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Title: | Africans viewed in the missionary mirror: shifts in the 'black-white' thinking of Dutch missionaries on Africans and their culture in East Africa 1945-1965 |
Author: | Jong, Albert de |
Year: | 2001 |
Periodical: | Exchange: Journal of Contemporary Christianities in Context |
Volume: | 30 |
Issue: | 1 |
Pages: | 49-77 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | East Africa Malawi |
Subjects: | images missionary history racism |
External link: | https://doi.org/10.1163/157254301X00048 |
Abstract: | This article examines the view held by Dutch missionary priests of the abilities, morals and customs of Africans in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Malawi during the period 1945-1965. Pervaded with European ethnocentrism, Dutch missionaries regarded Western cultural development as the normative criterion, while in practice they considered Europeans as superior to Africans. This attitude is illustrated by the various names used by Dutch missionaries to refer to Africans. The following three qualities of the African character were accepted among Dutch missionaries: sloth, stupidity and moral corruption. The most ugly form in which the ideology of white superiority and black inferiority surfaced was racial discrimination. The Dutch missionaries' approach to African morals and customs followed naturally from their line of thought regarding the African cultural milieu. Catholic moral theology and Church law were their guidelines, whereas cultural-anthropological knowledge scarcely influenced them at all. Notes, ref. |