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Abstract
This paper employs the letters, journals and books written by representatives of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) – charged with establishing a mission to Uganda – to explore the ways in which missionary discourses were framed by, and contributed to, contemporary debates over tropical acclimatization and healthiness of place. Attention first focuses on the degree to which advice produced for and by pioneering missionaries travelling to Uganda reflected prevailing Western stereotypes of the tropics as pestilential and hazardous for European constitutions. Attention then turns to the means through which missionaries’ interactions with the on-the-ground environments and pre-existing indigenous knowledge systems and practices may have contributed to a more nuanced understanding of the salubrity of the region, and further posited Uganda as a relatively healthful place. The role that missionaries and local assistants across Uganda played in the investigation of a series of climate and disease events which affected the broader East African region in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century will then be illustrated. Finally, the degree to which a series of climatic, pathological and ecological events around the turn of the twentieth century, coupled with colonial intervention, may have exacerbated the spread of epidemic disease, specifically trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness), will be elucidated.
Notes
1. CitationEtherington, “Introduction.”
2. CitationBarker, “Where the Missionary Frontier,” 86.
3. CitationWillis, “The Nature of a Mission Community,” 139.
4. Livingstone, “Scientific Enquiry,” 51.
5. CitationKokkonen, “Religious and Colonial Realities,” 165.
6. CitationJenkins, “The Earliest Generation,” 89–118.
7. CitationHarries, Butterflies and Barbarians, 15.
8. CitationLivingstone, “Human Acclimatization,” 359–94; CitationRowbotham, “Hear an Indian Sister's Plea”, 247–61.
9. Semple, Missionary Women.
10. CitationGriffiths, “Trained to Tell,” 158.
11. CitationBridges, “Introduction,” 28.
12. CitationBinder, “The Location of Christian Missions,” 168–202.
13. CitationLivingstone, “Scientific Enquiry”; CitationGrove, “Scottish Missionaries,” 163–87; CitationStenhouse, “Missionary Science”; Sivasundaram, Nature and the Godly Empire; CitationBravo, “Mission Gardens,” 49–65.
14. CitationDriver, “Imagining the Tropics,” 1–17; CitationDriver and Martins, Tropical Visions.
15. Livingstone, “Human Acclimatization”; CitationKennedy “The Perils of the Midday Sun”; CitationArnold, The Problem of Nature; CitationOsborne, “Acclimatizing the World,” 135–51; Crozier, “Sensationalising Africa.”
16. Various documents were consulted in the Church Missionary Society Archives, University of Birmingham Special Collections (CMS), including CMS Original Correspondence (CMSO, followed by name and date), personal papers (ACC and acquisition number, followed by date where applicable); and Nyanza Mission Papers (CA 6 followed by number of item of correspondence, missionary's name and date). Issues of the missionary periodical Mengo Notes, were also consulted. Collections housed in the Wellcome Trust Archives and Manuscripts were used, including the Journal Letters of A.J. Cook (Cook Letters) and the Annual Medical and Sanitary reports (AMSR). HCCP refers to House of Commons Parliamentary Papers.
17. CitationAnderson, “Where is the Postcolonial History of Medicine?,” 525.
18. CitationArnold, cited in Jenkins, “The Earliest Generation,” 1993: 110, footnote 39.
19. CitationComaroff and Comaroff, Ethnography and the Historical Imagination; CitationRaj, “Colonial Encounters,” 119.
20. CitationPeel, “For Who Hath Despised.”
21. Harries, Butterflies and Barbarians, 123.
22. MacKenzie, “Experts and Amateurs,” 191.
23. Curtin, The Image of Africa; Kennedy, “The Perils of the Midday Sun”; CitationLivingstone, “Tropical Hermeneutics”; Driver and Yeoh, “Constructing the Tropics.”
