16.1 Growing Colonial Rivalries
Toward the end of the 19th century, the pace of colonial acquisitions in Africa and Asia accelerated dramatically. European powers acquired (or subjugated) larger overseas territories between 1884 and 1914 than in the previous 75 years. Sub-Saharan Africa – still largely unknown to Europeans in its interior at the beginning of the 19th century – was de facto partitioned at the Berlin Congo Conference in 1884/85. The rival colonial powers staked out their claims, some of which were drawn on the map with a ruler. The effective seizure of the continent was largely completed by 1900 [Map 16]. Only two countries remained free of European colonial rule: the Christian empire of Ethiopia, which had successfully expelled Italian invaders in 1896, and the independent Republic of Liberia, founded in 1847 as a home for African-American returnees from the United States.
In Asia, the European powers rounded out their respective colonial possessions. Great Britain also annexed Upper Burma in 1885, rounding out its holdings on the subcontinent. Also in the 1880s, France formed its ‘Indochinese Union’, consisting of present-day Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. In Indonesia, the Netherlands gradually extended its rule over the entire island kingdom (where previously it often had controlled only the coastal regions). Between these colonial blocs, buffer zones formed with nominally independent countries, but de facto subject to strong restrictions on sovereignty. Thus Siam (Thailand) between British India and French Indochina, and Persia (Iran) between the British Empire and Russia, which was expanding in Central Asia. China remained nominally independent and undivided. Since the 1890s, however, Western powers had been staking out their own spheres of influence and zones of economic exploitation there in a system of unequal treaties. In 1900, a total of eight nations took part in a “punitive expedition” after the so-called Boxer Rebellion: in addition to England and France, this was Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Russia, the United States and (as an emerging Asian power) Japan.
In Latin America, which was not under formal colonial control, the economic influence of the USA increased steadily toward the end of the
New colonial powers appeared on the scene. In the Caribbean and the Pacific, these were, as mentioned, the USA, and in Africa, among others, Belgium. The Belgian ‘Congo Free State’, however, was not a state colony, but from 1885 to 1908 “private property” of King Leopold II, with a highly effective – and even by the standards of the time unusually cruel – system of forced labor and exploitation. Germany and Italy were latecomers to the colonial business. Italy was driven out of Ethiopia in 1896, but established a foothold in Libya as well as in East African Eritrea and Somaliland. Germany acquired (or forced the cession of) possessions in West Africa (Togo, Cameroon), East Africa (especially in the territory of present-day Tanzania), Southwest Africa (Namibia), China (the “leased territory” of Kiautschou), and individual territories and islands in the South Seas (such as New Guinea, Samoa). The German colonial period was fortunately only short (1884–1919), but all the more fatal due to the genocide of the Herero and Nama (1904–1908) in what is now Namibia.
This new phase of European-Western dominance has been called high imperialism. Different definitions of this term emphasize different features. These include the transition from informal to formal rule overseas; growing technological superiority of Europeans as a result of advanced industrialization; the search for overseas sources of raw materials, sales markets and settlement areas; escalation of international rivalries, compensation principle (balancing of interests at the expense of powerless third parties), colonial possessions as a bargaining chip. For example, Germany “ceded” the free Sultanate of Zanzibar to England in 1890 (in exchange for Helgoland). Many territories in Asia or Africa were occupied (or reclaimed) only to deny access to colonial rivals there. Overall, the last decades of the 19th century thus saw the transition from the previous (British-dominated) free trade imperialism to (multinational) colonial competition.
16.2 New Missionary Actors
In the last quarter of the 19th century, the number of Protestant and Catholic missionaries in the global South grew by leaps and bounds. The number of German Protestant missionaries alone tripled from the mid-1870s to the end of the century. In 1900, the (third) World Missionary Conference in New York gave the total number of Protestant missionaries worldwide as 15,460, which included both “ordained and lay” as well as members of “both sexes.” The latter figure is particularly noteworthy. For separate societies for female missionary personnel with specific tasks (especially in teaching native women in India or China, for example) were among the characteristics of the American missionary movement in particular. The increase of Catholic missionary activities at the end of the 19th century in various continents was also enormous [cf. Text 175–180]. In Africa alone, for example, there were probably about 10,000 Western missionaries and religious active around 1910, of whom more than 4,000 were Protestants and about 6,000 Catholics.
