How much did religion play a role in the politics of Colonial Africa?*
Religion played a significant role in the politics of colonial Africa, the most important being the actions of the Christian missions. It has been argued by historians such as Andrew Porter that the missions refrained from political activity and acted only on a religious agenda, but I will argue that is far from the case. In a direct manner, the missions purposefully influenced colonial Africa’s politics, such as the Angolan Catholic missions’ limitation of Protestant missions’ education subsidies. And it will be argued that indirectly the religious activities of the missions helped create African nationalism, which dominated the politics of the colonial era’s later years. Religion did play a role in colonial politics in other ways, but less significantly. Colonialists were primarily concerned with the control and stability of their territories; if religion threatened peace then it became a part of colonial politics. In choosing which authorities to support, different religious authorities were assessed for their ability to control; the colonialists’ decision was based on political necessity, not religious conviction. Finally, it will be proposed that religious sentiment did not influence colonialists in choosing whether to support missions. If missions were useful to colonial rule, they were supported, if not, they came into conflict with the colonialists. Thus while religion played a significant role in politics due to mission activity, in determining colonial policy it was not an important factor.
The missions purposefully affected the politics of colonial Africa. Porter argued “missions rejected all political involvement” due to their focus on their Christianizing aim. Porter may be correct in assessing the missions’ aims, but he is mistaken in underestimating the extent to which they sought political influence. Missions’ religious motives manifested themselves in political action. In the Belgian Congo the Catholic missions decisively affected policy; in forcing the resignation of Governor-General Lippens, in preventing the Protestant missions from attaining education subsidies. Such was their control of colonial politics that Markowitz claimed they were “a power to be reckoned with… and on occasion practically a law unto themselves.” It may be unfair to criticize Porter with this evidence, however, as his claim was based on British, not Belgian, imperialism. But in British East Africa, missions were also political significant. As fellow Europeans, missionaries’ views on local chiefs could influence colonial authorities’ choices over local authority. The Kenyan missionaries did not just focus on local politics. In the wider arena of colonial policy they formed a relationship with the settler community, their national organizations being the Protestant Alliance and the Legislative Council respectively. Githige highlighted the two groups successfully lobbying one another for support, over the 1923 Indian Question, when settlers were against the idea of Indian settlement of the Highlands, and over the 1929 circumcision crisis, in which the missions, mainly the Church of Scotland Mission (CSM), tried to force the colonial administration to support their attack on clitoridectomy. It is not the case that all missions participated in colonial politics; non-Portuguese Catholic missionaries in Angola had no interest in the politics of the region, but the actions of missions in colonies like the Congo and Kenya show that missions often played a vital role in colonial politics.
Not only did missions directly affect colonial politics, they also indirectly inspired African nationalist movements which would dominate the politics of the later colonial era and help bring about the end of colonial rule. Religion’s role in politics can, therefore, not be over exaggerated. Ayandele claimed “the church was the cradle of Nigerian nationalism” and the consequences of the missions’ actions confirms this sentiment true for all of colonial Africa. As the distributors of education, missions moulded the minds of the future leaders of the nationalist movements, such as Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Agostinho Neto and Jonas Savimbi of Angola. While in certain colonies the missionaries took a role of politically representing native interests, in others they sought to educate the Africans in political activism; evidence being the missions’ creation of the Ecole des Sciences Administratives a Kisantu in the Congo. It could be argued that it was not the products of the missions, but the independent churches which played the greater role in political nationalism. Ilega alluded to the God’s Kingdom Society and the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons in West Africa as nationalists split between independent churches and indigenous cultural groups dominating the political sphere. But Porter concluded that, while important, the role of the separatist churches should not be exaggerated as “most Christians continued to belong to the mission congregations.” While I side with Porter, as the missions churches had been longer established and would therefore have more support, the evidence on both sides leads us to accepting that religious bodies, be they mission church or separatist movement, had an important impact upon the nationalist politics of the African late colonial era.
Not only did the missions inspire political nationalism via education, they also brought about an indigenous cultural nationalism by using religion to attack traditional customs. No where in Africa was this more evident than in Kenya, with the consequences of the circumcision crisis. Strayer argued that “culture not politics seemed to have been the driving force” of this collision between the CMS and the Kikuyu. But while the Kikuyu may have seen this as a cultural assault, the CMS perceived it as a part of their religious duty to attack ‘barbaric’ practises. The Kikuyu perception of Western cultural imposition resulted in a radicalized nationalism. Although land and labour grievances were paramount in the Mau Mau rebellions, religion had played its part in turning Kikuyu opinion against colonial rule. However, it must also be recognized that religion’s role in politics was not so clear cut as producing a culturally indigenous nationalism in one territory and a missionary supported one in another. The God’s Kingdom Society and N.C.N.C. in West Africa have already been highlighted as conflicting nationalist movements in one region, but in Kenya too the Kikuyu Central Association’s establishment had been “facilitated by its mission contacts at Kahuhia” and the later Christian opponents of the Mau Mau were part of the Revivalist group that originated in Rwanda. Therefore religion played a doubly important political role in both attacking traditional customs and invigorating an anti-missionary indigenous nationalism, and in also inspiring Christian based anti-colonial nationalism.
