Role of Colonial Agents in the Colonisation of Africa
Senior 4 · History (Languages)
Role of Colonial Agents in the Colonisation of Africa
Lesson 1 of 4
25 min
In June 1863 the British officer John Hanning Speke returned to England a hero. With James Augustus Grant he had travelled from Zanzibar through Karagwe and Buganda and shown that the Nile flows out of Lake Victoria. His Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile (1863) was read across Europe. It gave Europeans new maps of the Great Lakes kingdoms. It also contained a chapter Speke called a "Theory of Conquest of Inferior by Superior Races", an invented racial story about the region's rulers that later writers repeated and colonial officials used in Rwanda (Unit 5).
That double legacy is the subject of this unit. A traveller with a notebook, or a priest with a Bible, seems harmless beside a soldier with a gun. Yet in Africa, explorers and missionaries were among the first colonial agents: their work opened the way for conquest. This lesson analyses who they were, why they came and what they did.
Definition
Colonial agent: any person or organisation whose activities helped a foreign power to take control of an African territory, whether or not that was their aim. The main agents were explorers, missionaries, traders, chartered companies and colonial administrators.
Explorer: a traveller who journeyed into areas unknown to his own society and reported on them. Missionary: a person sent by a church to spread its faith. Evangelisation: preaching a religion to win converts. "Legitimate commerce": the 19th-century European term for trade in goods such as palm oil and ivory, promoted as a replacement for the slave trade.
| Motive | Example |
|---|---|
| Geographical curiosity: the great river mysteries | The search for the source of the Nile, sponsored by the Royal Geographical Society: Burton and Speke reached Lake Tanganyika in 1858, and Speke saw Lake Victoria on 30 July 1858 |
| Fame, newspapers and money | The New York Herald and the Daily Telegraph paid for Stanley's expedition of 1874 to 1877 |
| Humanitarian and religious aims | David Livingstone, a missionary of the London Missionary Society, hoped that "Christianity, Commerce and Civilization" would replace the slave trade |
| National and commercial ambition | From 1879 Stanley worked for King Leopold II of the Belgians in the Congo; Götzen's crossing of Rwanda in 1894 served Germany's claim to the region |
What explorers did for colonisation. They mapped rivers, lakes and routes; reported on resources such as ivory, fertile land and minerals; described African states, their armies and their rivalries; and in some cases signed treaties for a government or a king. Their books and lectures made the European public want colonies, and their maps were later used to draw colonial borders.
Protestant and Catholic missionary societies multiplied in the 19th century. The Anglican Church Missionary Society (CMS) was founded in 1799; its missionary Alexander Mackay reached Buganda in 1877. The Catholic Society of the Missionaries of Africa, known as the White Fathers from the colour of their habits, was founded in 1868 by Charles Lavigerie, Archbishop of Algiers; ten of its missionaries set out in 1878 for Lakes Victoria, Nyasa and Tanganyika, and they reached the Lake Victoria region in 1879.
Rwanda. After the German occupation of 1897, Bishop John Joseph Hirth of the White Fathers travelled to Rwanda in 1899 and sought the goodwill of Mwami Yuhi V Musinga. He obtained permission to found the first Catholic missions at Save, Zaza and Nyundo between 1900 and 1901. The first church, a thatched building, went up at Save in 1900.
| Activity | How it worked | How it served colonisation |
|---|---|---|
| Evangelisation | Preaching, baptism, building churches and mission stations | Converts often became allies of the Europeans; missions were permanent European outposts |
| Language work | Learning African languages, writing grammars and dictionaries, translating the Bible; the White Fathers published six Luganda grammars and dictionaries | Gave Europeans the means to communicate, administer and teach |
| Schools | Reading, writing, religion and practical skills | Trained the clerks, catechists, teachers and interpreters colonial rule needed |
| Health care | Dispensaries and hospitals | Won goodwill and kept Europeans alive |
| Campaigns against the slave trade | Lavigerie and Livingstone appealed to European opinion | Gave European governments a moral reason to intervene |
| Reports and appeals home | Letters, journals and requests for protection | Spread information and sometimes called directly for colonial rule |
Yes, in effect. They arrived before or with colonial rule, depended on the protection of colonial governments, condemned many African beliefs and customs, and trained the people who staffed colonial administrations. Their writings, like Speke's, spread European ideas about Africans; in Rwanda, mission writers later helped to spread the false racial theories studied in Unit 5.
But not simply. Many missionaries came for religious reasons and did not seek colonies. They sometimes clashed with colonial officials and traders; some defended Africans against abuses. Their schools and hospitals served Africans for generations, and Africans themselves, as catechists and teachers, spread Christianity much further than European missionaries could.
A good judgement separates intentions from effects: whatever each missionary intended, the missions as a whole made colonial rule easier to establish.
White Fathers SFG St Anne Jerusalem: "Existence of the Missionaries of Africa in Rwanda", about 9 minutes. This is the society's own account of its work in Rwanda. Treat it as a source: note what it emphasises, and ask what a historian of colonialism might add.
Warning
Avoid "discovered". Speke did not "discover" Lake Victoria or the Nile: people had lived around them for thousands of years and had their own names for them, such as Nnalubaale in Luganda. Write "was the first European to reach". And do not treat explorers' descriptions of Africans as facts; many were prejudiced, and some, like Speke's racial theory, were invented.
Tip
For any colonial agent, ask three questions: Why did they come (motives)? What did they do (activities)? How did it help colonisation (role)? Learn the answers for explorers and missionaries now; Lesson 2 adds traders, companies and administrators.
Important
Discuss. Lavigerie told his missionaries to speak the local language and live like the people around them. Does this make the White Fathers less of a colonial agent, or a more effective one?
Practice
Key points
Sources and credits
Written by Ganzaa: the timeline, the tables, the analysis and the exercises. This lesson adapts CC BY-SA material and is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Quick check
Which of these is the best example of an explorer acting as a colonial agent?