In addition to the traditional ones, numerous new mission societies and congregations became active overseas, including those that had only been founded as a result of the changed colonial situation. In Germany, for example – which had entered the circle of colonial powers in 1884 – ten new smaller missions such as the ‘Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Evangelische Missionsgesellschaft’ (German East African Protestant Mission Society) in Berlin (1886) were established between 1886 and 1896. Unlike the earlier Protestant
“Why is the 19th century a missionary century?” was the title of a paper published by the afore-mentioned Gustav Warneck in 1880, in the period before the high-imperialistic phase of European colonialism. He refers, among other things, to the increased missionary enthusiasm on the home front, the “geographical discoveries” of the 19th century, the “colonial possessions of the Protestant states,” the Protestant-inspired “anti-slavery” movement of the early 19th century, and “the facilitation of world traffic through the invention of the new means of communication.” Indeed, this category of “world traffic” – in 19th century terminology the equivalent of today’s term “globalization” – is a crucial factor also in analyzing religious dynamics of the period. For a wealth of technological innovations – such as railroads, steamships, telegraphy and tropical medicine – or the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 had drastically shortened the exchange of news as well as travel times between different parts of the world. At the same time, they massively facilitated missionaries’ access to regions that had once been difficult to reach.
Conversely, however, the increased mobility since the 1890s also increasingly changed the profile of missionary work overseas. Previously, missionaries who had been active in a particular region for many years were usually very familiar with the local conditions and had often become part of the local milieu. Now, however, a new generation of missionary newcomers arrived in colonial port cities in rapid succession. They went – often before visiting their congregations – first to the clubs of the Europeans, where they were then informed about the “unreliability” of the “natives”. At the same time, the improved means of communication made it possible for the respective colonial or missionary headquarters to exert greater influence on developments overseas. Thus, the scope for local experiments became narrower. Conversely, however, communication was always a two-way process. News from the so-called “mission fields” and the emerging churches overseas increasingly reached Europe and the United States. They triggered sometimes controversial debates there.
16.3 Indigenous Counter-Movements
In numerous regions of Asia and Africa, resistance to European rule began to arise in the 1880s and 1890s. Initially largely independent of each other, the beginnings of nationalist movements formed in different colonial contexts. In India, for example, the ‘Indian National Congress’ (INC) was founded in 1885, initially more an assembly of notables than the national revolutionary movement of later years. The “blessings” of British rule were welcomed, but increased participation of native elites was urged [Text 63b]. From 1905 onward, the tone became more strident. Now the demand for ‘swaraj’ (self-government) was on the agenda. The victory of Japan over Russia in 1904/05 – that is, of an “Oriental” nation over a major European power, and this at the height of Western imperialism – spurred nationalist (and increasingly pan-Asian) aspirations across the continent [Text 65].
In many places, this “national awakening” was accompanied by a revival of traditional religions. In most cases, religious nationalism preceded political nationalism. “The whole character of Buddhism,” reported a missionary observer from southern Sri Lanka around 1899, “has changed in recent years. Whereas some time ago the mass of the people knew nothing about Buddhism … the present Buddhism is a widespread force opposed to Christianity” [Text 64b]. In the same year, the magazine ‘The Hindu Organ’,
Everywhere throughout the East there is a revival of [Asian] learning and literature, and the work of rescuing the glory of the Oriental religions from the forgotten past is going on apace. In India, Burma, Siam [Thailand], Annam [Vietnam], Japan, and even in China, … the need for religious and moral education is largely felt. [Text 62]
The resurgence of the old religions was associated with a close intertwining of religious and national identity. Among the Sinhalese in colonial Sri Lanka, for example, being a Buddhist was now considered a sign of “patriotism”. An Indian nationalist had to be Hindu at the same time, etc. Conversely, missionary Christianity (and membership in a missionary church) was now increasingly criticized as “denationalizing.” And it was in response to this challenge that debates began among Asian Christians from different missionary (or cultural) contexts about a “national form” and “native shape” of the Christianity introduced by the Western missionaries.
