Missionaries, Empire and Indigenous Agency: Historiographical Essay

Institution: University of Edinburgh, School of Divinity
Course: ECHS10016 Evangelism and Empire: Christianity in Africa, 1800 to the present (SCQF Level 10, 20 credits)
Study session: Semester 2, 2026
Assessment: Assessment 2, historiographical essay
Length: 2,500 words, with a permitted variance of ten percent in either direction
Referencing: Chicago, 17th edition, notes and bibliography
Weighting: 50 percent of the final course mark
Submission: Turnitin dropbox on Learn, by 12 noon on the Thursday of Week 11

Assessment Context

Edinburgh’s ECHS10016 Evangelism and Empire puts a single question at the centre of the course: how far does colonial impact explain the growth of Christianity in modern Africa, and how far does it fail to explain it? This essay asks you to answer that question as a historian rather than as an apologist or a prosecutor. The School of Divinity publishes the course as a Level 10 honours option examining conversion, religious innovation, and the two way relationship between religious and ethnic identity across African case studies since 1800. Assessment 2 asks for a historiographical essay, which means the argument must be built on the disagreements between historians, not only on the events they describe.

Edinburgh’s Common Marking Scheme governs the grade bands used below. Familiarise yourself with the difference between a 68 and a 72 before you start writing, because that difference turns almost entirely on whether the essay has a thesis that could be contested. Describing what scholars have said earns a 2:1. Judging between them earns a First.

Task Description

Evaluate the claim that nineteenth and early twentieth century British Protestant missionary societies functioned simultaneously as agents of cultural imperialism and as vehicles of indigenous empowerment. Test the claim against two case studies drawn from different imperial contexts. At least one case study must concern a majority Muslim society, in keeping with the course’s attention to Christian competition with Islam.

Approved Case Study Pairings

• Colonial India and the Gold Coast
• Northern Nigeria and Nyasaland
• The Cape Colony and Buganda
• Peshawar and the Punjab, paired with any Sub-Saharan site

Requirements

1. Open with a historiographical problem, not with a narrative of missionary arrival. Name at least two scholars who disagree and state what is at stake in the disagreement.
2. Advance a thesis in the first 400 words. A thesis that merely splits the difference between imperialism and empowerment will not reach the upper bands.
3. Anchor each case study in at least one primary source, such as a missionary periodical, a society annual report, a translation preface, or a colonial education despatch. Quote briefly and analyse the language.
4. Engage with at least six scholarly works. Two may be edited collections or monographs; the rest should be peer reviewed articles or chapters.
5. Treat African and Asian Christians as historical actors rather than as recipients of European intention. The course guide is explicit that students should form their own judgment about the parts played by African Christians and European missionaries.
6. Identify one interpretive limit that your two case studies cannot resolve, and say what evidence would settle it.
7. Follow Chicago notes and bibliography throughout. Footnotes, not endnotes, and a separate bibliography page excluded from the word count.
8. Write in continuous prose with subheadings permitted. Bullet points, tables, and epigraphs do not belong in a historiographical essay.

Required Structure

Section 1: The Historiographical Problem

Approximately 400 words. Set out the dichotomous debate as it currently stands, then state your thesis.

Section 2: Case Study One

Approximately 650 words. Establish the local political context, the missionary presence, and the specific evidence that supports or complicates your thesis.

Section 3: Case Study Two

Approximately 650 words. Where the second case contradicts the first, say so plainly rather than forcing agreement.

Section 4: Comparison and Consequence

Approximately 500 words. Explain what the comparison shows that neither case shows alone. Address the strongest counterargument to your position.

Section 5: Conclusion

Approximately 300 words. Restate the thesis, name the limit of the argument, and indicate the archival work that would test it further.

Marking Criteria

Feedback and Marking Process

Marking is anonymous through Turnitin. Feedback returns within fifteen working days as a completed rubric plus two paragraphs of prose comment. The prose comment will always identify one line of argument worth developing further, whether the essay passes or fails. Students who request an explanation of their mark receive it at the scheduled feedback hour rather than by email.

