political expansion as traders, consuls and concession-­hunters. By their settlement they threatened independence; by their methods they eroded custom, integrity and authority; by their connexions they invited the imperial replacement of resistant African rule.”24 Dachs also emphasises the extent to which missionary practice had to be adapted to the beliefs and structures of Tswana society; it was their resistance to Christianisation, he suggests, that convinced Mackenzie and fellow missionaries that British intervention was necessary.25 Brian Stanley has more recently rejected this argument, contending that Mackenzie was “too idealistic” to be motivated by instrumentalist uses of imperialism, and that his machinations in Bechuanaland “owed less to evangelistic strategy than it did to humanitarian concern”.26 20

Kenneth O. Hall, “Humanitarianism and Racial Subordination: John Mackenzie and the Transformation of Tswana Society,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 8, no. 1 (1975): 97–110, esp. 98. 21 Hall, “Humanitarianism and Racial Subordination,” 99. 22 Fidelis Nkomazana and Senzokuhle Doreen Setume, “Missionary Colonial Mentality and the Expansion of Christianity in Bechuanaland Protectorate, 1800 to 1900,” Journal for the Study of Religion 29, no. 2 (2016): 29–55. 23 Stanley, Bible and the Flag, 117. 24 Dachs, “Missionary Imperialism,” 658. 25 Dachs, “Missionary Imperialism,” 658. 26 Stanley, Bible and the Flag, 118.

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I interpret Mackenzie as having been heavily invested in the expansion of colonial rule, and committed to a colonising project that intersected in substantive ways with wider commercial and political colonising projects. In this sense, my argument is closer to that of Hall and Dachs than it is to Sillery, Holmberg, and Stanley. In particular, I am influenced by Hall’s theory of the shared values that underpinned Mackenzie’s and Rhodes’ assumptions about African capacity and the supposed supremacy of British rule. Interrogating the role that ‘peace’ played in Mackenzie’s thinking and praxis shifts the focus from debates about the extent of Mackenzie’s supposed humanitarianism or imperialism in productive ways. It reveals that claims of peace provided a powerful means through which imperial expansion was justified and Indigenous peoples subordinated. 3

Practices and Discourses of Peace

Peace, used as an adjective, an aspiration, and an ideology, reoccurs throughout Mackenzie’s extensive writings. The term occurs 26 times in Day-Dawn in Dark Places, 38 times in Ten Years North of the Orange River, and 363 times in the two volumes of Austral Africa. Cognate terms and the concept, without reference to the word itself, are also evident throughout these works. Taken together, this provides some indication of the extent to which peace was an ongoing preoccupation for Mackenzie. Mackenzie’s idealistic rhetoric had a particular shape; his use of peace discourse bolstered his ideological positioning, but it must also be seen as imbued with substantive meaning. In his statement at his ordination in 1858, Mackenzie, like many other new missionaries, was committed to a doctrine that contrasted the violence of ‘heathendom’ with the ‘peace’ of Christianity. Christianisation and civilisation were closely linked in his thinking as he believed that “in order to complete the work of elevating the people, we must teach them the arts of civilised life”. To do so, he argued “if we exhort them to lay aside the sword for the ploughshare and the spear for the pruning-hook, we must be prepared to teach them to use them with the same dexterity which they exhibited in wielding the other. If they are no longer to start upon the marauding expedition, if they are not to rely on the precarious results of the chase, then we must teach them to till their own land, sow and reap their own crops, build their own barns as well as tend their own flocks.”27 The vision of a civilised, agrarian society here is striking. 27

Mackenzie, Statement at his Ordination, Edinburgh 19 April 1858, reproduced in Papers of John Mackenzie, edited by Anthony J. Dachs (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1975), 72.

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Mackenzie used the concept of peace in his writing to forge a community of like-minded thinkers who would support his actions in southern Africa. In referring to “friends of peace” and “all lovers of peaceful progress” he evoked a constituency of humanitarian and missionary thinkers to be placed alongside other groups such as “the multitudes who are interested in commerce”.28 Similarly he wrote of the “good of the empire, and the peace of the world” as universal aspirations, or elsewhere as “nobler trophies” that could be shared by all.29 The desirability of peace is taken for granted in his writing despite the engagement of many of the constituencies with whom he worked in active conquest. Furthermore, Mackenzie presented peace as a personal goal as well as a general missionary concern. “My scheme contemplated the peaceful opening up of the whole country”, he wrote.30 “My object in this country is to produce peace, harmony and good will”.31 He also wrote of his “services in the cause of the peace of Bechuanaland and of South Africa.”32 Part of the discursive power of the word peace in Mackenzie’s writings was achieved through its frequent couplings with other positive concepts in ­Victorian thinking: “peace and industry”, “peace and prosperity”, “peace and progress”, “peace and stability”, “peace and justice”, and “peace and security”.33 The most frequently used coupling is “peace and order”, which appears repeatedly in his writing, and has the effect of equating peace with British rule.34 Implicit in this framing is also the portrayal of Indigenous peoples without European colonisation as chaotic, a frequent claim in much imperial writing. Mackenzie’s desire for the “peace and unity of the races under Her Majesty”, similarly ties peacefulness with the promise of British rule.35 In terms of lived experience and missionary practice, it is also important to make an obvious point: peace and war operate as important descriptors of a turbulent and often violent political landscape to which Mackenzie was a witness. His time in southern Africa saw numerous conflicts between Indigenous polities and the violent extension of both British rule and Dutch settlement; and he saw this fighting at close quarters. The point is worth making because witnessing war and peace directly, rather than simply as abstract concepts, 28 Mackenzie, Austral Africa, 1: 175. 29 Mackenzie, Austral Africa, 1: 1–2. 30 Mackenzie, Austral Africa, 1: 202. 31 Mackenzie, Austral Africa, 1: 309. 32 Mackenzie, Austral Africa, 1: 169. 33 Mackenzie, Austral Africa, 1: preface, 217; 245, 259, 293, and 443. 34 For references to “peace and order” see, for example, Mackenzie, Austral Africa, 1: 234, 283, 236, 380 (twice), 392, 403, 443, and 481. 35 Mackenzie, Austral Africa, 1: 449.

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is highly formative. I have written elsewhere about the profound effect that experiences of violence and displacement had on the missionary psyche and in particular on the performance of missionary masculinity.36 Mackenzie was certainly affected by these processes. Whilst desperately presenting themselves as occupying positions of autonomy underpinned by faith, missionaries such as Mackenzie often ended up depending on peoples and situations out of their control. If war was an archetypal arena for the performance of m ­ asculinity, and if missionary men did not fight, discursive work had to be put into their responses to conflict that would cast missionary behaviour positively, in terms of active participation, and to mitigate their bodily vulnerability.37 But the concept of peace was by no means limited in Mackenzie’s thinking to these political realities. Whilst Mackenzie did not write extensively about the theological underpinning of his worldview, he did return to Biblical teachings to inform his responses to colonial politics. During 1878, when Mackenzie was stationed amongst the Tlhaping in South Bechuanaland, a rumour began to circulate of a “colour war” in which “no white man must be spared”.38 When rumours appeared to be confirmed by the killing of the three Europeans at Daniel’s Kuil, Europeans throughout South Bechuanaland panicked and started to ­congregate. By his own account, Mackenzie did much to calm things down, persuading the European traders not to “take a stand” by themselves but instead offering them accommodation in the not-yet-finished Institution he was having built. In recounting this situation in Austral Africa, Mackenzie recounts an interesting conversation with two Quaker visitors, Mr. Isaac Sharp and Mr. Langley Kitching, about the meanings of war and peace. When Sharp praised Mackenzie for attempting to advert violence, Mackenzie replied that “we must do all in our power towards this end, and leave the rest in God’s hands”39 But despite describing himself as “almost a Quaker” on account of having life-long cherished their views, Mackenzie was by no means a pacifist.40 He wrote of some forms of violence as necessary in order to prevent further bloodshed, and during his conversation with Mr. Sharp, which developed into a discussion of the use of physical force, Mackenzie returned to the Bible to justify war in some contexts. Jesus’ teachings against resistance were quoted, yet he returned 36

Esme Cleall, “Missionaries, Masculinities and War: The London Missionary Society in Southern Africa, c. 1860–1899,” South African Historical Journal 61, no. 2 (2009): 232–53. See also Cleall, Missionary Discourses, chapters 5 and 6. 37 Cleall, “Missionaries, Masculinities and War.” 38 Mackenzie, Austral Africa, 1: 82. 39 Mackenzie, Austral Africa, 1: 85. 40 Mackenzie, Austral Africa, 1: 85.

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to Mosaic Law, legitimising violence in gendered terms; that is, by affirming that men should have the right to protect women: the [Mosaic] law was universal, that the strong male defended the weaker female and their offspring. This law of nature surely extended to man, and was not abolished by Christianity. It was, therefore, right in the highest sense for Christian husbands and fathers to defend those whom God had given them, and if need be to die in their defence.41 As was common in colonial discourse, race and gender were easily read off each other, and the Biblical teachings, overtly about gender, were readily applied to a racial hierarchy wherein the British should protect the “weaker races”. It was important for Mackenzie to reconcile this Hebraic teaching with the life of Jesus, and he saw in Jesus’ “own example before the highest Jewish Court” as “explanatory of what He really meant. We were to be forgiving and charitable and long-suffering; but we had His own example, that there was also an occasion when we should stand up for our rights.”42 Going back to the Hebrew Bible’s use of the language of ‘shalom’, peace was an active concept in Mackenzie’s thinking, indicating wholeness, and a positive assertation of an earthly and also a spiritual landscape that was imbued justice, order, and harmony—not merely the absence of conflict. As a missionary, Mackenzie described himself as a “man of peace”, performing “peaceful labours”.43 He believed “the one gospel of peace and good-will” had particular resonances in southern Africa precisely because it was characterised by warfare and violence.44 In Ten Years North of the Orange River, which recorded the earlier part of Mackenzie’s missionary career, and was written before he became involved in critiquing imperial policy (of which Austral Africa is a commentary), peace is used literally to denote an absence of warfare, and also to refer to his identity as a missionary. When asked by the Ngwato king ­Sekgome whether he would help in his war against the Ndebele he replied in the negative, reminding Sekgome that “I was a promulgator of peace and goodwill amongst all men”.45 This basis for refusal, whilst drawing on language common in missionary discourse, might be seen as somewhat disingenuous in the case of missionary relations with the Tswana, which had historically involved 41 Mackenzie, Austral Africa, 1: 85. 42 Mackenzie, Austral Africa, 1: 85. 43 Mackenzie, Ten Years, 433; 404. 44 Mackenzie, Ten Years, 134. 45 Mackenzie, Ten Years, 270–71.

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trading firearms that were then used in Indigenous conflicts.46 It was, however, a powerful discourse to maintain. As we know from Mackenzie’s trajectory, this kind of language could be used not only to exonerate missionaries from implications of violence but could also be used to construct a narrative of empire and imperial expansion that might also be described as one of peace. It is to this vision that I will now turn. 4

Austral Africa: Mackenzie’s Vision of Peace and Imperialism

Throughout the violence and upheavals witnessed throughout his lifetime, Mackenzie clung to a vision for southern Africa that involved the extension of imperial governance across the subcontinent—from Cape Town to the Zambesi and from Ocean to Ocean. In his writings, he imbued “Austral Africa” with an almost mythical status. He spoke of a “‘fresh departure,’ which would form a sequel to recent disturbances and wars, in various parts of Southern Africa.”47 He optimistically sketched an imperial future for southern Africa characterised by a peaceful “mingling of the races”, an expansion of British power, a southern Africa where “black” and “white” could co-exist—a ­comingling he believed was the “will of God”.48 Mackenzie believed that without British imperial intervention, cooperation between races could not be achieved: I desire that English rule should be gradually, and with due caution, extended over the native tribes; and that it should be done in such a manner that England should regard her work in this land with pleasure and with pride, instead of impatient bewilderment, as at present.49 This vision for the future provided a remarkable contrast with the political reality of contemporary southern Africa. Yet Mackenzie strove to make such a vision come alive for his audiences using maps, illustrations, and stories, to try to convince his readers and listeners that his dream was possible. He believed that his vision would be endorsed by a variety of different interest groups, appealing “not only to the British Statesman, but also to the broad-minded 46 47 48 49

Dachs, “Missionary Imperialism,” 648. See also Ørnulf Gulbrandsen, “Missionaries and Northern Tswana Rulers: Who Used Whom?,” Journal of Religion in Africa, 23, no. 1 (1993): 50. John Mackenzie (letter dated December 1879 to Sir Bartle Frere and Sir Garnet Wolseley) reproduced in Mackenzie, John Mackenzie, 243. Mackenzie, memo, quoted in Mackenzie, John Mackenzie, 244. Mackenzie, memo, quoted in Mackenzie, John Mackenzie, 244–45.

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Philanthropist, to the promoter of Colonisation, to the advocate of Temperance, and to the friend of Peace, as well as to the multitudes who are i­ nterested in Commerce”.50 Reading “the friend of Peace” as missionaries and their ­supporters this can be interpreted as a rather late rendering of the ‘3 Cs’ of Christianity, Civilisation, and Commerce in missionary thinking. It certainly shows that he considered colonisation and peace to be compatible, despite arguing elsewhere that “trouble” was “inseparable from empire”.51 This vision is most strongly advanced in his 1000 plus page, multivolume text, Austral Africa, a combination of personal memoir of Mackenzie’s political involvement in southern Africa, an account of the historical and geo-­political context of the contemporary crisis, and a manifesto for future action in the subcontinent. The concept of peace framed this extensive work. Opening with his reflections on the 1886 Colonial Exhibition Mackenzie applauded the productions and industries which bring together “the minds of the various parts of the English Empire, for the good of the empire, and the peace of the world”. He contrasted the visitors’ responses to the “strange idols” and “oriental grandeur” of the Indian Empire, to the “nobler trophies of peace and industry which had been sent to the mother country from her children inhabiting the Greater ­Britain beyond the seas.”52 In concluding, he turned from constructing the history of southern Africa to imagining its future, writing that he saw “this peaceful progress and prosperity of the whole country advancing step by step as it never did before”.53 Throughout he charted the process whereby peace would be achieved and maintained. This was an overtly imperial ideology, for when contemplating these ­colonising projects, and the violence they brought, Mackenzie did not recoil from colonisation generally, but rather advocated an imperial framework, radiating from Britain (or in Mackenzie’s writing, despite his Scottishness, from England), through which to render these processes peaceful. Mackenzie was painfully aware of the pervasiveness of colonial violence, and drew attention to its evils throughout his negotiations in imperial politics. Whatever his idealism and his commitment to Britain, he wrote that he was “disgusted” by the way in which Britain handled the South African situation, the “mess” that had been made, and Britain’s unwillingness to get involved in the way he deemed necessary.54 In repeatedly deploring the British policy of non-engagement in 50 Mackenzie, Austral Africa, 1: vi. 51 Mackenzie, Austral Africa, 1: 133. 52 Mackenzie, Austral Africa, 1: 2. 53 Mackenzie, Austral Africa, 1: 503. 54 Mackenzie, Austral Africa, 1: 131.

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South Africa, he constantly acknowledged the violence inherent in the colonial system. When still working for the LMS, Mackenzie saw his position as missionary as bearing a duty of “witness” to record the “wrong” and “unpleasant” occurrences in southern Africa back to the metropole.55 He was “not unwilling” to give those he met a sketch of our doings in South Africa – how we got it; how we improved it at once from what it was; how we allowed swarms of white men to get beyond our control and to become independent; how in the end we handed the future of the country over to them in the Sand River ­Convention, pledging ourselves never to make treaties with natives, but allowing the Boers to do so; and granting the Boers ammunition and the natives none.56 This bleak picture of the Transvaal drew attention not only to the violence, but the way in which this was legally entrenched.57 Evoking the uniqueness of southern Africa in contrast to colonies such as India, where the Indigenous population remained numerically dominant, and Australia, where the Indigenous population was believed to be “dying out”, Mackenzie wrote of southern Africa as having “immense unoccupied tracts, into which it has been satisfactorily shown of late that emigrants can be peacefully introduced with the approval of the native chiefs and people”.58 Such an image, which evokes the myth of terra nullius common in justifying colonial expansion, strongly posits the possibility of peaceful European expansion, a process, in reality underwritten by violence. The “growth or expansion of the European population” was something that he explicitly wrote could and should be “peaceful”.59 As well as being committed to a general belief that the British Empire brought “peace and industry”, he believed that specific imperial initiatives, such as the Warren Expedition, defended the “prosperity of all peaceful people” and would “secure the peaceful and orderly opening up of the country which had been ruined morally and commercially by lawless freebooters”.60 Peaceful expansion was not assured of course and even Mackenzie only saw it as one pathway the British could take if they intervened in the situation in a 55 Mackenzie, Austral Africa, 1: 132. 56 Mackenzie, Austral Africa, 1: 135. 57 Mackenzie, Austral Africa, 1: 136. 58 Mackenzie, Austral Africa, 1: 3. 59 Mackenzie, Austral Africa, 1: 7. 60 Mackenzie, Austral Africa, 1: 6.

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particular way. The alternative was violence. “[I]s the spread of Europeans in South Africa to be peaceful and orderly and remunerative to a Central Government”, he asked, “or is it to be accompanied by outrage and war”?61 Discussing the persistent violence in southern Africa, he wrote: The alternative, which I propose … is to respect private property, and to be just and firm, and severe when there is occasion; then the natives will believe in you, and the country will make peaceful and rapid progress. The way to avoid war and bloodshed is to incorporate peaceful native communities by arrangement with the chiefs, under a General ­Government, before complications have arisen, take over all unoccupied lands as belonging to Government, and defray the expenses of local administration by local taxation.62 Mackenzie envisaged various Indigenous peoples, as well as different groups of European settlers, being brought under “the peaceful sway of Her Majesty.”63 Following in the tradition of humanitarian intervention dating back to the Select Committee on Aborigines of the 1830s, which purported that direct ­British rule would stop the abuses of various ‘natives’ by settlers, he repeatedly called for British intervention in southern African politics—including creation of a Crown Colony as far as the Zambesi.64 However, unlike previous articulations of such a policy, which did not intrinsically require British intervention, such a policy would need enforcement.65 Mackenzie was unwilling to engage with the realities of what this enforcement might entail. His insistence that ­imperial rule equated with peace may be considered naïve. Given M ­ ackenzie’s ­significant experience of southern African politics, however, it reads more like a deliberate erasure and refusal to engage with the violent realities of ­British rule. Mackenzie’s imagining of a southern Africa characterised by peace was also distinctly utopian, evoking as it did a subcontinent blessed with racial harmony, the eschewing of greed and exploitation and, perhaps most importantly, characterised by Christianity, civilisation, and commerce. Such ideals are more commonly associated with the missionary movement of the first half of the 61 Mackenzie, Austral Africa, 1: 97. 62 Mackenzie, Austral Africa, 1: 99. 63 Mackenzie, Austral Africa, 1: 105–106. 64 Mackenzie, Papers of John Mackenzie, 153. 65 Geoffrey Troughton, “Samuel Marsden and the Origins of a New Zealand Christian Peace Tradition,” in Saints and Stirrers: Christianity, Conflict and Peacemaking in New Zealand, 1814–1945, ed. Geoffrey Troughton (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2017), 29–47.

