Militant Geographers and Primitive Maps

Abstract

With their close engagement with the people they worked among, European missionaries were signiciant actors in the imperial project and an important source of geogrpagical and ethnological knowledge. Joseph Conrad identified Livingstone as one of the formeost of the 19th century's 'militant geographers'.

While the role of missionary geography is widely acknowledged, not much had been written about the maps they produced. In this article, I look at maps produced by one of the missionary societies, the Primitive Methodist Missionary Society, and consider how it adds to our understanding of the society's work and how it was communcated to supporters in Britain.