Since the end of the 19th century, corresponding indigenization efforts – initially spontaneous and not very coordinated – have accumulated in various regions of Asia. They were directed at different features of church and religious life. “Indigenous leadership,” i.e., the demand of local Christians for church leadership positions, had been lively discussed in the Protestant mission churches of the continent for some time. In the Anglican context, this was reflected, among other things, in the controversies about a “native bishop”. Quite early, Indian Christians, for example, also referred to examples from Africa (such as the black Bishop Samuel A. Crowther), which was considered a model in this respect. Different experiments of a cultural indigenization of missionary Christianity (in liturgy, music, architecture, naming, etc., later also with first Christian ashrams) intensified since 1900. Very early criticism was voiced against the denominationalism (respectively the imported “sectarianism”) of the missionaries, with the result of various local ecumenical initiatives and national church experiments [Text 66–69]. In Madras (now Chennai), for example, a ‘National Church of India’ was founded in 1886. It pursued the goal of gradually uniting all Indian Christians, irrespective of their denominational affiliation, in one national church under indigenous leadership [Text 77; for details see chap. 17.2]. In Japan, Kanzi Uchimura founded the ‘Non-Church’ movement in 1901, which still exists today and saw itself as a Christian alternative to Western church models [Text 78; cf. Figure 41]. Initiatives for a Rome-independent Church, too, intensified in Catholic Asia.
In Africa, the emancipatory aspirations of black Christians were articulated primarily through the establishment of mission-independent churches under African leadership. The early 1890s saw a whole wave of the establishment of such ‘African Independent Churches’ (AIC’s) simultaneously, but independently, in the west and south of the continent. Some were short-lived, others enjoyed long duration [Text 170–171; see chap. 18.2 for more details]. They also gained enormous importance, especially as a precursor to the later explosive church growth in sub-Saharan Africa in the post-colonial era. In a first phase, these AIC s were still strongly oriented to the liturgical or confessional traditions of their respective missionary mother churches (e.g. Anglicans, Methodists or Baptists), from which they had separated. In a second wave, diverse local prophetic movements formed under the leadership of charismatic leaders [Text 172–173]. Founders of African churches such as Mojola Agbebi (1860–1917) in present-day Nigeria are considered pioneers of African nationalism [Text 170d].
Independentist and national church aspirations also existed among Latin American Protestants, as the Panama Conference of 1916, discussed in more detail below, records. “Probably in no other area except Japan,” it said in a report there, “have [U.S.] missionaries encountered such a strong nationalistic sentiment as in some Latin American countries.” This was especially true, it said, of “evangelical churches founded by North Americans in Brazil, Chile, Puerto Rico, and Mexico.” Separatist communities – such as the ‘Iglesia Presbiteriana Independiente’ founded in Brazil in 1903 or the ‘Iglesia Evangélica Independiente’ formed in Mexico in 1897 – enjoyed great popularity. Especially in Mexico, the goal of an interdenominational national church, free from North American influence, enjoyed great sympathy [Text 287].
16.4 Multiplicity of Transregional and Transcontinental Networks
Edinburgh 1910 was not only the culmination of the Protestant missionary movement of the 19th century. It also gave birth to the modern ecumenical movement of the 20th century in the Protestant churches of the Western world. It became the direct or indirect starting point of various strands of organized ecumenism (such as the ‘International Missionary Council’ or the ‘Faith and Order’ movement), which finally led to the establishment (and further developement) of the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam in 1948.
