Missionaries, like these English ones teaching New Guineans to read in the early twentieth century, often paved the way for merchants by helping to pacify native populations and acculturate them to capitalist economic values. (Library of Congress)
Individuals sent to a foreign country for the purpose of spreading their faith or for humanitarian purposes.
The missionary movement, or the organized endeavor to convert nonbelievers, has a close affinity to other cross-cultural activities such as trade. As mission activity was carried out not only within the missionaries’ own culture, the missionaries intermingled with others—explorers, soldiers, and merchants—who pioneered the connections with foreign cultures.
On the one hand, dynamics of interdependence exist between the mission and commerce, wherein missionaries benefit from trade and mercantile interests benefit from the mission. Like other aspects of religious life, missionaries were not only religious apostles, but also bearers of other interactions including trade. Missionaries have used trade and commerce routes to penetrate remote communities, which were not converted. Tradesmen used the early connections made by missionaries to penetrate new markets. On the other hand, because of the different priorities of each party, constant tension between trade interests and religious ones existed.
When discussing the phenomenon of the mission and its interactions with trade, it is important to separate the proselytizing religions, like Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam, which encourage missionary activity as a means to spread their respective religious philosophy, from the non-proselytizing religions, like Judaism and Hinduism, which oppose active and organized conversion. For this reason, some religious traditions did not spread alongside trade routes (although believers of these religions were also engaged in trade and cross-cultural interactions), while others had close links with trade.
It is also tempting to view the missionary phenomenon as homogeneous. In fact, missionaries and their links with trade differed across various denominations and organizations, and sometimes different policies and links could be found even in the same mission. Modern views of the mission often judge the missionaries’ actions by present-day norms, but many of the motives that guided the missionaries and the worldview that contributed to these motives were consequences of times in which they lived.
However, it could be said that in the premodern period, in which regimes and religious organizations were closely linked, so were in many cases also the regimes’ economic and political interests and those of the religious institutions. Newly conquered populations were converted to the reigning religion and used to carry out the commercial interests of the regime.
Missionaries, like these English ones teaching New Guineans to read in the early twentieth century, often paved the way for merchants by helping to pacify native populations and acculturate them to capitalist economic values. (Library of Congress)
In Islam, religious conversion is an essential part of the religion. It is the duty of each Muslim to spread the “calling” (Da’wa), and the duty of a Muslim regime is to make sure all believers of nonmonotheistic religions have converted to Islam (Jews and Christians are not to be converted and could live under Muslim regimes as protégés). The spread of the Islamic empire since the tenth century was, therefore, closely linked with the mass conversion of conquered populations.
After the initial militant expansion, Islam was mainly spread by merchants rather than by organized “missions.” The merchants who traveled to the far corners of the Dar el Islam (the land where Islam rules) brought with them Islam. However, since these merchants were not Islamic teachers, and their beliefs were often mixed with mystical Sufi Islam, these ideas, and not those of the Islamic orthodoxy, prevailed.
During the early medieval period, the main missionary effort was concentrated in Europe. Until the ninth century, the main forces in the spread of Christianity were Irish monks, who wandered throughout the Continent, spreading the gospel eastward through Budapest, and southward through Florence. The Irish brethren supported the empire of Charlemagne and strengthened its internal ties. The barbarian conquest of Ireland (and of its rich monasteries) marked a decline in the spread of Christianity from Ireland, which was later occupied by the English.
A further effort was made eastward (toward the Middle East) during the Crusades. The Crusades could be defined for that purpose as “armed missions.” Their conversion efforts were forceful and included the persecution of non-Christian populations (mainly Jews and Muslims) en route. The crusaders brought back with them goods, as well as financial methods, used in the East that were more advanced than those in contemporary Europe.
The age of Enlightenment provided the church with new challenges. While it continued to spread the gospel, its links to the regime were not obvious and it had to “compete” with new scientific ideas. With the imperialist spread in Africa and America, Europeans encountered new religious cultures, which were not similar to what was practiced in Europe or to what was known to have been practiced by Muslims. Given that the missionaries’ knowledge of the local practices and beliefs was often poor and based on superstitions and prejudices, they did not consider them to be parts of a “religion”; instead, the missionaries deemed the native populations in need of conversion. Moreover, the local populace was considered a “helpless” and “barbaric” population that needed to be “saved” or “salvaged.”
