| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
In adopting this methodology, we avoid a monolithic presentation of viewpoints, and provide a common foundation within which comparative cultural analyses are possible. The socio-historical background of the missionaries, i.e., their pre-established judgment of the people to convert, Eurocentric rules, their primary objectives and faith-based acts, stand in opposition to the African social and cultural environment. That is, we also look at the mission rules as opposed to discretionary objectives and analyze whether Andreas Riis, Rosine Widmann, and Carl Reindorf’s ethnographical presentations are similar. As will be seen later, and was previously argued by Jon Miller, the “centralization of control in the Mission […] left the missionaries with few opportunities and little official encouragement to use individual judgment in addressing the tasks assigned to them.”54 By linking discourse with actions, we seek new meanings in their individual experiences and cultural values. On these points, at least, we might notice the ambiguities in their aesthetical implications of colonial life that could be presented as contingent signs of missionaries and their practices.55
Here, it is convenient to make a statement about the Missionsfrauen or Missionsbräute. The Missionsfrauen were women who usually, upon the suggestion by the BM or by a missionary, were sent purposely to the missions’ stations to marry, or, as sometimes noted in the archival documents, as a companion or Gehilfin of a male missionary.56 As female congregational partners organized under the umbrella of Missionsfrauen, they undertook the responsibility of evangelizing and “civilizing” the local women as well as establishing a metropolitan presence to reflect an untarnished racial hierarchy.