In previous research, far too little attention has been paid to the extent to which Edinburgh responded to developments and controversies in the emerging overseas churches. It was, after all, the “awakening of great nations” in Asia [and Africa] that made united action by all Christendom (“the church [singular!] in Christian lands”) so exceedingly urgent in the eyes of the conference [Text 70b + a]. The detailed reports from overseas - both from missionaries and local church leaders – played a significant role in the deliberations. “I have heard said it again and again”, reported the Anglican bishop from Bombay, for example, “that it is only we foreign missionaries who keep the Indian Christians from [church] unity” [Text 69b]. And Chinese delegate Cheng Ching Yi told the assembly: Your denominationalism does not interest us. We Chinese Christians “love unity and national life”.2 The issue of church unity and the development of national (rather than denominational) organizational structures therefore played a defining role both in Edinburgh itself and especially in its Asian Continuation Conferences of 1912/13 [Text 71]. These triggered an indigenization push in the Protestant mission churches of the continent and initiated a dynamic phase of the Asian ecumenical movement.
In addition to (and outside of) the various missionary communication channels in the environment of the Edinburgh ecumenism, a multitude of supra-regional (and partly transcontinental) indigenous Christian networks also played a significant role. They add considerably to our understanding of Christian internationalisms at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1906, for example, a delegation of Japanese Christians visited India “at the special request and invitation” of their Indian coreligionists. This resulted in a multitude of mutual contacts and the beginnings of a Christian Pan-Asianism. At the same time, Indian Christians’ were connected through a network of their own associations with the Indian Christian diaspora in South Asia, South Africa, Great Britain and the USA. Not only through the missionary press, but increasingly also through their own journals, Asian and African Christians, for example, were in contact with each other. This led to increased exchange of information and influenced local discussions. Ethnic diasporas or voluntary migration (or migration forced by economic hardship) was also a major factor in the non-missionary spread of Christianity in different regions of the colonial world at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
An autonomous (not Western missionary) spread of the gospel was also the goal of that broad movement of black Christians on both sides of the Atlantic, commonly called Ethiopianism [for details see chapter 18.2]. In many cases it was associated with the beginnings of a Christian Pan-Africanism. Ethiopiopianism has a longer history going back to the end of the 18th century and reached its peak at the beginning of the 20th century. Besides biblical promises (such as Ps 68:31 or Acts 8), non-colonized Christian Ethiopia – symbol of ecclesiastical and political independence – increasingly served as a reference point. This movement led not only to the sending of African-American missionaries to Africa in the course of the 19th century, but also to intra-African missionary activities. Since the 1890s, there has also been a proliferation of transcontinental black church formations in the so-called ‘Black Atlantic’. The most prominent example has been the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) mentioned earlier. Founded in 1816 in Philaldelphia (USA), it merged in 1896 in South Africa with the ‘Ethiopian Church’ of the former Methodist preacher Mangena Mokone, which had been established there only shortly before [see Figure 36 + 37; Photo H09–12] Another instructive paradigm is the ‘African Orthodox Church’. Founded in 1921 as one of many black churches in New York, it already had offshoots in South Africa three years later (1924) and soon after (since 1929) also in East Africa [see Text 174]. Incidentally, these transatlantic connections came about initially through the African-American press.3
1906 is usually considered the starting date of North American Pentecostalism (Azusa Street Revival, initiated by African American preacher William Seymour). The early Pentecostal movement quickly became a transnational phenomenon. At the same time, however (and in some cases even earlier), intra-Christian revivals also occurred in other regions – such as Korea, India, South Africa, Chile or Brazil. This happened partly in loose connection with
The importance of the Latin American Plenary Council in Rome in 1899 for Latin American Catholicism has already been highlighted [see chapter 15.3]. It not only accelerated the so-called Romanization, but also strengthened the national and supra-regional cooperation within the Roman Church of Central and South America. Protestant counterpart – and at the same time counterpart to the Edinburgh Conference of 1910 – was in a certain sense the “Congress on Christian Work in Latin America” in Panamá in 1916. It sought to coordinate cooperation between the Protestant denominations (especially of U.S. origin) active there. Latin America, with its then 80 million inhabitants, was declared an open mission territory despite its nominally Catholic population. The focus of the consultations was on issues of social work and on the propagation of a Protestant ethic [see Text 287].