The missionaries were the first Europeans that many inhabitants of the newly acquired territories encountered. Thus, missionaries served as the “avant-garde” of the imperial powers, examining the area and making contacts with local populations before the arrival of the administrative powers. However, they were also perceived by the population as an integral part of the European forces and were an easy target for nationalists. The reports sent by the missionaries to their respective motherlands and their policy preferences played an essential role in the European expansion to Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
The missionaries were among the first to arrive in the newly “discovered” continent. During the early sixteenth century, missionaries arrived in Latin America, following the conquistadors, and were protected by soldiers. They belonged to several orders, which differed in their mission policies and in their consequences. These differences also affected the order’s (and the local populace’s) attitude toward the local traders.
With the arrival of the missionary organizations, the locals who were not already settled in communities (meaning the hunter-gatherers) were to be settled in mission communities, where they would work for food and live a communal “Christianized” life that was separated from the pagan traditions outside the mission villages. This organization of labor would also maintain them as an economic force. However, conflicts began to develop between them and the imperial (Spanish and Portuguese) administrations, because those different policies favored, first and foremost, the interests of the church, and not those of the regime. Moreover, since the missionaries were identified with the regime, in cases of Indian rebellions against the administration, the missionaries were also persecuted.
The Jesuit order maintained missions in much of the Spanish and Portuguese territories, where they employed a combined method of conversion through work in communities, in which food and labor were not transformable into payments. The relationship between the Jesuit priesthood, which was not indebted to the Spanish regime (but directly to the Holy See), and the “secular” Spanish administration was not always peaceful. The Jesuit priests expressed their opposition to the Spanish government in matters relating to the education of the local populace, as well as in matters concerning their subjugation as a workforce. In some areas, they went up against the mine and plantation owners, thus coming in direct conflict with the Spanish government.
The Jesuits maintained that even though their system prevented instability, the exploitation of the locals would drive them into rebellion. However, it was claimed the Jesuits themselves employed the native populace in slave-like conditions, holding them sometimes against their will, using corporal punishments, and gaining profits from the work of the locals.
Franciscans, who also arrived following the military forces, were different in their approach. They presented to the local population small tradable “gifts,” usually valueless commodities in Europe, which were unknown in America, like scissors, clothing, and beads. They also cooperated with local tradesmen and served as gobetweens for the locals and the tradesmen. Money from donations in the religious services and from the labor of the natives went partially to the Spanish Crown.
In Brazil, the Jesuit mission was highly active in Christianizing the Indians. However, because of the Brazilian geographical conditions, many natives escaped to the interior. The Jesuits persuaded the Portuguese to attack the interior and especially the Tupi, who had escaped there. The Jesuits viewed the enslavement of the captives taken during this military campaign as legitimate (as opposed to the enslavement of those who were not war captives). The slaves were to be used in the Portuguese plantation system, and the Jesuits used the potential profits from the plantations as a convincing argument in favor of the war to the king of Portugal. However, because of the Portuguese labor subjugation system, conflicts between the Jesuits, who wanted to convert and socialize the natives in their villages, and the administration arose. Eventually, the administration’s need for labor was met with shipments of enslaved “war captives” from Africa, sent partially by the Jesuits, as will be discussed later on.
With the early nineteenth-century nationalistic revolts against the Spaniards and the Portu guese, hostilities against the missionaries, who were identified as tools of the administrations, broke out. Many mission villages were “emancipated” into secular townships (pueblos). The Indians, who were once employed in the mission system, became landless and unemployed.
In North America, trade was often, but not always, correlated with the spread of Christianity. The journey to North America was long, and the missionaries needed sponsors. Since governments did not sponsor all missionary activity in North America, the funding had to come from other sources. Coupled with this dependency on funding was the interest of tradesmen in finding new markets and new populations, as well as finding new sites for the settlement of European immigrants.
