Colonial Legacy of Gender Inequality: Christian Missionaries in German East Africa*

• Author: Max Montgomery
• DOI: 10.1177/0032329217704432
• Date: 01 June 2017
• Published date: 01 June 2017
• Subject Matter: Special Issue Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0032329217704432

Politics & Society

2017, Vol. 45(2) 225 –268

© 2017 SAGE Publications

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DOI: 10.1177/0032329217704432

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Special Issue Article

Colonial Legacy of

Gender Inequality:

Christian Missionaries in

German East Africa*

Max Montgomery

German Institute of Global and Area Studies

Abstract

Why does sub-Saharan Africa exhibit the highest rates of gender inequality in the

world? This article evaluates the contributions of Christian missionary societies

in German East Africa to current socioeconomic gender inequalities in Tanzania.

Previous studies ascribe a comparatively benign long-term effect of missionary

societies, in particular of the Protestant denomination, on economic, developmental,

and political outcomes. This article contrasts that perception by focusing on the

wider cultural impact of the civilizing mission in colonial Africa. The analysis rests on

a novel georeferenced dataset on German East Africa—based on digitized colonial

maps and extensive historical records available in the German colonial archives—and

the most recently available DHS-surveys. The results highlight the formative role of

Catholic missionary societies in German East Africa in shaping gender inequalities

currently witnessed in Tanzania.

Keywords

colonialism, German East Africa, Africa, gender inequality, Christian missionaries

Corresponding Author:

Max Montgomery, Research Fellow, German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Neuer Jungfernstieg

21, Hamburg, 20345, Germany.

Email: max.montgomery@giga-hamburg.de

*This special issue of Politics & Society titled “The Comparative Politics of Colonialism and Its Legacies”

features an introduction and four papers that were presented as part of a workshop held at The Ohio

State University, April 2016, organized by Marcus Kurtz and Jan Henryk Pierskalla.

704432PASXXX10.1177/0032329217704432Politics & SocietyMontgomery

research-article2017

226 Politics & Society 45(2)

Recent studies have given ample credit to the comparatively benign effects of Christian

missionaries, in particular protestant missionaries, on current educational outcomes

and associated development benefits in former European colonies. Missionaries’ edu-

cational campaigns propelled human capital formation of the local population, trigger-

ing the intergenerational transmission of both knowledge and aspirations for education,

which manifested in persistent effects on current outcomes and significant spillovers

to the regional and national level.1 Furthermore, the “social benefits” of education

contributed to comparatively better political outcomes, such as increased support for

democracy and religious liberty, and higher economic growth rates.2 While this per-

spective partly acknowledges missionaries’ lasting transformative impact on local cul-

tures, it rests on a relatively narrow view of the nature of missionary education and

activity. Although the majority of Christian missionaries were not directly associated

with the colonial state, many of the functioned as quasi-colonial agents and incubators

of Western norms and values. Guided by the notion of the “mission civilisatrice,” mis-

sionaries viewed themselves at the vanguard of the “spiritual conquest” aimed at

uplifting the civilizational status of the indigenous population. In fact, these ambitions

formed one of the core reasons for missionaries’ emphasis on the provision of educa-

tion, which served as a tool and an incentive for religious conversion and cultural

adaptation to a Christian life style.

The relevance of religious and cultural values for long-run human capital and eco-

nomic development has attracted considerably more attention in studies focusing on

the industrialized world. Building on Weber’s seminal work on the Protestant work

ethic,3 it is frequently argued that the rise of Protestantism coincided with the spread

of mass education and behavioral traits more conducive to generating wealth. For

example, Becker and Woessmann4 find that Protestantism is associated with higher

economic prosperity in late nineteenth-century Prussia because it generated substan-

tially higher literacy rates. Similarly, Woodberry,5 taking a global view, argues that

Protestantism propelled development and democracy, also as a result of its catalytic

influence on mass education. While others, such as Delacroix and Nielsen,6 dispute the

widely held assumption that Protestantism is correlated to economic prosperity, strong

agreement exists on the notion that religious and cultural factors are related to behav-

ioral traits that matter for long-term development.7

Keeping this in mind, I therefore turn to a relatively understudied topic in this con-

text: the impact of these considerations on gender roles in the precolonial societies.