16.5 The First World War as a Caesura and the End of the ‘Christianity-Civilization’ Model
The hopes of the missionary community on the eve of World War I were high. The Edinburgh World Missionary Conference of 1910 saw itself, as mentioned, at a “turning point” in human history [Text 70b]. It expected the evangelization of the world still “in our generation”. This expectation seemed by no means as completely unrealistic as it appears in retrospect. In 1911, for example, in China the Ching dynasty was overthrown, which had ruled the empire for centuries; and the first (provisional) president of the new republic – Sun-Yatsen – was a baptized Christian.
But then came the First World War (1914–1918) and with it the moral catastrophe of Western Christianity. The “Great War” – as it was called in the English-speaking world for a long time – by no means took place only on the battlefields in Europe or the Middle East. The colonies and other countries in the global South were also directly affected. Asians and Africans were used as soldiers on the battlegrounds of Europe or were forcibly recruited in their hundreds of thousands as laborers. India alone provided approximately 1.5 million troops and laborers. When the British and French conquered the German colonies in Africa, African colonial troops fought on both sides. News of the horror events in faraway Europe – the battle of Verdun alone claimed some 275,000 lives on the French side and 250,000 on the German side in 1916 – quickly reached an irritated public in Asia or Africa. In a very different way from earlier European conflicts, the First World War was also a media event overseas.
Among the immediate effects of the war was a drastic reduction in missionary presence. German missionaries working in British or French colonies were immediately interned. In general, missionary activity was severely limited by the reduced supply of human and material resources. Native communities were now often left to fend for themselves. On the one hand, this accelerated the tendency toward local autonomy, which had already increased since Edinburgh. At the same time, mission-independent movements experienced rapid growth in many places. These included groups such as the ‘True Jesus Church’ (Zhen Yesu jiaohui), founded in China in 1917 in the midst of the turmoil of war (and expanding rapidly), which distinguished itself almost xenophobically from missionary Christianity. African Christian prophets such as William Wade Harris (Liberia) and Garrick Sokari Braide (West Africa) declared the war to be God’s judgment for the sins of Europeans [cf. Text 173]. Individual clerics went into armed resistance against colonial rule. One prominent example has been provided, in 1914 in what is now Malawi, by John Chilembwe (c. 1870–1915), black Baptist minister, African nationalist, and later revered as one of the country’s founding fathers [Text 172c].
In numerous colonies and regions of Asia and Africa, nationalist movements took off. For the period after the war, a higher degree of political participation was demanded – for example in British India or French Indochina. These hopes were spurred on by the ‘Fourteen Points’ of American President Woodrow Wilson, who in 1918 had declared the right of self-determination of peoples to be the cornerstone of a just post-war order. That this principle was now denied to the colonized peoples of the non-European world at the Versailles peace negotiations in 1919 was another serious disillusionment. Many Asian nationalists now turned away from the model of Western – and “Christian” – democracy toward socialist alternatives. So, for example, the Vietnamese Nguyen Ai Quoc, later known as Ho Chi Minh. Since the Russian October Revolution of 1917 – which had led to the destruction of the Russian Orthodox Church and the persecution of hundreds of thousands of believers – a
The war also had devastating effects particularly in the disintegrating Ottoman Empire. Here, the genocide of Armenian Christians occurred, which claimed at least one million lives between 1914 and 1918 (and still is being denied by Turkey up to the time of writing). The members of other Christian communities were also affected, especially in the border region with Russia. These included members of the Assyrian (“Nestorian”), Chaldean and Syrian Orthodox Churches (“Jacobite”) along with their Uniate members.
In 1916, in Sierra Leone, West Africa, the commentator of a black journal spoke of an “extremely thin” civilizational crust of European Christianity (“exceeding thinness of … European Christendom”) in view of the experiences of the “European war”.5 This is an analysis quite similar to that of the Swiss pastor Karl Barth, who at the same time – and thousands of miles away – had distanced himself from the cultural optimism and war enthusiasm of his liberal theological teachers. In the context of the history of Christianity in Africa and Asia, the end of the ‘Christianity-Civilization’ model had far-reaching consequences. After all, the perception of Christianity as an emancipatory force and a “ladder of ascent to civilization” – capable of bridging cultural differences and opening the way to participation and equality for ethnic groups at different stages of development – had been one of the decisive reasons for the attractiveness of the missionary message in times of colonial dominance. This foundation was now decisively weakened. At the same time, the insight to distinguish the preaching of the gospel from its Western-European form was also growing in missionary circles.
