The culturo-historical and personal circumstances of some 19th-century missionaries teaching in South Africa

Abstract

Broadly speaking, two approaches to missionary education in South Africa can be distinguished: a facts and figures approach featuring mainly the historical facts, statistics and other data concerning this period in education, and a rather more critical approach intended to prove the point that missionary education was instrumental in alienating the blacks from their traditional cultural heritage and in employing black labour in the class-dominated capitalist society of South Africa. A third approach is followed in this article: the period of missionary' education is approached by way of an analysis of the prevailing Zeitgeist in South Africa, Europe and elsewhere early in (he 19th century and of the concomitant philosophical and theological trends al Ute time. The personal motives and circumstances of the missionaries are also scrutinized. By following this approach a fuller and more illuminating view of missionary’ education in the 19th-century is assured, a view which can fruitfully be applied in conjunction with the other two approaches.