When European powers began their rush to conquer Africa in the nineteenth century, they did not enter a completely unknown continent. Long before European armies arrived to establish colonial administrations, missionaries had already travelled deep into African territories, established stations, learned local languages, mapped routes, built relationships with African rulers and communities, and sent detailed accounts of African societies back to Europe.
Missionaries were not all colonial agents. Many genuinely believed they were in Africa to spread Christianity, provide education and medicine, or protect African communities from violence. Some even went on to criticise colonial abuses and defend Africans against European exploitation.
This, however, did not mean missionary work was separate from European imperialism. Missionaries and colonial governments often had different motives, but their activities could still reinforce one another. A missionary might come to preach Christianity or establish a school without intending to advance colonial rule, while the European presence created by that mission could later serve the interests of colonial expansion.
One of the ways missionary work helped European expansion was by giving Europeans something they desperately needed: knowledge of Africa.
Missionaries travelled deep into territories that European governments knew little about, documenting languages, settlements, political structures, trade routes, rivers and other geographical details. David Livingstone’s journeys across southern and central Africa are a well-known example. His travels produced valuable geographical information that was published and circulated widely in Europe.
They also turned much of this information into maps. Missionary organisations mapped their areas of operation, marked mission stations and settlements, traced routes and recorded details about the people and territories they encountered.
These maps did not remain in mission stations. They circulated in Europe and became part of the geographical knowledge available to governments, explorers, merchants and imperial officials. In this way, information gathered for missionary purposes helped Europeans understand African territories and plan their expansion into them.
Missionary work also brought a profound religious and cultural transformation. Missionaries did not merely introduce Christianity as another religion. In many communities, traditional African beliefs and practices were condemned as pagan, primitive or ungodly. Converts were encouraged to abandon traditional religious practices, ceremonies and customs and to adopt Christian beliefs and European ideas of “civilisation.”
Missionaries also used their schools to teach Africans European languages, Christianity and basic literacy. The education was designed not only to spread Christianity but also to introduce European ways of thinking, behaviour and social values.
As colonial administrations and European businesses expanded, they needed Africans who could read and write European languages and work as clerks, interpreters and other junior employees. Mission schools helped produce this workforce, while reinforcing Christianity and European cultural values.
The influence of missionaries also extended beyond religion and education into politics. John Mackenzie, a Scottish missionary of the London Missionary Society who lived among the Tswana, became deeply involved in the political affairs of the region. Fearing the expansion of Boer settlers into Tswana territories, he campaigned for British protection. His campaign helped persuade Britain to intervene, and in 1885 the British government sent a military expedition that resulted in the establishment of the Bechuanaland Protectorate.
Mackenzie was therefore not simply preaching Christianity. He was helping shape the political relationship between an African society and a European power.
Another striking example was Charles Helm, a missionary who had established a close relationship with King Lobengula of the Ndebele Kingdom. In 1888, Helm acted as an intermediary between Lobengula and representatives of Cecil Rhodes during negotiations over what became known as the Rudd Concession, an agreement granting extensive mineral rights in Lobengula’s territory.
Lobengula later rejected the agreement, arguing that he had not understood the terms as presented to him and that the concession had been misrepresented. He accused the Europeans of taking advantage of the negotiations and insisted that he had never intended to surrender such extensive mineral rights. The dispute did not stop Cecil Rhodes and his British South Africa Company from using the concession to strengthen their claim over Ndebele territory, helping pave the way for the British colonisation of what became Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.
These examples reveal a complicated relationship between missionary work and European expansion. Missionaries could oppose certain forms of European exploitation while still believing that European Christianity, law and political protection were preferable to African political and cultural systems. In Bechuanaland, historians have described this as “missionary imperialism,” where missionaries became involved in political expansion through their settlements, relationships with African rulers and challenges to existing African authority.
By the time European governments began formally claiming African territories, missionaries had already helped create many of the conditions that made European penetration easier. They had established permanent European institutions, gathered geographical and political information, produced maps, learned local languages, built relationships with African rulers and communities, spread European Christianity and culture, and in some cases actively encouraged European governments to intervene.
The missionaries did not conquer Africa by themselves. European armies, governments, merchants and companies carried out the formal conquest.
But the conquest did not begin with the first European soldier.
In many parts of Africa, the missionaries had already gone ahead, established a European presence, mapped the land, gathered the knowledge and begun changing the political and cultural landscape. When the soldiers arrived, they were not always entering unknown territory.