24. Crozier, “Sensationalising Africa,” 396.
25. CitationKnox, “Defoe and the Politics,” 938.
26. Bridges, “Introduction.”
27. Tucker, Eighteen Years, 1–2.
28. CitationDriver, “Scientific Exploration,” 24.
29. CitationDriver, “Editorial Material,” 267–8.
30. Driver, “Scientific Exploration,” 27.
31. Bridges, “Introduction.”
32. CitationDriver, Geography Militant, 79; Jennings, “This Mysterious and Intangible Enemy,” 65–87.
33. CitationMatson, “Instructions,” 192–237.
34. CitationJennings, “This Mysterious and Intangible Enemy.”
35. Tucker, Eighteen Years, 5.
36. The two men are thought to have met their fate as a result of having given shelter to an Arab trader who had a disagreement with the King of Ukewere
37. Tucker, Eighteen Years.
38. CitationHarrison, Climates and Constitutions.
39. . CitationAnderson, “Disease, Race and Empire,”62–7.
40. CitationKupperman, “Fear of Hot Climates,” 213.
41. CitationLivingstone, “Tropical Climate,” 106.
42. Kennedy, “The Perils of the Midday Sun,” 125.
43. Crozier, “Sensationalising Africa,” 397.
44. Livingstone, “Human Acclimatization,” 361.
45. CA6/04, Letters to Headquarters. As CitationPresthold, Domesticating the World, 59–86, has illustrated, European concern over suitable attire in the East African interior was matched by distinctive local spatial and temporal variations among East African peoples for particular fashions, colours and textiles.
46. The Nile Valley Tribes: an appeal, 1902, William Authur Crabtree CMS ACC 27/ F1/ 1.
47. CitationBell, “The Pestilence,” 328; Kennedy, “The Perils of the Midday Sun,” 142.
48. Matson, “Instructions,” 197.
49. CMSO, CitationFelkin, 17 October 1878.
50. Livingstone, “Human Acclimatization,” 375.
51. CitationWoodruff, The Effects of Tropical Sunlight; CitationAnderson, “Where Every Prospect Pleases,” 506–29.
52. Waller, a British missionary and slavery abolitionist, went to central Africa in 1861 with the University's Mission to Central Africa. It is believed he spent around seven years in Africa. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
53. Matson, “Instructions,” 210.
54. Driver, “Scientific Exploration,” 21.
55. Driver, “Scientific Exploration,” 27
56. Driver, “Scientific Exploration,” 27
57. Matson, “Instructions”; CitationKark, “The Contribution of Nineteenth Century Protestant Missionary Societies.”
58. Peel, “For Who Hath Despised,” 602.
59. CMS ACC 88, Walker, January 30, 1896.
60. Kupperman, “Fear of Hot Climates,” 238.
61. CitationMackay, “Boat Voyage,” 273–83.
62. Livingstone, “Human Acclimatization,” 363.
63. CitationHutchinson, “Progress of the Victoria Nyanza Expedition,” 498–504.
64. CitationDriver, “Henry Morton Stanley and His Critics.”
65. CMS ACC 858/ F2; CMS-O, Mackay, July 1876.
66. CMS, ACC 858/ F2.
67. C A6/ 016 June 26, 1876.
68. C A6/ 016-21, Holmwood, August 18, 1876.
69. C A6/ 016-21, Shergold Smith, June 26, 1876.
70. Letter from Holmwood to CMS, August 18, 1876.
71. Livingstone, “Tropical Hermeneutics.”
72. CMS ACC 858 F2.
73. CA6/07, George J Clarke, Mpwapwa, November 10, 1876.
74. CitationPrice and Mullens, “A New Route,” 233.
75. This bimodal regime changes progressively into a single season with increasing distance from the Equator (CitationConway et al., “Rainfall Variability in East Africa”).