The Western conceptualization of gender roles and hierarchies, highly conservative by

our current understanding, formed an intrinsic aspect of the cultural package mission-

aries were attempting to impose. The highly negative effect of the colonial era on

women’s socioeconomic and political position is well documented,8 but the contribu-

tion of Christian missionaries has, to date, received relatively little scholarly attention.

This is surprising when we consider that gender inequality continues to pose a grave

impediment to economic and human development in sub-Saharan Africa.9 Furthermore,

the lack of substantial progress on the issue in recent decades, despite its being a UN

Millennium Development Goal, indicates that gender norms—and associated attri-

butes, opportunities and relationships that are socially constructed and learned through

Montgomery 227

socialization—are deeply entrenched within societal and political structures.

Consequently, it is necessary to extend the scope of analysis to incorporate factors that

have historically shaped the salience of social structures and gender roles in Africa.

The general picture that emerges from extant studies is relatively mixed. Some claim

that Christian missionaries had a positive effect on women’s emancipation through the

provision of education—either directly or as a downstream benefit—which offered

opportunities for women to “escape social control” and improved the possibility of

labor market participation.10 Such findings are restricted mostly to Protestant mission-

aries, who invested more in female education than their Catholic counterparts, as a

recent paper by Nunn demonstrates.11 By contrast, the gender-biased education pro-

vided by Christian missionaries is credited with isolating women in the domestic realm,

severely damaging their public position and opportunities for empowerment, and pro-

viding one of the most critical determinants of persistent gender inequality in the

region.12 Nevertheless, the majority of these studies are focused on the British colonial

realm, which exhibited considerable idiosyncrasy, in particular with regard to the strong

influence of Protestant missionaries in the educational sector.13

This article investigates the contribution of Christian missionaries to the current

structure of gender inequality in Africa by shifting the lens on the localized impact of

missionary stations in Tanzania, formerly a part of German East Africa. The role of

women in African precolonial societies, including today’s Tanzania, was far from uni-

form. Yet women often played a central role in production and the household, espe-

cially in agriculture-based societies, and matrilineal systems were a prominent

feature.14 Colonial intervention deeply upset the formerly prevailing conceptualization

of the gender-based division of labor, social, and political tasks.15 For example, matri-

lineal institutions came under attack during colonial rule because of the Christian mis-

sions’ promotion of the patriarchal nuclear family and government policies’ assumption

of male-headed households.16 Furthermore, in a symbiotic relationship with the colo-

nial administration, missionaries relied on the administration’s protection to achieve

their proselytizing ambitions, while in turn molding the native population into a labor

force ready to be exploited by the metropolis. Thus, morals and norms promoted by

missionaries permeated the local cultures subjected to the their influence.17 While it is

irrefutable that the colonial period deeply transformed social and political organiza-

tions, including gender roles and hierarchies, it goes without saying that the history of

Africa did not start with colonialism.18

Building on a novel georeferenced dataset constructed from archival sources on the

German colonial period, I analyze the relationship between historic exposure to differ-

ent Christian missionaries and current educational outcomes. This study demonstrates

that Catholic and Protestant missionaries, contrary to previous studies, contributed to

an almost equal degree to higher levels of educational attainment. However, I also find

that women’s socioeconomic status, proxied by educational attainment, is lower that

men’s in regions with a higher exposure to Catholic missionary activity. Further tests

reveal that those results are not restricted to individual missionaries and are driven by

German Catholic missionaries. This study thus corroborates previous findings on the

relevance of intergenerational transfer of colonial legacies, in particular with regard to