European Missionaries in Africa
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Christianity was bounded to the coastal areas of Africa. At this time in Western Africa, there were a total of three missionary societies operating in western Africa. There was the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG), the Wesleyan Missionary Society (WMS), and the Glasaw and Scottish Missionary Society (GSMS). In the southern portion of Africa, the Morovian Missionary and the London Missionary were dominant. There was only one society in eastern Africa and there were none at all in northern Africa. However, by 1840 the number of missionary societies had increased to more than fifteen in western Africa, eleven in southern Africa, five in eastern Africa in 1877 and there were six in northern Africa in 1880. Not only were these societies active in the coastal region of Africa, but they also started stretching inland to lands where they haven't reached before. Around the year 1860, these societies in southern Africa had traveled as far north as present day Botswana, Lesotho and Zambia. (Boahen
15) Famous names of this time include David Livingston and Robert Moffat. (Gordon 285)
Maybe it is good to look at how these missionaries spread and shared their ideas to all four corners of Africa. When the Europeans landed in Africa in the beginning, they had no knowledge of the type of people that they were dealing with. They knew nothing of their culture, language, religion or anything of that nature. So the Europeans had to find someone or something to tell them about the people they were dealing with. The Europeans looked no further than the slaves?mainly in the United States. Th ...