The Catholic mission movement in Africa which had started in the late fifteenth century and was given new direction by the foundation in 1622 in Rome of the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide by Pope Gregory XV, nearly collapsed under the impact of the French revolution and Napoleonic wars in the late eighteenth century, when many religious houses and congregations in Europe were closed down. It recovered in the first decades of the nineteenth century and revived the work of evangelization in Africa.

The vast African continent was always present in Lavigerie’s thoughts. From 1867 until his death in November 1892 the immense African interior remained the principal object of Cardinal Lavigerie’s zeal and from the very beginning he planned an apostolate south of the Sahara. Cardinal Lavigerie, as Professor of Early Church History at the Sorbonne, knew well that Christianity had had a very long history in Africa due to the existence of the ancient Churches in Egypt, the Roman Africa, Nubia and Ethiopia.

The missionary movement which was far from successful during this early period as far as Christian conversion was concerned, met with huge success in another field. In most regions of sub-Saharan Africa outside the reach of Islam, Africans were introduced to written literature through Christian propaganda, the very first books in their own African language were produced to advance the Christian cause. Missions of all denominations disseminated education in their attempt to win converts and to train African catechists. ‘Transforming Africa by the Africans”, was the formula advocated by Cardinal Lavigerie in his instructions to the White Fathers. “The missionaries must therefore be mainly initiators, but the lasting work must be accomplished by the Africans themselves, once they have become Christians and apostles. And it must be clearly noted here that we say: become Christians and not become French or Europeans.”1 1 Missionaries were therefore asked to adapt themselves to the Africans, to strip themselves, as much as possible, of the cultural elements peculiar to them, of their language in the first place. It was believed that without effective and active communication it was impossible to pursue the conversion of the Africans.

This concern for African languages developed by both Catholic and Protestant missionaries laid the foundations for literature in African languages reduced into written form. Christianization went with reading and writing, with the rise of African literatures.

The schools they established were often boarding schools because missionaries believed that in an atmosphere of the boarding school far removed from the traditional cultural influences of their homes, new converts would more easily give up all or most of their traditions. The school system promoted Western values and desires. Missionary schoolmasters provided a total culture pattern, including church attendance, Christian morality, table manners, etc. All this led to the segregation and alienation of converts from their families and their societies.

Amru soon undertook the conquest of the north of Africa; after his death, in 664~ the Egyptian Governor, Okba~ seized Eezzan, founded Kairwan, and advanced as far as the frontiers of Marocco, which, since 618, had belonged to the Visigoths of Spain. After the battle of Maluya, all Marocco, as far as Ceuta, fell into the hands of the Arabs. The Berbers, who at first opposed, in a short time nearly all adopted, Islamism, and, for the most part, the Arab language as well. Sixty- six years sufficed for the Arabs and Islam to subdue all the north of Africa, fl'om Egypt to the Atlantic.

within tile pale of Islam. The sovereigns of Sokoto extended their power over Adamawa, and the father of the present sultan, iY[allem Adama, founded a new Mohammedan kingdom on the ruins of several pagan States, of which the most important was Kokomi. When the work of destruction was accomplished, the conquerors began to colonise and reconstruct ; after having ravaged immense stretches of country they attempted to cultivate it afresh ; and in order to establish political unity, destroyed a great number of natives, so that the scattered States, once joined under their seeptre, became available for extensive commercial relations. Thus, the explorer Joseph Thomson writes in the Contem- porary .Review that in comparing the degraded populations of the Coast of Guinea and the banks of the Lower Niger with those of the Central Sudan, what he saw there gave him a very different impression from what he had expected to see. Although he was in the heart of Africa, in the midst of veritable Negroes, they were very different from those he had met in his travels. He found there large and well-built towns, well-clothed people, behaving with self-possessed dignity; and everywhere signs of an in- dustrious community, highly advanced in the path of civilisation, carry- ing on different trades; the various metals were worked, stuffs were spun and dyed, and the markets were thronged with people. Savage tribes had been transformed into semi-civilised nations l Fetichism, with its degrading superstitions, had disappeared before Islam, which had in- spired the Negroes with a new and vigorous life. Thomson adds that Islam reigns at the present day from the. Nile to the Atlantic, and from the Sahara as far as the sixth or even the fourth degree north of the Equator.

According to Paulitschke, Islam is making great progress amongst the Gallas. The great tribe of Day has embraced Islamism, while the Walashi and Garura have remained pagan. However this may be, the Arabs are found everywhere in Eastern Africa, either in colonies of a few families, or as travellers. They are to be met with in all the towns of any importance in Southern Africa as far as the colony of Natal and Cape Town. Nevertheless, they do not sensibly influence the population there.

The founder of this enterprise was George Schmidt, who preached to the Hottentots in Bavianskloof- not in their own difficult language, but in Dutch, with which the natives were familiar.18 In 1744 the undertaking was relinquished ; in 1792 it was resuscitated. The Dutch language continued in use* Hence there was not the same call for original works as in other Missions. The Dutch Bible, Dutch school-books, and the Dutch Hymnal of the Moravian churches in Holland were introdu