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nineteenth century than the second. Their persistence indicates the lingering connection between missionaries and humanitarianism, and perhaps more importantly, an enduring and intimate association between peace and humanitarianism.66 The utopia Mackenzie envisioned was Providentially ordained, and deeply and unambivalently linked with the British Empire—an empire he believed would provide the ideological underpinning, political scaffolding, and practical infrastructure for a Pax Britannica. As Anthony Sillery, Mackenzie’s biographer, has argued “Mackenzie’s importance does not lie so much in what he did as in what he said”.67 Whilst Mackenzie’s political influence both as a missionary and as Commissioner was far more limited than he wanted, his thinking had a wider significance in propagating a notion that the British Empire, however violent its lived realities, was underpinned by the desire for and ability to realise peace. This idea permeates Mackenzie’s writings, producing a remarkably consistent discourse in which peace, despite colonial ­violence, is the prerogative of the British. 5

Peace and Racialisation

If peace discourses were central to Mackenzie’s imperial vision and work, they were also critically related to ideas about racial superiority and inferiority on which that imperial vision depended. Mackenzie’s deployment of peace may be regarded as serving a crucial role in justifying such ideas and also making them palatable back in Britain. Kenneth Hall argues that “Mackenzie saw no conflict between humanitarianism and racial subordination” and whatever his evocation of a peaceful “comingling of the races” there is plenty of evidence in his writing that this imagined world did not entail racial equality.68 Instead, the structural racism embedded in Mackenzie’s thinking took for granted that British rule would operate at a ‘higher’ level of civilisation and that its imposition would be beneficial for all concerned. As Hall argues, Africans, by 66

Alan Lester, “Humanitarians and White Settlers in the Nineteenth Century,” in Missions and Empire, 80–84; Porter, Religion versus Empire. The literature on humanitarianism is newly expansive and may need closer consideration in connection with issues of peace not least to track the extent to which this periodisation (with humanitarianism waning after the 1840s) is complicated by later developments. For an example of this recent literature on humanitarianism, see: Penelope Edmonds and Anna Johnston, “Empire, Humanitarianism and Violence in the Colonies,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 17, no. 1 (2016), 10.1353/cch.2016.0013, together with other articles in this journal special issue. 67 Sillery, John Mackenzie, 185, quoted in Hall, “Humanitarianism and Racial Subordination,” 97. 68 Hall, “Humanitarianism and Racial Subordination,” 110.

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contrast appeared in Makenzie’s thinking as incapable of ruling themselves, and dependent on the spread of the European rule that he saw as both inevitable and ordained. A racial hierarchy is implicit in Mackenzie’s description of “the natives” as “our Divinely provided helpers in the great work of subduing the wilderness and compelling the mine to give up its treasures”.69 Whilst he was unusual in seeing cooperation between races, such cooperation always anticipated British leadership. Analysis of Mackenzie’s concept of peace helps us to extend these insights. It demonstrates that peace was far from a benign concept in Mackenzie’s writing: it was not only equated with British rule to justify imperial expansion, but also to justify and explain racial subordination. Ideas of ‘peacefulness’ helped construct and maintain racial hierarchies which were in turn deployed as part of a justification for British rule. This interpretation builds upon Hall, and is also the counterpart to an argument I have made elsewhere about the use of violence.70 I have argued that the belief that certain groups (such as the ­Ndebele) had a propensity for violence was used to ‘Other’ them; the evocation of violence, which included visceral descriptions of mutilation and dismemberment, were used to define certain groups of Indigenous ­people through the somatic. This had the effect of justifying missionary involvement in Ndebeleland and later helped to explain the hesitant and inconsistent missionary response to its violent colonisation and incorporation into southern Rhodesia. A similar argument can be made of the relational opposition: peace. Mackenzie depicted the Tlhaping, for example, as of “peaceful disposition”: “It speaks volumes for the peaceful disposition of the Bechuana tribes”, he wrote, “that for more than half a century these people have lived near our colonial ­border in entire peacefulness, and that while their own tribal system was slowly decaying.”71 Elsewhere, Mackenzie wrote that the “peaceful history of ­Bechuanaland” was well-known.72 Despite the largely positive connotations peace signifies, the evocations here are of childlike innocence, passivity, and reliance on European influence. The relationship between peace and ‘race’ in Mackenzie’s thought is complex, as it is in imperial thinking generally. From constructions of the Scots, Sikhs, and Gurkhas as “martial races”, to constructions of Aboriginal ­Australians as passive victims of violence and colonisation, the ability, willingness, and

69 Mackenzie, Austral Africa, 1: 268. 70 Cleall, Missionary Discourses, chapters 5 and 6. 71 Mackenzie, Austral Africa, 1: 45. 72 Mackenzie, Austral Africa, 1: 413.

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aptitude to fight was valorised in imperial thinking.73 In keeping with such thinking, Mackenzie characterises the Ndebele, Zulus, and Xhosa throughout his writings as “warlike” whilst other groups are constructed as “timid and unwarlike tribes”.74 There is a complicated relationship between these epithets and racial hierarchies. Here, as elsewhere in imperial writing, the so-called marital races attracted more respect from the British. Yet Mackenzie’s references to “rude and warlike clans” also speaks to the way that violence could be used to evoke ‘savagery’.75 Throughout Mackenzie’s writings, being ‘peaceable’ was also highly racialised. That is, it was interpreted as an inherent racial characteristic rather than the product of particular circumstances within the turbulent geopolitical situation of his time. The racial hierarchy also intersected with religious and cultural difference as a straightforward correlation between peacefulness and civilisation was complicated by the extent to which various polities were seen as receptive to Christianity. Those who were seen as resistant, most notably the Ndebele amongst whom conversion rates were notoriously low, were not also described as peaceful. At the same time, the Tlhaping, who as noted above were considered peace-loving, were also regarded as particularly receptive to Christianity. With this in mind, it is unsurprising that white violence occupied a particularly difficult place in Mackenzie’s thinking. White violence, perpetrated against Indigenous peoples who were acknowledged to be disadvantaged in conflict owing to the more rudimentary military technology available to them, disturbed notions of ‘fair play’, particularly when it was directed against women and children. Nonetheless, Mackenzie was able to reconcile the potential disruption posed by white violence within an established racial hierarchy. First, there was a clear distinction in his thinking between violence perpetrated by ‘Boers’ and by the British, with the former consistently portrayed as more prone to “lawless” and wanton violence. Indeed, identification of differential deployment of violence was one way in which Mackenzie separated the two. When reflecting on the British colonisation of the southern African subcontinent, Mackenzie emphasised the inevitability of the process, the only thing left to be determined, he believed, was the manner in which colonisation occurred. On the one hand “it can be done in a manner actually beneficial to the native” (that is, by the ‘peaceful’ British), on the other “it can be done by violence and 73

Heather Streets, Martial Races: The Military, Race and Masculinity in British Imperial C ­ ulture, 1857–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004). 74 See, for example, Mackenzie, Ten Years, 319, 489, 501, and 243. 75 Mackenzie, Ten Years, 365.

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the destruction of the native races” (that is, by the ‘violent’ Afrikaner settlers).76 Whilst advocating the former course of action, Mackenzie both demonstrated an awareness of the violence that often accompanied colonising processes, and implicitly endorsed colonisation as inevitable—or, in his words, as “a fact”.77 All violence was not equal in Mackenzie’s thinking and politics. Second, war and peace, as a dialectic, operated to help forge the “path of progress” or racial development through which Mackenzie expected ­Indigenous people to proceed. Mackenzie’s writing was inflected with stadial thinking, which anticipated that Indigenous peoples would follow European peoples down a pathway to progress. This presumption is evident in a conversation Mackenzie reports with an English trader in Bechuanaland. “I’m afraid this is slow work”, the trader said. Mackenzie agreed, replying “the history of our own native land leads us to expect that”. He continued, “Say that you and I are near to perfection, finished specimens of what civilisation and refinement, as well as religion, can accomplish we must remember two things: that ‘good people’ are still proverbially scarce in our own country, and that it has taken a long time to bring humanity to the elevated position which Englishmen occupy!” Intriguingly, Mackenzie’s path to progress was influenced by the peace/war dialectic that shaped his thinking elsewhere. It was, he argued, through the “commingling of races, and the aid of peaceful commerce, with perhaps the sterner discipline of war” that civilisation would be reached.78 While both war and peace played a part in racial development, peace was the apex of the kind of civilisation Mackenzie valorised. Whilst violence, or the supposed propensity towards violence, was a key element defining ‘savagery’, peace increasingly became linked with ‘civilisation’.79 This kind of racialisation and the political use to which the concept of peace was put, can also be seen in Mackenzie’s construction of Austral Africa. As Oliver Eberl has recently noted, “the notion that peace is the achievement of the civilized is one of the great narratives of European history”.80 From the eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment onwards, “Civil statehood, prosperity, and trade” were thought to “constitute the triangle of a concept of development” that explained Europe’s “progression from its uncivilized, ‘rude’ beginnings to ‘civil society’.” 76 Mackenzie, Austral Africa, 1: 55. 77 Mackenzie, Austral Africa, 1: 55. 78 Mackenzie, Ten Years, 82–83. 79 Cleall, Missionary Discourses of Difference, chapters 5 and 6. 80 Oliver Eberl, “The Paradox of Peace with ‘Savage’ and ‘Barbarian’ Peoples,” in Paradoxes of Peace in Nineteenth Century Europe, eds. Miloš Vec and Thomas Hippler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 219.

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Eberl argues that this assumption formulated the basis of nineteenth-century international law: “cooperation and therefore peace, was possible only among the civilised”.81 This kind of thinking underpins Mackenzie’s analysis, both in his sense that southern African could be civilised and that this civilisation would bring peace. The very notion of peace was thus linked inextricably with a colonising project. 6 Conclusion John Mackenzie’s missionary life and political career were shaped by the ­presence of violence. He witnessed numerous conflicts between Indigenous peoples, and was shocked by the violent relationship between the Tswana and the Ndebele. But war and violence were by no means confined to Indigenous peoples and white settlers and ‘diggers’ appear as particular culprits in his writings. Mackenzie was also acutely aware of the ambiguous and ambivalent margins between settlers and Indigenous peoples, especially in the form of mercenary white colonists trading their services for land—a practice M ­ ackenzie found deeply disturbing. During his missionary career, ­Mackenzie was not only witness to but also a protagonist in violent incidents. It was perhaps this proximity that made peace such a powerful signifier in his writings. Peace was not a remote concept, used only rhetorically, but a powerful indicator with whose relational corollary Mackenzie was only too intimately acquainted. Using peace as an analytical framework through which to understand missionary activity is work that must be done carefully. Whilst missionaries such as Mackenzie readily constructed themselves as agents of peace, the language of peace may present as a discursive screen, obscuring the part that violence played in processes of colonisation in which missionaries were entangled if not always complicit. And yet peace is nonetheless helpful in understanding the missionary worldview. As ‘messengers of peace’, missionaries believed they were spreading a gospel of civilisation and hope, and this language, whatever its ambivalent relationship with missionary praxis, helped to make sense of their activity. Far from dismissing the concept of peace in missionary writing, the ubiquity of such language in missionaries such as Mackenzie demands more careful attention in order to better understand the discursive contours and political significance of the global missionary project. 81

Eberl, “Paradox of Peace,” 219.

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Bibliography Barry, Amanda, Joanna Cruikshank, Andrew Brown-May, and Patricia Grimshaw. ­Evangelists of Empire: Missionaries in Colonial History. Melbourne: University of Melbourne, 2008. Chirenje, J. Mutero. A History of Northern Botswana 1850–1910. London: Associated ­University Press, 1977. Cleall, Esme. Missionary Discourses of Difference: Negotiating Otherness in the British Empire, 1840–1900. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Cleall, Esme. “Missionaries, Masculinities and War: The London Missionary Society in Southern Africa, c. 1860–1899.” South African Historical Journal 61, no. 2 (2009): 232–53. Comaroff, Jean, and John L. Comaroff. Of Revelation and Revolution, Volume 1: ­Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Copland, Ian. “Christianity as an Arm of Empire: The Ambiguous Case of India Under the Company, c. 1813–1858.” Historical Journal 49, no. 4 (2006): 1025–54. Cox, Jeffrey. “Were Victorian Nonconformists the Worst Imperialists of them All?” ­Victorian Studies 46, no. 2 (2004): 243–55. Dachs, Anthony. “Missionary Imperialism—The Case of Bechuanaland.” Journal of African History 13, no. 4 (1972): 647–58. Eberl, Oliver. “The Paradox of Peace with ‘Savage’ and ‘Barbarian’ Peoples.” In P­ aradoxes of Peace in Nineteenth Century Europe, edited by Miloš Vec and Thomas Hippler, 219–37. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Edmonds, Penelope, and Anna Johnston. “Empire, Humanitarianism and Violence in the Colonies.” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 17, no. 1 (2016). DOI: 10.1353/cch.2016.0013. Etherington, Norman, ed. Missions and Empire, The Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Gough, Barry. Pax Britannica: Britain and the World. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Gulbrandsen, Ørnulf. “Missionaries and Northern Tswana Rulers: Who Used Whom?” Journal of Religion in Africa 23, no. 1 (1993): 44–83. Hall, Catherine. Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002. Hall, Kenneth O. “Humanitarianism and Racial Subordination: John Mackenzie and the Transformation of Tswana Society.” The International Journal of African ­Historical Studies 8, no. 1 (1975): 97–110. Holmberg, Åke. African Tribes and European Agencies: Colonialism and Humanitarianism in British South and East Africa 1879–1895. Goteborg: Scandinavian University Books, 1966.

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Jerry, Sampson. History of Botswana: Early History, Government, Economy, People. ­Adidjan: Sonit Education Academy, 2006. Landau, Paul Stuart. The Realm of the Word: Language, Gender and Christianity in a Southern African Kingdom. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1995. Lester, Alan. “Humanitarians and White Settlers in the Nineteenth Century.” In M ­ issions and Empire, The Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series, edited by Norman Etherington, 64–85. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Lester, Alan. Imperial Networks: Creating Identities in Nineteenth-century South Africa and Britain. London: Routledge, 2001. Mackenzie, John. Papers of John Mackenzie, edited by Anthony J. Dachs. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1975. Mackenzie, John. Austral Africa: Extension of British Influence in Trans-colonial Territories. Proceedings at a Meeting of the London Chamber of Commerce, Assembled on the 14th May, 1888. London: P. S. King and Son, 1888. Mackenzie, John. Austral Africa, Losing It or Ruling It, Being Incidences and Experiences in Bechuanaland, Cape Colony and England. 2 vols. London: Sampson Low, Marsten, Searle and Rivington, 1887. Mackenzie, John. Bechuanaland and Our Progress Northward: A Lecture. Cape Town: Murray and St. Leger, Printers, 1884. Mackenzie, John. Day-Dawn in Dark Places: A Story of Wanderings and Work in Bechuanaland. London: Cassell and Company, 1883. Mackenzie, John. The High Commissionership as Connected with the Progress and ­Prosperity of South Africa – Further Correspondence Respecting the Affairs of the Transvaal and Sent to Parliament June 1886. West Minister: Parliamentary Agency, 1886. Mackenzie, John. The London Missionary Society in South Africa: Retrospective Sketch. London: London Missionary Society, 1888. Mackenzie, John. Ten Years North of the Orange River. Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1871. Morris, James. Pax Britannica: The Climax of an Empire. London: Faber and Faber, 1979. Nkomazana, Fidelis, and Senzokuhle Doreen Setume. “Missionary Colonial Mentality and the Expansion of Christianity in Bechuanaland Protectorate, 1800 to 1900.” Journal for the Study of Religion 29, no. 2 (2016): 29–55. Parchami, Ali. Hegemonic Peace and Empire: Pax Romana, Britannica and Americana. London and New York: Routledge, 2009. Porter, Andrew. Religion Versus Empire: British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, c. 1700–1914. Manchester: Manchester University Press, Andrew. Ross, Andrew. “John Mackenzie.” Dictionary of African Christian Biography. Accessed 27 August 2019. https://dacb.org/stories/southafrica/mackenzie-john2/. Shourie, Arun. Missionaries in India: Continuities, Changes and Dilemmas. New Delhi: ASA Publications, 1994.

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Sillery, Anthony. John Mackenzie of Bechuanaland 1835–1899: A Study in Humanitarian Imperialism. Cape Town: Balkema, 1871. Stanley, Brian. The Bible and the Flag: Protestant Missions and British Imperialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1990. Streets, Heather. Martial Races: The Military, Race and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture, 1857–1914. Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2004. Thorne, Susan. Congregational Missions and the Making of an Imperial Culture in N ­ ineteenth-Century England. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. Troughton, Geoffrey. “Samuel Marsden and the Origins of a New Zealand Christian Peace Tradition.” In Saints and Stirrers: Christianity, Conflict and Peacemaking in New Zealand, 1814–1945, edited by Geoffrey Troughton, 29–47. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2017. Vec, Miloš, and Thomas Hippler, eds. Paradoxes of Peace in Nineteenth Century Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Chapter 7

“In the Interest of Peace, the Society Yielded”: Mission Growth and Retreat in Moshi-Kilimanjaro Amy E. Stambach 1 Introduction In 1849, Church Missionary Society (CMS) Reverend Dr. J. Ludwig Krapf ­journeyed two hundred miles west from the East African port of Mombasa to the Usambara Mountains where, he wrote in his 1860 memoirs, “I took possession of the pagan land for the militant Church of Christ.”1 Shortly after, Krapf identified an equatorial line across Africa that could countermand the “Mohammedan trade” in slaves and bring the region under Church influence. In 1885, the CMS established a mission station in Moshi-Kilimanjaro and, just five years later, after seeking first to broker peace, closed it, explaining to its Intelligencer readers that German authorities had wrongly “declared that [CMS missionaries] had supplied powder and ammunition to the Natives, and encouraged them to resist the authority of the German Resident.”2 In 1899, CMS historian Eugene Stock recorded that “in the interest of peace, the Society yielded”, and the CMS missionaries retreated to Mombasa.3 Yet as the following analysis of CMS activities illustrates, ‘yielding’ advanced an array of political and economic interests, not all of them non-violent. Across its five short years, the CMS station in Moshi-Kilimanjaro went from serving as 1 Eugene Stock, The History of the Church Missionary Society: Its Environment, Its Men, and Its Work (3 vols, London: The Society, 1899), 2: 131. 2 G. F. S., “The Closing of the Chagga Mission,” The Church Missionary Intelligencer, vol. 18, new series (London: The Church Mission Society, 1893), 248. Note that “G. F. S.” are the initials of The Church Missionary Intelligencer editor whose 1893 article “The Closing of the Chagga Mission” runs from pages 246 to 255. Contained within those pages are extracts of letters from the Rev. A. R. Steggall to an unidentified British source (248–53), which in turn includes within it an excerpted text dated 1892 from the German Foreign Secretary Bernhard von Bülow (248–49); extracts of 1892 telegrams between the British Consul-General Gerald Portal and CMS Bishop Michael Tucker (253–54); and a portion of Bishop Tucker’s 1892 correspondence to Rev. Steggall (254). Here and below, I reference each of these sources separately so that readers can grasp the various British, German, and CMS voices in conversation during this era. 3 Stock, History of the Church Missionary Society, 3: 432. © Amy E. Stambach, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004536791_008

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a sanctuary for those the missionaries thought needed protection, particularly children and freed slaves, to becoming a sanctuary for missionaries themselves, and then to a place too dangerous for them to stay. After first seeking to broker peace between Mandara and his adversaries, among whom Mandara counted the German Army, the CMS missionaries rapidly closed their station to avoid violence. Yet missionaries’ retreat opened the way for the German Regiment to capture Mandara’s son and hang him publicly. German officers working with Mandara’s enemies set fire to Mandara’s houses and drove away families’ cattle. Eight years later, German officers hung several chiefs from across Kilimanjaro. Analysis here of a Christian mission station’s expansion and closure ­provides a case for examining the fraught and fragile contexts in which m ­ issionaries operated on the continent of Africa at the end of the nineteenth century. Historical and anthropological records abound with examples of conflictual peace, and of the practices and structures favouring concord for some groups. Tomaz Mastnak’s Crusading Peace as well as accounts of global evangelism,4 show that many missionaries regarded world evangelism as enabled by, and helping to advance, the levelling operations of empire. Yet, whereas much of this historical work focuses on church expansion and crusade, this ­chapter examines how peace is also used to rationalise and mobilise church withdrawal and retreat. 2

Respite, Peace, and Power in Kilimanjaro

In the mid-eighteenth century, Kilimanjaro was a frontier of European expansion. Although Roman Catholic Franciscan priests had settled in coastal Kilwa between 1505 and 1513, and Portuguese and Spanish slavers working out of Zanzibar had been buying trafficked slaves from the mainland since before the 1800s,5 Europeans had not travelled inland. In 1846, CMS Reverend J. Ludwig 4 Tomaz Mastnak, Crusading Peace: Christendom, The Muslim World, and Western Political Order (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Norman Etherington and John M. MacKenzie, “Exploration and Empire,” in The Encyclopedia of Empire, ed. John M. ­MacKenzie (Hoboken: Wiley, 2016); Adrian Hastings, Church and Mission in Modern Africa (London: Burns and Oates, 1967); Roland Oliver, The Missionary Factor in East Africa (London: Longmans, 1965); Melani McAlister, The Kingdom of God Has No Borders: A Global History of American Evangelicals (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018); Michael G. Thompson, For God and Globe: Christian Internationalism in the United States Between the Great War and the Cold War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015). 5 Edward A. Alpers, Ivory and Slaves: Changing Patterns of International Trade in East Central Africa to the Later Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975);

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Krapf travelled with fellow Reverend Johannes Rebmann to the East African interior. Krapf recorded seeing Mount Kilimanjaro, and Rebmann reported to readers of the Church Missionary Intelligencer that the “general friendliness of the tribes” in the region provided a favourable environment for a mission.6 By the 1850s, the CMS began to develop “a chain across Africa” of mission stations. The sequence began in Frere Town, where one route went north and another south, both following the paths of the East African caravan trade. The northerly route ran shortly inland to Rabai then further to Segalla. CMS commentator S. G. Stock described Segalla as “a healthy spot, most suitable for a link.”7 For some years the chain of stations stopped at Segalla until more information about Kilimanjaro was supplied, first in 1862 by Baron von der Decken and nine years later by Methodist missionary Rev. Charles New, who visited the lands of one particularly powerful chief, Mangi Mandara, seeking food and rest on his journey. New described Mandara’s lands as beautiful but violent. En route, he passed caravans transporting slaves, but not wanting to get involved, he did not stop them. Closer to Mandara’s residence, New was ordered to halt and to perform a “ku-hossa” ceremony, involving the exchange of goatskin rings to signal friendliness. Like Rebmann and, later, CMS Bishop Hannington, New was intrigued by this tradition. New then saw Mandara who had wondered why New had not “given a salute fire.”8 Mandara compared New’s visit to those of the caravan traders sent by coastal Sultans and asked, “Where are your guns? Give us a volley and let us know that we are to be visited by a king!” When New refused (although New had several classes of guns with him), Mandara countered along the lines Mandara later told another CMS missionary: “[If] you cannot bring me gunpowder and guns, what good will you do me if you live here?… The Sultan of Zanzibar wants my country; the Germans want my country; you want my country. Whoever wants my country must pay for it.”9 New did not pay for land, although later CMS missionaries Fitch and Wray would.