Thus, European businessmen who hoped to expand their businesses to the new territories after the missionaries made the first contact sponsored some mission delegations. However, in other cases, the link between the tradesmen and the missionaries was opposite, and missionaries followed the tradesmen to their new settlements, trying to convert or maintain a spiritual presence among the tradesmen. Tradesmen, especially those engaged in fur and whalebone trade with the Native Americans, were neither involved in nor belonged to religious organizations. The missionaries that followed them were sometimes in conflict with the tradesmen, although the missionaries took advantage of the initial acquaintance of the tradesmen with the local populace.
For example, until the early nineteenth century, fur traders, despite their disrespect for their counterparts’ religious beliefs, did not try to convert the Native Americans. The managers of state conglomerates, such as the Hudson’s Bay Company, also made little effort to convert the local population. On the other hand, missionaries sometimes insisted on accompanying the fur traders in their contacts with local populace. In any case, by the early nineteenth century, and with the settlement of European immigrants in the area, missionary efforts began. Missionaries were not always allied with the traders in those areas, and the traders were sometimes criticized by the missionaries for causing damage to their relations with the local population.
The phenomenon of the traveling “missionaries,” whose calling is the conversion of nonbelievers, was well known by both Muslims and Buddhists in Asia. Buddhism spread throughout Asia by traveling businessmen and monks, who converted the native populations from Mongolia to Indonesia, and from India to Japan.
Missionaries and foreign traders were associated in their arrival to Asia and in their attempts to influence the local populace. The Muslim traders and missionaries were partially successful in their attempts to convert the local population, especially in Southern Asia (Indonesia and Malaysia) and in the Indian subcontinent.
The European missions attained partial success in their outposts in the Indian subcontinent and in China. The British missions in India had only partial success in converting the local populace. Most of the converted were of the lower castes. The Jesuit activity in China was marred by the locals’ refusal to adhere to the pope’s directives prohibiting Confucian rituals (1704). Many missionaries took the opposite view, which demonstrates how flexible the missionaries could be, especially when handling foreign populations. The Portuguese and the Spaniards, who viewed the conversion of “heathens” to Roman Catholicism as necessary, were especially noteworthy in the establishment of missions. Throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, these policies had gained the most success in the Spanish colony of the Philippines, where a large portion of the population converted.
In Japan, the European missionary and trade attempts were viewed as hostile cultural, economical, and political permeations. They were blocked by an official policy, the Sakoku, from the mid-seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries. The Japanese saw the spread of Christianity in the country (mainly by Jesuit and Portuguese missionaries) as endangering their environment and as a political danger: the Christians might ally with the Portuguese and the Manila-based Spaniards.
The Sakoku policy excluded Roman Catholic priests and traders from Japan and forbade the practice of Christianity within the country. Also, Japanese were banned from foreign travel. The se clusion was not total—Dutch, Korean, and Chinese merchants were allowed to enter Japan and trade in limited areas. Designated Japanese traders were allowed to travel to Korea. The Japanese policy prevented a wide range of missionary activity and trade in the country. Decades before the official policy was put into effect, a line of edicts and policies hostile to missionaries and Christians were issued. The first edict, which prohibited the practice of Christianity in Japan, was issued in 1587. It was not always effectively enforced, and from 1623 the policy became stricter, as Japanese officials used surveillance and torture against missionaries and converts. Between 1633 and 1639, the first five official Sakoku directives, which persecuted missionaries and converts and regulated foreign trade and travel, were issued. A reward was offered to those handing over a Bateren (foreign priest) or revealing a Bateren’s location. Assistance to Baterens or to other proscribed foreigners, and later the maintenance of adopted half-European children, was also punishable. This Japanese policy made it an interesting comparative case to other regions, to which the European missionaries, and with them the traders, penetrated.
In China, for example, missionaries were very much involved in the economic life of the areas under their influence. After the Opium Wars (1839–42) and the legalization of the opium trade, Protestant missionaries in China were associated with free traders in the attempts to expose China to trade with Europe during the mid-nineteenth century. As they had concerning the issue of African slavery, the missionaries pressured the European governments to regulate the trade with China. They wanted to prevent what seemed to them as unfavorable trade that might hinder the interest of “opening up China.” The targets of their criticism were, among others, the opium traders. These merchants were highly criticized, not without the usage of religious bigotry. The missionaries were concerned that the trade with China might cease, unless the trade in opium was banned.
