Mombasa Cathedral and the CMS Compound: the Years of the East Africa Protectorate
| Autor: | P. J. L. Frankl |
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| Rok vydání: | 2008 |
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| Zdroj: | History in Africa. 35:209-229 |
| ISSN: | 1558-2744 0361-5413 |
| DOI: | 10.1353/hia.0.0017 |
| Popis: | Exactly when Islam arrived on the Swahili coast is difficult to say, but Mombasa was a Muslim town long before the arrival of Vasco da Gama in 1498. During the two centuries or so that the Portuguese-Christians occupied this part of the sea route from Europe to India there were churches in Mombasa and elsewhere in Swahililand, but none has endured. Modern Christianity dates from 1844, when Ludwig Krapf arrived in Mombasa. Before then Mombasa was a “wholly Mohammedan” town. Krapf, a German Lutheran, was employed by the Church Missionary Society (CMS) based in London. Failing to make any converts on the island, Krapf moved into the coastal hinterland, among the Nyika, where Islam was less in evidence and where, therefore, Krapf was more hopeful of success. With remarkable perspicacity he wrote: “Christianity and civilisation ever go hand in hand…. A black bishop and black clergy of the Protestant Church may, ere long, become a necessity in the civilisation of Africa.”In England, when attention was drawn to the east African slave trade, a settlement of liberated slaves was established on the mainland north of Mombasa island in 1875, and a church built (Emmanuel Church, Frere Town)—the first parcel of land in central Swahililand to be owned by European-Christians. There was still no church on the island. However, this was the zenith of the British imperial power and in the capital of almost every major British overseas possession, it was de rigueur—alongside the Secretariat and the Club—to have a Church of England cathedral. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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