Patrick Harries

A complex and layered analysis of the impact of Swiss missionaries on the ordering and understanding of the African continent.

Swiss Missionaries & Systems of Knowledge in South-East Africa

Butterflies & Barbarians

Laurence Favre

 The missionaries' inability to see the African landscape was a product of a visual estrangement that partly explains how they saw, or failed to see, the occupants of that land. However, as they explored the country and subjected it to a new gaze, these Aufklärer reduced it to the manageable proportions and familiar outlines of a map. At the same time, they carefully collected and classified animals and plants and engaged in meticulous meteorological studies. Once they had established a cognitive control over the land, the missionaries were able to view the African popula- tion in new and more empathetic ways. 

Institutions such as the Sunday school, the museum and the botanical garden introduced the Swiss -a people without colonies or a population of slave-descent to this exciting new world. I stress in this chapter that they also created the cultural conditions for the normalization of imperialism.l5

Butterflies & Barbarians Swiss Missionaries & Systems of Knowledge in South-East Africa

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