Everyday Life of Protestant Missions’ Communities in South Africa (First Half of the 19th Century)

Abstract

The article examines the activities of Protestant missionaries in South Africa. It was the most important component of the processes of the formation of a colonial society and the transformation of African society in the 19th century. Based on memoirs, travel journals, diaries and letters of missionaries, as well as official publications of the British Parliament and the Cape Colony, the article analyzes changes in economic life and the economic structure, the spread of school education, new family values and forms of organizing the living space of Protestant missions in South Africa. It then examines the African contribution to the life of Christian communities, which turned them into a fusion of modernity and precolonial traditions. Even the most stringent measures could not uproot the traditions of Africans, and missionaries had to reconcile or turn a blind eye to these practices within their congregations. The conclusion is that the Christian communities of Protestant missions were conceived, on the one hand, as the communities of the elect, as in early Protestant history; but they were, at the same time, a completely new syncretic phenomenon as the result of the interaction of cultures on the African continent.