Notes to Chapter 16
Raupp (1910), Mission in Quellentexten, 418 ff. 412–435.
Document 108 in: Koschorke et al. (2016), Discourses of Indigenous Christian Elites, 124.
Burlacioiu (2015), „Within three years“.
Koschorke (2019), Erste Weltkrieg als moralische Katastrophe, 123–142 (with detailed references); cf. Ludwig (2020), First World War as a Turning Point; Liebau (2010), World in World Wars.
Document 264 in: Koschorke et al. (2016), Discourses of Indigenous Christian Elites, 289.
16.1 (Growing Colonial Rivalries)
Porter (2016), European Imperialism; Abernethy (2000), European Overseas Empires, 81ff. 87–103; Pakenham (1998), Scramble for Africa; Osterhammel (1997), Colonialism, 21ff; Iliffe (32017), Africans, 201–227; Gründer (2003), Expansion, 154–177; Reinhard (1990), Expansion IV, 36–85; Reinhard (1996), Kolonialismus, 213 ff. 229–279; Fieldhouse (1965), Kolonialreiche 175 ff; Demel (1993), Rassentheorien; Van Laak (2005), Über alles in der Welt; Von Albertini (21985), Kolonialherrschaft; Gründer/ Hiery (32022), Kolonien (German colonialism).
16.2 (New Missionary Actors)
Ward (2017), Missionary Movement, 137ff; Cox (2008), British Missionary Enterprise, 169–212; Robert (2011), Christian Mission; Latourette (R1980), Expansion of Christianity. Vol. IV + V; Porter (2003), Imperial Horizons; Etherington (2009), Missions and Empire; Stanley (1990), Bible and the Flag; Gensichen (1976), Missionsgeschichte, 42 ff; Raupp (1990), Mission in Quellentexten, 412–434; Warneck (1880), Missionsjahrhundert; Gründer (1982), Deutscher Imperialismus; Gründer (1992), Welteroberung, 368 ff. 387 ff.519–567; Lessing et al. (2012), German Protestant Church; Tyrell (2004), Weltmission, 13–136; Stanley (2009), Edinburgh 1910.
16.3 + 4 (Indigenous Counter Movements, Multiplicity of Transregional and Transcontinental Networks)
Kalu (2005), African Christianity, 258–277. 309–332; Ludwig (2002), African Independent Churches, 259–272; Elphick (2012), Equality of Believers; Koschorke (2002), Rise of National Church Movements, 203–217; Koschorke (2018), Dialectics of the Three Selves; Koschorke (2018), Christliche Internationalismen um 1910, 261–282; Thomas (1979), Christian Indians and Indian Nationalism, 78 ff.146 ff; Ahn (2014), Korea as an Early Missionary Center, 99–110; Weber (1966), Asia and the Ecumenical Movement; Stanley (2009); Edinburgh 1910; Robert (2009), Christian Mission, 53–80; Lindenfeld (2021), Indigenous Experience, 106–116. 192–206; 230–244; Ludwig (2000), Tambaram; Prien (2013), Latin America, 374–386; Prien (1978), Geschichte, 798 ff (Panama-Congress 1916); Campbell (1998), Songs of Zion; Martin (1989), Black Baptist and African Missions; Engel (2015), African American Missionaries; Burlacioiu (2015), „Within three years“ (on the ‚African Orthodox Church‘).
16.5
Ludwig (2020), First World War as a Turning Point; Greschat (2014), Erste Weltkrieg und die Christenheit; Koschorke (2019), Erste Weltkrieg als moralische Katastrophe, 123–142; Schjørring (2018), First World War, 19–40; Negel/ Pinggéra (2016), Urkatastrophe; Hofmann (2006), Armenien; Hovannisian (2007), Armenian genocide; Liebau (2010), World in World Wars.