Julie Donaldson: Looking For Mrs Livingstone (Saint Andrew Press)
Successful missionaries in 19th-century Africa required certain attributes: burning religious passion, a firm if dubious belief in Western cultural superiority and a robust constitution headed the list.
Successful missionaries in 19th-century Africa required certain attributes: burning religious passion, a firm if dubious belief in Western cultural superiority and a robust constitution headed the list.
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Review: Jonathan Wright
Other assets were deemed to be desirable but not absolutely necessary: these included a wife.
As Julie Davidson explains in her delightful new book, the organisations that supervised missionary activity preferred their agents to be married. Wives provided companionship, they could help with pastoral chores, and they made their husbands much less threatening to the locals. A missionary who brought the family along on his evangelical adventure was less likely to cause trouble – he would not want to endanger his nearest and dearest. It therefore came as no surprise when David Livingstone married Mary Moffat in 1845.
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