Paper short abstract:

In the C19 Anglican missions attempted to reform the African worker in eastern central Africa and as an economic institution they employed and instructed both free and unfree labour. This paper demonstrates the interplay between African and Anglican labour systems.

Paper long abstract:

This paper attempts to contribute to two key questions in African labour history. Firstly, what roles did Africans play in the development of labour systems, ideologies and capitalism? (Freund, The African Worker, 1988) And secondly, by way of revisiting the Weberian dilemma, what are the connections between and the impact of the evangelical spread of Christianity and the ideologies of capitalism and its related work ethic? (Comaroff and Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, 1997)

Stepping back from the study of "organised workers", this thesis deals with a great variety of African labour customs. Central to this is the intersection between religion and the changing practices and understandings of work, time use and production within the mission stations and the wider context of nascent capitalism and imperialism. Historians commonly treat missions narrowly as religious or humanitarian institutions but like any enterprise of such ambition they had to be economically viable and so can be thought of as small-scale economies employing both free and unfree labour.

Zanzibar is fundamental to this study as it has long been a transnational space as part of the Omani empire and it was equally important to the Africans employed by the mission, who circulated considerably throughout eastern central Africa. Moreover, comparisons and connections are made further afield such as Mozambique or Madagascar, where missionaries' employment of slaves was commonplace. This is, therefore, a transnational project designed to illustrate the changing roles of the African worker at this revealing moment in African history.