Collecting while converting: missionaries and ethnographics

Abstract

This paper concerns an understudied yet germane aspect of western receptions and interpretations of indigenous ritual art around 1900: the role of Christian missionaries, who furnished countless indigenous art objects, and that of missionary propaganda. The latter used to stress the heroic agency of misionaries in the field combating superstition and confiscating or burning idols. However, what happened in the field often turns out to have been different and more richly checkered than the crude image usually projected on the home front by the boards of missionary organisations and periodicals. We analyze three case studies which show a consideable role for native agency and autonomous local developments, with missionaries as relatively passive bystanders.

Keywords

• missions
• iconoclasm
• ethnographics
• collecting
• conversion