The Rev Hope Masterton Wadell - Twenty-nine Years in the West Indies and Central Africa: A Review of Missionary Work and Adventure 1829-1858

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CASS LIBRARY OF AFRICAN STUDIES

MISSIONARY RESEARCHES AND TRAVELS

No. 11

General Editor: ROBERT I. ROTBERG

Associate Professor, Department of Political Science,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

MISSIONARY RESEARCHES AND TRAVELS

No. 1. Rev. Thomas Birch Freeman
Journal of Various Visits to the Kingdom of Ashanti, Aku and Dahomi (1840-43, 1844).
With a new introduction by Professor Harrison Wright.
Third Edition

No. 2. Rev. Dr. J. Lewis Krapf
Travels, Researches and Missionary Labours during an Eighteen Years Residence in Eastern Africa (1860).
With a new introduction by Dr. R. C. Bridges.
Second Edition

No. 3. T. J. Bowen
Adventures and Missionary Labours in several countries in the interior of Africa from 18491856 (1857)
With a new introduction by Dr. E. A. Ayandele.
Second Edition

No. 4. Henry Aaron Stern
Wanderings among the Falashas in Abyssinia; together with a description of the country and its various inhabitants (1862).
With a new introduction by Professor Robert Hess.
Second Edition

No. 5. John Mackenzie
Ten Years North of the Orange River. A story of every day life among the South African tribes from 18591869 (1871).
With a new introduction by Dr. Cecil Northcott.
Third Edition

No. 6. Rev. Thomas Cullen Young
Notes on the History of the Tumbaka-Kamanga Peoples in the Northern Province of Nyasaland (1932).
With a new introduction by Ian Nance.
New Edition

No. 7. Rev. J. D. Hepburn
Twenty Years in Khamas Country and Pioneering among the Batuana of Lake Ngami (1895).
With a new introduction by Dr. Cecil Northcott.
Third Edition.

TWENTY-NINE YEARS

IN THE

WEST INDIES AND CENTRAL AFRICA

A REVIEW OF

Missionary Work and Adventure

1829-1858

BY

REV. HOPE MASTERTON WADDELL

SECOND EDITION

With a New Introduction by

G. I. JONES

This impression first published by

FRANK CASS AND COMPANY LIMITED

This edition published by Routledge - 2012
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Transferred to Digital Printing 2006

New Introduction Copyright 1969 G. I. Jones

First edition 1863

Second edition 1970

ISBN: 978-0-714-61881-4 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-136-25737-7 (ebk)

Publishers Note

The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent

General Editors Preface

H OPE MASTERTON WADDELL was a stalwart pioneer of Scottish missions in both Jamaica and Nigeria. He worked among the freed slaves in Jamaica and, when they themselves sought to take the Gospel to Africa, helped them to establish a Church of Scotland mission in eastern Nigeria, among the Efik, Ibibio, Efut, Qua, and Ijo peoples. The missionaries dealt with the dominant kings of Duke Town and Creek Town, played an instrumental part in bringing about the end of a number of important traditional practicesindeed helped to establish A Society for the Suppression of Human Sacrifices in Calabarand worked generally to disseminate Western political and economic, as well as religious, ideas. Waddell and his colleagues also pioneered the linguistic study of the Efik language, but he is nevertheless most remembered as an educator. This book is therefore valuable for the light that it sheds upon the activities of the Scottish evangelists in Jamaica and the new and complicated mission field in and around the creeks and rivers of eastern Nigeria. Fortunately, however, Waddells account also provides valuable insights into the economic and political developments of a region where commercial and national rivalries were commonplace during the middle years of the nineteenth century.

Dr. Gwilym Iwan Jones, who knows the area intimately and has written a new introduction to this second impression, is able to place Waddells often disjointed remarks fully into the context of their times. Dr. Jones, now a Lecturer of Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, served for twenty years in the Nigerian administrative service. He is the author of The Trading States of the Oil Rivers: A Study of Political Development in Eastern Nigeria (London, 1963); Report on the Status of Chiefs and Natural Rulers (Enugu, 1958); Basutoland Medicine Murder (London, 1951); and, with Daryll Forde, The Ibo and Ibibio Speaking Peoples of South-eastern Nigeria (London, 1950).

R I R

12 February 1968

Introduction
to the
Second Edition

---

H OPE MASTERTON WADDELL was one of the great missionary evangelists of the nineteenth century. The story of his life still awaits a biographer and can only be summarised here. Born in Monaghan, Ireland, on 14 November 1804, he decided to become a missionary when he was 18 and went to Edinburgh to study for the ministry. He was ordained in 1829 and married in the same year.

His career falls into four parts; first in Jamaica from 1829 to 1846 as an agent of the Church of Scotland Missionary Society, then as a Minister of the Secession Synod (which later became the United Presbyterian Church), and then, from 1846 to 1858, in Old Calabar as the founder of the Church of Scotland Mission in Nigeria. Finally, after ill health had caused his retirement from West Africa, he lived in Dublin, where he took a leading part in forming the missionary congregation, until his death in 1895 at the age of 91.

It was Waddells advocacy that persuaded the Secession Synod to adopt Jamaica as its first overseas mission. The missions success was such that, by 1841, it had formed its own Presbytery and was planning to send a mission to West Africa. It also sought the support of the Scottish Synod for this venture. The heavy mortality that had befallen the Niger Expeditions of 1832 and 1841, had, however, made missionary bodies in Britain chary of risking further European lives there, and it was hence felt that they should wait until they could use persons of African descent who, it was assumed, would be more resistant to the climate. (But this plan also implied the training of these evangelists in the Presbyterys academy in Montego Bay). The Jamaican missionaries felt, however, that there was no time to lose and Hope Waddell eventually persuaded the Scottish church to change its mind and support the immediate despatch of a party of white and Negro missionaries to Old Calabar under his leadership.

In the event, the Negro Jamaican missionaries were no more resistant to disease than the Scottish and out of the five who arrived in West Africa in 1846, one of each race had died within the year. Mortality continued to be high for, although quinine was now available as a prophylactic against malaria, there was nothing that could afford protection against yellow fever, and, as the number of recruits in Scotland continued to be greater than in Jamaica, the Old Calabar mission continued to be staffed predominantly from Scotland until it was able to train a sufficient number of local African ministers, catechists, and teachers.

The policy of the Scottish mission differed markedly from that of the Church Missionary Society on the Niger. Instead of attempting to extend its evangelical efforts as widely as possible, the Scottish mission preferred to restrict them to a single area, and to concentrate on education as a prior requirement for baptism, only accepting those who were able to demonstrate a thorough grasp and acceptance of Christian principles. This position was partly forced upon them by the Efik who, like other Oil Rivers communities, were determined to monopolise any contacts with Europeans. The Niger mission was only able to get through to the lower Niger River with British naval protection. No doubt this would have been forthcoming had the Church of Scotland mission asked for it, but to do so would have meant abandoning their headquarters in Old Calabar as the Efik were determined not to allow any penetration of the interior either by mission or commercial interests.

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