Positionality and Knowledge Production about West Africa in the Basel Mission

Positionality as a Key Topic

During our excursion, we were often confronted with differing viewpoints on the history of the Basel Mission (BM) and its work. From the outset of our excursion some of us were more inclined to highlight the negative aspects of the mission’s past while others saw the positive sides as more important. Furthermore, the tour guides of Mission 21, the successor organisation of the BM, and the guide we had in Korntal also shared knowledge that diverged significantly in what they emphasized of the Mission’s activities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It became clear to me that our personal views and surroundings influenced whether we put more emphasis on the mission as a part of the greater framework of exploitative European colonial activities or as a positive influence that brought with it things like schools and new types of medical treatments. As a result of these observations, I found myself wondering what kind of knowledge was generated by the BM about the people and places the missionaries encountered in western Africa and what role positionality played in this.

Target Audiences of Knowledge

The Basel Mission published the missionary newspaper Evangelischer Heidenbote (“Heathen Messenger”), which was meant to propagate a certain knowledge about West Africa and other places, with an audience in mind that would have been generally supportive of the mission. Many donors and devout Christians were curious about the mission’s activities and reports. I am more interested, however, in the knowledge spread by newspapers that targeted a broader audience, including less staunchly Christian circles. According to Patrick Harries, Swiss households in the latter half of the nineteenth century were introduced to an image of Africa that was heavily influenced by missionary viewpoints and that constructed a sense of Switzerland in opposition to “Africa”.[1] To explore this knowledge generation for a less mission-oriented audience, I will use an example from the Basellandschaftliche Zeitung, a politically liberal newspaper of the nineteenth and twentieth century that was not directly mission-affiliated. The newspaper was published in Liestal by the brothers Lüdin; one of the brothers, G. Ad. Lüdin, was also its editor.

n.a.: Baselland. Mission (correspondence), in: Basellandschaftliche Zeitung, 20.08.1890, p. 3.
n.a.: Baselland. Mission (correspondence), in: Basellandschaftliche Zeitung, 20.08.1890, p. 3.

“The Holy Task” and the Exotic Image Constructed by Missionaries

The article’s author is unknown. It is, nonetheless, relevant for my analysis because it was published and served as a source of knowledge about West Africa for its readers. The article recounts the events of a missionary festivity that was held in Muttenz, a town close to Basel, in August 1890. The writer summarizes the speeches of two Basel missionaries and adds their own opinion at the end of the article. The first missionary was Mr. Steiner, who had been a missionary for several years and was the publisher of the missionary magazine in Basel at the time of the festivities. The second missionary was Mr. Tschopp from Ziefen, who was serving as missionary in the Gold Coast. Steiner appears to have focused on discussing Cameroon, where the BM had taken over mission activities from the English-led mission.

The article’s writer states that “Land und Leute, sowohl das Gebirg mit seiner wilden Bevölkerung, wie das Küstengebiet mit seinen intelligenten, handelstreibenden Einwohnern wurden […] uns vor Augen geführt“.[2] This quotation from the talk describes the people settled in the mountainous area of Cameroon as “wild” and the ones living near the coast as “intelligent and industrious”, constructing an image of a degree of civilization that decreases the further one goes inland. It also evokes a sense of the unknown and adventure which would have kept listeners engaged. Patrick Harries describes a similar effect of capturing readers’ and especially children’s attention with adventurous stories about Africa.[3] The article also quotes Steiner as describing Africa as the “schwarze[r] Erdtheils” i.e. “dark part of the earth” which was a title that was used in part due to the “dark acts” committed there according to Harries.[4] I would argue that the knowledge generated by these missionaries that was then subsequently spread through articles such as this one was based partially on a desire to inspire the imagination of readers and listeners out of a position of needing more support for the mission and its goals.

The other missionary, Tschopp, apparently familiarized everyone at the festivities with the “finstern Gebräuchen des Aberglaubens, welche die Heiden daselbst so unglücklich machen”[5] – the “sinister practices of superstition which make the heathens so unhappy”. Tschopp’s words infantilize Africans as ignorant, the source of their own unhappiness, and needing help from an outside source. Tschopp further noted that many local people were recognizing the light of the gospel, which is said to be the remedy against the “night” of these practices. This dichotomy of light and darkness, whether a genuine belief or not, evidently formed a key part of the knowledge construct that was being built up about Africans.

The article ends with a personal statement from the anonymous author expressing the hope that the festivities have convinced many that the mission is a “holy task of the true Christianity”.[6] For readers with little prior knowledge about West Africa the image created in their mind by this article would have been dominated by the concept of a holy mission that needed to spread the light of Christianity against the “darkness” of traditional practices in an exoticized unknown part of the earth.

Final Remarks

The personal positions of the writer of the article as a seemingly very religious individual as well as the desire for financial and community support for the missionaries undoubtedly informed how an image of Cameroon and the Gold Coast was constructed. Interestingly it seems that even a liberal newspaper at the time did not diverge much from common mission rhetoric. However, my observations of this singular article certainly cannot capture a broader or diachronic picture of the type of knowledge that a newspaper like the Basellandschaftliche Zeitung generated. Nonetheless, I believe it shows how the personal positions of the original source, in this case, the missionaries, as well as the person writing an article can influence what kind of knowledge is transmitted. In my opinion, the same holds true for all kinds of knowledge, which is why it’s important to always reflect on our own position as well as those of others. While this source shows that the knowledge spread to the wider public by missionaries included infantilizing ideas of Africans as heathens who needed to be converted in order to save them from darkness, during the excursion we also heard about how positive the impact of singular missionaries sometimes had been for Africans. Thus, for the case of the relationship between the BM and Ghana, which was initially perceived quite differently depending on our personal and cultural background, the setting of a shared, cross-cultural and academic excursion allowed all of us to share our perspectives, unravel misconceptions and pursue a more differentiated viewpoint with more critical, negative perspectives but also positive ways of evaluating the complex web of singular actors and organizations involved in the relationship between the BM and Ghana.

About the author:Arthur Lorenz Heller

I am currently studying History and Anglophone Linguistics and Literary studies at the University of Basel. The collaborative approach of the Baselfo project to the history of the Basel Mission and its involvement with Ghana was something that initially sparked my interest. I then found myself particularly intrigued by the different perspectives on the Basel Mission that existed amongst our group, in the people we encountered and in the past. Apart from my studies I am an avid fan of tabletop games and enjoy going for a run in nature.