After the Americas, sub-Saharan Africa was one of the places where the influence of the missionaries was most dominant. The first Europeans to express interest in converting Africans were the Portuguese. In the late fifteenth century, the Portuguese, who had just recently recuperated from their victory in the long battle to preserve the Catholic character of the Iberian Peninsula (a victory that also involved the deportation of Jews and Muslims from Spain and Portugal), began to express interest in the conversion of Africans for the purpose of establishing allies against the Muslims. By the early sixteenth century (and after Christopher Columbus’s arrival in America), new trade interests changed the Portuguese agenda, and the efforts to Christianize Africa were abandoned in favor of a much more profitable commerce from Africa: the slave trade.
In 1490, they arrived in the Kingdom of Bakongo, where the ruler was baptized. King Afonso I became a zealous Catholic and an admirer of the Christian and European culture. He believed, like the missionaries that taught him, that the slave trade was a legitimate trade. When slave traders from the island of São Tomé (where the Portuguese had built plantations) arrived in Congo, he cooperated with them in the quest for slaves and felt deceived only by the meager profit they left him. In order to acquire more slaves, the Portuguese merchants initiated rebellions against the kingdom, with the intention that the war captives would be sold into slavery.
By 1522, the kingdom was shattered, depopulated, and disintegrated. The Portuguese traders took over the kingdom, leaving Afonso with only ceremonial authority. European missionaries scorned his son, who had been ordained as a bishop. During this period, the Portuguese (and Jesuit) missionaries viewed themselves as representatives of their governments’ and European interests, including maintaining the slave trade and convincing more kings to trade in slaves, and were less interested in preserving Christianity in Bakongo.
The Portuguese missionaries also maintained a station in Gatwo (Benin), where the few locals who were baptized and taught to read and write became valuable mediators in the slave trade. As a result of rumors of considerable gold deposits in the region, they also expressed interest in the area of Luanda (located in present-day Angola). The resistance in the region, combined with tropical diseases, drove them out of the inland areas and the Portuguese remained only in Luanda.
During this period, the Portuguese and Jesuit missionaries were highly involved in the slave trade. The missionaries claimed that the enslavement of Africans would introduce them to European values of work in the American colonies. The Jesuits, who oversaw the education system in the Portuguese colonies, were highly supportive of this claim. The order owned slave trade ships that were engaged in the shipment of Africans from Luanda to Brazil. Before departing, slaves were baptized.
The missionaries’ connection with the tradesmen was also apparent in the Portuguese attempts to establish their dominance in East Africa. The Portuguese set up several outposts in East Africa—first on the shores of modern-day Mozambique and later northward, in Zanzibar and on the islands along the coast of modern-day Tanzania. The Portuguese prime interest was in trade, especially with their colony in Goa (India), but Augustine missionaries followed the tradesmen, setting up missions in the outposts. It was not until the Portuguese were driven out of the region that the missions ceased to operate.
New efforts to massively convert the people of Africa were not conducted again until the nineteenth century. In nineteenth-century Europe, missionaries played a major role in the opposition to the African slave trade, pressuring their governments (and especially the British government) to abolish the trade. The struggle itself and its aftermath raised the missionary interest in Africa.
The abolitionists argued that the Africans should not be enslaved and that it was the “white man’s burden” to enlighten them on the ways to exploit the wealth of their continent, instead of the trade in its populace. However, to demonstrate the financial potential awaiting the merchants in Africa, missionaries served first and foremost the commercial interests, finding new profitable enterprises for the tradesmen in order to convince them that abolition would not cause them to lose money.
Many missionaries deliberately associated trade and Christianity and saw the insertion of the Western economic system as their mission. The most noteworthy of those bringing Christianity and trade together was David Livingstone. The supporters of the “commerce and Christianity” theory claimed that Christianity and commerce were interdependent and that each strengthened the other. As such, missionaries should be engaged in trade and vice versa. Then again, it should be mentioned, that since the missionaries were not a homogeneous group, their attitudes differed on this question. Most of the missionaries came from the middle and lower classes, and their alliance with the local European merchants was not guaranteed.
