African History Commons^™

Colonial Lessons: Africans' Education In Southern Rhodesia, 1918-1940, Carol Summers

Bookshelf

Studying of the meanings of education, mission identities, and cultural change in Southern Rhodesia, Summers shows how mission-educated Africans negotiated new identities for themselves and their communities within the confines of segregation. From the beginning of the 20th century to the end of the Second World War, Africans in Southern Rhodesia experienced massive changes. Colonialism was systematized, segregation grew rigid and intensive, and economic changes affected every aspect of life from assembling bridewealth to entrepreneurial opportunities. This book provides a challenging portrayal of the possibilities and limits of African agency within the colonial context.

Mission-educated Africans who aspired to elements …

Mission Boys, Civilized Men, And Marriage: Educated African Men In The Missions Of Southern Rhodesia, 1920–1945, Carol Summers

History Faculty Publications

This paper examines what marriage may have meant to African men within the Christian elite of Southern Rhodesia. Using mission and government sources, it argues that domestic, Christian marriage was important to elite African men as a way of allowing them to achieve adulthood while remaining in good standing with mission sponsors who generally objected to or feared indigenous ideas of patriarchal male adulthood. Tracing life histories of two American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions ministers, one who succeeded in remaining within the mission system and one who left, blacklisted, it explores how domestic, Christian marriage defused many of …

Giving Orders In Rural Southern Rhodesia: Controversies Over Africans’ Authority In Development Programs, 1928-1934, Carol Summers

History Faculty Publications

This article focuses on the period from 1928 to 1935, Depression years, when Harold Jowitt was director of native development. During these years, debates over the Jeanes teacher program, and specifically over the careers of Matthew Magorimbo and Lysias Mukahleyi, exposed both the needs that drew the administration and missions toward community-based development, and the questions of power, authority, and resources that blocked community development, and more specifically the Jeanes teacher program, from achieving its stated aims.

"If You Can Educate The Native Woman...": Debates Over The Schooling And Education Of Girls And Women In Southern Rhodesia, 1900-1934, Carol Summers

History Faculty Publications

As the turn of the century, European settlers, officials, and missionaries in Southern Rhodesia were apathetic about promoting African girls' schooling. By the late 1920s, however, all sectors of the European community-settlers, officials, and missionaries- were debating whether, and for what reasons, girls should attend mission schools.¹ Europeans discussed girls' and women's schooling as a strategy for coping with problems in the social and economic development of the region. Some Native Commissioners hope that disciplined moral education would encourage women to remain in rural areas and take responsibility for their families, supporting the system of migrant labor. Many missionaries …

[Introduction To] From Civilization To Segregation: Social Ideals And Social Control In Southern Rhodesia, 1890-1934, Carol Summers

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This study examines the social changes that took place in Southern Rhodesia after the arrival of the British South Africa Company in the 1890s. Summer’s work focuses on interactions among settlers, the officials of the British South America Company and the administration, missionaries, humanitarian groups in Britain, and the most vocal or noticeable groups of Africans. Through this period of military conquest and physical coercion, to the later attempts at segregationist social engineering, the ideals and justifications of Southern Rhodesians changed drastically. Native Policy, Native Education policies, and, eventually, segregationist Native Development policies changed and evolved as the white and …