#94. Mission and the Scramble for Africa (15 Nov 1884)

On Livingstone, Stanley, and Leopold and the Mission of God

Welcome to “Global Witness, Globally Reimagined.” You get a glimpse here of the kind of work that I do both at Church Mission Society and Missio Africanus where I help students of all levels (from unaccredited courses to PhD) explore the theological (and missiological) implications of the rise of World Christianity. In the newsletter, I focus on the subject of global witness in the twenty-first-century context. Every Thursday, I share a thought that has spoken to me in the week, one or two resources that I trust will be helpful to you, and three exciting quotes about mission to give you something to think about as you go through your day. I pray one of these will energise you.

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1. A Thought I Can’t Shake Off

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Today is 15 November 2024.

It has been exactly 140 years since the beginning of the infamous West African Conference that took place in Berlin between November 1884 and February 1885. It is now known as the Berlin Conference. European governments needed to avoid conflict over their colonial interests in Africa, which, they were afraid, might disturb the balance of power among them. The Portuguese claimed some parts of coastal Africa around Angola and Mozambique. The French had taken control of Tunis in 1881. The British had occupied Egypt in 1882. The French were trying to assert themselves in an area King Leopold of Belgium had just claimed for himself in the Congo. Something had to be done to prevent European countries from going to war against each other over Africa. But the real drive was for Leopold to gain international recognition for his claim to the Congo — a piece of land seventy-seven times larger than his small kingdom of Belgium — as his personal property. So, of course, Leopold manipulated the string in the background, and Otto von Bismarck called many countries, the United States included, to Berlin to discuss a collective policy for establishing colonies in Africa. Thirteen European countries attended. Africa was not represented.

The implications of the conference are many. It “officially” launched the Scramble for Africa, which had essentially been in motion for a while by then. This led to the quick colonisation of the entire continent (except for Liberia and Ethiopia) with the violent pacification of the colonies destroying African communities, especially their leaders. The conference also indirectly sanctioned Leopold’s extremely cruel antics in the Congo that led to the death of millions upon millions of people. And, in connection with our conversation on mission and colonialism, it changed the work of many Christian missionaries in Africa by institutionalising the inferiority of Africans to the colonising Europeans and, therefore, attaching Christian mission, rather explicitly, the civilising agenda of the colonial empires. More often than not, the missionaries would be “ideological shock absorbers of imperialism” or, as some have called them, “the religious arm of imperialism.” Often, the message of Christ that sets captives free became a tool for colonising people.

Connecting the dots backwards, we will notice that the highly esteemed missionary of the nineteenth century, David Livingstone, was directly connected to the conference. (His daughter would also, in a few years, benefit from British colonialism in Malawi when, in 1893, she (with her husband, Alexander Bruce) bought land at Magomero — the mission station that David Livingstone had established for the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa (UMCA) in 1861).

In the late 1860s, David Livingstone, an international celebrity at that time, went silent on the world. For a couple of years, he did not send any reports of his travels to the UK. People thought he had died, and they wanted to know what happened. If it was a publicity stunt, it worked. The New York Herald sent a British man, Henry Morton Stanley, to Africa to find Livingstone. The two of them met at Ujiji in 1871 — the scene of the famous “Dr Livingstone, I presume.” Livingstone refused to return to Europe — he died two years later, at 60 years of age. Stanley went on to publish his instant bestseller, How I Found Livingstone, in which he paints Livingstone as the ultimate warrior missionary — ‘‘His is the Spartan heroism, the inflexibility of the Roman, the enduring resolution of the Anglo-Saxon.’’ After another trip across the Congo, Stanley was hired by the notorious Leopold to take the Congo for him, which he did in 1879. This taking of the Congo for Leopold — Leopold himself never visited Congo — was the trigger that made the Berlin Conference happen.

Writing this 140 years later, with the help of hindsight, I wonder how the story ends if 1884 never happened. Eventually, Livingstone got his main wish, the eradication of slave trade, and his secondary wish, (benevolent) imperialism that was not so benevolent at all (as a means for ending slave trade). What did Africans get? The yoke of colonialism. Of course, I do not decry the colonisation of Africa. I am resigned to the fact that this was (and is still) inevitable. Human history is a violent winner-takes-all contest — all empires rise and fall on violence. The Christian faith does not change this fact — see Ukraine, the Middle East and, indeed, the United States. I cannot think about the Berlin Conference without remembering Leopold, Stanley, Livingstone, the British Raj in India, William Carey, the British East India Company and, indeed, the entire missionary enterprise.

Was 1884 crescendo and the beginning of the unmaking of the Western missionary movement?

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2. Resources I am Enjoying

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Video: Truth's Table S7E25 Ms. Missiology: Black Women Missionaries with Barbara Jones

In this episode of the Truth’s Table podcast, hosts Christina and Ekemini sit to discuss with Barbara Jones, one of the unusual faces in mission, being a black missionary woman engaged in mission and leading domestic and international missionary works as well as community development projects around the world. In this conversation, Jones reflects on her struggles, journey, and experiences as a black missionary woman in a space that still centres men and Western missionary models. She comes with at least twenty-eight years of work as a missionary and consultant to the table, among many other interesting angles to her life and stewardship. This is one conversation for lovers of God and of God’s mission, especially as God’s mission continues to unfold with different dynamics in this age of World Christianity.

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3. Quotes I am Pondering

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• Christianity has to be fully incarnated, accepted, and used in daily living. — Ndung’u J. B. Ikenye, "Contextualization of Pastoral Theology in African Christianity: Theory, Models, Methods, and Practice," in African Contextual Realities, ed. Rodney L. Reed (Cambria, UK: Langham Global Library, 2018), 47.

• White British leaders and African leaders need an improved approach to creating dialogue on issues of partnership in mission. It is wasteful and outdated to continue to lament the state of society when efforts have not been made to utilize the resources that God continually provides. — Valerie Nkechi Taiwo, "Let Us Work Together: Mission Partnership Between Black African Diaspora Churches and White British Churches in the UK," in African Voices: Towards African British Theologies, Global Perspective Series (Cumbria, UK: Langham Global Library, 2017), 224.

• In evangelistic campaigns and discipleship programs, the church must endeavor to inculcate biblical moral values through activities such as Bible studies, prayer meetings, purposeful church services, cell-group meetings, and strategic social activities. — Fredrick Amolo, "The Impact of an Essential Christian Theological Reconciliation Schema in Peace-Building in Africa," in African Contextual Realities, ed. Rodney L. Reed (Cambria, UK: Langham Global Library, 2018), 125.

I pray that you will be faithful to the work God has for you this week.