6 7 8 9

­Sanderson Beck, East Africa, Arabs, and Europeans 1700–1856 (Santa Barbara: World Peace Communications, 2010). Johannes Rebmann, “Narrative of a Journey to Jagga, the Snow Country of Eastern Africa,” Church Missionary Intelligencer, vol. 1 (London: Church Missionary House, 1850), 12. S. G. Stock, “A Chain Across Africa,” The Church Mission Society: Awake, no. 23 (London: Church Missionary House, 1892), 127. Charles New, Life, Wanderings, and Labours in Eastern Africa (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1874), 371. J. A. Wray, “The First Year of the Chagga Mission,” Church Missionary Intelligencer and Record, vol. 11, new series (London: Church Mission Society, 1886), 555.

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Instead, New asked Mandara what he knew about Europeans’ “crushing operations”10 in the Indian Ocean, their capture and burning of slave vessels, and of the slaves who had been taken from Mandara’s area. Mandara defended that the coastal slavers offered him tempting gifts. He defended that he only turned over his enemies, sick people, old women, and children who, he said, were of no use to him. New also learned that Swahili traders helped to protect Mandara against his enemies. Sitting inside Mandara’s hut, New observed one day that “the hills rang with the alarm of war…. So, missionary though I was, I prepared for defense.” New loaded his guns; others begged gun powder from him; and Mandara called up “about 700 men for a fight.” In the end, “the ­Swahili stopped Maasai [raiders] from attacking; they did so by ransoming some of their own [trafficked] men and then paid the Maasai to go another way.”11 New reported that Chief Mandara was pleased to see him at his side and thereafter liked him better, yet as German explorer Hans Meyer wrote,12 when New returned again, two years later, Mandara robbed the missionary, and New died escaping to the coast. In March 1885, Bishop Hannington (himself later murdered in Uganda), ­traveling with Rev. E. A. Fitch and Mr. J. A. Wray, visited Mandara’s lands and ­brokered a deal permitting the CMS to use land and build a station. Like Rev. New, Hannington admired Mandara’s environs. Hannington exclaimed “England, England! You see England here. Yes, and that charming part of England, Devonshire.”13 According to Meyer,14 these men’s contemporary, Hannington had been persuaded by positive accounts that Mandara’s land was suitable for mission building. In one of his journal entries published in the Church Missionary Intelligencer, Hannington reported that, “The sum of what [Mandara wants] is the echo of almost every chief’s heart in Africa: ‘I want guns and gunpowder, and if I can’t have them, the next best thing is a white teacher to live in the land.’”15 Hannington also visited Mandara’s enemy, Sina in Kibosho, and took a “tusk of ivory” from Mandara for which Hannington was “to send him a lamp, some soap, and oil.”16 He then continued to Fumba’s

10 New, Life, Wanderings, and Labours in Eastern Africa, 377. 11 New, Life, Wanderings, and Labours in Eastern Africa, 390. 12 Hans Meyer, Across East African Glaciers: An Account of the First Ascent of Kilimanjaro (London: George Philip & Son, 1891), 102. 13 Bishop Hannington, “Visit to Chagga: The Bishop’s Journal,” Church Missionary I­ ntelligencer, vol. 10, new series (London: Church Missionary House, 1885), 612. 14 Meyer, Across East African Glaciers, 15. 15 Hannington, “Visit to Chagga: The Bishop’s Journal,” 611. 16 Hannington, “Visit to Chagga: The Bishop’s Journal,” 612.

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country, in Kilema, where Fumba’s father arrived with a sheep that he killed after Hannington first “spit on his head,” part of the ku-hossa ceremony. Exchange and trade, for Mandara, were preconditions to missionaries’ entry. However, for missionaries, the primary concern was to build infrastructure and advance evangelism. Indeed, the trope of travel marked the progress of the CMS’s chain-linked growth from the coast to the interior, and the image of a “road” between stations evoked a picture of emerging peaceful order. “We trust these little links may, through God’s good providence, throw out others, and by-and-by join the chain that has gone through Taita, Taveta, and Chagga.”17 Indeed, the stations on the road were compared to “a link in the chain of blessing”18 across Africa. In 1883, an advance was made on this road, though not as far as Chagga lands.19 The image of roads also served, metaphorically, to contrast the paucity of heathenism and Mohammedanism with Christianity. Writing about a road used by “Arab traders” that cut through an area controlled by “the fierce tribe of the Maasai, a nation of warriors, who prefer to live by stealing other people’s goods,” S. G. Stock rounded out the mission story by qualifying: You must not, however, suppose that there really is a road at all. There are only the narrow paths you have heard of before, and sometimes travellers would find that, as the Natives say, ‘the road has died,’ which means that so few had passed that way, that the path was overgrown.20 In late January 1888, American naturalist Dr. William Louis Abbott followed the chain link of stations from Zanzibar to Kilimanjaro. Although Abbott had been sending and receiving letters through the Church Mission Society in Mombasa for several months, it was not until December 1888 that he first visited the CMS Kilimanjaro station. Abbott went first “to the Church Mission Society station and saw the Rev. Fitch [who] was building a new church and schoolroom.”21 Then he “went on up to the German Company’s station where Otto Ehlers [a company manager] received me most hospitably.” Abbott had recently killed a man whom he had chartered (as a “slave” Abbott later identified) and sought refuge in K ­ ilimanjaro, under the protection of both the missionaries and the Germans. 17 18 19 20 21

S. G. Stock, “A Chain Across Africa,” 128. S. G. Stock, “A Chain Across Africa,” 128. “Mr. Hooper’s Party: Another Grave at Mamboia,” The Church Missionary Gleaner 12, no. 144 (1885): 133–34. S. G. Stock, “A Chain Across Africa,” 126. William L. Abbott, letter dated 31 December 1888; in William L. Abbott Personal Papers, 7117, Box 2, Smithsonian Archives, Washington, DC, USA (hereafter Abbott personal papers).

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While there, Abbott kept a record of the Kilimanjaro operations of the German East African Society, under the regional direction of Lt. Ehlers, an Austrian-born business person who was soon to be replaced by the German Government. Ehlers’ job as head of the Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Gesellschart (DOAG) was to bypass Swahili and Indian middlemen by buying ivory directly from chiefs in exchange for supplying guns and powder to leaders such as ­Mandara. Ehlers, Abbott, Mandara, and the CMS missionaries were all known to one another and, as Abbott’s records make clearer than do missionaries’ accounts, were not so much working together as they were all aware—and wary of—the growing German military presence in the region. Mandara himself was fighting several enemies, including Maasai groups and other mountain leaders. For this, Mandara was eager for powder and guns from Swahili and Europeans, though he was not as successful in getting weapons from missionaries as he was from other travellers. He and other leaders had long been raiding one another’s people and cattle. “If I do not go to war,” Mandara once asked missionaries, “how will I get cattle?”22 Cattle were pivotal in the regional economy in exchange for marriage and as gifts to families. ­Additionally, leaders including Mandara took enemy people as captives, trading or (in so many words) selling these captives to coastal slavers. “We never sold our people until the Waswahili came with tempting offers of fine clothes,” Mandara told Methodist New, agreeing “it is a bad business.”23 Amidst all of this marauding, CMS missionaries continued to conduct their work, although they less seldom used Krapf’s images of militancy than now peace and pacifism to motivate their efforts. “Peace, perfect peace,” is what one missionary uttered when asked what he wanted.24 “Rock of my refuge” referred to the church, and indeed it was on a rock that CMS missionaries first b­ aptised Kilimanjaro congregants. The metaphor of creating “an African A ­ sylum,”25 ­discussed next, spoke to the mission’s interest in securing peace. 3

Creating an “African Asylum” for Slaves and Children

As a stop on a chain of stations linking Mombasa to Kilimanjaro, the mission station near Mandara’s residence was a place of refuge for the missionaries 22

Rev. E. A. Fitch, “The First Year of the Chagga Mission,” The Church Missionary I­ ntelligencer and Record, vol. 11, new series (London: Church Mission Society, 1886), 561. 23 New, Life, Wanderings, and Labours in Eastern Africa, 377. 24 “Mr Hooper’s Party,” The Church Missionary Gleaner, 134. 25 Stock, History of the Church Missionary Society, 2: 431.

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as well as for Abbott and for Mandara’s enemies. “At Chagga there have lately been some baptisms,” CMS author S. G. Stock wrote in the November 1892 issue of Awake, referring to Kilimanjaro as Chagga.26 Writing about “King Mandara” of Kilimanjaro, S. G. Stock conveyed that although Mandara “had been heard to say that he believed in Jesus Christ, he was never baptized, and we cannot tell whether his faith was real.”27 Nonetheless, “the missionaries found the people flocking around them, both for instruction and for medical treatment”—an image conveying assurance to readers that humanitarian good works of the church were being done.28 Entwined infrastructural and humanitarian ideas of sanctuary ramified positively with the political ideologies of European governments at the time. In Europe, rising nationalism mixed unevenly with the language of missionary peace. 1848 revolutionaries had recently pressed for political changes in Prussia and Hungary, and, in England, protestors continued to resist what they saw as an expanding “Romish” papacy. Against this background, the Church Mission Society reported that the CMS’s response to “Papal ­Aggression” in England was “a larger number of missionaries, European and Native, ordained in connection with the CMS than any previous year in the Society’s history.”29 The opening of the CMS mission to East Africa in 1851 was the Society’s “answer to Rome,” a show of Anglican victory, Stock reported. “We will show her [the Roman Catholic Church] that, although rotten branches may fall off, the English nation, like our own country oak, is sound at heart; that there is life in the English Church, for there is growth in the extremities.”30 By the time Hannington had reached Mandara’s territory in 1888, ­European governments had already divided East Africa into “British”” and “German” territories. German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who chaired the conference, chartered the German East African Society to govern Tanganyika. Mangi ­Mandara (called Mangi Rindi in other accounts31) “agreed” to Kilimanjaro becoming German territory. In 1886, Britain and Germany signed a treaty defining the border dividing British Kenya form German Tanganyika. Implicitly referencing an idea used at the Berlin Conference in 1884–1885—that

26 S. G. Stock, “A Chain Across Africa,” 128. 27 S. G. Stock, “A Chain Across Africa,” 128. 28 S. G. Stock, “A Chain Across Africa,” 128. 29 Stock, History of the Church Missionary Society, 2: 130. 30 Stock, History of the Church Missionary Society, 2: 130. Italics in original. 31 See Kathleen M. Stahl, The History of the Chagga People of Kilimanjaro (London: Mouton & Company, 1964), 37.

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Africa would be carved into different spheres of European influence—S. G. Stock stated: All the country along this new road to the Lake [Victoria] belongs to what is called ‘the sphere of British influence.’ People in Europe, having found that instead of being a sandy desert, East Africa is a country rich in all kinds of produce, are anxious to get the trade with it into their own hands. So different European countries have agreed to leave different parts to one another…. Eastern Equatorial Africa is divided between the English and the Germans.32 For the next five years, the CMS objective of building more stations continued in “German” East Africa. Engineers and mechanics, teachers and doctors—all were engaged in the mission project. “The most effective weapon in Church Defense is Church Extension,” was a recurring idea supporting the Society.33 This defense, and this extension, also involved a structural and logical inversion. Although missionaries opposed slavery and slavery had been outlawed since at least 1822, the CMS “freed” East African slaves who had been shipped to India. British ships intercepted slaves bought from East Africa. Traffickers continued to buy slaves and ships trafficked people from ports to the north and south. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Kilimanjaro chiefs traded directly with Kamba merchants to the north and east who, in turn, shipped slaves and ivory to Mombasa, which at that time was under the control of the Mazrui family.34 By the 1840s, some seven tons of ivory were exported from Kilimanjaro weekly, and by the 1860s Zanzibar and Pemba housed tens of thousands of slaves annually.35 In the 1870s, British officials and missionaries tried to persuade Maasai from raiding one other for slaves but some “sold themselves as slaves to the Mohammedan Swahili on the coast,”36 which increased missionaries’ efforts once again to receive and care for freed slaves. In the 1870s as earlier, some were taken to Bombay for safety, “as it was not safe to put the slaves thus rescued on African shores again,” historian Eugene Stock reasoned.37 Some were taken to mission sites where they “received Christian instruction,

32 S. G. Stock, “A Chain Across Africa,” 128. 33 Stock, History of the Church Missionary Society, 2: 130. 34 Sally Falk Moore, “The Chagga of Kilimanjaro,” in The Chagga and Meru of Tanzania, eds. Sally Falk Moore and Paul Puritt (London: International African Institute, 1977), 11. 35 Beck, East Africa, Arabs, and Europeans. 36 Stock, History of the Church Missionary Society, 3: 408. 37 Stock, History of the Church Missionary Society, 2: 431.

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and were baptized” in India.38 One station, established in the 1850s and later run by lay missionary W. S. Price, became known as the “African Asylum.” There, rescued girls and boys were taught trades and became a “­special object” of missionaries’ “labour and solicitude.”39 By the time Fitch, Abbott, and Ehlers, and the German government converged in Kilimanjaro in the late 1880s, “runaway slaves” were still stationed at Rabai on the East Africa coast, near Mombasa. A CMS “Native” missionary, W. S. Price, who had established what CMS missionaries called the India African Asylum, had by this time relocated to British East Africa and was working to harbour more runaways, though technically seven years earlier there had been another treaty prohibiting slavery. The Gleaner published that, “The Arabs and Swahili were very angry at being ‘sold’ to the English, and anticipated an early suppression in their traffic in slaves.”40 By 1888, when the British East Africa Company arrived at Mombasa, Arabs, and Swahili issued a complaint against the CMS that the mission was “receiving and harbouring their runaway slaves.”41 In fact, the mission had agreed not to target runaways—presumably on the grounds that runaway slaves were technically free and, as such, among the larger masses open for conversion. Nonetheless, it was not always easy to discern who was, and was not, a ­runaway. The place of enslaved peoples near Rabai was “not a guarded enclosure but an open village, with nothing to prevent any one coming near, and ‘pitching his tent’ (so to speak); and of course the runaways had not avowed themselves as such.”42 Presumably Price pitched his tent, in the vein of evangelising as a tent-maker,43 and he spoke to the possibly-not runaway slaves. When an African pastor in charge of Rabai, William Jones, who “had been a slave himself and was now a minister of the Church,” refused return these “poor souls to their cruel and merciless masters,” the British East Africa Company, under the direction of, again, one Mr. Mackenzie, came forward to “ransom” the slaves.44 To take the matter one step further, the British East Africa Company suggested at this time that the Church Mission Society bear a part of the cost of slaves’ recovery. In response to slavers’ complaints that the CMS “received and harbored their runaway slaves,” the BEAC ransomed about 900 slaves for a sum of about 3500 British pounds. But “missionary funds were of course not 38 Stock, History of the Church Missionary Society, 2: 431. 39 Stock, History of the Church Missionary Society, 2: 431. 40 Stock, History of the Church Missionary Society, 3: 429. 41 Stock, History of the Church Missionary Society, 3: 430. 42 Stock, History of the Church Missionary Society, 3: 430. 43 As is suggested in Acts 18:3 of the Christian Bible. 44 Stock, History of the Church Missionary Society, 3: 430.

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available,” and so a church donor, “Sir Fowell Buxton and some members of his family paid down the 1200 pounds on its behalf.”45 Between the lines, one can discern that the meaning of asylum for slaves near Mombasa was different from that for captives in Mandara’s area of ­Kilimanjaro. In Mombasa, a church donor paid compensation to slave owners while in Kilimanjaro there was no direct return for Mandara’s sending of ­children to the mission. In early 1878, Mandara had sent a message to the ­British in Frere Town, near Mombasa, asking “for white teachers to come and live in his country.”46 Missionaries lauded Mandara’s willingness but it is questionable whether they fully comprehended the context of what Mandara meant. Mandara wrote (as translated from Arabic by the missionaries): If God please, let peace descend upon you…. Now I want to ask you a question. If you want children to teach them, we shall give them to you. And I shall follow you to learn with all my people, if you do really want. Meanwhile, send me a Book. Mind you don’t forget it…. With much ­honour [this] is written by a weak man, King Mandara.47 CMS missionary, Mr. James Lamb, wrote the following reply, dated 11 March 1878, opening first with his own greetings and wishes for blessings, then continuing: The letter you sent by Sadi [the trader who had also accompanied New] has reached [us] safely. Also the spear and the dagger which I received with much pleasure as tokens of your readiness to hear the Word of God…. It is very probable you will see some [teachers] before long. I very gladly comply with your request, and send you the Book of God. I also send a bag which I brought from England, as a further small token of our wish to hold friendly relations with you; and in the bag you will see a red cloth of 16 elbows.48 Already there were different visions of peace. Certainly Mandara knew missionaries wanted him to turn over his spears and daggers (though he also likely knew that they wanted him to give up his bigger arsenal), and certainly he 45 Stock, History of the Church Missionary Society, 3: 430. 46 S. G. Stock, “A Chain Across Africa,” 127. 47 “Invitation from the King of Chagga,” in The Month (London: Church Mission Society, 1878), 448. 48 The Month, 448–49.

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deployed greetings of peace to accommodate a conversation. However, the promise of children and exchange of presents was not of equal meaning. To Mandara, the sending of children to the missionaries would have ramified with local practices of child fostering, not Christian baptism and not slavery. Not all children given or taken were taken out of circulation. Children of others could be given to friends and even enemies to ensure good current and future relations, not the removal of the child from the social setting.49 Yet the ­missionaries sought to convert and take children out of poverty and to break the chain of trade in slaves for weapons. For missionaries, opening stations was a way to create a safe and peaceful place for children. Thus, at a time when European forces were competing, and when local leaders were vying to garner either or both German and British support, the mission station was a place of refuge as well as a place to offer humanitarian aid. In other words, not only was it inward facing but also outward reaching. Abbott’s letters illustrate both the qualities of respite and of precariousness at the station. Writing from the Seychelles in a letter dated 15 April 1890, he noted: I have just received a letter from Morris, the missionary on Kilimanjaro. The news is awful as regarding my old friend Marealle and his people. You know I wrote you that he was on bad terms with old Mandara…. Two weeks after my departure, Mandara’s people with those of Kilema and Uru surprised Marealle early one morning…. By Mandara’s orders, no quarter [respite] was given, and hundreds or even thousands were killed in cold blood and the bodies mutilated. The fugitives were pursued for many miles, Marealle himself escaped, but everything was swept away, cattle and goods of any description. My former station burned. All the presents which I and others had given to the chief were carried off as trophies to Moshi. The missionaries could do nothing and were not allowed to enter Marangu.50 Abbott’s letters capture the rise and fall, then rise again, of Mandara’s and ­ ermans’ power. In February 1891, Lieutenant Ehlers raised the German flag G in Moshi, and the CMS informed home readers that German sources had publicly printed in English newspapers that the German Resident charged the CMS missionaries “had supplied powder and ammunition to the Natives, and 49 50

Amy Stambach and Aikande Kwayu, “‘Take the Gift of My Child and Return Something to Me’: On Children, Chagga Trust, and an American Evangelical Orphanage on Mount Kilimanjaro,” Journal of Religion in Africa 43, no. 4 (2013): 296–425. William L. Abbott, letter dated April 15, 1890, Abbott personal papers, 7117, Box 2.

