Previous page | New search |
The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here
Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Laying the First Course of Stones: Building the London Missionary Society Church in Madagascar, 1862-1895 |
Author: | Leonardi, Cherry |
Year: | 2003 |
Periodical: | International Journal of African Historical Studies |
Volume: | 36 |
Issue: | 3 |
Pages: | 607-633 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Madagascar |
Subjects: | missionary history churches Religion and Witchcraft History and Exploration Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/3559436 |
Abstract: | This article seeks to further the study of the environmental and spatial aspects of missions in the context of 19th-century Madagascar and the London Missionary Society's (LMS) mission to the island, which began in 1820, was suspended in 1836, and resumed in 1862. The focus of the article is the period 1862-1895. The overwhelmingly frequent discussion of building work in the LMS records suggests the need to locate this mission within the wider missionary impulse to colonize, dominate and reshape the African landscape. The buildings were intended both to bring a European vision of civilization and beauty to the landscape and to physically demonstrate the missionary presence and create a new sacred geography. The article focuses in particular on the Martyr Memorial Churches in Antananarivo as among the earliest and most ambitious of the mission structures, but also looks at the wider efforts to transform the physical, moral and sacred landscape through mission buildings. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract] |