The Realm of the Word (Social History of Africa)

The Realm of the Word is the first study of mission Christianity in colonial southern Africa to treat religion and society as a coherent whole. While previous works have concentrated on the interactions of European missionaries and Africans, Landau shifts the focus to African evangelists, schoolchildren, cattle barons, healers, miscreants, political rebels, and, most of all, Christian women. Drawing as much as possible on the words of Tswana contemporaries, his sources include oral traditions and reminiscences, court reports, and royal and ecclesiastic correspondence in SeTswana, as well as government and missionary archives. The ideologies and practices of Christianity emerge as inseparable from a kingdom's construction of power in central Botswana--a realm of the Word, premised not on Western hegemony, but instead on Tswana self-rule.