Bishop Colenso and Theophilus Shepstone: Partners in Christian Imperialism

Abstract

Abstract This article revisits Bishop J.W. Colenso’s long partnership with Theophilus Shepstone, trying to see it as it unfolded chronologically under changing circumstances. From the outset the bishop’s missionary practice envisaged a partnership with the colonial state to deliver a Livingstonian programme of commerce, industry and civilisation. His administration of his foundation ‘school for chiefs’, Ekukanyeni, was set up on the model of an English Public School. Until it foundered on the rocks of African resistance, Colenso played the headmaster to the hilt, attempting to build character and flogging where he thought flogging was needed. The ‘black kingdom’ dream he dreamed with Shepstone was not, as presented by Jeff Guy and other historians, a thought bubble killed off by higher authorities but a scheme to which the friends returned repeatedly right up to their irreparable break of 1874. In each of its various guises it articulated a vision of patriarchal rule that challenges conventional pictures of Colenso as a consistent champion of justice and autonomy for Africans. No missionary to Southern Africa ever articulated a more extensive project of Christian imperialism.