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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Missions, Respectability and Civil Rights: The Cape Colony, 1828-1854 |
Author: | Ross, Robert |
Year: | 1999 |
Periodical: | Journal of Southern African Studies |
Volume: | 25 |
Issue: | 3 |
Period: | September |
Pages: | 333-345 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | South Africa The Cape |
Subjects: | missionary history Khoikhoi Religion and Witchcraft History and Exploration colonialism Law, Human Rights and Violence |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/2637676 |
Abstract: | In the first half of the nineteenth century several representatives of the London Missionary Society (LMS) in the Cape Colony in South Africa, most notably John Philip, deplored the oppression of the Khoikhoi and ex-slaves by white settlers. John Philip justified his actions both as part of his general duty as a Christian to reduce the misery in the world and, in more strictly missiological terms, as a struggle to create the conditions within which individual salvation was possible. Conversion of the Khoikhoi would not only have spiritual benefits, but would also provide advantages in terms of material progress and through the granting of civil rights. Accepting the faith would entail a code of behaviour, or respectability. The removal of civil disabilities for Free People of Colour under Ordinance 50 (enacted in 1830) was seen as the work of the missions. However, when in the following decades the missionaries failed to deliver on their promises, relations with English settlers went sour and the Khoi did not receive the respect from others they had expected, the Eastern Cape Khoi reacted in anger in the Kat River Rebellion of 1851-1853. Notes, ref., sum. |