This thesis explores the development of missionary infrastructure in the Canadian north between approximately 1850 and 1915 and its impact on the evangelization of northern indigenous people by missionary organizations. Focussing on two groups of missionaries - the Catholic Oblates of Mary Immaculate and the Anglican Church Missionary Society - this thesis demonstrates how missionaries used buildings to develop a programme for evangelization based on the convert and civilize model prevalent in nineteenth-century global missions. It argues that the intent was to convert indigenous people to Christianity and to enact significant changes on their traditional way of life, including their economy and social structure. Within this programme, architectural spaces, specifically the mission station, were used as a frontier location where indigenous people and missionaries interacted, providing a location for missionary teaching, a didactic place to demonstrate how Christians lived, and a method of transforming what was viewed as a non-Christian wilderness into a Christian 'garden' through construction of buildings and control of the natural world. While these ideas were applied to diverse locations throughout the global mission field in the early modern period of missionary activity, the Canadian north presents a unique area of study for this topic because of the relative lack of pre-existing non-indigenous development in the region, the difficulties in building resulting from its environment, and the romantic approach that missionaries took to it as the frontier of European and Christian activity - in biblical terms, the 'uttermost ends of the earth'. Within this context, the use of architecture as part of a missionary programme of conversion and civilization became extremely important as a tool for the transformation of the land and its people to a Christian ideal rooted in European precedent. This proved problematic because of the inherent difficulties in evangelization in this geographic region. As a result, this thesis demonstrates how missionaries applied architecture within the mission station as a tool for evangelization in this region, taking into consideration both the way in which they perceived the territory and the realities they faced on the ground. It reveals how these missionaries created a unique set of architectures that responded to how missionaries understood building function within the missionary environment, as well as what was actually achievable in the northern mission field.

This thesis is about the social, political, and economic interactions that took place in and around the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa (UMCA) in two very different regions: north-eastern Tanzania and Zanzibar. The mission was for much of the period a space in which people could – often inventively – make a living through education, employment, and patronage. Indeed, particularly in the period preceding British colonial rule, most Christians were mission employees (usually teachers) and their families. Being Christian was, in one sense, a livelihood. In this era before the British altered the political economy, education had only limited appeal, while the teaching profession was not highly esteemed by Africans, although it offered some teachers the security and status of a regular income. From the 1860s to the 1910s, the UMCA did not offer clear trajectories for most of the Africans interacting with it in search of a better life. Markers of coastal sophistication, such as clothing or Swahili fluency, had greater social currency, while the coast remained a prime source of paid employment, often preferable to conditions offered by the mission. By the end of the period, Christians were at a social and economic advantage by virtue of their access to formal institutional education. This was a major shift and schooling became an obvious trajectory for future employment and economic mobility. Converts, many of whom came from marginal social backgrounds, sought to overcome a heritage of exploitative social relations and to redraw the field for the negotiation of dependency to their advantage. However, as this thesis shows, the mission also contributed to new sets of exploitative social relations in a hierarchy of work and education.

The archaeological research was conducted at Botshabelo, a nineteenth century Berlin Mission Society station located outside Middelburg, Mpumalanga. It focuses primarily on the collection of residential houses and homesteads in the area known as the Motse, meaning “village” in Sotho. This is where the mission station’s African residents lived. This research seeks to use archaeology, specifically the study of the associated material culture, in order to refine the chronology of changes to settlement in this area, and to explore the ways in which the inhabitants interacted with other sectors of the mission station community and the then wider Transvaal society. Although the mission station and its settlement dates from 1865, the material culture excavated and analysed in this project is primarily from the twentieth century. It is through the careful analysis of these houses and their architecture, together with the associated material culture that the social and cultural values of the people who built and used them can be explored. To date there has been a copious amount of research done on these mission stations in southern Africa, flowing mainly from the disciplines of history and anthropology (Comaroff and Comaroff 1991; Delius 1981; Japha et al 1993; Kirkaldy 2005; Vernal 2009). In contrast, however, there has been relatively little archaeological research carried out on the various mission stations within southern Africa (but see Ashley 2010; Boshoff 2004; Clift 2001; Jeppson 2005; Reid et al 1997). This research project is based in archaeology, and in particular in the discipline of historical archaeology, which can provide the methodologies and approaches that can be used to make sense of the history of the Botshabelo Mission Station and the Motse. This research therefore intends to contribute to the currently under researched field of mission archaeology within South Africa. / Anthropology and Archaeology / M.A. (Archaeology)

This research traces the developments in Europe that led to a rush for foreign missions i different parts of the world, with specific reference to South Africa. It describes the operations of the Swiss missionaries in South Africa from 1873 to 1975. This study also evaluates the motives for the evangelization of the African masses, and contradictions th existed in the relations that missionaries had with proselytes during the period under review. The sterling contributions of black evangelists in this period are demonstrated. It cannot be denied that the Swiss missionaries did a lot of good to the indigenous populac of South Africa-the importance of their services at Lemana Training Institution (1906) and Elim Hospital (1899) are indelibly inscribed in our historiography. They should also applauded for their response to the plight of the Shangaans, who had for reasons unkno to the researcher been by-passed by other missions during the "scramble for mission fields". But the missionaries also had their shortcomings, for instance their failure to ind the state to remove capital punishment from the statute books. They may nonetheless stil continue to be used by the present government of South Africa to assist in carrying the social transformation process forward. / Educational Studies / M. Ed. (History of Education)

This research traces the developments in Europe that led to a rush for foreign missions i different parts of the world, with specific reference to South Africa. It describes the operations of the Swiss missionaries in South Africa from 1873 to 1975. This study also evaluates the motives for the evangelization of the African masses, and contradictions th existed in the relations that missionaries had with proselytes during the period under review. The sterling contributions of black evangelists in this period are demonstrated. It cannot be denied that the Swiss missionaries did a lot of good to the indigenous populac of South Africa-the importance of their services at Lemana Training Institution (1906) and Elim Hospital (1899) are indelibly inscribed in our historiography. They should also applauded for their response to the plight of the Shangaans, who had for reasons unkno to the researcher been by-passed by other missions during the "scramble for mission fields". But the missionaries also had their shortcomings, for instance their failure to ind the state to remove capital punishment from the statute books. They may nonetheless stil continue to be used by the present government of South Africa to assist in carrying the social transformation process forward. / Educational Studies / M. Ed. (History of Education)