WOMEN MISSIONARIES

Part 2: Papers of the Ladies' Society for Female Education in Africa and India, 1878-1904, from the National Library of Scotland

"Women Missionaries promises to be an exciting new contribution to the growing field of Empire Studies. The wide range of rare primary source documents that make up the collection will prove an invaluable resource for researchers interested in the history of women, religion and empire."
Michelle Tusan, Assistant Professor in History,
University of Nevada, Las Vegas

The Ladies Society for Female Education in Africa and India was an offshoot of the Free Church of Scotland (after 1900, the United Free Church of Scotland, following a merger with the United Presbyterian Church). It sought to bring literacy, numeracy and knowledge of the Gospel to native women in Africa and India. Very few records of the Society survive, but we are fortunate that some of the letter books of the organising secretaries, containing their letters to missionaries in the field and supporters at home, have been preserved and these provide valuable insights into their successes and failures.

These letter books (found in NLS MS.8009-8011 and 7981) have been filmed in their entirety. They contain the correspondence of:

- The secretary of the Glasgow Committee (Peter Gardner, WS), 1878-1891
- The general secretary (Rev William Stevenson), 1891-1904

The majority of the material deals exclusively with news of the Societys missionary endeavours in South Africa, in a period of considerable turmoil following the discovery of diamonds in Kimberley in 1867 and gold in Transvaal in 1886. Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902), politician and entrepreneur, was pursuing aggressive, expansionist policies and these posed severe difficulties for a small missionary organisation attempting to spread the Gospel but often being perceived as part of a larger imperial design. There activities were put under yet more strain with the onset of the Boer War (1899-1902). There are also some records for the later period concerning the Societys missionary activities in Calabar, the former slaving centre, on the West Coast of Africa.

These letter books will be useful for scholars exploring contacts between European and native women and provide valuable evidence concerning local culture. Their publication will be welcomed by historians of Africa, anthropologists, missiologists and those interested in the gendered dimensions of missionary activity.

Material in this project can be usefully compared with the accounts of female missionaries in Section II and III of the Church Missionary Society Archive, as well as more generally with CMS material and the Regions Beyond Mission Union Archive. The material complements the manuscripts in Womens Language and Experience, 1500-1940. A broader cultural context for the aspirations of women is found in the advice books, manuals and journals of Women and Victorian Values. These projects are all published by Adam Matthew Publications and details on each can be found on this website.