Each volume of the Understanding World Christianity series analyzes the state of Christianity from six different angles. The focus is always Christianity, but it is approached in an interdisciplinary manner--chronological, denominational, sociopolitical, geographical, biographical, and theological. Short, engaging chapters help readers understand the complexity of Christianity in the region and broaden their understanding of the region itself. Readers will understand the interplay of Christianity and culture and will see how geography, borders, economics, and other factors influence Christian faith. In this exciting volume, Paul Kollman and Cynthia Toms Smedley offer an introduction to Eastern African Christianity that has been desperately needed by scholars, students, and interested readers alike. Rich in experience and knowledge, Kollman and Toms Smedley introduce readers to the vibrancy of Eastern African Christianity like no other authors have done before.

"This work explores how 19th-century French missionary policies shaped the future of the Catholic Church in Eastern Africa. Avoiding stereotypes, Kollman relates the complex story of evangelization by members of the Congregation of the Holy Ghost (also known as Spiritans) and its reception by African ex-slaves. Rich in historical detail and anthropological insight, this book brings into vivid relief the way these groups interacted and were affected by circumstances neither could control."--BOOK JACKET.

Though the history of slavery is a central topic for African, Atlantic world and world history, most of the sources presenting research in this area are European in origin. To cast light on African perspectives, and on the point of view of enslaved men and women, this group of top Africanist scholars has examined both conventional historical sources (such as European travel accounts, colonial documents, court cases, and missionary records) and less-explored sources of information (such as folklore, oral traditions, songs and proverbs, life histories collected by missionaries and colonial officials, correspondence in Arabic, and consular and admiralty interviews with runaway slaves). Each source has a short introduction highlighting its significance and orienting the reader. This first of two volumes provides students and scholars with a trove of African sources for studying African slavery and the slave trade.

By the time the Capuchins arrived in the seventeenth century, Kongo had been Catholic for nearly two hundred years. The European mission could not be conversion, then, but reinforcement; the Capuchins sought to establish the sacraments and a line to Rome in a lay-led church already suffused with an enduring, creative, and complex theological culture. In Memorializing the Unsung, Elochukwu Uzukwu uses the framework of this “ancient” Kongo Catholicism to explore European dependence on enslaved Kongo Catholics and the unconscionable Capuchin and Spiritan participation in the slave trade at large—a practice denounced by the lone voices of Capuchin Epifanio de Moirans and Spiritan Alexandre Monnet. Reconstructing the church that missionaries and Kongo Catholics built together on the foundations of local religion, Memorializing the Unsung contrasts the dignity denied the Kongo Catholics with the freedom they nonetheless performed. Uzukwu is particularly deft in tracing the agency of Kongo elites and laypeople from the fifteenth century through the nineteenth, carefully evaluating their deliberate engagements with southern Europeans, the role of the maestri (translator-catechists) in guiding the faithful, and the ultimate development of a unique theological vocabulary endorsed by the Kikongo catechism. Without the support and creativity of these unsung lay Catholics across west-central and eastern Africa, Uzukwu shows, the European missions in the region would have failed. Even while enslaved, the Kongo Slaves of the Church and the eastern African Slaves of the Mission served as mediators, co-creators, and reinventors of their world.

Slavery in the Great Lakes Region of East Africa is a collection of ten studies by the most prominent historians of the region. Slavery was more important in the Great Lakes region of Eastern Africa than often has been assumed, and Africans from the interior played a more complex role than was previously recognized. The essays in this collection reveal the connections between the peoples of the region as well as their encounters with the conquering Europeans. The contributors challenge the assertion that domestic slavery increased in Africa as a result of the international trade. Slavery in this region was not a uniform phenomenon and the line between enslaved and non-slave labor was fine. Kinship ties could mark the difference between free and unfree labor. Social categories were not always clear-cut and the status of a slave could change within a lifetime. Contents: - Introduction by Henri Médard - Language Evidence of Slavery to the Eighteenth Century by David Schoenbrun - The Rise of Slavery & Social Change in Unyamwezi 1860–1900 by Jan-Georg Deutsch - Slavery & Forced Labour in the Eastern Congo 1850–1910 by David Northrup - Legacies of Slavery in North West Uganda ‘The One-Elevens’ by Mark Leopold - Human Booty in Buganda: The Seizure of People in War, c.1700–c.1900 by Richard Reid - Stolen People & Autonomous Chiefs in Nineteenth-Century Buganda by Holly Hanson - Women’s Experiences of Slavery in Late Nineteenth- & Early Twentieth-Century Uganda by Michael W. Tuck - Slavery & Social Oppression in Ankole 1890–1940 by Edward I. Steinhart - The Slave Trade in Burundi & Rwanda at the Beginning of German Colonisation 1890–1906 by Jean-Pierre Chretien - Bunyoro & the Demography of Slavery Debate by Shane Doyle