Academic Integrity

Submit original work. Edinburgh treats unattributed paraphrase as plagiarism in exactly the same way as unattributed quotation. Turnitin reports are read for text matching and for patterns consistent with generated prose. Self plagiarism from a previous course, and reuse of an essay submitted elsewhere, both fall under the University’s misconduct procedure.

Learning Materials and References

Heaton, Matthew M. “Decolonising the Hajj: Nationalist Politics and Pilgrimage Administration and the British Empire in the Mid-Twentieth Century.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 49, no. 2 (2021): 284–311. https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2020.1848031

Jensz, Felicity. “The 1910 Edinburgh World Missionary Conference and Comparative Colonial Education.” History of Education 47, no. 3 (2018): 399–414. https://doi.org/10.1080/0046760X.2018.1425741

Jensz, Felicity. Missionaries and Modernity: Education in the British Empire, 1830–1910. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022. https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526152985

Sherman, William E. B. “Romance on the Afghan Frontier: Desire in the Literature of the Church Missionary Society of Peshawar.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 49, no. 6 (2021): 1021–1046. https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2021.1950325

Verification note. The course title, SCQF level, credit value, and published course description for ECHS10016 and its sister listing DIVI10018 are recorded in the University of Edinburgh Degree Regulations and Programmes of Study. The 2,500 word length, the fifty percent weighting, and the Chicago requirement follow School of Divinity coursework conventions for Level 10 essays. Confirm the dropbox deadline against your own course guide, since the Semester 2 timetable is set locally each year.

What a Strong Essay Looks Like

The best essays on this question refuse the terms of the debate before they answer it, and the opening paragraph is where that refusal has to happen. William Sherman’s study of the Church Missionary Society in Peshawar shows why, because he observes that scholarship on British missions has been trapped between two questions, whether missionaries reinforced imperial control or resisted it in the name of Christian universalism, and he treats that trap as the real object of analysis in Romance on the Afghan Frontier (Sherman 2021, 1021). Thomas Patrick Hughes wrote a pseudonymous romance novel about an Afghan woman and a British soldier in 1883, and Sherman reads the fiction alongside missionary correspondence to show how the society trained its readers to desire the conversion of Afghans. The novel resists imperial policy in one chapter and reinforces it in the next, which means the historian cannot sort the mission into an imperial or an anti-imperial box without losing the evidence. A thesis built on that insight will say something sharper than the claim that missionaries were complicated. It might argue, for instance, that missionary universalism supplied the empire with an affective vocabulary that military administration could never generate on its own. Textbooks do not make that argument. The essay that does will be marked as a First, because it treats the dichotomous debate as a historiographical artefact rather than a question to be settled.

Education runs through the second case study for the same reason, and the comparative work on mission schools gives the essay its strongest empirical footing. Felicity Jensz examined the report produced by Commission III of the 1910 Edinburgh World Missionary Conference, which ran to 470 pages and drew on more than 200 responses, and she found that missionaries in different colonial spaces recorded sharply different relationships with colonial governments in The 1910 Edinburgh World Missionary Conference and Comparative Colonial Education (Jensz 2018, 399). Mission schools pulled pupils in by teaching secular subjects, then discovered that the same curriculum could cultivate anti-British sentiment, which is the paradox Jensz develops at book length in Missionaries and Modernity (Jensz 2022, 224). That paradox does real work in a comparative essay, because it predicts where empowerment emerged, namely wherever Africans and Indians took control of the literacy the mission provided. The Hajj offers a further line of evidence that most students miss entirely. Matthew Heaton shows that British administrators spent the mid twentieth century building machinery to regulate Muslim pilgrimage, then watched that machinery pass into the hands of independent nation states during decolonisation (Heaton 2021, 285). Religion and empire met in administration as often as in preaching. Add that observation to your comparison and the essay moves past the mission compound into the wider governance of religious life. In the submitted essay these citations appear as footnotes rather than as brackets.

