Africans in the British missionary imagination, 1910--1965

British Protestant missionaries not only traveled to the Empire (and beyond) to evangelize non-Christians, but they also brought home their particular version of Empire through their promotional materials. During the twentieth century, missionaries especially packaged images of Africa as it became their primary focus and destination since they viewed it as a place in serious need of civilizing with considerable potential to improve. This dissertation analyzes the propaganda that two evangelical organizations, the Church Missionary Society and the London Missionary Society, produced on Africa and Africans between the years of the ecumenical missionary conference, "Edinburgh 1910" and decolonization. It argues that in order to understand the narratives and images that the missionaries disseminated, one must consider the missionaries' theology because it served as their raison d'etre. The missionaries' Christian beliefs informed their ideas of race, gender and culture. These missionaries crafted theologies that aligned with their evangelical tenets and their desire to be seen as relevant and modern contributors to the civilizing mission. Responding to the shifting political and cultural conditions in Africa and Britain, these missionaries devised doctrines and strategies that capitalized on African demand for education and British ideas of colonial responsibility. Thus, this dissertation illuminates the changing representations of Africans within missionary propaganda and contextualizes them in the British imperial project.;This dissertation, too, situates these missionaries within the scope of British Christianity. While working to Christianize Africa, these evangelical missionaries simultaneously strove to engage the imaginations of Britons and reinvigorate British Christianity. Although the influence of evangelical missionaries waned in the 1960s both at home and in Africa, their work outlasted Empire. Moreover, the representations of Africans that these missionaries created continue to live on in the promotional materials of other humanitarian and non-governmental organizations today.