76. CMS ACC 858 F2.
77. CMS ACC 858 F2.
78. Price and Mullens, “A New Route,” 234
79. C A6/ 016-21.
80. CA6/ 07, Clarke, November 10, 1876, Mpwapwa.
81. Bell, “The Pestilence that Walketh”; Anderson, “Disease, Race and Empire.”
82. CitationHill, “Gender, Culture and ‘the Spiritual Empire’”; CitationEndfield and Nash, “Happy Is the Bride”.
83. CitationSemple, Missionary Women.
84. CA6/07 George J Clark, November 10, 1876, Mpwapwa.
85. CA6/07 George J Clark in December 6, 1876, Mpwapwa.
86. The site was re-occupied in 1878 by Baxter who found nothing more than a pile of rubbish where the mission station had been CA6/ 05 Baxter, Dr John Edward Fox.
87. C A6/ 016-21, Kagei, November 2, 1877.
88. Tucker, Eighteen Years, 5.
89. CMS CA6/0 25, Wilson.
90. Felkin, “Journey to the Victoria Nyanza,” 357–63.
91. Felkin, Victoria to Nyanza Mission Party. Nile Route, Health Report: received March 19, 1879. CA6/0 10, Robert William Felkin.
92. The link between the anopheles mosquito and malaria was recognized in 1897 by Ronald Ross (CitationColeman-Jones, “Ronald Ross and the Great Malaria Problem,” 181–4).
93. CMS CA6 /015, Litchfield, October 25, 1878
94. CitationNicholson and Yin, “Rainfall Conditions,” 387–398; this period corresponds to one of the strongest El Niño events of the nineteenth century; CitationQuinn, “A Study of Southern Oscillation-related Climatic Activity,” 119–49.
95. CA6/0 10, Robert Felkin, March 18, 1879.
96. CA6/0 15, Reverend George Litchfield, Rubaga, Uganda, June 12, 1879.
97. CA6/0 10, Robert Felkin, March 18, 1879.
98. CA6/0 10, Robert Felkin, November 1, 1878.
99. CA6/0 10, Robert Felkin, March 18, 1879.
100. CA6/0 10, Robert Felkin, March 18, 1879.
101. CA6 0 15, Litchfield, October 25, 1878.
102. Writing on January 10, 1879; from CitationHarrison, A.M. Mackay, 106.
103. CMS CA6/0 19, Pearson.
104. CitationMockler-Ferryman, “Christianity in Uganda,” 276–91.
105. Livingstone, “Human Acclimatization,” 371.
106. CitationHarrison, “The Tender Frame of Man,” 68–93.
107. Kupperman, “Fear of Hot Climates,” 232.
108. CitationSavage, “Tropicality Imagined and Experienced.”
109. . Driver and Martins, Tropical Visions, 3; Arnold, “Envisioning the Tropics,” 143.
110. CitationCurtin, The Image of Africa.
111. CitationKenny, “Climate, Race and Imperial Authority,” 658.
112. Livingstone, “Human Acclimatization,” 363.
113. Lugard, “On Travels across from East Coast to Uganda,” 822.
114. Included in a review of CitationLugard's book, published in the British Medical Journal, December 2, 1895, 1240.
115. Moffat, in CitationPortal, “Report on the Mombasa Victoria Lake Railway Survey,” 94.
116. Ankole, Mengo Notes, March 1901.
117. CMS ACC 167, Chadwick.
118. Moffat in Portal, “Report on the Mombasa Victoria Lake Railway Survey,” 94
119. Kennedy, “The Perils of the Midday Sun”; Livingstone, “Tropical Hermeneutics”; CitationDriver and Yeoh “Constructing the Tropics.”
