Protestant Missions and Colonial States

This chapter provides a brief overview of the evolution in the relationship between Protestant Christian missions and colonial administrations in Africa between 1880 and 1960. While discussing developments over these eighty years in general, the chapter will concentrate on providing some background to what is identified as a social revolution that took place during the 1920s. The chapter makes the case that beginning in the 1920s, Protestant missions, working with and against colonial governments, put into place institutions, programs, and initiatives that allowed some Africans, typically Christian Africans, with the knowledge and skill to assert some control over the provision of social welfare in colonized Africa. Over the latter decades of the colonial era, these Africans became the social face of Western modernity in Africa.