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encouraged them to resist the authority of the German Resident.”51 The CMS record objected to this but reported that continued accusations were made “that the chief of Chagga has received lead and caps from the English Mission, now stationed at Taveta.”52 In good faith, the CMS’s public record admitted clearly that, “this latter charge we are unable at present to refute.”53 However, it diplomatically stated “with the fullest confidence” that until it heard otherwise, it was publishing all of the correspondence so far at hand “as will make evident the attitude of the mission in the summer of 1892.”54 So far, one might broadly state that the CMS in Kilimanjaro began at first to missionise zealously in response to what the CMS portrayed as “Papal Aggression” and then pushed forward using more pacifist imagery, portraying mission work as unshackling the enslaved and creating a place of peace for children who might otherwise be captured and traded. Yet there was a third manner in which the missionaries worked in Mandara’s area: through the diplomacy of high ranking missionaries with governments. Review of Rev. Steggall’s work and letters next will demonstrate the deftness if limits of this diplomacy. 4

Yielding for Peace

By the middle of 1892, relations were tense. Missionaries’ place in the scene was precarious. As Rev. Steggall’s letters indicate, a skirmish erupted between German personnel and some of Meli’s neighbour’s men. German sources maintained that the CMS missionaries had supplied ammunition to “the Natives” and were, in effect, promoting an ideology of English nationalism, always exposing Meli, Mandara’s son, “to English, and nearly never to German influence.”55 Rev. A. R. Steggall operated as an intermediary. He sent messages to the German Army and forwarded Germans’ letters to the British. When Steggall found Meli preparing for an all-out attack on the Germans, Steggall advised Meli of three options: One, “send all the weapons of the country ... to the German fort” and surrender. Meli did not wish to do this. Two, “go himself, unarmed, and deliver himself up,” though Steggall also conveyed that if Meli did this he would likely be “hanged at once.” Three, “clear out of the 51 52 53 54 55

G. F. S., “The Closing of the Chagga Mission,” 248. G. F. S., “The Closing of the Chagga Mission,” 248. G. F. S., “The Closing of the Chagga Mission,” 248. G. F. S., “The Closing of the Chagga Mission,” 248. Herr Bernhard von Bülow, “Extracts from His Letters on the Closing of the Chagga ­Mission,” Church Missionary Intelligencer, vol. 18, new series (London: Church Missionary House, 1893), 248.

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country with his people,” but Meli refused, saying to do so would be to die on the plains of exposure. “So there will be fighting,” Steggall reasoned.56 Again, the missionaries prepared to open their station to women and ­children fleeing battle. “The schoolroom will be at their disposal,” Steggall wrote, “and, of course, non-combatants will be safe on our premises.”57 But beyond this, Steggall indicated that some of the local men whom missionaries harboured might be in danger. German officers already had hung Moshi men whom they thought were conspirators working with the English. Steggall described one “Moshi man” whom the Germans had executed as “absolutely innocent.” To protect human life, Steggall decided to send “all or most of my boys to Taveta for safety,”58 surely referring in a patronising and racialising tenor of the day to male converts. All-out attack occurred on June 10th. Steggall blamed the Germans for bringing a “ridiculously” small force to Meli’s. “I would have preferred to see the Germans successful [for] now I suppose it is politically necessary that a further appeal to arms should be made.” Steggall weighed again the wisdom of full retreat but reasoned, again, that missionaries’ presence “will be some protection to the people in a future attack” and that “some of the fatherless and homeless ones to whom we might be of service” might find asylum at the school. He added that to “withdraw just now” would “be cowardly.”59 A few days later, when Meli accused French Catholic missionaries of aiding the German Army, Steggall again warned Captain Yohannes, this time of “the danger the French mission was in.” A party of Meli’s army followed Steggall to the German station, planning, Steggall thought, to kill Captain Yohannes.60 Writing six days later, Steggall then mediated between one of Meli’s m ­ essengers and Captain Yohannes. They wrote a “treaty,” Yohannes signed it, and sent it back to Meli for his inscription. But again Meli refused, this time demanding the Germans send him his enemy, the chief of Marangu, in whose areas the German Army was now stationed. This the Germans refused and here again Steggall predicted fighting, “but in this case the German officers will not to be blamed, as they have been most patient and painstaking.”61

56 57 58 59 60 61

Rev. A. R. Steggall, “Extracts from His Letters on the Closing of the Chagga Mission,” Church Missionary Intelligencer, vol. 18, new series (London: Church Missionary House, 1893), 249–50. Steggall, “Extracts from His Letters on the Closing of the Chagga Mission,” 250. Steggall, “Extracts from His Letters on the Closing of the Chagga Mission,” 250. Steggall, “Extracts from His Letters on the Closing of the Chagga Mission,” 250–51. Steggall, “Extracts from His Letters on the Closing of the Chagga Mission,” 252. Steggall, “Extracts from His Letters on the Closing of the Chagga Mission,” 253.

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A month later, in early September, the “German government announced that they have decided for the sake of their prestige that the English Mission cannot be permitted to remain at Moshi.”62 A courtesy invitation was given to the CMS to move their church to “any other part of the German sphere and even to Marangu” but if the English missionaries did not leave Moshi immediately, they “will bring trouble and war on all that district.”63 Bishop Tucker requested that first the German Government needed to withdraw publicly its accusations that the missionaries had armed Meli’s army. Without this apology, Bishop Tucker was concerned, the missions’ “withdrawal from Moshi would be regarded as a confession of guilt.”64 The German Governor Gerald Portal replied that he had “never made any accusations and therefore cannot retract any.” Portal added: “A peaceful settlement is also desired by Her ­Majesty’s Government.”65 Tucker then agreed to abide by what both Her Majesty and the German Government wished, but not until next receiving “compensation for the value of our Mission buildings, which are nearly new, and also the cost of removal, and any loss that may be incurred in the operation.”66 Portal told Tucker to ask the English not Germans for this protection, and Tucker agreed, but not without re-asserting “there is danger to life, liberty, and property in attempting withdrawal,” alluding to his concern that Meli would see the English as moving over to the Germans’ side and thus try to ambush “private loads and the mission property.”67 Withdrawal occurred but accusations continued. Despite the agreement, the German Governor reported to Her Majesty’s Consul-General “that Mr. Steggall has continued to maintain relations with Meli, and the Baron von Soden makes the charge that the chief has received supplies of lead and caps from the English Mission.”68 Thus, even after the CMS’s departure, the German Governor continued to frame potential conflict in terms of others’ actions in obstructing peace, underscoring a difference: The German Governor used peace to imply CMS responsibility for violence, perhaps deflecting responsibility from the

62 63 64 65 66 67 68

Gerald Portal, “Extracts from His Letters on the Closing of the Chagga Mission,” Church Missionary Intelligencer, vol. 18, new series (London: Church Missionary House, 1893), 253. Portal, “Extracts from His Letters on the Closing of the Chagga Mission,” 253. Michael G. Tucker, “Extracts from His Letters on the Closing of the Chagga Mission,” Church Missionary Intelligencer, vol. 18, new series (London: Church Missionary House, 1893), 253. Portal, “Extracts from His Letters on the Closing of the Chagga Mission,” 253. Tucker, “Extracts from His Letters on the Closing of the Chagga Mission,” 253. Tucker, “Extracts from His Letters on the Closing of the Chagga Mission,” 253. G. F. S., “The Closing of the Chagga Mission,” 255.

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German Government; and the CMS used peace as a standard of justice that, in their terms, validated both their entry and withdrawal. 5 Conclusions In the span of five years, missionaries went from seeking to spread peace through preaching to becoming entangled with violence. By leaving, they opened the field for Meli’s local enemies to attack his lands and take his cattle, women, and stores of ivory. Missionaries’ retreat enabled the German Regiment to capture Meli and hang him publicly, something Rev. Steggall predicted would be done. Subsequently, the German government enlisted indigenous communities into the Schutztruppe, the German colonial army; and the British government enlisted indigenous men into the Kings African Rifles. Such rearmament and militarisation underscores that the CMS’s yielding for peace— not unlike its missionising for peace—was highly situational. Understanding the specific terms of the CMS retreat indicates that retreat is not surrender. Retreat points to the fraught and fragile context in which the mission operated and to the complex and shifting power dynamics that involved a range of agents. Looked at closely, CMS records show that local groups’ aggressions had little to do with the missionaries’ yielding to German pressure. In fact, the CMS station served as a stabilising force between M ­ andara and his enemies. Where Mandara in effect “housed” the CMS missionaries, Mandara’s enemies harbored French and Italian Catholics, whom the CMS also painted as aggressors in East Africa. After all, it was “in the interest of peace” that the CMS entered into the area in the first place, hoping to counter the “Papal Aggressions” of the Catholic Church and to put a stop to the “Mohammedan trade” in slaves. Ironically, however, in working with manumitted persons and providing them protection against slave traders, missionaries were themselves accused of doing what they sought to stop. When the British government reimbursed Swahili coastal traders for slaves that had been captured from up-country, and when those freed persons came to live and work at a CMS station, accusations that missionaries were indirectly buying slaves rose clearly to the surface. ­Official CMS publications acknowledged this but then explained that it was not the entity of the Anglican Church but one of its individual members who compensated or paid slave traders. Nonetheless, CMS activities complicated conflict. Charles New took out his guns, “missionary though I was,” and attacked raiding Chagga invaders. Rev. Steggall twice endorsed the use of violence to underwrite European control

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of Meli: once when the German Regiment failed to bring enough soldiers to defeat Meli, and again when Meli refused to surrender to the Germans and Steggall reasoned the next route must be war. Although many scholars have evaluated the conflicting conditions under which missionaries’ peaceful efforts spread, this chapter has examined how peace informed decisions to change course and pull away. In the end, there was no perfect peace in the decision to withdraw. Nor was there any one kind of peace for all the parties, neither for Mandara nor for Europeans. In fact, what stands out as perhaps the greatest final factor informing the CMS’s decision to withdraw is the accusation of German Captain Yohannes that CMS missionaries were supplying local people with weapons and that, were the CMS not to yield, they, the missionaries, would be blamed for the Germans’ slaughter of Mandara’s people and their invasion of Mandara’s lands. In other words, whether or not the missionaries stayed, there would be bloodshed in the region. The only outcome that Steggall could control, which both Steggall and the Germans knew, was whether CMS converts and missionaries would live. ‘In the interest of peace’ thus literally meant to CMS agents, ‘for the self-protection of themselves’ rather than a comprehensive resolution that offered final concord for all. Finally, the details of this case suggest that if we are to understand missionaries’ fuller strategies regarding peace, we should look beyond official accounts, such as in the Intelligencer and The Church Missionary Gleaner, to understand how ideas of peace shift and recombine locally. Knowing the local history of raiding, and of trading and lending children as insurance against future invasions, helps to explain how missionaries’ taking of Mandara’s children helped place the CMS in Mandara’s good stead. Where the missionaries saw children and women who came to the mission as people to be won over, Mandara saw them as people who, like captives, secured ongoing relations of exchange and negotiation with the missionaries. When the CMS leaders negotiated with the Germans, the CMS effectively negotiated with Mandara’s son’s enemies. The children whom the missionaries had taken or been given as gifts were now truly persons who had been enslaved and stolen. Yet such was not the meaning of slavery among the missionaries, who saw slavery as coerced servitude and forced labour. The question of what kind of peace and for whom was a manifold dynamism, a multi-lectic, that pivoted around different groups’ interests, alliances, and moral quandaries. Missionaries betrayed Mandara’s trust by taking Mandara’s children with them. In the end, the questions of peace in whose terms, for whom, under what conditions, and shaped by what constraints are best answered by the particulars of this case: peace in terms of fewer missionary and missionaries’ converts’ lives lost; peace for European governments, Britain, and Germany, that had declared themselves authorities of these land; peace under the conditions that

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the responsibility for arming local persons could remain ambiguously attributable by the Germans to the English missionaries; and peace as a matter to be settled by those who declared the land their territory. Here, those actors were: Mandara and the Germans; the CMS was simply stationed in what Europeans had unilaterally agreed was “German East African” territory. Yet because these particulars are nested—involving European conflict, Mandara’s troubles with his enemies, the Swahili coastal slave trade, and the raid and capture of Chagga—we can see commonalities within and across these conflicts, and we can begin to generalise: Peace occurs under conditions of constraint, as if it is only visible when it is absent. Peace is partial and shifting, not final, comprehensive, or faultless; and it is an ideal, a rationalisation, a hope, as well as, sometimes, an alibi for not doing more. Peace can also be used as a threat, as when a particular party is accused of not maintaining it. CMS missionaries aspired to peace yet said they were forced to retreat to preserve it. Thus, although peace may be incomplete, and used to defend r­ ealpolitiks that are far from an agency’s overt mission, withdrawal for peace may be ­tactical, a means to a more distant goal, not an end itself. The missionaries used peace as an ideal or banner under which to open as well as to close a station. They validated as ‘good and worthy’ both church expansion and removal. Indeed, if peace is used to postpone resolution, and not just to paper over differences, retreat may lead to concord. “Peace, perfect peace” may not emerge, but yielding for peace may carry the potential to keep doors open for future conversations. Acknowledgements Research for this essay was funded by grants from the Smithsonian I­ nstitution Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology, the University of Wisconsin-­ Madison African Studies Program, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Anthropology. For their generous comments and suggestions, I am grateful to Geoff Troughton, Aikande C. Kwayu, and participants of the “Messengers of Peace” workshop, hosted at Victoria University of Wellington. I also thank the Tanzanian Commission for Science and Technology for granting me permission to conduct archival and ethnographic research in Tanzania. Bibliography Abbott, William L. Letter dated 15 April 1890. William L. Abbott Personal Papers, 7117, Box 2. Smithsonian Archives, Washington, DC, USA.

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Abbott, William L. Letter dated 31 December 1888. William L. Abbott Personal Papers, 7117, Box 2. Smithsonian Archives, Washington, DC, USA. Alpers, Edward A. Ivory and Slaves: Changing Patterns of International Trade in East Central Africa to the Later Nineteenth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975. Beck, Sanderson. East Africa, Arabs, and Europeans 1700–1856. Santa Barbara, California: World Peace Communications, 2010. Etherington, Norman, and John M. MacKenzie. “Exploration and Empire.” In The Encyclopedia of Empire, edited by John M. MacKenzie. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley, 2016. Fitch, Rev. E. A. “The First Year of the Chagga Mission.” The Church Missionary Intelligencer and Record, vol. 11, new series, 555–62. London: Church Mission Society, 1886. G. F. S. “The Closing of the Chagga Mission.” The Church Missionary Intelligencer, vol. 18, new series, 246–55. London: The Church Mission Society, 1893. Hannington, Bishop “Visit to Chagga: The Bishop’s Journal.” Church Missionary Intelligencer, vol. 10, new series, 606–613. London: Church Missionary House, 1885. Hastings, Adrian. Church and Mission in Modern Africa. London: Burns and Oates, 1967. “Invitation from the King of Chagga.” The Month, 448–49. London: Church Mission Society, 1878. Krapf, Rev. Dr. J. Lewis. Travels, Researches and Missionary Labours During an 18 Years’ Residence in Eastern Africa. London: Trubner & Co., 1860 Mastnak, Tomaz. Crusading Peace: Christendom, The Muslim World, and Western P­ olitical Order. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. McAlister, Melani. The Kingdom of God Has No Borders: A Global History of American Evangelicals. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Meyer, Hans. Across East African Glaciers: An Account of the First Ascent of Kilimanjaro. London: George Philip & Son, 1981. Moore, Sally Falk. “The Chagga of Kilimanjaro.” In The Chagga and Meru of Tanzania, edited by Sally Falk Moore and Paul Puritt, 1–85. London: International African Institute, 1977. “Mr. Hooper’s Party: Another Grave at Mamboia.” The Church Missionary Gleaner 12, no. 144 (1885): 133–34. New, Charles. Life, Wanderings, and Labours in Eastern Africa. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1874. Oliver, Roland. The Missionary Factor in East Africa. London: Longmans, 1965. Portal, Gerald. “Extracts from His Letters on the Closing of the Chagga Mission.” Church Missionary Intelligencer vol. 18, new series, 246–55. London: Church Missionary House, 1893. Rebmann, Johannes. “Narrative of a Journey to Jagga, the Snow Country of Eastern Africa.” Church Missionary Intelligencer, vol. 1, 12–23. London: Church Missionary House, 1850.

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Stahl, Kathleen M. The History of the Chagga People of Kilimanjaro. London: Mouton & Company, 1964. Stambach, Amy, and Aikande C. Kwayu. “‘Take the Gift of My Child and Return Something to Me’: On Children, Chagga Trust, and an American Evangelical Orphanage on Mount Kilimanjaro.” Journal of Religion in Africa 43, no. 4 (2013): 296–425. Steggall, Rev. A. R. “Extracts from His Letters on the Closing of the Chagga Mission.” Church Missionary Intelligencer, vol. 18, new series, 248–53. London: Church ­Missionary House, 1893. Stock, S. G. “A Chain Across Africa.” The Church Mission Society: Awake, no. 23, 126–29. London: Church Missionary House, 1892. Stock, Eugene. The History of the Church Missionary Society: Its Environment, Its Men, and Its Work. 3 vols. London: The Society, 1899. Thompson, Michael G. For God and Globe: Christian Internationalism in the United States Between the Great War and the Cold War. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2015. Tucker, Bishop. “Extracts from His Letters on the Closing of the Chagga Mission.” Church Missionary Intelligencer, vol. 18, new series, 254. London: Church Missionary House, 1893. von Bülow, Bernhard. “Extracts from His Letters on the Closing of the Chagga ­Mission.” Church Missionary Intelligencer, vol. 18, new series, 248–49. London: Church ­Missionary House, 1893. Wray, J. A. “The First Year of the Chagga Mission.” Church Missionary Intelligencer and Record, vol. 11, new series, 555–62. London: Church Mission Society, 1886.