Reading Mission Archives Against Themselves

Primary sources for this essay are more accessible than students expect, and the effort of finding them separates a 65 from a 75. The Church Missionary Society archive, the Baptist Missionary Society periodicals, and the British and Foreign Bible Society records all circulate in digitised form through university libraries, and the National Library of Australia holds missionary papers covering Australia, the Pacific, and beyond. Read an annual report for what it omits as carefully as for what it claims. Conversion statistics usually count attenders at mission schools rather than communicant members, and a student who notices that distinction has found an argument. Translation work offers the richest single source, because prefaces to vernacular scriptures reveal what translators thought about the language they were rendering and about the people who spoke it. Jensz makes the point that missionary education carried a religious rationale even when the curriculum looked secular, so a school syllabus is never a neutral document (Jensz 2022, 26). Treat every archive as an argument addressed to a British donor, and your close reading will improve immediately.

Where Marks Slip Away

Students who lose marks on this essay almost never lose them for poor writing. Four errors account for most of the damage:

1. Writing a narrative of arrival, conflict, and eventual independence, which reads as a summary of events and scores under the historiographical criterion.
2. Treating African Christians as objects of policy. The course guide asks for their agency, and an essay that never names a catechist, translator, or independent church founder has ignored that instruction.
3. Choosing two case studies that produce the same finding, which makes comparison pointless. Pick sites where the evidence pulls in different directions.
4. Using textbooks and web summaries as scholarly sources. Six peer reviewed works are the minimum, and Wikipedia does not appear in a bibliography at this level.

Common student queries about this brief tend to cluster around the same few points. Can one case study carry the whole argument? It can, but the rubric rewards comparison, and a single case caps the comparative criterion at the lower second band. Does the essay need to reach a verdict on the missionaries? No, and a forced verdict usually reads as a moral judgement rather than a historical one. Should the two cases be weighted equally? Roughly, yes, at about 650 words each, because an unbalanced pair reads as one case study with a comparison bolted on. Is it acceptable to argue that both sides of the debate are partly right? That position is defensible only if you specify which mechanism in which context produced which outcome. Vagueness at that exact point is what examiners penalise.

Religion Beyond The Mission Compound

Broadening the essay from missionaries to the governance of religion will lift it above the standard treatment, and the historiography supports the move. Heaton’s account of pilgrimage administration shows that imperial power operated through permits, quarantine rules, shipping contracts, and consular offices rather than through sermons. Once administrative regulation enters the comparison, the empowerment question changes shape, because a colonial state that standardised travel documents also created the infrastructure that postcolonial governments inherited and controlled. Missions and administration therefore produced different legacies, and an essay that separates them explains more than one that treats empire as a single pressure. One further consideration belongs in the counterargument section. Missionary society records were written for supporters in Britain, so silence about indigenous initiative may reflect the archive rather than the past. Jill Lepore made this methodological point about evidence and narrative two decades ago, and it applies directly here. Address that problem explicitly and the critical engagement criterion becomes straightforward to satisfy.

Conclusion

Pick the pairing that interests you rather than the one that looks easiest, because a case study you find genuinely puzzling will carry the essay further than a tidy one. Read Sherman first, since his framing of the dichotomous debate will save you from writing 2,500 words that answer the wrong question. Hunt for two primary sources before drafting the comparison, as the evidence should shape the argument rather than confirm it afterwards. Expect the counterargument section to expose a weakness in your thesis, and fix the thesis instead of hiding the weakness. Leave a full day for the footnotes, because Chicago rewards patience and punishes haste. Submit through Turnitin early enough to read the similarity report before the deadline.

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Missionaries, Empire and Indigenous Agency: Historiographical Essay

Course and Assessment Information

Institution: University of Edinburgh, School of Divinity

Course: ECHS10016 Evangelism and Empire: Christianity in Africa, 1800 to the Present

Academic Level: SCQF Level 10

Study Session: Semester 2, 2026

Assessment: Assessment 2, Historiographical Essay

Word Count: 2,500 words, with a permitted variance of 10%

Referencing Style: Chicago 17th Edition, Notes and Bibliography

Assessment Weighting: 50% of the final course mark, as specified in the supplied brief

Assessment Context

The University of Edinburgh course ECHS10016 Evangelism and Empire: Christianity in Africa, 1800 to the Present examines the relationship between Christianity, colonial expansion, religious conversion, and indigenous agency. Its historical approach challenges students to assess how far colonial influence explains the growth of Christianity in Africa and where colonial explanations fall short.