Thus, and in correlation with the rising interest in the salvation of the Africans, missionary commissions arrived on the coasts of Africa by the early to mid-nineteenth century, more than a dozen years before the colonization of the interior of the continent. Their aim was to transform African society. Despite the distrust that their effort raised among the locals, the colonial authorities perceived them as a tool for making the first contact with local leaders, before any financial investment.
The missionaries’ task was not without hazards. Many times, their poor knowledge of African society, its structures and traditions, caused misunderstandings, and their attempt to transform the society raised anxieties and hostilities. In many cases, their ignorance concerning diseases and dangers put them in physical danger.
The arrival of Christianity had an immense effect on the local population. Those who followed the missionaries and converted were sometimes considered outcasts in their own ethnic group. The decision to go to a missionary school was understood as a declaration of dissociation from the group.
Old traditions broke down, sometimes without being replaced by new ones. An example is the abolition of the clientele system among the Xhosa. The southern African group of Xhosa consisted of a subgroup, the Mfungu, in which the Xhosa served as patrons to the Mfungu. A domi nant group of missionaries, wary of slavery, led a campaign to “emancipate” the Mfungu. The result was a change in Xhosa structures and their economic conditions (since Xhosa lands were granted to the freed Mfungu), and an alliance between the mission and the Mfungu. Consequently, the Xhosa were weakened in their resistance to the British. Some groups were divided along religious lines (depending on what missionary organization—Roman Catholic or Protestant—arrived to which region), and internal loyalties broke down. What is more, the missionaries encouraged the new converts to remain neutral during armed conflicts between the local groups and the colonial forces.
Since most missionaries were linked to the dominant European force in the region, their affinity with the colonial regime’s political and financial policies was in many cases stronger than their commitment to the group they served. Some researchers suggest that the missionaries encouraged neutrality and started internal conflicts in the groups support colonial authorities, which favored the weakening of the structures of the bigger groups. However, it should be mentioned that many missionaries felt that the participation of Africans in wars against the colonial regime would only hurt the locals.
Other links of the missionaries with the colonial regime were in providing information on the societies they served. The missionaries often served as intermediates between the Africans and the colonial government, or between the Africans and European traders. This role was essential to the exchange of commodities and to bridge language and cultural differences.
In Oceania and most of the Pacific islands, European immigration overwhelmed the original indigenous population. In Australia, missionaries were unsympathetic to trade that took place between the convict laborers and the Aboriginal population. The convicts bought and sold sexual favors, tobacco, and alcohol. The missionaries expressed criticism on the corruption of the Aborigines, whom they intended to convert and study.
Similarly, in New Zealand by the mid-nineteenth century the missionaries began to express deep criticism of the white settlers, who were seen as destructive to the Maori society. The mission complained that the white settlers, especially the whalers and other “entrepreneurs,” introduced prostitution, alcohol consumption, and other ills to the Maori society. In Africa, too, some voices expressed concern and criticism of the introduction of alcohol and other destructive elements to the local society.
In the Hawaiian Islands, the local populace almost vanished, as the European missionaries and the settlers outnumbered it. The Europeans, who owned most of the lands and cultivated it in plantations, dominated Hawaiian politics and the economy. The indigenous Hawaiian population declined, and the need for workers on the plantations was filled by massive immigration from Asia.
With the Industrial Revolution, missions in Europe and North America became charity organizations, whose purpose was to save the poor from a life of idleness, drunkenness, and violence through the establishment of orphanages, soup kitchens, and other charitable activities. These missions provided businessmen and the government with a social support system and structural stability that enabled them not to be concerned about the welfare of the poor. Even in countries with formal state and church separation, the state relied heavily on the missions in dealing with the problem of poverty.
In colonial societies, missionaries played a crucial role in the socialization of the local populace. Missionaries began to develop different disciplines that were not part of the regime. Region-specific medicine and hospitals were developed, and agricultural methods were introduced. The missionaries also introduced Western methods of planning and infrastructure. The use of foreign products (tea, clothing, and so on) was also part of the introduced “European way of life.” As a result, the formerly self-sufficient subsistence economy was undermined and weakened. How ever, the missionaries’ most crucial contribution was in the pedagogic realm.
