Missionaries' Correspondence

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Tanzania and Malawi in Records from Colonial Missionaries, 1857–1965

Missionaries' Correspondence

Collection: Tanzania and Malawi in Records from Colonial Missionaries, 1857–1965 Volumes Missionaries' Correspondence

This correspondence reveals a history of the mission's relationship with the native people they sought to convert which is at times tumultuous. Alongside the preaching and lessons that might be expected from missionaries, are guidelines regarding appropriate punishments and incidents where individuals condone wife beating. However, a missionary bishop did object to a member of the Goverment's alleged proposal that female slaves should not be emancipated with their male counterparts, lest their masters should be left lacking concubines. Various items within this grouping discuss sightings of and interactions with both slaves and their captors; however. general agreement upon their right to freedom sits alongside derogatory remarks toward their race as a whole. Deaths are frequent in these accounts with cholera and water-born diseases frequently killing both natives and missionaries; deaths are also caused by serious famines, the war between the Manganju and Anjewa peoples, and the 1905 rebellion. Some traces of African history are present in this grouping, though it is a version interpreted through the eyes of missionaries. The missionaries made notes regarding the Swahili and Makua languages, recorded details of the war betweem the Manganju and the Anjewa, described how accusations of witchcraft were dealt with, recorded the migration of a tribe with c.5000 members to avoid capture and forced labour, and provided accounts of the 1905 rebellion as it unfolded. This voluminous selection of correspondence provides a detailed overview of how the missionaries both saw and experienced their time in Africa, before many of them met their sudden deaths.

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