This historiographical essay requires students to evaluate competing historical interpretations rather than simply describe missionary activities. The central debate concerns whether nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Protestant missionary societies primarily supported British cultural imperialism or whether their educational, religious, and institutional activities also created opportunities for indigenous empowerment.

Students must examine the relationship between missionary intentions and local responses. African and Asian Christians should appear as historical actors who interpreted Christianity, adapted missionary institutions, and sometimes challenged European authority. A strong essay will distinguish between missionary objectives, colonial government priorities, and the independent decisions of local Christian communities.

Task Description

Evaluate the claim that nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British Protestant missionary societies functioned simultaneously as agents of cultural imperialism and as vehicles of indigenous empowerment.

Develop a comparative historiographical argument using two case studies drawn from different imperial contexts. At least one case study must concern a majority-Muslim society to address the course’s emphasis on Christian competition with Islam.

Your essay must assess the interpretations of historians, analyse primary evidence, and explain how indigenous Christians shaped missionary encounters. Avoid treating imperialism and empowerment as mutually exclusive categories unless the evidence supports that conclusion.

Approved Case Study Pairings

• Colonial India and the Gold Coast
• Northern Nigeria and Nyasaland
• The Cape Colony and Buganda
• Peshawar and the Punjab, paired with a Sub-Saharan African case study

Assessment Requirements

1. Introduce a historiographical problem rather than beginning with a general narrative of missionary arrival.
2. Identify at least two historians whose interpretations differ and explain the significance of their disagreement.
3. Present a clear, contestable thesis within the first 400 words.
4. Use at least one primary source in each case study, such as a missionary periodical, annual report, translation preface, or colonial education despatch.
5. Quote primary sources briefly and analyse their language, intended audience, and historical context.
6. Engage critically with at least six scholarly works, including peer-reviewed articles, scholarly chapters, and monographs.
7. Examine African and Asian Christians as historical agents, including catechists, translators, teachers, church founders, and converts.
8. Identify at least one interpretive limitation and explain what additional evidence could help resolve it.
9. Use Chicago 17th edition footnotes and a separate bibliography.
10. Write in continuous academic prose. Subheadings are permitted, but bullet points and tables should not appear in the submitted essay.

Required Essay Structure

Section 1: The Historiographical Problem

Suggested length: 400 words.

Introduce the debate about missionaries, imperial power, and indigenous agency. Explain the competing interpretations advanced by historians and identify the evidence or assumptions that separate them. State your thesis and briefly explain how the selected case studies will test it.

Section 2: Case Study One

Suggested length: 650 words.

Establish the political, cultural, and religious context of the first case study. Explain the missionary presence and examine evidence of cultural imperialism, educational influence, religious conversion, and indigenous participation. Analyse at least one primary source and connect your interpretation to the historiographical debate.

Section 3: Case Study Two

Suggested length: 650 words.

Examine the second case study using the same analytical approach. Explain whether the relationship between missionary activity and indigenous empowerment differed from the first case. Identify any contradictions and consider whether political structures, religious competition, or local leadership account for the differences.

Section 4: Comparison and Historical Consequences

Suggested length: 500 words.

Compare the two cases and explain what the comparison reveals about missionary influence. Address the strongest counterargument to your thesis. Consider whether missionary education, translation, literacy, and church organisation created opportunities that missionaries did not fully control.

Section 5: Conclusion

Suggested length: 300 words.

Restate the central argument in light of the evidence. Explain what the comparison establishes and identify the principal limitation of the essay. Indicate which additional archival materials, missionary correspondence, indigenous writings, or oral histories could strengthen the argument.

Assessment and Marking Criteria

The following rubric reproduces the assessment criteria and weighting supplied in the course material.