120. Cook Letters, Kavirondo, February 6, 1897.
121. CitationStepan, Picturing Tropical Nature, 48
122. CMSO, “Interesting Journal letters from Miss Ruth Hurditch,” May 5, 1900.
123. Portal, “Report on the Mombasa Victoria Lake Railway Survey,” HCCP 1894, 94.
124. CMS ACC 167, July 27, 1895.
125. CMSO, Miss Ruth Hurditch, May 11, 1900; Cook Letters, April, 1901; CMS ACC 84, Fisher, December 12, 1899.
126. Cook Letters, December 30, 1905.
127. Cook Letters, Gonodkero, December 15, 1905.
128. Cook Letters, November 12, 1905 and also Masindi, November 16, 1905.
129. Cook Letters, March 23, 1903.
130. Cook Letters, July 21, 1903.
131. CMSO, Bishop CitationTucker to Reverend Fox, Uganda, June 7, 1899.
132. CMSO, Walker, August 4, 1899.
133. CitationJohnson, “Preliminary Report.”
134. CitationManson et al., “Acclimatization of Europeans,” 600.
135. CitationThompson, “East Central Africa”, 66, quoted in Livingstone, “Human Acclimatization,” 384–5.
136. From “Famine in the Busoga District of Uganda,” HCPP, November 1908, 11.
137. CMS ACC 88, Walker, November 15, 1894
138. Mackay, September 5, 1888, cited in Harrison, A M Mackay.
139. Ashe, cited in Doyle, “Population Decline,” 439.
140. Médard, “Croissance et Crises.”
141. CitationKuhanen, Poverty, Health and Reproduction.
142. CMS ACC 88, Walker, Buddu, December 17, 1891.
143. CMS ACC 88, Walker, Kitesa Buganda, March 12, 1890.
144. CitationOfkansky, “The 1889–1897 Rinderpest Epidemic,” 31–8; CitationFèvre et al., “Reanalyzing the 1900–1920 Sleeping Sickness Epidemic,” 567–73; CitationBerrang-Ford et al., “Sleeping Sickness in Uganda,” 223–31.
145. Doyle, “Population Decline,” 429–58
146. CMS ACC 88, Walker, Uganda, May 30, 1894.
147. CMS ACC 88, Walker, Uganda, May 30, 1894.
148. CitationKonczacki, “The Emin Pasha Relief Expedition,” 615–25.
149. CMS ACC 88, Walker, May 9, 1894
150. Cook Letters, November 12, 1896
151. CMS ACC 88, Namirembe, Uganda CMS, November 15, 1896; Pike was collecting rainfall data to send to the Royal Geographical Society (CMS ACC 88, Robert Henry Walker, Uganda, January 30, 1896).
152. Cook Letters, July 1899.
153. CitationMédard, “Croissance et Crises”; Kuhanen, Poverty, Health and Reproduction.
154. CMSO, Baskerville Kyagwe, October 11 and November 18, 1897.
155. Waller 1998, in CitationGillson, “A Large Infrequent Disturbance,” 459; Cook Letters, April 1899.
156. Cook Letters, April 17, 1899.
157. Cook Letters, April 17, 1899.
158. The Times, October 2, 1899, Issue 35949.
159. Cook Letters, March 26, 1899.
160. CMS ACC 84 F5, Masindi, Bunyoro, October 2, 1899.
161. CMSO, Glass's Journal, April 1900; CMSO Innes, Bukaleba, Busoga, April 29, 1900
162. CMS ACC 478 Mengo Notes , Volume 1, September 1900.
163. CitationDoyle, “Population Decline”; Gillson, “A Large Infrequent Disturbance.”
164. CitationMcConnel, “Annual and Medical Sanitary Report.”
165. CMS ACC 84, Fisher, May 7, 1899.
166. Soff, “Sleeping Sickness in the Lake Victoria Region.”
167. CMSO, Glass's Journal, Mengo, April 30, 1900.
168. The Times, November 13, 1900, 4.
169. Bristol Mercury and Daily Post, June 15, 1899, Issue 15942.
170. Report on British East Africa, British Medical Journal, May 1, 1902.
171. CitationHide, “History of Sleeping Sickness,” 112–25; CitationHaynes, “Framing Tropical Disease,” 467–93.
172. From N'gana – a Zulu word which means “powerless/useless” and refers to the animal becoming unfit for use (Steverding, “The History of African Trypanosomiasis,” 1).