Chapter 8

Missionaries, Peacemaking, and the “Meeting of Laws” in Australia Joanna Cruickshank and Bronwyn Shepherd This chapter considers missionary approaches to conflict and ­peacemaking in the Australian context, during the late nineteenth and early ­twentieth centuries. We compare the changing perspectives and practices of two ­ ­missionaries: John Bulmer, who worked at Lake Tyers Mission on Gunaikurnai country in the colony of Victoria from 1859 to 1907, and Theodor (T. T.) Webb, who managed the Milingimbi Mission on Yolŋu country in the Northern Territory from 1926 to 1939. The experiences of these two men, working in different geographical locations and centuries, provide evidence of common structural causes of conflict on Aboriginal missions as well as different ways in which missionaries understood and undertook the task of peacemaking. Both John Bulmer and T. T. Webb brought with them a commitment to ­promoting peace on missions as well as preconceptions about how this might be achieved. On the ground, however, they encountered a world that was very unfamiliar to them. The factors shaping this world included both the long history of Indigenous sovereignty and law-holding and the immediate impacts of colonial invasion and dispossession. As these two missionaries became more aware of the factors at work in the mission context, so aspects of their approach to peacemaking changed. In the first section of this chapter, we set out the broader context in which Australian missions operated, by describing the “contest of laws” which informed how violence and peacemaking were understood by missionaries, other settlers, and Indigenous people. We then examine the experiences of Bulmer and Webb, identifying similarities in their approaches to peacemaking, but also seeking to explain differences that emerge from their accounts. Our analysis relies primarily on sources produced by Bulmer and Webb themselves, as well as anthropologists and government agents. We do not ­suggest that these sources adequately represent the experience of Gunaikurnai or Yolŋu people in relation to settler invasion or their interactions with ­missionaries. Our concern is to analyse the changing perspective of ­missionaries as they and other settler agents represented it. We do draw on contemporary Indigenous accounts of law and history, however, as well as © Joanna Cruickshank and Bronwyn Shepherd, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004536791_009

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missionary accounts of Aboriginal people’s words and actions, in order to inform our analysis of missionary activity. 1

Colonising, the “Contest of Laws”, and Conflict

In contrast to many other contexts in the Pacific, Christian missions to ­Indigenous people in the lands now called Australia were established well after British colonial invasion. The occupation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lands, which began with the arrival of convicts and their guards on the eastern coast in 1788, involved a series of aggressive incursions that included the violent expansion of white occupation into the northwest of the continent in the 1930s. Prior to these invasions, at least 250 Indigenous language groups lived across the continent, organised in family-based clans that were linked by language and kinship into larger nations. Clans and nations belong to distinct ‘Country’ (including water) and this Country is the source of Indigenous law.1 The expansion of European settlement without agreement was unlawful according to Indigenous law and was strongly resisted by Aboriginal nations. The taking of Indigenous land often involved physical violence, including official “punitive expeditions” undertaken by military or police, clashes between settlers and Aboriginal people on whose country they were encroaching, and widespread massacres of families and entire clans.2 In response, Aboriginal people defended their lands, often successfully mounting effective resistance for extended periods. Less obvious to European eyes was the impact of what Ford and Roberts call the “quiet encroachment of legal institutions and legal ideologies that gave the imprimatur of law” to this dispossession.3 Colonial courts were initially unclear about the legal status of Aboriginal people, but during the first half of the nineteenth century, Aboriginal people were increasingly understood

1 C. F. Black, The Land is the Source of the Law: A Dialogic Encounter with Indigenous J­ urisprudence (London: Routledge, 2011). 2 The extent and scale of settler massacres of Aboriginal people is indicated by the m ­ assacres recorded via the massacre mapping project at Colonial Frontier Massacres in Central and Eastern Australia 1788–1930, led by Lyndall Ryan: https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/ (accessed 24 February 2020). 3 Lisa Ford and David Andrew Roberts, “Expansion, 1820–50,” in The Cambridge History of ­Australia, Volume 1: Indigenous and Colonial Australia, eds. Alison Bashford and Stuart ­Macintyre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 143.

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by colonial jurists to be subject to British law.4 Indigenous peoples’ rights and responsibilities under their own law went largely unrecognised in colonial courts, or were criminalised. They were prosecuted for trespass when they travelled on their own lands, for poaching when they hunted, and for assault or murder when they enacted traditional punishments.5 Aboriginal people and some humanitarians pointed out the injustice inherent in these prosecutions, but this was rarely reflected in the decisions of courts.6 Colonisation thus produced what Black, McVeigh, and Johnstone call a “contest of laws”, with the colonising authorities seeking to assert their laws and Aboriginal nations and individuals seeking to continue to conduct themselves according to Indigenous law.7 As Indigenous scholars such as Christine Black, Aileen Moreton-Robinson, and Irene Watson have shown, these systems of law were profoundly different in many ways.8 Speaking broadly, Black contrasts Australian Common Law—which, she argues, derives from a monotheist belief system and has as its guiding principle the protection of the individual and their goods—with Indigenous Law, which derives from the land. Indigenous Law, she states, “stems from a belief that humans must reciprocate with every aspect of life on earth and the spiritual realm. The penalty for a breach of

4 Significant scholarship on this topic includes: Mark Finnane, “The Limits of Jurisdiction: Law, Governance and Indigenous Peoples in Colonized Australia,” in Law and Politics in ­British Colonial Thought: Transpositions of Empire, eds. Shaunnagh Dorsett and Ian Hunter (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 149–68; Bruce Kercher, “Recognition of Indigenous Legal Autonomy in Nineteenth Century New South Wales,” Indigenous Law Bulletin 4, no. 13 (1998): 7–9; Frances Thiele, “Superintendent La Trobe and the Amenability of Aboriginal People to British Law 1839–1846,” Provenance: The Journal of Public Record Office Victoria 8 (2009): https:// prov.vic.gov.au/explore-collection/provenance-journal/provenance-2009/superintendent -la-trobe-and-amenability; Susanne Davies, “Aborigines, Murder and the Criminal Law in Early Port Phillip, 1841–1851,” Australian Historical Studies 22, no. 88 (1987): 313–35. 5 For the criminalisation of Aboriginal lawful conduct see Lisa Ford, Settler Sovereignty: ­Jurisdiction and Indigenous People in America and Australia, 1788–1836 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010). 6 See Julie Evans, Patricia Grimshaw, David Philips, and Shurlee Swain, Equal Subjects, Unequal Rights: Indigenous Peoples in British Settler Colonies (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003). 7 The concept of “meeting of laws” and the contests that may result are developed in Christine Black, Shaun McVeigh, and Richard Johnstone, “Of the South,” Griffith Law Review 16, no. 2 (2007): 305. 8 Black, The Land is the Source of the Law; Christine Morris (Black), “A Full Law,” Griffith Law Review 9, no. 2 (2000): 209–11; Irene Watson, Aboriginal Peoples, Colonialism and International Law: Raw Law (London: Routledge, 2014); Aileen Moreton-Robinson, ed., Sovereign Subjects Indigenous Sovereignty Matters (Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2007).

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this law is called ‘payback’. The colloquial term goes to the heart of the guiding principle of reciprocity, which in turn shapes the custodial ethic.”9 This contest of laws—and the implications that it had for how conflict was produced, interpreted, and resolved in the colonies—can be demonstrated in two early encounters between colonisers and Indigenous people. In 1790, two years after the arrival of the First Fleet in the lands now known as S­ ydney, an Eora man speared Governor Arthur Philip. At the time, this event was largely unintelligible to the colonists, but it followed the Governor’s kidnapping of Bennelong, an Eora man, and Bennelong’s subsequent escape.10 The spearing of Philip was conducted in the presence of Bennelong, by an Eora lawman. ­Dharug historian Richard Green notes that the method of spearing shows clearly that it was intended as payback, a way of re-establishing relations with a person such as Philip who had behaved unlawfully.11 Though the British did not understand what had occurred, Philip urged that no retaliation be taken. Inga Clendinnen suggests that by refusing to retaliate, Philip unknowingly behaved appropriately according to Eora law and thus allowed for a brief improvement in the relations between the colonists and the Eora.12 The following year, a naval officer named Watkin Tench recorded another incident that occurred in the new settlement. In May 1791, a convict had stolen fishing tackle from a local Aboriginal woman named Dar-in-ga. Governor Arthur Phillip, concerned to maintain relations with the Eora, ordered that the convict “be severely flogged, in the presence of as many natives as could be assembled, to whom the cause of punishment should be explained.” Many Aboriginal people attended, but when the flogging began, Tench recorded that they were horrified. “There was not one of them,” he wrote, “that did not testify strong abhorrence of the punishment, and equal sympathy with the sufferer”. Barangaroo, an Eora woman, tried to physically intervene, picking up a stick and threatening the man doing the flogging in an attempt to stop him.13 As Lisa Ford has commented, in this instance, Governor Philip “­misunderstood the character and the bounds of Indigenous retaliatory violence.”14 The ­flogging—intended 9 10

Morris, “A Full Law,” 209. This incident and its meanings are discussed in detail in Inga Clendinnen, “Spearing the Governor,” Australian Historical Studies 33, no. 118 (2002): 157–74. 11 See interview with Richard Green in The First Australians, Episode 1, “They Have Come to Stay,” directed by Rachel Perkins (Sydney: Blackfella Films, 2008). 12 Clendinnen, “Spearing the Governor.” 13 Entry for May 1791; Watkin Tench, A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson in New South Wales Including an Accurate Description of the Situation of the Colony; of the Natives; and of its Natural Productions (London: G. Nicol and J. Sewell, 1793). 14 Ford, Settler Sovereignty, 80.

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as an evidence of the exercise of lawful authority—appeared to the Indigenous viewers as excessive and therefore illegitimate violence. In both these examples from the earliest period of colonial invasion, one group sought to fulfil their lawful obligations through a public, ritual act of violence—in the first case, spearing, and in the second case, flogging. In both instances, it seems that the intention was to bring about or maintain peaceful relations. In both instances, however, the lawfulness of the act was not visible to the group observing and appeared as evidence of the absence of law: of irrationality, cruelty, or excess. In such cases, where the meaning and purpose of violence is misunderstood or contested, the potential for conflict is obviously high.15 These early events reflect the complex relationship between law and ­violence. Christoph Menke writes: Every attempt at defining the relationship between law and violence must start with two tensely related, if not blatantly contradictory ­premises. The first states: Law is the opposite of violence; legal forms of decision-making are introduced to interrupt the endless sequence of violence and counterviolence…. The second premise states: Law is itself a kind of violence.16 This summary, which represents the perspective of Western jurisprudence, identifies law as a way of ending a cycle of violence, while recognising that the same law authorises the use of force or violence to achieve this end. Many British observers, including many missionaries, interpreted Indigenous ­practices of “payback” as a lawless cycle of violence. Yet both British and Indigenous people had ancient codes of law that included the use of violence as a means of resolving conflict and maintaining right order. Tench’s record of Eora responses to a public flogging show that the extremity of violence authorised under British (naval) codes was horrifying to the Eora and no doubt to other Aboriginal people. This broad context, we argue, provides two insights that are particularly important for interpreting missionary attempts at peacemaking in A ­ ustralia. First, all Aboriginal missions were established in contexts where colonisation produced or exacerbated multiple forms of conflict. Whether or not missionaries understood this broader history of conflict and however they engaged 15 16

In the case of the flogging, Barangaroo’s intervention can certainly be seen as an assertion of sovereignty, in a situation where unlawful violence was occurring on her country. Christoph Menke, “Law and Violence,” Law and Literature 22, no. 1 (2010): 1.

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with it, the establishment of a mission created a significant new element in any given context of conflict. Second, while Aboriginal people were quickly forced to become familiar with colonial law, even as they might resist it, many missionaries were either ignorant of, or opposed to, the continuation of Indigenous lawful conduct. Missionary understandings of and attitudes towards Indigenous Law profoundly influenced both their responses to conflict on missions and their vision of what peace entailed. 2 Missionary “Peacemaking” on a Colonial Mission: The Case of John Bulmer As noted, missionary work among Aboriginal people was slow to develop and very few missions were established in the first half of the nineteenth century. Sporadic efforts to evangelise Aboriginal people during this time, some ­supported by British missionary organisations and others supported by ­colonial regimes, were generally perceived by white Christians to have failed completely.17 Missionary efforts were undermined by settler hostility or a­ pathy, the highly destructive and traumatic impact of colonial invasion, and missionaries’ own lack of engagement with Aboriginal language and culture. In the second half of the century, however, as the colonies began to be granted self-government, some settler churches in the southeast and the west supported more permanent missions among those Aboriginal people who had survived the initial onslaught of colonial settlement. In the colony of Victoria, a Select Committee of the Legislative Council was charged in 1858 with inquiring into “the best means of protection and assistance to be given to the Aborigines of Victoria”.18 The Committee recommended that land be set aside for reserves where Aboriginal people could be Christianised and civilised, ideally under the management of missionaries. The Anglican and Presbyterian Churches, both of which had supported earlier small-scale missionary ventures among Aboriginal people in the colony, took this opportunity to establish new and more financially sustainable missions 17

18

For overviews of early missionary efforts, see Jean Woolmington, “Writing on the Sand: The First Missions to Aborigines in Eastern Australia,” in Aboriginal Australians and ­Christian Missions: Ethnographic and Historical Studies, eds. Tony Swain and Deborah Bird Rose (Bedford Park: Australian Association for the Study of Religions, 1988), 77–92; John Harris, One Blood: 200 Years of Aboriginal Encounter with Christianity (Sutherland: ­Albatross Books, 1990), 23–131. “Report from the Select Committee upon Protection to the Aborigines (1858–59)” (­Melbourne: John Ferres, 1860), front matter (n.p.).

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in the Gippsland District in the east of the colony. This was the country of the Gunaikurnai nation, whose people had been subject to severe violence from colonists. Up to 90% of the Gunaikurnai population may have died from s­ ettler violence in the initial stage of invasion during the 1840s and 50s.19 Gunaikurnai historians tell of the widespread massacres, rape, and land theft that occurred during this period.20 It was in this context that, in 1861, a young missionary assistant named John Bulmer was sent to establish a new mission in the Gippsland District. Bulmer was a cabinetmaker with a Methodist background, but had worked for five years at a previous Church of England missionary venture called Yelta. ­Bulmer had no theological training, but unlike many of his fellow missionaries during this period, he was a keen linguist with an interest in Aboriginal language and customs. He quickly began learning the language of the Kroatungolung clan, whose country had been selected as the general region for the new mission. Bulmer’s experience at Yelta led him to take great care in selecting the site for the new mission, as he had learned that different sites held very different meanings and associations for Aboriginal people. The Kroatungolung people to whom he spoke advised against the site that the Church of England mission board had recommended. Instead they directed him to a site that the colonisers had named Lake Tyers. For the Gunaikurnai, this place is Bung Yarnda, or “camping waters”, a traditional meeting place and site of spiritual significance, where the freshwater of the lake meets the saltwater of the sea.21 Bulmer accepted that the site was ideal, writing that it was “adapted for our purpose with regard to the aboriginal supplies of food” and was also isolated from the gold diggings and thus “out of the way of temptation for the blacks.”22 In accepting the Gunaikurnai recommendation—and perhaps invitation— to establish the mission at a traditional meeting place, Bulmer avoided one potential source of significant conflict. Other early missions had become unsustainable because they required clans to settle on country to which they

19

Peter Dean Gardner, Gippsland Massacres: The Destruction of the Kurnai Tribe 1800–1860 (Ensay: Peter Dean Gardner, 1983), 23. 20 Phillip Pepper with Tess de Araugo, You Are What You Make Yourself to Be: The Story of a Victorian Aboriginal Family, 1842–1980 (Melbourne: Hyland House, 1989), 9–69. 21 Pepper, You Are What You Make Yourself to Be, 38. For an account Bung Yarnda by ­Gunaikurani elder Uncle Wayne Thorpe, see “Bung Yarnda: Camping Waters—This Place,” YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_HIY7Yq6Gs (accessed 24 ­February 2020). 22 Peter Carolane, “Instinct for Mission: John Bulmer, Missionary to the Aborigines of ­Victoria, 1855–1913” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Melbourne, 2009).

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did not belong, creating constant conflict between Aboriginal groups.23 This does not appear to have been the case at Lake Tyers, and people from different clan groups camped near the mission regularly or moved to live permanently at the mission.24 Nonetheless, Gunaikurnai people who came to the mission were the survivors of extreme violence and land theft, which had severely ­disrupted traditional laws. Phillip Pepper, a Gunaikurnai historian whose grandparents were children in the 1850s, has written that prior to colonisation, Gunaikurnai were “mostly peace-loving people”: They had their friendly meetings, corroborees and swapped songs and stones for axes, and sacred ceremonies they had too. These tribal businesses got messed up when the cattle and sheep took up the hunting spots and the whites killed the kangaroos to keep ‘em off the stock runs. After a while the Aborigines wasn’t wanted on the runs and that was when the tribal fights got earnest, ‘cos they had to hunt on some other tribe’s ground.’25 Pepper’s account provides context for Bulmer’s repeated complaints, in the early years of the mission, about the prevalence of “fighting” among ­Gunaikurnai people living on or visiting the mission.26 In 1866, for example, writing to the government “Central Board appointed to watch over the ­interests of the Aborigines” (later Board for the Protection of Aborigines), he complained that on multiple occasions, those living at the mission would “disperse, to assemble at some distant spot where they can have satisfaction in a general fight.” He concluded, “But for the fights, I think many of the young men would settle down and learn steadily.”27 In his reports to the Board, Bulmer provided little information about how he understood the causes or nature of this conflict. Fifty years later, however, in his written Recollections, Bulmer provided a more detailed reflection on the 23

For example, the mission at Buntingdale in Western Victoria; see Heather Le Griffon, Campfires at the Cross (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2007). 24 Bulmer noted that he was largely unsuccessful in convincing members of one clan to ­settle at the mission, because of what he interpreted as “suspicions” between the ­traditional owners of the country and this clan. 25 Pepper, You Are What You Make Yourself to Be, 37–38. 26 See reports on Lake Tyers in Fourth Report of the Board Appointed to Watch over the Interests of the Aborigines in the Colony of Victoria (Melbourne: John Ferres, Government Printer, 1864), 7; and Fifth Report of the Board Appointed to Watch over the Interests of the Aborigines in the Colony of Victoria (Melbourne: John Ferres, Government Printer, 1866), 10. 27 Bulmer, in Fifth Report of the Board, 10.

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issue of “fighting”. Bulmer described the conflicts that he witnessed, in which a man found guilty of an offence would usually be required to stand while boomerangs were thrown at him. “In these fights I had to be neutral,” he wrote, “as you could never find out who was in the wrong. So one just had to protest against their fighting, and if possible try to promote peace.” Of what, then, did the promotion of peace in this context consist? Bulmer wrote that initially he had made a practice of standing in the way of the boomerangs, as he found that the Gunaikurnai would not risk hitting him. Yet this, he determined, was only a short-term solution as “there was always an undercurrent or commotion which would break out again”. Ultimately, he concluded that “it was best to let them have it out … to get it done with and let them shake hands and make friends.”28 As this account demonstrates, Bulmer was concerned about conflict among the Gunaikurnai and believed that it was his responsibility as a missionary to “promote peace”. Yet, as his description shows, this fighting followed clear rules and was a community judgment on the wrongdoing of an individual. In the parlance of Western law, these practices of “conventionalised retaliation, socially sanctioned, publically demonstrated, with the aim of settlement (indemnity)” are both legal and judicial procedures.29 After initially attempting to intervene, Bulmer recognised that in fact his efforts were counterproductive. Realising that the violence was in fact regulated, to ensure that no one was killed, he concluded that “there was no particular harm done and if by these fights the fellows got rid of murderous feelings the fights were a blessing.”30 Bulmer was particularly challenged by the fact that women were involved in such conflict: “To me as an Englishman, it was shocking to see a man fighting with a woman”. Yet when he attempted to protect a woman who was fighting, she “would have no interference. She was, she said able to defend herself, so I had to retire a wiser man.”31 He described the role that women played in punishing a man who had been found guilty of running away with another man’s wife: “The man had to stand out by himself and the women were to pass by him armed with a yam stick, a stick about 6 feet long … as they passed the culprit, they gave him a smart blow on the head.” Though Bulmer considered that this ritual was “not a nice sight”, he conceded that “he had now got his punishment 28

John Bulmer, Recollections of Victorian Aboriginal Life, 1855–1908, compiled by Alastair Campbell, ed. Ron Vanderwal (Melbourne: Museum Victoria, 1999), 79. 29 Ronald M. Berndt and Catherine H. Berndt, The World of the First Australians (Sydney: Ure Smith Pty. Ltd., 1999), 350. 30 Bulmer, Recollections, 20. 31 Bulmer, Recollections, 79.