Academic Integrity and Source Use

Submit original work that demonstrates independent historical analysis. Cite quotations, paraphrases, historical interpretations, and borrowed ideas using Chicago footnotes. Avoid reproducing another student’s essay or submitting work previously assessed elsewhere.

Missionary archives require particular attention to authorship and audience. A report written to attract donations may exaggerate conversions or minimise indigenous contributions. Compare missionary accounts with local Christian writings, colonial records, and other available evidence before accepting their claims.

Learning Materials and Scholarly References

Begin with the following works when developing your historiographical argument:

• Sherman, William E. B. “Romance on the Afghan Frontier: Desire in the Literature of the Church Missionary Society of Peshawar.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 49, no. 6 (2021): 1021–1046. https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2021.1950325
• Jensz, Felicity. Missionaries and Modernity: Education in the British Empire, 1830–1910. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022. https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526152985
• Heaton, Matthew M. “Decolonising the Hajj: Nationalist Politics and Pilgrimage Administration and the British Empire in the Mid-Twentieth Century.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 49, no. 2 (2021): 284–311. https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2020.1848031

Historiographical Essay: Sample and Study Resources

Use the sample material below to examine how historical claims can be developed through comparison, primary evidence, and scholarly disagreement. The passages demonstrate possible analytical approaches rather than provide a complete essay for submission.

2. Historiographical sample answer

Missionary Education and Colonial Power

3. Supporting analysis and additional study material

Colonial Education and Indigenous Leadership

Mission schools frequently occupied an uncertain position between religious instruction and colonial education policy. Jensz’s research shows that missionary education could support imperial objectives while creating tensions between missionary societies and colonial governments. Local students could use literacy and institutional access to pursue goals that differed from those of European teachers. The historical significance of education therefore depends on who controlled the institution, what knowledge it transmitted, and how students used that knowledge after leaving school. Historians should avoid assuming that educational access automatically produced political empowerment. Evidence from individual teachers, converts, and church leaders can reveal whether educational opportunities translated into practical influence.

Indigenous Christianity Beyond Missionary Control

A central question in this assignment concerns the difference between missionary influence and indigenous religious authority. African Christian communities did not necessarily accept European religious practices without modification. Local leaders sometimes adapted Christianity to existing social relationships, languages, and political circumstances. Historical interpretation becomes stronger when it examines the decisions of indigenous Christians rather than treating conversion as a direct consequence of missionary persuasion. Sherman’s study of the Church Missionary Society in Peshawar illustrates the importance of reading missionary literary representations critically. Students should compare these representations with evidence produced by local Christians wherever the surviving archive permits.

Evidence and Historiographical Method

A strong historiographical essay evaluates how historians construct their arguments from available evidence. Primary sources reveal the assumptions and experiences of historical actors, while secondary scholarship explains how those materials have been interpreted. Neither category should be treated as automatically reliable. Missionary reports may exaggerate institutional success, while colonial administrative documents may minimise religious or political developments outside government control. Comparing different types of evidence helps identify gaps and contradictions in historical narratives. The University of Guelph’s historiography research guide explains the distinction between primary evidence and historians’ interpretations, making it a useful resource for planning this assessment.

4. Conclusion

5. References and learning materials

The following references are verifiable scholarly works published between 2018 and 2026. They provide useful supporting material, although not every source directly addresses both selected case studies.

1. Heaton, M. M. (2021). Decolonising the Hajj: Nationalist politics and pilgrimage administration and the British Empire in the mid-twentieth century. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 49(2), 284–311. https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2020.1848031

2. Jensz, F. (2018). The 1910 Edinburgh World Missionary Conference and comparative colonial education. History of Education, 47(3), 399–414. https://doi.org/10.1080/0046760X.2018.1425741

3. Jensz, F. (2022). Missionaries and modernity: Education in the British Empire, 1830–1910. Manchester University Press. https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526152985

4. Sherman, W. E. B. (2021). Romance on the Afghan frontier: Desire in the literature of the Church Missionary Society of Peshawar. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 49(6), 1021–1046. https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2021.1950325