173. MacKenzie, “Experts and Amateurs,” 191.
174. British army surgeon David Bruce had established that nagana was caused by a trypanosome transmitted to cattle by tsetse while he was working in Natal in 1894 (MacKenzie, “Experts and Amateurs,” 190).
175. New York Times, September 18, 1898, in an article entitled “From Chambers Journal.”
176. MacKenzie, “Experts and Amateurs,” 189.
177. CitationBerrang-Ford, “Civil Conflict and Sleeping Sickness.”
178. In March 1903 the War Office despatched Colonel David Bruce of the Royal Army Medical Corps who drew the link between the tsetse fly and the disease.
179. CMS ACC 167 F2/ F 4.
180. Cook Letters, December 15, 1904.
181. Tilley, “Ecologies of Complexity,” 24.
182. Fevre et al., “Reanalyzing the 1900–1920 Sleeping Sickness Epidemic.”
183. Summers, “Intimate Colonialism,” 791.
184. CitationHoppe, “Lords of the Fly,” 86–105; Tilley, “Ecologies of Complexity.”
185. CMS ACC 167 F2/ F 4.
186. MacKenzie, “Experts and Amateurs,” 198, 203.
187. CMS ACC 167 F2/ F 4.
188. CitationSummers, “Intimate Colonialism,” 801.
189. CMS ACC 167 F2/ F 4.
190. CitationVaughan, “Healing and Curing,” 295; Comaroff and Comaroff, Ethnography and the Historical Imagination.
191. CitationChristy, “Bubonic Plague (‘Kaumpuli’),” 1266.
192. Wellcome Trust, Bruce correspondence, May 12, 1903.
193. Wellcome Trust, Bruce correspondence, May 14, 1903.
194. Wellcome Trust, Bruce correspondence, May 12, 1903.
195. Wellcome Trust, Bruce correspondence, June 13, 1903.
196. CitationDristas, “From Lake Nyasa to Philadelphia,” 48.
197. British Medical Journal, Correspondence, July 9, 1904.
198. CitationBruce and Nabarro, “Progress Report on Sleeping Sickness in Uganda,” 11–88; CitationBruce et al., “Further Report on Sleeping Sickness in Uganda,” 2–88.
199. CitationSoff, “Sleeping Sickness in the Lake Victoria Region,” 255–68.
200. Cook Letters, Masindi, November 16, 1905.
201. Cook Letters, Kamuli, November 19, 1905.
202. AMSR year ending December 31, 1913.
203. ACR 1913–1914, 22.
204. AMSR, year ending December 31, 1922.
205. CitationTilley, “Ecologies of Complexity”; CitationWebel, “International, Colonial, Transnational.”
206. Anderson, “Where Every Prospect Pleases,” 508.
207. Livingstone, “Human Acclimatization,” 365; CitationMacKenzie, “Experts and Amateurs,” 187.
208. CitationMaudlin, “African Trypanosomiasis,” 681.
209. CitationSivasundaram, Nature and the Godly Empire, 12.
210. Hide, “History of Sleeping Sickness in East Africa”; CitationSteverding, “The History of African Trypanosmiasis.”
211. CitationFeierman and Janzen, “The Decline and Rise of African Population,” 27–8.
212. CitationFeierman, “Struggles for Control,” 86.
213. CitationLyons, The Colonial Disease.
214. CitationWorboys, “The Comparative History of Sleeping Sickness,” 90.
215. CitationGiblin, “Trypanosomiasis Control in African History.”
216. CitationHartwig and Patterson, Disease in African History, 12.
217. Feierman, “Struggles for Control,” 86.
218. Fevre et al., “Reanalyzing the 1900–1920 Sleeping Sickness Epidemic,” 572.
219. CitationFord, The Role of Trypanosomiases.
220. CitationFord, The Role of Trypanosomiases.
221. Giblin, “Trypanosomiasis Control in African History.”
222. CitationFabian, Out of our Minds.
223. Livingstone, “Scientific Enquiry,” 50.