Inventing the African nation: The influence of missionary publishing on language, literacy and identity in colonial Kenya, 1895--1963

The late 19th century saw the expansion of European colonial power to almost the entire continent of Africa. Concurrently, evangelistic fervor in the United States and Europe generated an intense missionary effort to convert Africa to Christianity. The interplay between indigenous people, missionaries and colonial rulers determined the path of development of colonialism and eventually its demise. Central to the missionary role during the colonial period was an emphasis on the written word, particularly the Bible. The missionaries' desire to provide the Word of God led them to engage in translation, literacy education and publishing. Or, seen another way, the printed word was at the very heart of missionary activity.;Missionary work surrounding the printed word provided an important infrastructure for the development of African nationalism in the colonial context. First, the introduction of literacy was itself empowering to the Africans, allowing them to communicate more effectively with each other and with the European powers, whether missionary or colonial. Second, to foster literacy, the missionaries created systems of schools and churches, which provided organizational structures capable of being coopted by Africans for nationalist causes. Finally, while the publishing houses and printing facilities themselves were rarely used for nationalist causes per se, they did gradually come to address a wider set of political topics outside the purely religious realm. At the same time, they provided opportunities for at least a few Africans to be published and to gain some prominence and influence at the regional and national levels.;The missionaries themselves were clearly not nationalists, but neither were they colonialists. From the beginning they envisioned an independent African church, and in the process of building it, they also unwittingly provided important tools for building an independent African state.