The Nature of Christianity in Northern Tanzania: Environmental and Social Change, 1890–1916 by Robert B. Munson (review)

In The Nature of Christianity in Northern Tanzania, Robert B. Munson explores the ideas and practices associated with the introduction and development of Christianity in northern Tanzania during the German colonial period. This period started in 1890 and ended during World War I. Munson’s specific interest is to examine the role that the Lutheran and Roman Catholic Christian missions played in introducing Christianity, reordering space, and introducing new species of plants that Africans appropriated, adapted, and used to address their own social, economic, and political needs. Drawing on a rich array of German archival sources, Munson argues that Christian Missions’ emphasis on new plant species and ordering the natural world supported their goal of spreading Christianity and vice versa, a process he refers to as “botanical proselytization” (p. 252). By this concept, Munson means that the spread of Christianity in northern Tanzania assisted and was itself supported by the new order upon the landscape and the introduction of new plants (pp. 2, 228).

The book is organized into six chapters. Chapter 1 sets the background by documenting places, plants, and people before colonial conquest and institutionalization of Christianity. Chapter 2 explores colonial conquest and the penetration of missionary societies from 1890 to 1906. This period witnessed initial efforts by the Germans to strengthen the colonial presence in northern Tanzania by building military posts, district offices, mission schools, and churches; experimenting with new plants; and reorganizing space. Chapter 3 examines the period from 1907 to 1916 when Africans became aware of the benefits of German religious, spatial, and botanical changes and began adopting and appropriating them. Chapter 4 addresses the Germans’ efforts to reorder space through land surveying, boundary creation, and map making. Munson notes that this spatial ordering was necessary for establishing places for uses such as establishing plantations, constructing roads and railways, urban planning, and creating forest and game reserves. Chapter 5 explores new plant species that the Germans introduced such as European potatoes, grevillae, ceara rubber, Arabica coffee, and sisal, and how Africans adapted to them. Chapter 6 looks at changes in people as they evolved into Christians and Africanized environmental and social changes brought by Germans to expand their livelihood opportunities.

Munson’s book makes an important contribution to Tanzania’s history, since the interplay between spatial transformation and the development of Christianity has not received adequate attention from historians of Tanzania. By documenting German colonial initiatives and African responses in shaping and reshaping landscape, Munson uncovers the complex nature of colonial encounter between Africans and European. As opposed to nationalist- and Marxist-oriented literature that emphasized the passive nature of Africans in their encounter with the colonizers, Munson’s work joins new African histories that underscore the fact that Africans were not passive recipients of missionary teachings. He reveals the agency of Africans in adopting and appropriating missionary teachings into their own cultural meaning and in using those teachings to address their contemporary socioeconomic and political challenges. Africans accepted Christianity not because it was superior to their indigenous religions but because it opened up new opportunities for survival in the form of Western medicine, employment, trade, and education. The book also makes important contributions to cultural heritage studies by uncovering the extent to which many of the physical structures seen today in the landscape such as organization of places, varieties of plants, and religious influences have deeper roots in the German colonial past. The book, therefore, provides fresh insights into the historic ties between Tanzania and Germany that started in the late-nineteenth century. Furthermore, the value of the book lies in its interdisciplinary dimension. It brings together history, human ecology, religion, geography, and cultural heritage in the examination of environmental and social changes in northern Tanzania.

There are three main limitations regarding Munson’s book. First, it lacks serious theoretical and historiographical...