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and the feelings of the women had been relieved … they had done what they thought was due to the breaker of domestic felicity.”32 Here, as throughout his discussion of fighting in his Recollections, Bulmer repeatedly described violence as the result of Aboriginal people’s emotions or “feelings”. More rarely, he recognised that violence could also be a matter of law. For example, he recounted his response to the elopement of a young couple who were not permitted to marry under their clan’s marriage laws. After a few days in the bush, the couple returned to the mission and the woman sought refuge at Bulmer’s house. “As I knew the fearful punishment which awaited the couple,” Bulmer wrote, “I very foolishly did not tell the people she was returned, however in a short time the people found out that they were on the station.” The eighty Gunaikurnai people who were staying on the mission surrounded the house. Bulmer tried to convince them to “lessen the punishment, but it was no use”. Eventually, he gave the young woman up to her parents, recording that her feet were speared. Reflecting on these events some decades later, Bulmer concluded “With my present experience I should at once have given the girl up as it would have discouraged any other elopements.” In addition, he noted, “in this case the girl was related to the young man and he should have known better as he knew he was breaking the laws, which all his own friends reminded him of.”33 By 1871, Bulmer was reporting to the Board for Protection of the Aborigines (BPA) that the people on the mission were “showing greater inclination than hitherto to give up their old ways”.34 He reported that “they have now given up fighting altogether” and “have continued to live in peace”. Bulmer seems to have taken several further steps to promote this goal, including removing some of the people’s “war implements”.35 In addition, he claimed: “we have introduced the practice of meeting in the school-house when anyone offends against the laws of the tribe, and try the offender; this I find puts them all in a good humour and avoids bloodshed”.36 In subsequent reports, he did not ­mention any further instances of fighting at the mission. In his Recollections, however, he complained about the enduring “trait in their [Aboriginal]

32 Bulmer, Recollections, 18. 33 Bulmer, Recollections, 19. 34 Seventh Report of the Board for the Protection of the Aborigines in the Colony of Victoria (John Ferres, Government Printer, Melbourne, 1871), 17. 35 In this same report, Bulmer mentions sending some “war implements” to the Secretary of the BPA; it is not clear if this was done for ethnographic interest, or in order to prevent fighting. 36 Seventh Report, 17.

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character” that continued to make them prone to anger and to resulting violence.37 “One good followed the preaching of the Gospel,” he concluded, “the fights became less common.”38 Nonetheless, he claimed, after three generations Aboriginal people would still attack one another for “some trivial cause”. As noted at the outset, Bulmer’s descriptions of conflict and peacemaking at Lake Tyers cannot be taken as a comprehensive or reliable explanation of Gunaikurnai experience. In his reports to the BPA, Bulmer presented fighting as a problem that was resolved fairly quickly through his efforts, while his ­Recollections suggest a more complex story in which he took various approaches to resolving conflict. As a whole, his accounts repeatedly ­interpret G ­ unaikurnai “fighting” as a matter of “feelings”—the result of intense and unregulated anger that he ultimately identified in racialised terms as an element of Aboriginal character. Obscured in his analysis is any reflection on how the conditions of genocidal violence and social disruption that these mission residents had endured, the restrictions of mission life, and the increasing encroachments and humiliations of Protection policies might create or ­exacerbate conflict. Similarly, in focusing on his own efforts to avoid bloodshed by creating contexts for talking through disputes, Bulmer gave little attention to Gunaikurnai agency in resolving conflict. As his own descriptions of Gunaikurnai culture made clear, however, both the lawful conduct of “payback” and community discussion were central elements of the traditional processes of dispute resolution.39 Nonetheless, Bulmer has been remembered in positive terms by some descendants of those who lived at Lake Tyers, in part because of his commitment to resolving conflict. Philip Pepper, a Gunaikurnai historian descended from several families who lived at the mission, said that Bulmer “understood the people and their tribal ways and, as the different tribes came together, there wasn’t many of ‘em left and if they had an argument to fight over he’d just say to them, ‘Let’s talk it over’, and they all sat down and talked.”40 In Pepper’s account, Bulmer appears as one figure in the broader account of how Gunaikurnai people found ways to live lawfully together in a context of cultural and social devastation. Pepper’s description of Bulmer as one who “understood … tribal ways” points to another element that emerges in Bulmer’s accounts: a growing willingness to recognise Gunaikurnai law as a source of social order. Even though Bulmer did not express any understanding of how the conflict he described 37 Bulmer, Recollections, 23. 38 Bulmer, Recollections, 23. 39 Bulmer, Recollections, 3–21. 40 Pepper, You Are What You Make Yourself to Be, 41.

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might be a matter of law, he nevertheless concluded that by settling disputes “the fights were a blessing”. Similarly, he changed his view that punishments for breaking the marriage laws should be resisted, even though in his account they involved violence of which he disapproved. Bulmer’s description of the use of the schoolhouse as a space in which matters of Gunaikurnai law could be addressed provides further evidence of Pepper’s statement that Bulmer became closely involved in conflict resolution among Aboriginal people ­living at Lake Tyers, in ways that engaged with rather than resisted ­Gunaikurnai law. 3 Peacemaking on a Twentieth-Century Mission: T. T. Webb at Milingimbi We see similar complexities relating to missionary involvement in peacemaking on the Methodist missions established in the early twentieth century on Yolŋu country along the far northeastern coast of Australia. Europeans named this region Arnhem Land. Following the Federation of the colonies into the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901, the new Federal Government had assumed responsibility for Arnhem Land as part of the broader “­Northern Territory”. The Federal Government, which was seeking to promote white ­settlement and “development” in the Territory, was generally supportive of Christian ­missions as a means of “managing” Aboriginal people. As a result, during the first half of the twentieth century, a significant number of Catholic, Anglican, and ­Methodist missions were established across the north of Australia with (­limited) financial support from the Government. As in the case of Victoria, these missions operated under Government oversight and became key elements of Government policy towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.41 Also as in the case of earlier Victorian missions, these northern missions were established in the wake of extreme violence towards the Aboriginal people of the region by pastoralists and other white invaders. Richard Broome has argued convincingly that settler violence against Aboriginal people during this period was even more widespread and unrestrained than in the early colonial period. The northern regions were remote from any oversight by southern officials (who, in any case, often turned a blind eye to massacres of Aboriginal people). In addition, by the end of the nineteenth century, settlers had access 41

Tim Rowse, White Flour, White Power: From Rations to Citizenship in Central Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

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to new guns, capable of even more terrible destruction than the weapons available earlier in the century.42 Both archival records and oral histories show that massacres, enslavement of Aboriginal people for labour, and sexual assault of Aboriginal women by white invaders were widespread in the Northern Territory from the 1880s onwards.43 In this section, we consider the experience of Rev. Theodore (T. T.) Webb, the Superintendent of Milingimbi Mission, the second of five Methodist missions established in Arnhem Land during this period. Webb was Superintendent at Milingimbi from 1926 to 1939 and the extensive archival records relating to his experience provide evidence of his changing understanding of how conflict on the mission should be resolved. Webb arrived at the mission with well-defined expectations of how the mission would establish itself amongst the people and the place. Webb had first worked as a blacksmith and then trained as a Methodist clergyman at the University of Melbourne’s Queen’s College. He worked as a Methodist minister for fifteen years and also served the Australian war effort in France. He was married with two children when he began his work on the Methodist mission at Milingimbi.44 In the thirteen years that he spent at Milingimbi, Webb underwent significant changes in his understanding of Aboriginal people and the appropriate way to undertake a mission amongst them. Like Bulmer, some of these changes related to questions of conflict, ­violence, and law. James Gaykamangu, who lived at Milingimbi as a boy, has written about the establishment of the missions in terms that emphasise the agency of Yolŋu people in engaging with the missionaries. Gaykamangu reported that his grandfather George foresaw the enormous changes that would be introduced by the B ­ alanda (white people) and sought to protect his people. When the missionaries arrived at Milingimbi, George sent his son, Djawa, to investigate their message and intent. Gaykamangu recorded:

42 43 44

Richard Broome, Aboriginal Australians: A History Since 1788 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2002), 137. For a discussion of settler violence in the region, see Mickey Dewar, The Black War in ­Arnhem Land: Missionaries and the Yolngu 1908–1940 (Brinkin, NT: The Australian National University, North Australia Research Unit, 1995), 8. In 1923, Webb married Eva Mary Rawson. They had two children. See Wendy ­Beresford-Manning, “Theodore Webb: Missionary, Advocate, Linguist,” in Out of the Ordinary: Twelve Australian Methodist Biographies, eds. Patricia Curthoys and William Emilsen (South Australia: MediaCom, 2015), 151.

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When George saw that the missionaries were bringing good things, he decided it would be good to sit side by side. Both sides were to learn and respect each others’ law and culture. The aim was to put the two laws together. George was a lawyer and a peacemaker.45 From Webb’s perspective, the role of the mission was to provide a sanctuary away from the violence and vices of other white settlers. He was also committed to the idea of a largely self-sufficient “industrial” mission, which would enable the people of Arnhem Land to develop the principles of industry and settled life.46 Webb’s agenda for the mission was, however, continually challenged, in part because of the presence of conflict at the mission in the early years. Milingimbi Mission had been established on an island belonging to Yannhaŋu speaking groups. However, with the arrival of the mission, other clan groups began to settle in the area. 47 As people from different clans were drawn into close proximity, on country that was not their own, new tensions developed. In some cases, there were long-standing disputes between clans that this proximity exacerbated, particularly during seasons of ceremonies when large populations would gather in the area.48 In his reports to the Methodist missionary board, Webb wrote in detail about his attempts to address the problem of conflict between people at the mission, including his negotiations with clan leaders. On occasions, he was invited by the various leaders to attend the mediation processes, where he became aware of the importance of an existing lawful practice, observed across the clans, which provided a mechanism for ensuring relatively peaceful co-existence between people. This practice was called a Makarrata and Webb described it as “a means for making peace between two tribes or

45 46 47

48

James Gurrwanngu Gaykamangu, “Ngarra Law: Aboriginal Customary Law from Arnhem Land,” Northern Territory Law Journal 2, no. 4 (2012): 238. T. T. Webb, “Suggested Policy for Aboriginal Missions” (1936), Methodist Church of ­Australasia, Department of Overseas Mission Records, (henceforth MOM) 232, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney. Including the Djambarrbuyngu, Wanguru, Djinga, Marlarra, Ganalbingu, Bururra, and Gupapuyngu speaking groups. See James Gaykamangu with Penelope Taylor, Striving to Bridge the Chasm: My Cultural Learning (Darwin: Larrakia Nation Aboriginal Corporation, 2013), 47–48. Ian Macintosh and David Burrumarra, The Whale and the Cross: Conversations with David Burrumarra (Darwin: Historical Society of the Northern Territory, 1994), 67.

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sections of tribes between whom a state of war exists”.49 As will be outlined below, in this period ­Makarrata ceremonies usually involved staged combat or ­spear-­throwing, as a form of payback to bring about the restoration of relationship. Gaykamangu describes Makarrata as “a type of settled agreement, similar to a treaty, [which] typically involves compensation and undertakings to do or not do certain things.”50 As such it is an intrinsic part of the Yolŋu law system, which more broadly involves tracing the root of the problem by listening to and taking into account the various sides of the conflict. The solution to conflict is not just about punishing the perpetrators but bringing about a solution where mutual respect can be restored. In 1928, Webb estimated there were at least ten to twelve Makarrata ceremonies held at the mission station.51 In Webb’s understanding, the Makarrata was not necessarily a means of fully resolving a conflict between two warring parties, but he described it as restoring “the restricted sphere of personal blood relationship”. Without the Makarrata, he argued, “unrestricted killing would be constantly taking place, the people could practically never come together for big intertribal ceremonies, such as they delight in nor could they happily roam over large tracts of country.”52 Webb concluded, therefore, that the practice of Makarrata “is productive of much good and under certain conditions is greatly desired. It is essentially a peace-making ceremony and ‘Blessed be the Peacemakers’.”53 Webb gave an extended account, in both his mission reports and later publications, regarding the use of the Makarrata in one particular case in 1927. A man named Maiangula, who according to Webb was “the very best and most promising young fellow” on the mission, was responsible for the death of another young man.54 Maiangula had committed the killing with the aid of two others, as payback for his father’s violent death fifteen years earlier.55 Whilst the killing did not take place at Milingimbi, the people involved were 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

T. T. Webb, “Aboriginal Life: Ceremonies for Making Peace,” The Mission Review (­September 1928): 10–12. Gaykamangu, “Ngarra Law.” Webb, “Aboriginal Life,” 10. Webb, “Aboriginal Life,” 11. Webb, “Aboriginal Life,” 12. T. T. Webb to Burton, 18 July 1927, MOM 450, ML; also published in the Methodist ­periodical The Spectator under the section “North Australia” on 7 September 1927. The anthropologist Lloyd Warner was undertaking his fieldwork in the area at this time. In his book, Black Civilization, he describes this incident as one in a series of feuds and part of the “great wars” that extended over twenty years. See W. Lloyd Warner, A Black Civilization: A Study of an Australian Aboriginal Tribe (New York: Harper Books, 1958), 159–77.

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associated with the mission. Describing the arising issues to the Methodist Mission’s Board in 1927, Webb explained: Now the whole countryside is inflamed and as the three boys are back here, there is, or was a lot of talk about the Mission sheltering ‘murdering men’ as they call them; but that of course, we could not think of doing. The difficulty is to administer such punishment as will adequately meet the case, and at the same time strike a blow, if possible, at this old ­blood-feud order of things.56 In his reports to the Mission board, Webb gave a brief description of the ­process by which the clans at the mission sought to resolve this conflict. ­Discussions amongst the “old men” aimed to “determine just what was back of the killing and to attempt to find out if anyone had ‘pushed’ the younger men”.57 These discussions resulted in the conclusion that the killing was not justified, with the consensus being that the deceased man was too far removed from the real culprit Parrparr, who had killed Maiangula’s father fifteen years ago. Also, too long had since passed for it to be considered as a rightly avenging act. Webb reported that some of the old men recommended that Maiangula and his accomplices should be exiled to the mainland, but this was rejected as leaving them vulnerable to attacks from relatives of the dead man. “They finally agreed,” Webb wrote, that the men “should be sent to Darwin Gaol for a period of two years or so”. In a later account, written in 1947, Webb described a much longer and more involved process of restitution relating to this incident, claiming “there was taking sides, a marshalling of forces, with much talking and minor brawling, for such a time old grievance are brought to light and used to still further inflame warlike passions already aroused.”58 As part of this process of “­marshalling of forces”, a series of Makarratas were held to consolidate alliances between the clans involved. Webb described these as purely formal, as spearheads were removed before the ceremony. Webb wrote: “as fresh parties or individuals arrived at the station, the ceremony had to be repeated again and again in order to weld them into a state of tribal solidarity.”59

56 T. T. Webb to Burton, 18 July 1927, MOM 450 ML. 57 Warner, A Black Civilization, 185. 58 T. T. Webb, “Aboriginals and Adventure in Arnhem Land” (unpublished manuscript, 1947), 130, Series 7, Box 22/97, Elkin Archives, University of Sydney. 59 Webb, “Aboriginals and Adventure,” 97.

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In this later account, Webb also provided a more detailed description of the ways that the mission community—and he himself—became involved in these negotiations. He wrote that attempts were made to get those “most deeply aggrieved” by the killing to come and settle the matter at the mission by Makarrata, but they refused. As a result, “one of our leading mission boys volunteered to go over with a friendly neutral, to seek these people out and endeavour to make friends.” This was an unusual strategy, as the mission man was related to Maiangula and would thus be traditionally considered an enemy of those Maiangula had wronged. Nevetheless, Webb wrote: “it was considered that as a messenger of peace and as a representative of the mission he would be safe, and so they set off”.60 According to the records of the anthropologist Lloyd Warner, the two men who undertook this task were Andrew Birrindjaoi and Raiola, both men who had developed a strong connection to the mission.61 It seems that Birrindjaoi was related to Maiangula while Raiola had kin among the offended clan. Their attempt to broker peace was not well received, however, and Birrindjaoi was attacked. In response, Raiola defended him against his own kin, throwing a spear at “his own tribal brother”.62 The two men barely escaped with their lives. Subsequently, according to accounts by both Webb and Warner, a Makarrata was arranged on the mission station to resolve matters. Maiangula (­responsible for the killing of the young man) and his clan faced members from four different clans.63 This Makarrata differed from the earlier ones mentioned above, as payback was required. Webb explained: Now the culprit was hard pressed indeed; spears flashed about him appearing to miss by no more than a fraction of an inch, until by the ­fierceness of the attack, he was forced to make a run for the mangrove thicket nearby. This was repeated until the fury of the assailant was appeased and with the spear-thrust in the leg, peace was formally restored.64 60 61

62 63 64

Webb, “Aboriginals and Adventure,” 98. These are names of well-known Yolŋu men associated with the mission and they are spelled in various ways across different sources produced by anthropologists and missionaries. The contemporary spelling of these names is Andrew Birrinydjawuy and Raiwala. Joseph Neparrŋa Gumbula, Matjabala Mali’ Buku-Rruŋanmaram: Images from Miliŋinbi (Milingimbi) and Surrounds, 1926–1948 (Sydney: Darlington Press, 2011), 109; Bob J. Baker in The Spear and the Gun: Japanese Attacks on Arnhem Land: A Wartime History of Milingimbi 1942–45 (Kent Town: Avonmore Books, 2017), 31. Webb, “Aboriginals and Adventure,” 98. The four men were from the Ritarngo, Djinba, and Warumeri clans and one from ­Wangurri; Warner, A Black Civilization, 187. Webb, “Aboriginals and Adventure,” 99

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After these requirements of Yolŋu law were fulfilled, Webb also followed the recommendation of the clan leaders by sending Maiangula and his two accomplices to Darwin on the mainland, so that they could be “placed temporarily and unofficially under the charge of a police constable” who was a friend of Webb.65 When violent disruptions continued, Webb wrote that he finally persuaded Parrparr, the original offender who had killed Maiangula’s relative fifteen years earlier, to come to the mission and settle disputes. As it was Parrparr’s first time at the mission, he was met with a huge gathering of men from clans across the region.66 “Many fierce and impressive displays were given,” Webb recalled, “but nothing untoward happened.” As a result, he concluded “we reached the end of the day in quietness, with at least some additional friendliness among those widely scattered people, and with the position of the mission more surely established among them.”67 Whilst conflicts such as these continued to be part of the mission spaces, the frequency and intensity lessened as the years went on. This measure of peace, Webb wrote, he had earlier not thought possible.68 Webb’s convictions regarding the importance of the Makarrata in relation to peacemaking can be seen after he left the mission, in a letter he wrote to his successor at Milingimbi, Arthur Ellemor. Arthur’s wife Joan had written an article for the Mission Review, in which she described a Yolŋu Christian who had removed the heads from spears before a Makarrata. For the Ellemors this action was pleasing evidence of the growing influence of the Christian message of peace. Webb disagreed, arguing that the Makarrata should be preserved in its current form because “in this we have the beginnings of a sense of sacrifice for sin.” He continued: It is not at root revenge, nor is it evil but is a voluntary and sacrificial act and ‘without shedding of blood there is no remission of sin’. Until they themselves make such cultural adaptations as will provide some other adequate course it is in their interests to preserve it in its completeness. To merely prevent the wounding is I think to misinterpret the meaning and requirement of Christianity.69 65 66

67 68 69

T. T. Webb to Burton, 18 July 1927, MOM 450, ML. As well as the regular residents of the mission, Webb listed those involved in these proceedings to include ranks from: the “Burera men from behind Cape Stewart; Wulaki and Rainbarrngo from the Katji country; Kanalbingo, Djinba and Mildjingi from the Goyder River; the Ritarrngo from further inland; the Guyala from Buckingham Bay; the Kwiyamirrilil from Arnhem Bay; and the Kokaria from the Blyth River”. See Webb, “Aboriginals and Adventure,” 100. Webb, “Aboriginals and Adventure,” 100. Webb, “Aboriginals and Adventure,” 101. T. T. Webb to Ellemor, 13 November 1941, Ellemor Papers, ML. Webb was responding to an article in the Women’s Auxiliary publication for Methodist Overseas Mission written by

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Webb’s experience of dispute resolution according to Yolŋu law led him to conclude that this law offered effective processes of peacemaking that should not only be tolerated, but actively preserved unless the Yolŋu themselves decided to make changes. 4 Conclusions The experiences of these two missionaries, though 4000 kilometres and half a century apart, provide evidence of a similar trajectory. Both Bulmer and Webb founded missions in contexts and cultures that they barely understood, ­bringing with them Eurocentric understandings of what ‘peace’ might look like. Clearly, both men believed that missionaries should promote peace, not only through the preaching of the Christian gospel, but also through their i­nterventions in the Aboriginal communities with whom they lived. Over decades, in their engagement with what they initially saw as fighting by Aboriginal p ­ eople, both Bulmer and Webb underwent significant changes in thinking. These changes came about primarily as they recognised that the societies with which they were engaging had their own forms of dispute resolution. Both Bulmer and Webb came to the conclusion that conduct they originally saw as fighting was in fact a blessing because it promoted peace. Yet there were also differences between the ways that Bulmer and Webb responded to Aboriginal practices relating to peacemaking. John Bulmer interpreted the Gunaikurnai forms of peacemaking as primarily about ­ the relief of “feelings”. His acceptance of some forms of conflict between ­Gunaikurnai people appears to have been a pragmatic accommodation, made in the interests of promoting social order on the mission. T. T. Webb, on the other hand, developed a more complex understanding of Yolŋu law and particularly the Makarrata ceremony, which he interpreted in theological terms. Webb explained the Makarrata as an expression in Yolŋu culture of the biblical concept of sacrifice for sin: “without the shedding of blood there can be no forgiveness of sin”. This reflected Webb’s broader conviction that Aboriginal people must slowly develop their own expression of Christianity, rather than simply adopting Western forms of Christianity. The differences between Webb’s and Bulmer’s engagement with these elements of Aboriginal law may have reflected differences in personality and background. However they also mirror changing attitudes within Protestant Mrs. Joan Ellemor: “Progress in Arnhem Land,” The Women’s Auxiliary Overseas Mission Link (November 1941): 6.

