Browsing by Subject "Missionaries"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Heathens, 'Hottentots', and Heimat: Colonial Encounters and German Identity in Southwest Africa, 1842-1915
    (2017-04) Blackler, Adam
    At the turn of the twentieth century, depictions of colonized African peoples were prevalent in the German metropole. Tobacconists catered to the erotic fantasies of colonial enthusiasts with images of Hereromädchen (Herero girls) in their advertisements. Coffee companies used portraits of black African women to affirm the quality of their beans. Youth magazines allowed children to escape into “exotic” domains where their imaginations could wander unhindered by “civilized” social expectations. Anthropologists shifted the paradigms of scientific analysis by studying Naturvölker (“natural peoples”) as faceless objects. Novelists published romanticized accounts of faraway conflicts, a practice that over time made the realities of colonial bloodshed palpable for a continental audience. Though characterizations like these typified the contemporary discourse on Africa and epitomized Europe’s dominance over the continent, they belie the significant degree to which Africans in turn influenced German colonial policy. These portrayals also tell us little about how events in German Southwest Africa (DSWA) altered collective perceptions of the imperial project in Germany. "Heathens, 'Hottentots', and Heimat: Colonial Encounters and German Identity in Southwest Africa, 1842-1915" reorients our understanding of the relationship between Imperial Germany and its overseas empire in southern Africa. The principal objective of this study is to expose the other side of imperial domination, specifically how African peoples manipulated German rule and the degree to which colonial encounters overseas altered German national identity in the metropole. My focus on colonial encounters in DSWA shows that peoples in Windhoek, Swakopmund, and Otjimbingwe were as integral to Germany’s national development as the merchants, soldiers, and settlers who first ventured abroad in 1884. I emphasize encounters in DSWA as a means to illuminate the multifaceted composition of Germany’s imperial project in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This study contends that colonialism strengthened visions of identity that saw cultural difference and national belonging not just as competing phenomena, but also as forces that together fortified Germany’s presence abroad. By focusing on colonial encounters in DSWA, I show that African, German, and indigenous people in Southwest Africa were just as integral to Germany’s national development as the merchants, soldiers, and settlers who first ventured abroad in 1884. The dramatic increase in scholarship on German colonialism has been a welcomed development in the historiography. Much of this recent work has concentrated on colonial-era violence and the emergence of segregationist politics before and after the First World War. These inquires have raised important questions about the inherent role of violence in European colonial systems and have placed Germany’s overseas empire at the center of notable debates about the origins of mass murder in Europe and Nazi genocide. Apart from an emphasis on colonial genocide, historians have also started to investigate the transnational orientation of the German colonial project in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This dissertation builds on this research by examining how colonial interactions in DSWA affected collective impressions of the Heimat ideal in Europe. Though an inherently abstract idea, the concept Heimat denoted a local or national sense of place that was grounded in emotional attachments to local surroundings. I argue that after 1884, colonial conquest provided Heimat greater rhetorical and social mobility. In particular, it enabled missionaries, settler-colonialists, and politicians to appropriate Africa as a natural extension of German culture, memory, and tradition. An emphasis on colonial encounters in DSWA provides a means to illuminate the multifaceted composition of Germany’s imperial project in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
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    Nation-building and Catholic assistance to migrants in Italy's transition from land of emigration to immigration, 1861-1990
    (2014-03) Venditto, Elizabeth O'Ressa
    This dissertation analyzes how Italian Catholic missionaries understood Italian migrants' relationship to both an abstract Italian nation and a concrete Italian nation-state, and how those understandings affected the spiritual and charitable work that missionaries undertook with Italian migrants. Massive emigration after Italian unification in 1861 embarrassed the new state, and it attempted, with limited success, to convince Italians that they were part of an Italian national community, even abroad. Although the new state and the Catholic Church remained officially estranged until the 1929 Lateran Accords, Italian missionaries employed their own version of Italian nation-building as a key strategy for maintaining migrants' Catholicism abroad. Missionaries, including Scalabrinians, Salesians, Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, and the missionaries of the Opera Bonomelli, followed Italian migrants around the world and created Italian Catholic communities and institutions. Missionaries frequently collaborated with the Italian state both before and after the Lateran Accords, and though missionaries always insisted on their independence from the Italian state, their relationship with the state was complex and often contested under both the Liberal (1861-1922) and Fascist (1922-1943) governments. By the mid-twentieth century, Italian missionaries' work evolved into a universal migrant ministry rather that one focused exclusively on Italians. Missionaries began to argue for a more expansive notion of the Italian national community and greater political and social inclusion for the migrants who arrived in Italy in the late twentieth century. This project examines the complex intertwining of religion and nation-state in a country known for its weak state, strong Church, and high levels of mobility.
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    Selling the Mission: The North American YMCA in China 1890-1949
    (Institute of History, National Central University, Chungli, Taiwan, 2012-12-01) Bean, Ryan
    The archival material relating to the history of the North American Young Men’s Christian Association’s (YMCA) activities in China, housed at the Kautz Family YMCA Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries, spans over a hundred years of involvement in the region. The greater part documents the entry of American YMCA secretaries into the field in 1890 through to the creation of the People’s Republic in 1949. The YMCA’s role in the history of missionary work is curious. The YMCA was not organized as a missionary enterprise, though it worked intimately with missionaries. Over time the YMCA’s scope and work in China evolved. This paper seeks to trace an outline of that evolution - in particular the evangelical outreach in the missionary field - as evidenced by the material contained within the Kautz Family YMCA Archives.