Mission Spaces in German East Africa: Spatial Imaginations, Implementations, and Incongruities against the Backdrop of an Emerging Colonial Spatial Order

Abstract

In this chapter Adam Jones and Geert Castryck identify spatial formats that were at play in the encounter of missionary societies and orders with Africa, with colonialism, and with other missions in German East Africa. By focusing on the spatial strategies – or perhaps, less consciously, spatial practices – of missionaries in the early colonial African context, we attempt to break up the binary of the colonizers and the colonized, with their, at times, incongruent spatial conceptions and projects. At the same time, we address the diversity of spatial concepts, interactions, frames of reference, and scales of operation amongst missionaries, both within German East Africa and, in comparison, with other African-European colonial contexts.

Biographical Note

Geert Castryck (SFB 1199, Leipzig University)

Geert Castryck is a historian specializing in African and global history. He did research on African urban history, remembrance education, and colonial legacies. He earned his PhD in history from Ghent University in 2006 for his dissertation about the colonial Muslim communities of Bujumbura (Burundi). He came to Leipzig University in 2010 to write a global history of the East Central African town of Kigoma-Ujiji. At the Collaborative Research Centre, he analyses the redefinition of political, economic, and religious spaces in East and Central Africa as well as in Europe during and after the Scramble for Africa.