Local languages were reduced to written form, and appropriate grammar books and dictionaries were written, so that the laymen could read their Bible. A system of education, including one of adult literacy education, was established. The first to enjoy these systems were those whose social systems were already instable or vanishing: liberated slaves, Creoles, and refugees from wars and famines. Ironically, many of these same people became the first African preachers, businessmen, and clerks.
The missionaries’ educational endeavors and the enforcement of a belief and ritual system influenced first and foremost the local elites, but also, through them, the general public. The missionary education system had a tremendous influence on the shape of future postcolonial regimes. Among other influences, many Third World leaders were educated in missionary schools (most notably in Jesuit schools) and the political structures of their countries were also influenced by the cultural and financial activity of the missionaries in their country.
The new elite group became those who were fully socialized, that is, those who were baptized. Therefore, a new elite that adopted the European revolutionary means and abandoned those of their traditions was created. Those who were educated at the missionary schools found profitable jobs in the colonial administration or in the integration of the trade and economic organizations, but not always with the support of the local Europeans, who objected to the education of the local native populace. Thus, the missionary schools became the gateway to success in the colonies.
The salaries of those working in the administration, although lower than those of their white counterparts, gradually introduced the capitalist currency system to traditional societies. Merchandise was sold for currency, not in barter exchange for another commodity, and consisted of formerly unused articles of trade that originated from the West. However, the market power of the local products was damaged by his transformation.
Other members of the native populace, who were not working in clerical jobs for the administration, had to adapt to the new economic system. As a result, they had to enhance the production of their agricultural products, with the intention that these products could be sold in the market, or to begin working for larger systems, usually for colonial plantations. A process of proletarization began, as locals began to desert their traditional posts and occupations in favor of working for the Europeans; that is, they wanted jobs that would pay them in currency.
The missionaries’ relationships with the colonial powers also went through changing dynamics, from complete adherence and correlation in interest, to identification by the missionaries with the local population, and, later on, with their struggle for independence. The links between the missionaries and the colonial governments acted sometimes against the former in cases of disputes between a colonial government and local groups and especially with the struggle for independence.
Missionaries themselves were not always supportive of the European forces and their governments. In these cases, they were perceived as “traitors” by both sides. After independence, missionaries were sometimes involved in activities against dictatorships and intolerant regimes, mobilizing the local population to struggle against the oppression.
The Philippines serve as a good example in this case. The Catholic Church arrived at the archipelago with the Spanish imperialist forces to organize the conversion of the locals and thereafter served as an accomplice with the occupying regime. However, throughout the Spanish occupation local clergy who supported the native populace slowly emerged among the missionaries. One of them was Jose Rizal, a young priest who became the leader of the Philippines anticolonial movement that struggled against the Spanish regime. Rizal was hanged by the Spaniards, and the Philippines became an American colony, but the church and its people were involved in several other popular struggles, most notably to overthrow the Ferdinand Marcos regime in a peaceful democratic revolution in 1986.
Similar to the change of dynamics with the colonial powers, the missions also changed their view of trade. If in the first decades of European expansion trade was promoted, hailed, and encouraged by the missionaries, in the post-colonialist period, especially in recent years, there was a change in most missions’ policies. Several factors influenced this change. In Catholic missions, one of the most dominant influences was liberation theology, which attempted to integrate socialism and Christianity and was popular in the Third World throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Another issue is the rights of local indigenous populations, in terms of land and resources, against global corporations, local governments, and their financial interests.
Some of these attitudes are reflected in the involvement of Jesuits in the Chiapas rebellion of native Mexicans against their government in the 1990s. The impact of liberation theology reached Protestant missionaries as well. Some adopted similar positions toward trade and human rights, while others, mainly American Pentecostals, as a counterreaction, drew closer to authoritarian right-wing regimes, to block “Catholic communism.”
The Pentecostal churches have enjoyed rapid growth since the late 1970s, not only because their spiritual approach integrated popular and mystical beliefs with charismatic and flexible organization and laymen activity, but also because of their emphasis on free-market economy and on the success of businesspeople.
Tamar Gablinger
See also: Buddhism; Hinduism; Islam; Judaism; Pilgrimages; Slavery.
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