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missiology during this period, in tandem with the influence of anthropology. From the 1850s onwards, some Protestant mission theorists had argued that all societies contained within them God-given truths that pointed to the coming of Jesus and the Gospel he proclaimed. Missionaries who were influenced by such “fulfilment theologies” saw Christ as the culmination of truths that were already present among those they sought to evangelise.70 While these ideas were certainly present in international missionary circles during ­Bulmer’s tenure at Lake Tyers, fulfilment theology had become much more widely accepted by the early twentieth century, in part because it connected well with evolutionary understandings of culture and the new anthropological theories of how societies ‘progressed’. Bulmer was certainly interested in Gunaikurnai ideas about the divine.71 However his accounts of Gunaikurnai culture were primarily descriptive and he did not provide any analysis of how these ideas might fit into the Christianisation of Gunaikurnai society. Given that Bulmer was not theologically trained, nor employed by an international missionary society, his contact with fulfilment theories of mission are likely to have been limited in the period that he worked at Lake Tyers. By contrast, when Webb went to Milingimbi in the 1920s, fulfilment theology was exercising a very significant influence on Protestant missionary societies worldwide. As a trained Methodist clergyman and part of an international network of Methodist missionaries, Webb was more likely to have been influenced by this approach to the beliefs of the people he worked among. In addition, Webb hosted a number of anthropologists at Milingimbi and argued that missionaries needed anthropological training. His vision of a slow “­development” of Yolŋu society, towards a culture that was both Christian and Yolŋu, seems to reflect these broader influences.72 Like all missionaries, Bulmer and Webb saw Aboriginal people through the lens of their own preconceptions and their descriptions of Gunaikurnai 70

71 72

For the impact of “fulfilment theology” in missionary circles in the early twentieth century, see Andrew F. Walls, “Romans One and the Modern Missionary Movement,” in The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996), 55–67; Richard J. Platinga, “Missionary Thinking about Religious Plurality at Tambaram 1938: Hendrik Kraemer and His Critics,” in The Changing Face of Christianity: Africa, the West and the World, eds. Lamin Sanneh and Joel Carpenter (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 160–79. See, for example, Bulmer’s discussion of Gunaikurnai terms for god in Recollections, 33. We discuss in greater detail the influences on Webb’s missiology in a forthcoming chapter, Bronwyn Shepherd and Joanna Cruickshank, “Methodism in Milingimbi: Encounter and Enculturation in Arnhem Land, Australia, 1923–1945” in The Inventions and Reinventions of Methodism: Sect, Church and Radical Movement, edited by Andrew Cheatle (London: Routledge, forthcoming 2022).

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or Yolŋu conduct should not be treated as authoritative or comprehensive. Bulmer, in particular, continued to claim that a propensity to ‘fighting’ was somehow inherent to the character of Aboriginal people. Accounts produced by Aboriginal historians such as Phillip Pepper and James Gaykamangu provide perspectives that are largely missing from the missionaries’ accounts. Both the Lake Tyers and Milingimbi missions were established in the wake of horrific settler violence against the local Aboriginal people, which in turn caused conflict between Aboriginal clans. Missionaries might have understood themselves providing a refuge from settler violence, but missions also created new variables in destabilised contexts, sometimes triggering considerable conflict. Bulmer’s and Webb’s reports support Pepper’s and Gaykamangu’s broader accounts of Aboriginal people seeking to find ways to resolve disputes and conduct themselves lawfully in the midst of this disruption. In recent years, Gaykamangu has written about the conduct of “payback” in Yolŋu society, noting: When “payback” happened in the past, it involved physical punishment, just like in the old law of the Old Testament: “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”. These days “payback” is more like mutual obligation: when you look after my children when they visit you, I have to “pay back” by looking after your children when they visit me.73 Gaykamangu describes Yolŋu people continuing to conduct themselves ­lawfully according to the ethic of reciprocity, in ways that promote peaceful communities. His reference to the Old Testament supports Webb’s claim of similarities between biblical principles and Yolŋu law and shows how many Yolŋu people have engaged deeply with the Christian message. For Gaykamangu, these connections are explained as evidence of commonalities between Yolŋu and Western beliefs and law. Where Webb emphasised the need for Yolŋu to change, Gaykamangu notes that both Balanda and Yolŋu laws have changed over time. He goes on to argue that while Yolŋu law far pre-dates the Balanda “law” the missionaries promoted, these laws can “sit side-by-side”, coexisting and ­learning from each other.74 Rather than the “contest of laws”, which has characterised the encounter between Aboriginal people and invaders, ­Gaykamangu calls for a more peaceful and equitable meeting of these laws.

73 74

Gaykamangu, “Ngarra Law,” 243. See Gaykamangu’s comments on Yolŋu learning of “missionary law” and the relationship between Balanda law and Yolŋu law. Gaykamangu, “Ngarra Law,” 237–38, 243.

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John Bulmer’s and T. T. Webb’s experiences of peacemaking can p ­ roductively be read as part of this history of the meeting and contest of laws in the lands now called Australia. Bulmer and Webb both sought to bring peace according to assumptions about the relationship between law, peace, and violence. Both missionaries sought at times to prevent Aboriginal people from acting lawfully according to Indigenous law. Yet Bulmer and Webb were unusual among their contemporaries—and even more unusual among other settlers—in their careful attention to the language and culture of Aboriginal people among whom they worked. As a result, they developed new appreciation for the lawful practices through which conflict resolution took place in Aboriginal societies and—in different ways—came to endorse these practices as promoting social order. At the same time, Aboriginal accounts show that Gunaikurnai and Yolŋu people engaged with missionaries and their message as they sought to conduct themselves lawfully to the changing circumstances of colonial invasion. Bulmer’s and Webb’s attempts at peacemaking should be seen in the context of the broader “contest of laws” that has been ongoing since invasion and to which they, like other missionaries, contributed. However, they also provide examples of more productive “meetings of laws”, which, both then and now, are necessary for the making of a more just peace. Bibliography Baker, Bob J. The Spear and the Gun: Japanese Attacks on Arnhem Land: A Wartime ­History of Milingimbi 1942–45. Kent Town: Avonmore Books, 2017. Beresford-Manning, Wendy. “Theodor Webb: Missionary, Advocate, Linguist.” In Out of the Ordinary: Twelve Australian Methodist Biographies, edited by Patricia Curthoys and William Emilsen, 147–80. South Australia: MediaCom, 2015. Berndt, Ronald M., and Catherine H. Berndt. The World of the First Australians. Sydney: Ure Smith Pty. Ltd., 1964. Black, C. F. The Land is the Source of the Law: A Dialogic Encounter with Indigenous Jurisprudence. London: Routledge, 2011. Black, Christine, Shaun McVeigh, and Richard Johnstone. “Of the South.” Griffith Law Review 16, no. 2 (2007): 299–309. Bulmer, John. Recollections of Victorian Aboriginal Life, 1855–1908, compiled by Alastair Campbell, edited by Ron Vanderwal. Melbourne: Museum Victoria, 1999. Broome, Richard. Aboriginal Australians: A History Since 1788. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2002. Carolane, Peter. “Instinct for Mission: John Bulmer, Missionary to the Aborigines of Victoria, 1855–1913.” Ph.D. thesis, University of Melbourne, 2009.

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Central Board. Seventh Report of the Board for the Protection of the Aborigines in the Colony of Victoria. Melbourne: John Ferres, Government Printer, 1871. Central Board. Fifth Report of the Board Appointed to Watch over the Interests of the Aborigines in the Colony of Victoria. Melbourne: John Ferres, Government Printer, 1866. Central Board. Fourth Report of the Board Appointed to Watch over the Interests of the Aborigines in the Colony of Victoria. Melbourne: John Ferres, Government Printer, 1864. Clendinnen, Inga. “Spearing the Governor.” Australian Historical Studies 33, no. 118 (2002): 157–74. Dewar, Mickey. The Black War in Arnhem Land: Missionariesand the Yolngu 1908–1940. Brinkin, NT: The Australian National University, North Australia Research Unit, 1995. Davies, Susanne. “Aborigines, Murder and the Criminal Law in Early Port Phillip, 1841–1851.” Australian Historical Studies 22, no. 88 (1987): 313–35. Ellemor, Mrs. Joan. “Progress in Arnhem Land.” The Women’s Auxiliary Overseas ­Mission Link. (November 1941): 6. Evans, Julie, Patricia Grimshaw, David Philips, and Shurlee Swain. Equal ­Subjects, Unequal Rights: Indigenous Peoples in British Settler Colonies. Manchester: ­Manchester University Press, 2003. Finnane, Mark. “The Limits of Jurisdiction: Law, Governance and Indigenous Peoples in Colonized Australia.” In Law and Politics in British Colonial Thought: Transpositions of Empire, edited by Shaunnagh Dorsett and Ian Hunter, 149–68. London: ­Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Ford, Lisa, and David Andrew Roberts. “Expansion, 1820–50.” In The Cambridge History of Australia, Volume 1: Indigenous and Colonial Australia, edited by Alison Bashford and Stuart Macintyre, 121–48. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Ford, Lisa. Settler Sovereignty: Jurisdiction and Indigenous People in America and A ­ ustralia, 1788–1836. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2o1o. Gardner, Peter Dean. Gippsland Massacres: The Destruction of the Kurnai Tribe 1800–1860. Ensay: Peter Dean Gardner, 1983. Gaykamangu, James, with Penelope Taylor. Striving to Bridge the Chasm: My Cultural Learning. Darwin: Larrakia Nation Aboriginal Corporation, 2013. Gaykamangu, James Gurrwanngu. “Ngarra Law: Aboriginal Customary Law from ­Arnhem Land.” Northern Territory Law Journal 2, no. 4 (2012): 236–48. Gumbula, Joseph Neparrŋa. Matjabala Mali’ Buku-Rruŋanmaram: Images from Miliŋinbi (Milingimbi) and Surrounds, 1926–1948. Sydney: Darlington Press, 2011. Harris, John. One Blood: 200 Years of Aboriginal Encounter with Christianity. Sutherland: Albatross Books, 1990. Kercher, Bruce. “Recognition of Indigenous Legal Autonomy in Nineteenth Century New South Wales.” Indigenous Law Bulletin 4, no. 13 (1998): 7–9.

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Le Griffon, Heather. Campfires at the Cross. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly ­Publishing, 2007. Macintosh, Ian, and David Burrumarra. The Whale and the Cross: Conversations with David Burrumarra. Darwin: Historical Society of the Northern Territory, 1994. Menke, Christoph. “Law and Violence.” Law and Literature 22, no. 1 (2010): 1–17. Methodist Church of Australasia. Department of Overseas Mission Records, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney. Moreton-Robinson, Aileen. Sovereign Subjects Indigenous Sovereignty Matters. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2007. Morris, Christine. “A Full Law.” Griffith Law Review 9, no. 2 (2000): 209–11. Pepper, Phillip, with Tess de Araugo. You Are What You Make Yourself to Be: The Story of a Victorian Aboriginal Family, 1842–1980. Melbourne: Hyland House, 1989. Platinga, Richard J. “Missionary Thinking about Religious Plurality at Tambaram 1938: Hendrik Kraemer and His Critics.” In The Changing Face of Christianity: Africa, the West and the World, edited by Lamin Sanneh and Joel Carpenter, 160–79. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. “Report from the Select Committee upon Protection to the Aborigines (1858–59).” ­Melbourne: John Ferres, 1860. Rowse, Tim. White Flour, White Power: From Rations to Citizenship in Central Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Ryan, Lyndall, et al. “Map.” Colonial Frontier Massacres in Central and Eastern ­Australia 1788–1930. Accessed 24 February 2020: https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au /colonialmassacres/map.php. Tench, Watkin. A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson in New South Wales Including an Accurate Description of the Situation of the Colony; of the Natives; and of its Natural Productions. London: G. Nicol and J. Sewell, 1793. Perkins, Rachel, dir. First Australians. Episode 1, “They Have Come to Stay.” Sydney: Blackfella Films, 2008. Shepherd, Bronwyn, and Joanna Cruickshank. “Methodism in Milingimbi: Encounter and Enculturation in Arnhem Land, Australia, 1923–1945.” In The Inventions and Reinventions of Methodism: Sect, Church and Radical Movement, edited by Andrew Cheatle and Kenneth Newport. London: Routledge (forthcoming). Thiele, Frances. “Superintendent La Trobe and the Amenability of Aboriginal People to British Law 1839–1846.” Provenance: The Journal of Public Record Office Victoria 8 (2009): https://prov.vic.gov.au/explore-collection/provenance-journal/provenance -2009/superintendent-la-trobe-and-amenability. Walls, Andrew F. “Romans One and the Modern Missionary Movement”. In The ­Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith, 55–67. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996.

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Warner, W. Lloyd. A Black Civilization: A Study of an Australian Aboriginal Tribe. New York: Harper Books, 1958. Watson, Irene. Aboriginal Peoples, Colonialism and International Law: Raw Law. ­London: Routledge, 2014. Webb, T. T. “Aboriginals and Adventure in Arnhem Land.” Unpublished manuscript, 1947. Series 7, Box 22/97, Elkin Archives, University of Sydney. Webb, T. T. “Aboriginal Life: Ceremonies for Making Peace.” The Mission Review (­September 1928): 10–12. Woolmington, Jean. “Writing on the Sand: The First Missions to Aborigines in E ­ astern Australia.” In Aboriginal Australians and Christian Missions: Ethnographic and H ­ istorical Studies, edited by Tony Swain and Deborah Bird Rose, 77–92. Bedford Park: Australian Association for the Study of Religions, 1988. YouTube. “Bung Yarnda: Camping Waters—This Place.” https://www.youtube.com /watch?v=z_HIY7Yq6Gs (accessed 24 February 2020).

Chapter 9

Missions and Peace in Prospect Geoffrey Troughton To examine ideas concerning peace and Christian mission is to enter deeply contested terrain. For many contemporary interpreters, such mission is ­ ­indelibly tied to colonialism and therefore bound up in violence and domination. ­Patrick Wolfe, for example, has noted that territory rather than religion was the primary motive driving settler colonialism. Nevertheless, as expressions of a colonialism that “destroys to replace”, his analysis locates religious conversion and the influence of “total institutions such as missions” firmly within settler colonialism’s central “logic of extermination”.1 Similar understandings of peace abound. A popular slogan on social media platforms, and occasionally used in decolonisation workshops in New Zealand, distils historical dynamics of colonisation and contemporary imperatives of decolonisation into a pithy pairing of “3 Ms”. In this, colonisation consists of the Missionaries to pacify the people, the Military to keep the people pacified, then the Masses to overpopulate and assimilate the people. Decolonisation is all about reclaiming: the Marae, the home of the people; the Mauri, the life essence of the people; and the Mana, the power and authority of the people.2 The mnemonic clearly links Christian mission with peace—albeit peace imagined primarily in imperial terms, and mission as the advanced guard of a coherent programme of colonial subjugation. A powerful and unambiguous critique of “pacifying missions”. Given the prevalence of such sentiments and critiques, the present v­ olume may have been expected to explore missionary peace through a forthright emphasis on complicity with domineering projects of pacification, or through cases in which missions, colonialism, and empire-building strongly converged in the nineteenth century. These matters are manifestly relevant to critical work on peace within the contexts of empire and missions. Indeed, it is precisely for this reason that the preceding studies sought to reckon with peace in 1 Patrick Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 4 (2006): 388. 2 In some versions, the saying expands to “the four Ms”, adding a fourth component to those already noted: “the Media, to keep the people assimilated” (colonisation); and “the Maia, the bravery of the people” (decolonisation). © Geoffrey Troughton, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004536791_010

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its complex relationship with conflict and violence, cognizant of the burgeoning scholarly work on violence and empire and widespread critiques of the entanglements of missions, empire, and colonisation. Yet, the primary concerns animating this volume were somewhat distinct and arguably more foundational. Stimulated in part by recognition of its apparent prevalence in the missionary archive, we set out to examine peace in the worlds of nineteenth-century Protestant mission. Eschewing a common tendency to by-pass peace as conceptually inconsequential, taken-for-granted, or essentially an expression of power, we determined to foreground peace as a specific focus for analysis. The ambition was to provide a richer understanding of how missionaries imagined, articulated, and enacted it; how, why, and when they mobilised peace, and the functions and effects of doing so. The volume therefore focused squarely on connections between peace and missionary work. Taken as a whole, our studies confirm that peace was a significant theme in the missions, even if it was not always the decisive priority. The volume also demonstrates that visions of peace varied in substantial ways. D ­ ifferent types operated. Peace was plural, dynamic, and contested, worked out in ­specific contexts, and thoroughly entangled both with understandings of conflict and violence and experiences of them. These observations are important for understanding the cases addressed in this volume as well as its broader ­contribution. They also suggest related conceptual and methodological implications relevant for future horizons of research. Our approach, for example, has accepted the essential contestability of peace and therefore the importance of historical context and contingencies in analysing it. Historicising and contextualising peace entails adopting a dynamic, rather than essentialised or reified, understanding of the concept. This coheres with critical scholarship that draws attention to the historicity of ‘religion’ itself, which further suggests the importance of attending to interactions between key related and similarly dynamic concepts.3 Our approach has also attempted to ply out theological and ­imaginative dimensions of peace, as well as material ones, and the ongoing fruitfulness of exploring discourses, practices, communities, and connections.4 Introducing notions of imperial, subversive, and proselytising peace, I ­earlier noted that this typology elucidates, and should be understood, in relation to 3 Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993); Brent Nongbri, Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006). 4 On these themes, see Geoffrey Troughton and Philip Fountain, “Afterword: Christianity and the Peace Tradition in New Zealand,” in Pursuing Peace in Godzone: Christianity and the Peace Tradition in New Zealand, eds. Geoffrey Troughton and Philip Fountain (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2018), 234–36.

