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 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
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| Title: | Andreas Riis: a lifetime of colonial drama |
| Author: | Quartey, Seth |
| Year: | 2005 |
| Periodical: | Research Review (ISSN 0855-4412) |
| Volume: | 21 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Pages: | 29-44 |
| Language: | English |
| Notes: | biblio. refs. |
| Geographic terms: | Ghana West Africa |
| Subjects: | missions attitudes Whites Africans colonialism Biography, Obituaries biography Riis, Andreas Missionaries |
| About person: | Andreas Riis (1804-1854) |
| Abstract: | In order to challenge the commonly held view that missionaries in the 19th-century Gold Coast (now Ghana) were cultivators and educators of cultures, this paper traces the experiences and operations of Andreas Riis (1804-1854), a missionary assigned to the Gold Coast by the Basel Mission. Among the questions addressed are the following: what assumptions did Riis make about the people and the land? What attributes did he assign to the people in his portrayal of their character and how did he articulate the concepts of the dominant culture to make sense of the colonial environment? Colonial environment is defined as landscapes where imaginitive reconstruction of religion, of Europeanness and images of otherness are enacted to undercut local notions of values and power structures. The paper focuses on moments in Riis' early attempts at building a mission, discovery tours, and the use of slave labour as they intersect with the system of power and identity formation. Unpublished documents from the Basel Mission Archive in Switzerland show how Riis set himself up as a paradigm of a superior culture in possession of modernity and exportable European values. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. [ASC Leiden abstract] |