Open this publication in new window or tab >>2023 (English)In: Africa as Method. Sources and Epistemologies in the study of Africa’s past: Sources and Epistemologies in the study of Africa’s past / [ed] Karin Pallaver and Uoldelul Dirar, New York: Springer London, 2023, 1Chapter in book (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
This article explores contrary tendencies in the missionary sources of the two major Swedish Lutheran missions operating in Africa from around the 1890s to the 1930s: the Swedish Evangelical Mission (SEM) in Eritrea-Ethiopia beginning in 1865 and the Church of Sweden Mission (CSM), from the early 1870s in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The attempt is to shed light on the distinctiveness, the scope and the categorization of different materials and how social and political tendencies are seen in the archival sources. Originating from the Swedish 19th century popular mobilization from below, the SEM was a vehicle for egalitarian ideals and the modernization of society, manifest in its educational endeavours in Eritrea-Ethiopia, but also in a criticism of local, traditional Ethiopian society. The CSM, on the other hand, representing a romanticist-inspired, nationalist folk church movement, had rather been formed against the forces of modernity. In KwaZulu-Natal, the missionaries encouraged Zulu history, culture, ethnic and national unity in the face of an aggressive colonialism and capitalism. The two missions shared the Swedish Lutheran background, but the divergent tendencies of the sources indicate that social and political background overruled both national and confessional belonging as well as the different contexts of their mission fields respectively.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
New York: Springer London, 2023 Edition: 1
Keywords
Swedish missions, modernity, romanticism, nationalism, education
National Category
History
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:du-44681 (URN)
Note
Ännu ej publicerad
2022-12-222022-12-222023-03-17Bibliographically approved