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A colonial concordat: two views of christianity and civilisation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
Sierra leone began as an explicitly christian colony, and as an overwhelmingly african one. The 1100 immigrants of african descent who effectively took over Granville Sharp’s ‘Province of Freedom’ were as much children of the evangelical revival as the Clapham philanthropists who planned and financed the settlement. They brought other transatlantic imports to Africa besides evangelical religion; a material culture based on that of the plantation states where most of them had once lived (so they built their houses in the ‘colonial’ style, wore european clothes and spoke english) and radical political reflexes which came to be hardened and sharpened by the settled sense of grievance, first in Nova Scotia and then in Sierra Leone.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1975
References
1 On the whole period covered by this article see Fyfe, [C.], [A History of Sierra Leone] (London 1962)Google Scholar; and for an interpretation of the forces at work in Sierra Leone in the period of the settlement of the recaptives, Peterson, [J.], [Province of Freedom: a History of Sierra Leone 1787-1870] (London 1969)Google Scholar. On the religious significance of the Nova Scotia settlers, see Walls, [A. F.], [‘A Christian Experiment: the early Sierra Leone colony’], in The Mission of the Church and the Propagation of the Faith, SCH 6 (1970) pp 107-29Google Scholar.
2 See Peterson p 13.
3 See CMS Archives CA 1 E5, Kenneth Macaulay to Zachary Macaulay 25 September 1815: ‘The captured negroes and other natives do no doubt get polished by their constant intercourse with the former settlers.’
4 See Fyfe p 124.
5 MacCarthy to William Davies, Paris, 28 February 1821, printed in appendix to [Extracts from the Journal of William] Davies, [1st, when a missionary at Sierra Leone] (Llanidloes, preface dated 1835).
6 See Ricketts, [Major], Narrative of the Ashantee War (London 1831) p 58 Google Scholar: ‘if [the superintendent of ordnance] had not suddenly disappeared ... it is probable that if Sir Charles had had the means at the moment, he would have put his threat into execution of suspending him to a tree.’
7 See Fyfe p 147.
8 Three settlements outside Freetown - Leicester, Wilberforce and Hogbrook (renamed Regent’s Town by MacCarthy) antedated MacCarthy’s arrival. MacCarthy reorganised them and created ten more.
9 Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility cap 17.
10 I have often heard him observing, after coming into my house, ‘Davies, such and such a man, that lives in such a house, is one of your members, is he not?’ ‘How does your Excellency know?’ ‘Why, he has white-washed his house, his fence around the premises is good, his garden is clean and productive.’ ‘Your Excellency is right - he is a member, and Christianity alone can civilize: for godliness is profitable for all things, and when they get religion they will be industrious’. Davies, p 53.
11 CMS Archives CA 1 E5, MacCarthy to Pratt, 15 June 1816.
12 See CMS Archives CA 1 E5/71, MacCarthy to Pratt.
13 On Davies’ ejection, see Walls. His period as superintendent at Leopold is only minimally reflected in the methodist missionary society archives, which hold his letters from Freetown, but is documented in the 1835 memoir.
14 At the beginning of those operations known as ‘The Society for Missions to Africa and the East.’
15 CMS Archives CA 1 5E/71, MacCarthy to Pratt.
16 Ibid Kenneth to Zachary Macaulay, 25 September 1815. Zachary Macaulay sent the letter on to CMS.
17 Ibid Pratt to Garnon, 9 April 1817. The missionary in question was Leopold Butscher, ‘a good man’, as Garnon replied.
18 See Peterson pp 67 et seq.
19 CMS Archives CA I E5, Bickersteth to Pratt, 20 April 1816.
20 Missionary Register July 1816.
21 William Garnon, while deprecating MacCarthy’s complaints about CMS dilatoriness, urged the sending out of Bickersteth’s twelve instead of a reply to his letter. CMS Archives CA 1 E5A, Garnon to Pratt, 28 October 1816.
22 In the private notes for Bickersteth, made prior to his visit, (CMS Archives CA 1 E5/141) Pratt indicated ‘The Society will undertake to supply all the required teachers if it can retain reasonable control over them,’ and outlined a scheme whereby teachers appointed to the government would be regarded as connected with the society, and their salaries paid through the society. A much smaller scale affair than the parish system, was, of course, envisaged.
23 CMS Archives CA 1 E5, Pratt to MacCarthy, 11 November 1816.
24 CMS Archives CA 1 E5A, Garnon to Pratt, 28 October 1816.
25 See Walls, A. F., ‘Missionary Vocation and the Ministry: the first generation’ in New Testament Christianity for Africa and the World: Essays in honour of Harry Sawyerr, ed Glasswell, M. E. and Fashole-Luke, E. W. (London 1974)Google Scholar.
26 CMS Archives CA 1 E5A, Pratt to Garnon, 9 April 1817.
27 CA 1 E5, Wenzel to Pratt, 21 June 1816, and Pratt’s reply ibid 2 November 1816. See CA 1 E7A Nylander to Bickersteth, 3 March 1819, and Peterson pp 132-5.
28 CA 1 E5A, Pratt to Garnon, 9 April 1817.
29 The sad decline of C. F. Wenzel is evident: see, for example, ibid Garnon to Pratt 28 October 1816.
30 Near contemporaries and later writers have pointed to Johnson’s magisterial powers as part of the secret of his missionary success (see Fyfe p 129, Peterson pp 116 et seq. and writers quoted) but it must be noticed that the experience of Wenzel and Nylander, quoted above, was that magisterial functions militated against missionary effectiveness.
31 He was a hanoverian, who had worked in a distillery and a sugar refinery in London. See Jowett, [W.,] Memoir [of the Rev. W. A. B.] Johnson (London 1852)Google Scholar. Nevertheless, though he says he did not understand english very well in 1812, he was writing it very effectively by 1816, and he was recognized as the best qualified of the three teachers sent out then, CA 1 E5/23.
32 Johnson, Memoir 94.
33 Ibid p 125. Mr Davies was, of course, a wesleyan. Baptism was not the only matter where Johnson recognised an absolutism other than the governor’s. He refused, for instance, to encourage the singing of ‘God Save the King’, on the ground that it was customarily sung over a beerpot, while fully agreeing with a perplexed MacCarthy that ‘Honour the King’ was an apostolic injunction, ibid.