Missionary Education

Missionaries have been subject to academic and societal debate. Some scholars highlight their contribution to the spread of modernity and development among local societies, whereas others question their motives and emphasise their inseparable connection with colonialism. In this volume, fifteen authors – from both Europe and the Global South – address these often polemical positions by focusing on education, one of the most prominent fields in which missionaries have been active. They elaborate on Protestantism as well as Catholicism, work with cases from the 18th to the 21st century, and cover different colonial empires in Asia and Africa. The volume introduces new angles, such as gender, the agency of the local population, and the perspective of the child.

Contributes simultaneously to both British imperial and Indian history. This work demonstrates that missionary understandings and interactions with India, rather than being party to imperial ideologies, often diverged from metropolitan and imperial norms.

From Missionary Education to Confucius Institutes examines the history and globalization of cultural exchange between the United States and China and corrects many myths surrounding the incompatibility of American and Chinese cultures in the higher education sphere. Providing a fresh look at the role of non-state actors in advancing Sino-American cross-cultural knowledge exchange, the book presents empirical studies highlighting the diverse experiences and practices involved. Case studies include the U.S.-initiated missionary education in modern China, the involvement of private foundations and professional associations in education, the impact of Chinese and American laws on student exchanges, and the evaluation of the experience of U.S. Confucius Institutes. This book will appeal to students and scholars of U.S. and Chinese higher education from the past to the present, as well as international admission officers and university executives who are concerned about the global educational partnership with China and questions around the internationalization of education more broadly.

Taking up a little-known story of education, schooling, and missionary endeavor, Helen May, Baljit Kaur, and Larry Prochner focus on the experiences of very young ’native’ children in three British colonies. In missionary settlements across the northern part of the North Island of New Zealand, Upper Canada, and British-controlled India, experimental British ventures for placing young children of the poor in infant schools were simultaneously transported to and adopted for all three colonies. From the 1820s to the 1850s, this transplantation of Britain’s infant schools to its distant colonies was deemed a radical and enlightened tool that was meant to hasten the conversion of 'heathen' peoples by missionaries to Christianity and to European modes of civilization. The intertwined legacies of European exploration, enlightenment ideals, education, and empire building, the authors argue, provided a springboard for British colonial and missionary activity across the globe during the nineteenth century. Informed by archival research and focused on the shared as well as unique aspects of the infant schools’ colonial experience, Empire, Education, and Indigenous Childhoods illuminates both the pervasiveness of missionary education and the diverse contexts in which its attendant ideals were applied.

This volume examines the relationships between the German colonial administration, the Basel Mission, the British Baptist Missionary Society and other missionary societies that characterized the setting up of Basel Mission education in Cameroon against the backdrop of intense rivalry. Spanning a period of 82 years, the book meticulously documents the kick off, expansion and elaboration of the Basel Mission’s efforts to institutionalise education as well as its objectives and operational modalities. Basel Mission Education in Cameroon deepens our understanding of European imperialism and its legacy in postcolonial societies. Policy makers and educationists in Cameroon and Africa at large will find this volume very instructive as they forge educational systems that serve the needs of current and future generations of Africans.