Methods of mission: The ordering of space and time, land and labour on Methodist mission stations in Caffraria, 1823-1835

Abstract

The methodist missionary enterprise in the period, 1816 to 1835, formed part of a broader process of colonial intrusion into the lands and lives of African people beyond the Cape colony. This paper examines the everyday activities of missionaries beyond the Eastern Cape in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. It takes as a theme their attempts to structure the pockets of land around mission stations into orderly settlements, and to order the lives of station residents according to the rhythms of industrialising England. The paper describes and analyses the ways in which the aims of the Methodist mission were translated into everyday practices. While focusing on missionary interactions with Africans beyond the Colony, the narrative traverses the web spun, by missionaries, from bases in the Colony across the interior.