Power and Conviction: The Political Economy of Missionary Work in Colonial-Era Africa

This Element engages with recent attempts by economists and political scientists to rigorously estimate impacts of missionary work in sub-Saharan Africa. It argues that, although these efforts contribute to more accurate assessments of the 'true' effects of missionary presence, they also have a tendency to present Christian involvement in the region as a largely apolitical process, that was relatively unaffected by the rapidly evolving geopolitical and socio-cultural contexts of the colonial period. Countering this trend, this Element illustrates aspects of missionary behavior that were inherently more political and context-dependent, such as local struggles for religious hegemony between Protestants and Catholics and interactions between colonial regimes and the church-based provision of goods like education. The Element draws heavily on market-based theories of organized religious behavior. These perspectives are entirely compatible with the analytical language of economists and political scientists. Yet, they played surprisingly limited roles in recent literature on missionary impacts.