Monatshefte

Germany's colonial project was an inherently violent enterprise. From merchants and capitalists seeking their fortune overseas to soldiers and settlers removing populations from their homelands, the Imperial Age bore witness to countless atrocities in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Scholars since the early 1960s have appropriately identified [End Page 290] missionaries among the agents who helped empower colonists and their metropolitan allies to expand Germany's influence abroad. Whether as mediators for the imperial state or as Christian proselytizers, mission societies and their institutional endeavors greatly expanded the imperial potential of European empires worldwide.

Jeremy Best's Heavenly Fatherland: German Missionary Culture and Globalization in the Age of Empire offers a more holistic portrayal of German missionary activity in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While he never categorizes them strictly as apolitical actors, Best concentrates on the international motivations that inspired missionaries to evangelize in so-called German East Africa. Through his emphasis on their efforts to establish global networks overseas, Best asserts that Protestant missionaries cast aside civilizational impulses in favor of an inclusive ideology that looked upon all peoples as equal before God. In doing so, Best affirms, German missionaries instead worked to create a universalist "heavenly Fatherland" that regarded nationalist and racist logic as antithetical to Christian theology (13). He concludes that what German mission societies regarded as humanitarian virtues chiefly motivated them to inaugurate a robust presence in Africa, justifications that were averse to the economic and territorial aspirations of the colonial state (86).

Heavenly Fatherland is to be welcomed as a contribution to the historiography on the evolution of European colonialisms in Africa. Best draws upon an impressive array of primary materials and demonstrates a strong command of the sources. Readers will also note his deep knowledge of German Protestant theology and its historical application in the nineteenth century. These factors allow him to illustrate how missionaries utilized textual sources—notably the Bible, scriptural missives, correspondence, and reports—to agitate for an international community that fought for "a future Christian globe" (32). Given the nature of these materials, Best's analysis leads him to underscore the intellectual character of the German Protestant mission. Men such as Gustav Warneck, Julius Richter, Karl Axenfeld, and other Missionswissenschaftler (advocates of missiology) also assume special significance throughout the book. Equipped with an intrinsic academic and theological appreciation for their religious responsibilities, Best advances, German Protestant Missionswissenschaftler labored to promote Christianity among East Africa's diverse populations for altruistic reasons. In their pursuit of forging a Protestant world, German missionaries deemed nationalism and imperial warfare destructive outgrowths of secular voices and centralized state authority (50). As a result, German mission societies increasingly advocated for more independence from the colonial government, especially in the twentieth century, so that they might continue to manifest the international disposition of their Godly activities in Africa.

Best organizes the book into six thematic chapters. Chapters One and Two illustrate the origins of the Missionswissenschaft and the importance German Protestant missionaries placed on language training and instruction. German missions, he sustains, looked upon schools as the foundation of their future "Christian communities" in East Africa. While Best carefully notes how Eurocentrism saturated missionaries' pedagogy and curriculum, he underscores numerous instances where they celebrated cultural and ethnic diversity. These occasions press him to argue that German Protestant missionaries gave humanitarianism "more than lip service" and represented a sincere effort to save Africa's "heathen populations" (67). Chapters Three and Four shift attention to groups that posed contrarian viewpoints to Missionswissenschaftler [End Page 291] in German East Africa, namely other Protestant societies, religious and secular Germans, and Catholic missions. Heavenly Fatherland is at its best in its engagement with these diverse agents. Though they embraced internationalism, German Protestant missionaries were not above harboring contemptuous attitudes toward their rivals. In accounting for the reactionary measures that Missionswissenschaftler used to neutralize Catholic and secular voices, Best utilizes a global framework to show how their prejudices evolved over a long time span and in multiple locations in Europe and Africa. He maintains that this history, together with German East Africa's diverse milieu, helps clarify why some Missionswissenschaftler adopted nationalist discourses and land procurement programs in the colonial era (116). While Best acknowledges the effect of such endeavors on African peoples, his account stresses that Protestant missionaries did not justify their actions purely with civilizational logic. This explanation strongly contrasts with histories that frame German mission societies as cultural agents of the colonial state apparatus.

The final two chapters scrutinize the international ramifications of German missionary activity in Africa. Chapter Five elucidates how Missionshilfsvereine (mission aid associations) cultivated charity networks in Germany, while Chapter Six demonstrates the importance of international missionary conferences for the organizational practices of the Protestant mission. Best convincingly describes how missionaries acted as the most prominent voices on "colonial culture" in Germany's isolated towns and small villages (146). This fact, he claims, is significant as it explains why some German communities pushed back against official accounts that promoted imperial conquest along racial lines. These counter-narratives ultimately "distilled globalization […] into a manageable message for German consumption," an outcome, Best concludes, that exemplifies the benevolent intentions behind Protestant missionary practice in Africa (216).

Best's study deserves praise for its thorough research and courteous rebuttals against literature that defines German missionary activity as exclusively colonial. Heavenly Fatherland nevertheless would have benefited from more engagement with African populations and how Protestant missionaries incorporated them into their international networks. Best is very clear about his intention to examine textual sources and what they reveal about the intellectual character of the Missionswissenschaft (6). But one wonders how sincerely they involved their African flocks in day-to-day operations in East Africa. Such accounts—if they exist—would have likely added to Best's contention that Missionswissenschaftler conducted their theological activities with truly ecumenical and benevolent intentions. These sources, moreover, might have provided a counter to the otherwise paternalistic disposition of men like Warneck and Axenfeld that radiates throughout the text. Best is not, of course, seeking to craft an apologetic study that legitimizes the chauvinistic practices of white Europeans in the Imperial Age. His scholarly contribution is both measured in tone and frequently reminds readers of the inherent violence behind colonial occupation (15). One can also appreciate, however, the need to incorporate materials that prove the international scope of an otherwise religious-imperial venture. Lastly, some historians would be curious to know how closely Missionswissenschaftler engaged with Protestant societies in other areas of Germany's colonial empire.

These criticisms do not detract from Best's significant contribution to the history of Germany's Protestant mission in Africa and its function in the overall imperial [End Page 292] project. Heavenly Fatherland emphasizes and relies upon archival sources that amplify the international reach of Missionswissenschaftler. In doing so, it offers an important opportunity for scholars to examine missionaries' role overseas more holistically. Best's study makes clear that in addition to civilizational and racist logic, contemporary Germans also weighed what they regarded as humanitarian rationales for contact in Africa.