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both the disruptive character of peace and peace’s connections and proximity to power. As a means for interpreting expressions of peace addressed in this volume, the typology therefore gives weight to the pervasive workings of power and experiences of subjugation. Notably, however, it also raises questions about how far such paradigms take us. Missionary peace was always political, but was it only political? It was bound up in dynamics of power, but was it reducible to such terms? It was implicated in domination and coercion, but was it bound to an “ontology of violence”?5 What other work did it do? What other possibilities did it afford? The issues at stake here are broad ranging. They include our capacity to imagine different, more hospitable, ways of encountering others, navigating difference, and cultivating amity—ways that are not simply defined by perfidious power. This task entails engaging ­seriously with such possibilities as they arise from distinctively religious contexts with their various traditions and ethical and imaginative frameworks. Testing the broader applicability of our typology in these ways can only enhance understanding of the place of peace in missionary activity. Such work may also be fruitful for thinking about the missionary project more generally, as well as the nature and reach of empire. Further research may fruitfully tease out the relationship of missionary peace with dynamics of empire more explicitly. Empire is the essential context of the studies in this volume, and the case studies contain a wealth of insights into the shape of empire generally and more particularly concerning missions and empire. Yet, as this material indicates, analyses of missionary peace may also shed light on a range of other specific debates, concerning for example: locality, mobility, and the webs and networks through which empire was constituted and enacted;6 the ambiguities of humanitarianism;7 and mutually formative interchanges between missions, empire, and the metropole.8 5 John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006). 6 Tony Ballantyne, Webs of Empire: Locating New Zealand’s Colonial Past (Wellington: ­Bridget Williams Books, 2015); Alan Lester, Imperial Networks: Creating Identities in Nineteenth-­ Century South Africa and Britain (London: Routledge, 2001). 7 Alan Lester and Fae Dussart, Colonization and the Origins of Humanitarian Governance (­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Penelope Edmonds and Anna Johnston, eds., Special Issue on “Empire, Humanitarianism and Violence in the Colonies,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 17, no. 1 (2016), https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/33312. 8 Susan Thorne, Congregational Missions and the Making of an Imperial Culture in N ­ ineteenth-Century England (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999); Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination 1830–1867 (Chicago: ­University of Chicago Press, 2002); Catherine Hall and Sonya O. Rose, eds., At Home with the Empire: Metropolitan Culture and the Imperial World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

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This volume’s soundings in Africa and the Pacific will doubtless be enriched through further cases. Comparison with other geographical locations, notably in Asia, the Caribbean, and the Middle East, would be especially valuable in addressing dynamics of empire, as would analysis of other empires and ­religious traditions. These matters are evidently of broad historical relevance. They are also of more general contemporary concern in a time of intense debate over the nature and impact of imperial pasts and calls for the decolonisation of history, politics, and society. In this context, there is much at stake in unpicking the meanings and salience of peace in the context of imperial-era Christian missions. Arguably, no more so than for the numerous Indigenous Christian traditions whose stories and self-understandings have been shaped by the influence of missions and languages of Christian peace. For it is often upon them that the burdens and ongoing reverberations of pacifying missions are most acutely felt. Bibliography Asad, Talal. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. Ballantyne, Tony. Webs of Empire: Locating New Zealand’s Colonial Past. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2015. Edmonds, Penelope, and Anna Johnston, eds. Special Issue: Empire, Humanitarianism and Violence in the Colonies. Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 17, no. 1 (2016). https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/33312. Hall, Catherine. Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Hall, Catherine, and Sonya O. Rose, eds. At Home with the Empire: Metropolitan Culture and the Imperial World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Lester, Alan. Imperial Networks: Creating Identities in Nineteenth-Century South Africa and Britain. London: Routledge, 2001. Lester, Alan, and Fae Dussart. Colonization and the Origins of Humanitarian Governance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Milbank, John. Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. Nongbri, Brent. Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept. New Haven: Yale ­University Press, Thorne, Susan. Congregational Missions and the Making of an Imperial Culture in N ­ ineteenth-Century England. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.

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Troughton, Geoffrey, and Philip Fountain. “Afterword: Christianity and the Peace ­Tradition in New Zealand.” In Pursuing Peace in Godzone: Christianity and the Peace Tradition in New Zealand, edited by Geoffrey Troughton and Philip Fountain, 228–36. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2018. Wolfe, Patrick. “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native.” Journal of G ­ enocide Research 8, no. 4 (2006): 387–409.

Index Aboriginal peoples 174–95 Eora 177–78 Gunaikurnai 174, 180–85, 192–95 Kroatungolung 180 Yolŋu 174, 185–95 Aborigines’ Protection Society 107 Africa 3, 4, 18, 24–51, 64, 107–26, 130–51, 155–71 Central Africa 107–26 East Africa 111, 115, 155–71 southern Africa 10, 15, 24–51, 98, 108, 110, 111, 121, 130–51 West Africa 111, 115 Afrikaner 41, 46, 50, 133, 150 agriculture 16, 44, 114, 139 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions 113 angels 96–100, 102, 104 Anglican 24n2, 58, 79–80, 88, 89, 92, 93, 95, 97, 99, 103, 104, 161, 169, 179, 185 Anglo-Catholic 114, 115 Arnhem Land 185–92 asylum 160–66, 167 See also sanctuary atrocity 101, 124 See also genocide; massacre Australia 10, 62, 66, 73, 107, 110, 145, 174–95 Baptist 5, 24, 124 Baptist Missionary Society 24 Bechuanaland 133–41, 148, 150 Belgium 79, 115, 117, 118, 120, 121 Bennelong 177 Bible 5, 8, 16, 58, 59, 90, 94, 96, 97, 99, 100, 102, 104, 121, 141–42, 163n43, 194 New Testament 5, 16, 90, 100, 104, 121 Old Testament 58, 90, 97, 100, 104, 142, 194 Birrindjaoi, Andrew 190 Botswana 135 Brethren (See Plymouth Brethren) British East Africa Company 163 British Empire 1, 3, 11, 41, 107, 109, 110, 121, 131, 145, 147 See also Pax Britannica Browne, Thomas Gore 87, 89, 91, 92, 93, 100

Buddle, Thomas 6, 89, 96 Bulmer, John 174–85, 186, 192–95 Cameron, Duncan 101 cannibalism 12, 59, 64, 79 Cape Colony 29–31, 34, 38, 39, 40, 41, 45, 133, 134, Cape Town 29, 31, 32, 45, 107, 121, 136, 143 Carey, William 5 Catholic (See Roman Catholic) Chatham Islands 102, 103 children 40–41, 48, 49, 57, 67–69, 71, 75, 78, 80, 98, 102, 103, 148, 149, 194 education, schooling 55, 61, 94 enslavement 25, 30–31, 34, 44–47, 50, 113, 118–19, 122–23, 125n66, 158, welfare and protection 18, 44–47, 49, 95, 156, 160–66, 167, 170 China 114, 132 China Inland Mission 113 Church of England (See Anglican) Church Missionary Society 5, 11, 24, 56–60, 62, 63, 79, 88–90, 92, 93, 94, 103, 104, 107, 113, 155–71 civilisation 1–2, 10, 11, 16, 33, 35, 42, 44, 49–51, 101, 108–14, 117, 119, 120, 134–35, 139, 144, 146, 147, 149, 179 markers of 16, 35, 139 peace as measure of 11, 60, 134, 150–51 peace through 16, 33 Colonial Exhibition (1886) 144 Congo 115–26 Congo Free State (See Congo) Congregational Union 77, 136 Congregational Seminary, Bedford 132 conversion ix, 1, 8, 26, 33, 57, 66, 88, 111, 112, 114, 123, 124, 132, 149, 163, 165, 170, 199 convert evangelists 13, 17, 100, 104, 124 peace and 12, 15, 16, 17, 25, 26–27, 112, 179 Democratic Republic of Congo (See Congo) Dutch 25, 29, 31, 32, 33, 37, 40, 42, 47, 140 Dutch East India Company 29, 31, 109 Eromanga 61, 76, 77

206 eschatology 112 See also millennialism evangelicalism ix, 3, 9, 10, 24, 25, 56, 88, 98, 100, 109, 113, 122 evangelism 2, 12, 15, 16, 56, 88, 108, 109, 110, 113, 117, 156, 159 evangelists 12, 13, 37, 100, 104, 122, 123, 124, 126, fighting 11, 12, 17, 70, 94, 95–96, 102, 103, 119, 140, 160, 167, 181–84, 188, 192, 194 See also violence; war firearms 114, 143 guns 34–41, 88, 114, 157, 158, 160, 169, 186 gunpowder 37, 41, 157, 158, 160 muskets 13, 67 rifles 67 See also weapons flogging 177–78 France 186 French 24, 88, 116, 167, 169 French Revolution 24 Franciscans 156 Frere, Bartle 134 Frere Town 157, 164 Garenganze Evangelical Mission 113 Gariep River (See Orange River) Gate Pā 95 gender 61, 67, 68, 133, 141–42 See also masculinity genocide 24–51, 126 See also atrocity; massacre Germany, German 125, 155–71 Gippsland 180 Grey, George 87, 92, 93–94, 95–96, 98, 100–102, 103 Griqua 25, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 40, 41, 49–50 Griqualand 34, 133, 134, 135 Griqua Town 34, 36, 37, 38, 40 guns (See firearms) Hadfield, Octavius 89, 91 Hauhau (See Pai Mārire) humanitarianism vii, viii, 9, 10, 25, 41, 44–47, 50, 100, 107, 109–12, 124, 125, 126, 132, 125, 137, 138, 139, 140, 146–47, 161, 165, 176, 201 ambivalences of 44–47, 201

Index humanitarian imperialism 107, 109–12, 137, 139 hunting 25, 36, 51, 116, 181 hunter-gatherers 25, 28, 29, 32, 48, 50 imperialism 1–2, 8–9, 11, 15, 24, 43, 50, 107, 108–12, 115, 136, 137, 138, 143–47, 148, 149, 199–202 cultural imperialism 136 humanitarian imperialism 107, 109–12, 137, 139 missionary imperialism 138 India 110, 133, 145, 162, 163 injustice 91, 176 International African Association 118, 119, 119n43 Islam 109, 117, 119, 155, 159, 162, 169 Jameson Raid 136 Jesuits 114 Jesus Christ 2, 15, 26, 27, 97, 116, 141–42, 161, 193 justice 14, 41, 58, 137, 140, 142, 169 Just War 104 Katanga 108, 120–23 Kilimanjaro 11, 155–71 Klaar Water (See Griqua Town) Kok, Adam 38 Krapf, J. Ludwig 155, 156–57 Lake Tyers 174, 180, 181, 184, 185, 193, 194 Lavigerie, Charles 113, 115–18 law 17, 35–36, 45, 46, 50, 61, 96, 112, 117, 120, 121, 142, 145, 149, 151, 174–95 Indigenous law 17–18, 174–95 See also utu; Makarrata Likoma Island 114 Livingstone, David 107, 111–12, 114, 121, 133 London Missionary Society viii–ix, 5, 12, 24–51, 56, 58, 61, 67, 76, 77, 107, 108, 110, 112, 121, 130, 132–35, 136, 137, 145 Mackenzie, John 11, 130–51 humanitarianism of 137–139, 147 Mafeking 136 Magellan, Ferdinand 4n8 Maiangula 188–91 Makarrata 187–91, 192

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Index MaKololo Expedition (1859–1860) 133 Mandara 156–61, 164–66, 169–71 Mā0ri 4n8, 13–14, 17–18, 55–82, 87–104, 199 Māori King Movement 87, 89, 90, 92–93, 94, 96, 97, 100, 104 Marsden, Samuel 58, 59, 107, 111 Mary, The Virgin 97, 100 masculinity 67, 116, 119, 141–42, 167 massacre 175, 175n2, 180, 185–86 See also atrocity; genocide Melanesia 55–56, 60–82 Melanesian Mission 13, 55, 57, 60, 61, 78 Methodist 13, 88, 89, 96, 102, 103, 115, 157, 160, 180, 185, 186–89, 193 See also Wesleyan Milingimbi 174, 185–92, 193–94 millenarianism 15, 26–28, 98, 100 millennium, millennialism 112, 122 mission societies 5, 24, 28, 50, 65, 107, 108, 112, 113, 193 See also American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions; Baptist Missionary Society; China Inland Mission; Church Missionary Society; Garenganze Evangelical Mission; London Missionary Society; Melanesian Mission; Universities Mission to Central Africa; White Fathers Moffat, Robert 133 Mombasa 155, 160, 162, 163, 164 monastic communities 114 Morgan, John 93 Moshi-Kilimanjaro (See Kilimanjaro) Mota 62, 66–68, 70, 73, 78 muskets (See guns) Muslims (See Islam) Natal 111, 134 Ndebele 133, 142, 148, 149, 151 Ndebeleland 135, 136, 148 New Caledonia 63, 73 New Hebrides 56, 73, 76 New Plymouth 79, 80, 91, 110 New Testament (See Bible) New Zealand 1, 4, 5, 6, 12, 13–14, 17, 55–60, 62, 65, 66, 68, 76, 78–82, 87–104, 107, 108, 110, 111, 199 Ngwatetse 134

Northern Territory 174, 185–86 Old Testament (See Bible) Orange River 34, 38, 133, 139, 142 Orange State 134 Pacific region viii–ix, 3, 4, 4n8, 5, 12, 13, 55–82, 175, 202 pacifism 5, 58, 141, 160, 166, paganism 108, 114, 118, 155 Pai Mārire 64–65, 97–100, 104 Parris, Robert 97 payback 17, 76, 96, 177, 178, 184, 188, 194 See also reciprocity; retribution; utu Pax Britannica 11, 131 peace contested concepts vii, 6–7 conversion and 12, 15, 16, 17, 25, 26–27, 112, 179 discourse 6, 7, 12, 58, 87, 139–43, 147, 150, 200 imperial peace 1–2, 8, 11, 14 proselytising peace 1–2, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16 subversive peace 1–2, 9, 10, 14 symbols of 4–5, 20, 36, 77 typology of missionary use 1–2, 18, 200–01 See also Pax Britannica peacemaking 7, 13, 16, 24, 29, 32, 51, 59, 78–81, 107, 108, 174, 178, 179–92 Indigenous traditions 60, 178–79, 192–95 Philip, Arthur 177 Philip, John 25, 29, 41, 47–49, 50, 107, 108, 110, 137 Plymouth Brethren 108, 109, 113, 120–23, 125–26 Portuguese 4n8, 134, 156, Poverty Bay 96, 102 Presbyterian 55, 77, 179 Protestantism 3, 5, 6, 8, 24, 77, 112, 118, 120, 192–93, 200 Providence 15–16, 31, 75, 159 Quakers 10, 11, 141 race 49, 61, 82, 100–101, 111, 132, 140, 142, 143, 146, 147–51, 184, racial hierarchies 49, 61, 142 Raiola 190

208 Rarotonga 5, 9, 58, 77 Rebmann, Johannes 157 reciprocity 177, 194 See also payback; retribution; utu Red Rubber Crisis 116, 124 Religious Society of Friends (See Quakers) retribution 6, 60, 73 See also payback; reciprocity; utu Rhodes, Cecil 136, 138, 139 Ringatū 103, 104 Roman Catholic 6, 88, 89, 93, 95, 100, 103, 108, 112, 113, 115, 116–20, 121, 125, 156, 161, 167, 169, 185 French 88, 116, 167, 169 Italian 169 Royal Navy 19, 72, 73, 74, 82 Rrolong 134 sacrifice 97, 122 atonement for sin 191–92 San 15, 24–51 sanctuary 18, 156, 161, 187 See also asylum Santa Cruz 56, 62, 71, 72 Santa Maria 68–70, 74, Sarawia, George 68 sectarian 6 Selwyn, George Augustus 56, 61, 67, 68, 72, 73, 91–93, 94, 95n35, 97 Shire River 114, 115 Skevington, John 102 slavery 18, 32, 43, 44, 47, 113, 114, 115–20, 122, 123 125, 157, 159, 163, 164, 169 emancipation and redemption 18, 44, 111, 119, 122–23, 124, 125, 156, 160–66, 164 slave trade 41, 46, 107, 108, 109, 111, 112, 115, 119, 121, 122, 125n66, 155, 156, 157, 158, 160–66, 169, 171 Smith, Goldwin 100–101 Solomon Islands 56, 71, 72, 74, 78 Somerset, Charles 43–44, 46 South Africa Company 136 South Africa War 136 spears 72, 139, 164, 177, 178, 183, 188, 190, 191 Steggall, A. R. 166–70 Stock, Eugene 95, 155, 161 Stock, S. G. 159, 161, 162 Strockenström, Andries 40–41, 43–46 Sydney 73, 177

Index Tāmihana, Wiremu (See Tarapīpipi, Wiremu Tāmihana) Taranaki 64, 80 Taranaki War 14, 59, 79, 87, 90, 91, 92, 93, 96, 100, 102–104 Tarapīpipi, Wiremu Tāmihana (William Thompson) 14, 17, 59, 90, 96 Taratoa, Hēnare 95 Tāwhiao 80 Taylor, J. Hudson 113 Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Tūruki 102–103, 104 Te Ua, Horopāpera (Haumēne) 96–98, 100, 102, 104 Te Wherowhero, Pōtatau 94 Tench, Watkin 177, 178 theology 15–16, 18, 58, 61, 89, 108, 112, 116, 141, 192, 200 fulfilment theology 193 See also sacrifice; millennialism Tītokowaru, Riwha 14n42, 102–103 Tlhaping 134, 141, 148, 149 Torres Strait Islanders 175, 185 Transvaal 134, 135, 145 treaties, treaty making 32, 88, 121, 161, 163, 167, 188 See also Waitangi, Treaty of Universities Mission to Central Africa 114, 116, 121 utu 58–59 See also payback; reciprocity; retribution Vanuatu 12, 56, 66, 67, 68, 74 Victoria, colony of 174, 179–85 Victoria, Lake 162 Victorian 63, 125, 130, 140 violence 2, 6, 7–11, 12–14, 17–19, 34, 39–41, 45, 50, 98–99, 108, 116, 120–23, 126, 130–32, 133, 136, 140–43, 156, 157, 168, 169, 174, 182, 195, 199–201 colonial and settler 8–9, 23, 25, 30–31, 111, 133, 144–47, 149, 151, 175, 180–81, 185–86, 187, 194 interpretation of non-Christian peoples 11–12, 25, 28, 32, 50–51, 55–82, 63, 68, 70, 72, 131, 139, 148–51, 177–78, 181–85 repudiation of 12, 15 See also fighting; war

209

Index Völkner, Carl 64, 99, 101 Waikato 13, 14, 56, 57, 58, 64, 65, 79, 82, 87, 93, 100, 102, 104 Waikato River 59 Waikato War 14, 87, 93–96, 100, 102, 104 Waitangi, Treaty of 88, 104 war 3, 5, 11–12, 13–14, 16, 17, 25, 27, 30, 31, 40, 48, 55, 59–60, 61, 65, 67–68, 79, 82, 87–104, 111, 115, 130–31, 133, 136, 140–42, 143, 146, 150, 151, 158, 160, 168, 170, 188 Christian conduct in 12, 87, 94–96 warlike reputation 62–63, 68, 70, 78, 149, 189 warlords 108, 120 See also fighting; violence Warner, Lloyd 188n55, 190 Warren Expedition 135, 145 weapons 25, 67, 68, 69, 70, 77, 78, 160, 165, 166, 170, 183, 186 See also firearms; spears Webb, Theodor (T. T.) 174, 185–92, 192–95 Wesleyan 1, 6, 13, 89

See also Methodist White Fathers 108, 109, 113, 115–20, 121, 122, 125 White, John 97 Whiteley, John 1, 13 whiteness 25, 29, 53, 61, 82, 89, 98, 141, 143, 145, 151, 158, 164, 186 white farmers 25–26, 29, 33, 34, 46, 50 white invaders 175, 185–86 white settlers 25, 87–88, 104, 108, 109, 110, 151, 178, 185, 187 white supremacy 138 Williams, Henry 5–6, 90 Williams, John viii–ix, 5, 61, 77 Williams, William 92, 93 Williamson, Alexander 132 Xhosa 29, 31, 33, 48, 98, 110, 149 Zambezi River 143, 146 Zanzibar 111, 114, 156, 157, 159, 162 Zoutpansberg 46 Zulu 149

Brill_SCM58.qxp_SPINE=19mm 27-02-2023 17:10 Pagina 1

Contributors to this volume are: Esme Cleall, Joanna Cruickshank, Elizabeth Elbourne, Norman Etherington, David Maxwell, Jane Samson, Bronwyn Shepherd, Amy E. Stambach, and Geoffrey Troughton.

Pacifying Missions

Pacifying Missions provides the first sustained examination of peace and missionary work in the context of the British Empire. It interrogates diverse missionary projects from Africa and the Pacific region, unfolding a variegated world of ideas, discourses, and actions. The volume yields compelling evidence for a reconsideration of peace as a vital focus for analysis in the history of Christian mission. It also reveals a landscape of peace that was plural, dynamic, and contested, worked out in specific contexts, and deeply entangled with understandings and experiences of violence.

Pacifying Missions Christianity, Violence, and Empire in the Nineteenth Century

edited by Geoffrey Troughton scm [58]

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isbn 978-90-04-53678-4

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Geoffrey Troughton (Ed.)

Geoffrey Troughton, Ph.D. (2008), Massey University, is Associate Professor and Programme Director of Religious Studies at Victoria University of Wellington. His major publications include New Zealand Jesus (2011), Saints and Stirrers (2017), and Pursuing Peace in Godzone (2018).

studies in christian mission [58]

studies in christian mission [58]

issn 0924-9389

BRILL

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