Religion’s role in politics was not confined to the missions; it also influenced the colonial administration. However, this was a much less significant factor, as the politics of the colonial administration were determined by officials’ preoccupations with control and stability of the colonies. Reynolds was correct in his analysis, that religious issues only became part of administrations’ politics when “they threatened peace and “good order”.” Péclard would disagree, as he argued that the Portuguese colonial policy was saturated with religious aims. President Salazar himself declared “the nationalization of missionary aims… must be integrated forever in the Portuguese colonial process.” However, although religion was a factor in colonial policy, it was a subsidiary one. In Portuguese, as well as Belgian and Spanish, colonies there was a constant fear of foreign Protestant influence. It was not religious conviction, but political fears that influenced colonial policy. The fear was of Protestant missions creating a vulnerability which foreign powers, especially the British, could exploit. The subsidiary role of religion is not only evident in Portugal and Belgium’s support of Catholic missions for political necessity, but in Britain’s refusal to allow Christian missions into Northern Nigeria for fear of them corrupting the natives and subsequently legitimizing Islamic authorities. France too used the pre-existing Islamic authorities to control French West Africa, exiling only those authorities who threatened disruption like Senegal’s Ahmadou Bamba. Whilst the evidence from the Catholic powers’ colonies would seem to suggest that religion had a large role in colonial policy, by assessing the overriding foreign policy concerns and Britain and France favouring Islam over Christianity in West Africa it is shown that colonial politics were motivated by concerns of control and stability, with religion’s role being negligible.
However, colonial administrators’ engagement with missions differed between imperial powers, and in this we see the role of religion being varied across Africa. The British had a very practical approach to colonialism, where religion’s role in determining local authority was indirect, much more to do with an authorities’ ability to maintain order than their faith. The Muslim religion commanded obedience and instilled submission into its subjects, thus allowing for easier tax collection and territorial stability in Northern Nigeria. The Christian converts of Southern Nigeria claimed that “they were not obligated to pay taxes or to provide labourers for the work details” as the Christian faith freed them from the obligations to the indirect rule of colonial chiefs under the British, so the missions were less desirable to the colonial administration. Religion was only important to the colonial powers in assessing political capability and the potential of territorial stability, colonialists assessed them practically remaining religiously neutral. Asare Opoku argued that the colonial politics was influenced by religion, that the colonialists were “favourably disposed” to the missionaries, but when it came to the circumcision crisis they refused to legislate policies on religious grounds that would disrupt the region politically. Thus it was the nature and practical abilities of religions that determined the policy of the British administration, as opposed to the colonialists having a religious conviction to favour one over another. Triaud argued that the French did have a religious conviction, and that when it came to Muslim authorities they “refused to invest them with a recognized legal power.” But although they attempted working with colonial chiefs, the French soon realized the natives would not accept this invented legitimacy and had to return the exiled Bamba to Senegal and rely more heavily on the Marabouts. Religion played more of a role for the French colonialists than the British, but eventually both ignored religion in favour of pragmatism. However, Portugal and Belgium actively favoured their Catholic missions, which gave them great political powers. In Portuguese Angola missions were subsidized by the state, and in the Belgian Congo the fact that the majority of Europeans in the country working with the natives were missionaries meant that administrators had to politically rely on them to run the colony. Religion’s role in the politics of colonial Africa varied depending on the imperial power in control.
The role religion played in the politics of colonial Africa is varied and complex. Christian missions had been active on the African continent long before the arrival of the colonizers, though colonial rule did allow for greater numbers and subsidized mission schools. Porter was wrong in asserting missions refrained from political involvement; they engaged with it on the basis of religious conviction. In the appointments of chiefs, district commissioners and colonial governors, the missions continued to influence the course of colonial politics. However, in a more profound way, the missions determined the colonial era’s later years, by educating those Africans who would become the nationalist leaders and inspiring Africans in Christian nationalism or attacking their customs and forcing them to find a distinctly indigenous path towards independence. The colonial administration was preoccupied with issues of order and control, religion being left to the missions. But in choosing between authorities the imperial powers had to make distinctions between the merits of different religions, and so religion continued to play a role. Only a few examples have been able to be given in this essay, the whole of Africa’s colonial politics cannot be assessed for religious influences and this may have limited its scope. Religion played an important role in the lives of all the African people in their everyday lives, and so religion and politics were never truly separable from one another, the one always having a part to play in the other.
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