This collection is open for research.
Onsite storage.
This collection contains records from the Basel Mission relating to its educational work on the Gold Coast (Ghana), West Africa, including practical manuals given to missionaries as standards for teaching at the primary and middle school levels, and a pamphlet on its educational approach.
Basel Mission on the Gold Coast, West Africa educational records, 1894 -- 1904
This series contains records from the Basel Mission relating to its educational work on the Gold Coast (Ghana), West Africa, including practical manuals given to missionaries as standards for teaching at the primary and middle school levels, and a pamphlet on its educational approach.
Missionary Research Library Archives: MRL1, Africa
This collection is arranged in one chronological series.
This collection is open for research.
Onsite storage.
Some material in this collection may be protected by copyright and other rights. Information concerning copyright, fair use, and reproduction requests can be consulted at Columbia's Copyright Advisory Office.
Item description, MRL1: Basel Mission on the Gold Coast, West Africa educational records, 1894-1902, box #, The Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University in the City of New York.
Formerly part of the independent Missionary Research Library (MRL), these records were accessioned by the Burke Library at the time of the MRL's closure in 1976.
Columbia University Libraries, Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary
Materials were cataloged by Lynn A. Grove on 1988-07-18. Metal staples were removed from materials. Materials were placed in new acid-free folders. Acidic items were separated from one another by interleaving with acid-free paper as needed. The finding aid was created by Brigette Kamsler in 2011 with the support of the Henry Luce Foundation, and edited by Leah Edelman in 2021.
2021-09-27 PDF converted to EAD and description updated by Leah Edelman.
The Basel Mission, a protestant missionary society named for the Swiss city, was founded in 1815. All the directors, most of the lecturers in the Mission college, and more than half of the overseas staff were recruited from Wurttemberg, Germany. Missionaries were first sent to the Gold Coast in the 1820s; however, due to illness, their presence was not truly felt until the 1840s. Other locations for the Mission included India, China, Cameroon, and Kalimantan. The two main goals of the Basel Mission for its first century were to build a Christian village culture among farmers, and to concentrate on building church life and education in the vernacular languages. In the 19th century, the Mission ran Ghana's first organized school system, from the village primary school to the Teachers' Training College. The Basel Mission reached its peak just before 1914 when more than 300 people were in their service abroad. Expelled during the period of World War I and World War II, the Basel Mission never regained the same presence abroad. In 2001, the Basel Mission merged with three other independent protestant mission societies to form mission 21.
The subject headings listed below are found in this collection. Links below allow searches for other collections at Columbia University, through CLIO, the catalog for Columbia University Libraries, and through ArchiveGRID, a catalog that allows users to search the holdings of multiple research libraries and archives.
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| Subject | ||
|---|---|---|
| Missions -- Ghana | CLIO Catalog | ArchiveGRID |
| Religious education -- Africa | CLIO Catalog | ArchiveGRID |