Exploring the Heritage of the Basel Mission Together

In Twi, the most widely-spoken language in Ghana, “Baselfo” (plural) or “Baselnii” (singular) is the term for persons associated with the Basel Mission (BM) tradition. This website is the result of a collaborative teaching project that brought students and faculty from Basel, Switzerland, Accra and Akropong, Ghana, together in their joint endeavor to research the heritage of the Basel Mission. Students from the University of Ghana, the Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission and Culture, and the University of Basel discussed the history of the BM in two preparatory seminars, both online and on-site. At the heart of our collaboration were two excursions, one in southern Ghana in January 2024, and one in Basel and southern Germany in July 2024, where we jointly visited historic monuments, archives, and museums, while also talking to missionary descendants.
The Evangelical Missionary Society in Basel, founded in 1815, developed into one of the largest German-speaking missions. The missionaries of the early 19th century almost all came from pietistic peasant or artisan families in southwestern Germany and the Basel area. Ghana was one of the first countries to which the BM sent missionaries (1828). The work of the BM in Ghana gave birth to the Presbyterian Church of Ghana (PCG), one of the oldest and largest churches in the country.
In the former places of work of the BM in the south of Ghana, the traces of the mission are omnipresent until today, with schools and hospitals, cemeteries, churches, former homes of missionaries and plantations forming part of the BM’s material heritage. Likewise, missionary work has left traces in Basel itself as well as in pietistic areas in southwestern Germany. These include the central mission archive in Basel, local museums, churches and memorials. Moreover, the BM is a central part of family histories in Ghana as well as in Switzerland and Germany.


However, this tradition is valued very differently. In light of current decolonial debates, missions have (yet again) come under critical scrutiny, or even dismissed altogether as colonial agents. However, from a local perspective, the legacy of the BM is more complex, as many of our contributions show.
The aim of our cooperation is thus joint research and exchange on the history of BM, which connects Ghana, Switzerland and Germany until today. Despite the fact that the institutions involved in the collaboration were unequally resourced and despite visible differences in privilege among participants (not least financial), all participants were open to share and learn across unfamiliar cultures and discuss difficult topics like religion, slavery, gender, and patriarchy with sensitivity and respect. At times when certain sections of the media discredit anything “postcolonial”, this was a living example of what can be gained by approaching teaching from such a perspective.
This project was made possible thanks to the generous funding of the History Department of the University of Basel, the Center for African Studies Basel (ZASB), and the Freiwillige Akademische Gesellschaft (FAG). A special thanks also goes out to Veit Arlt and Andrina Sommer for their vital organizational support!