This comprehensive survey of multi-colonial sites over the long time span clearly describes the missionary paradox that to draw in pupils missionaries needed to provide secular education, but that secular education was seen to lead both to a moral crisis and to anti-British sentiments.
Many missionary societies established mission schools in the nineteenth century in the British Empire as a means to convert non-Europeans to Christianity. Although the details, differed in various colonial contexts, the driving ideology behind mission schools was that Christian morality was highest form of civilisation needed for non-Europeans to be useful members of colonies under British rule. This comprehensive survey of multi-colonial sites over the long time span clearly describes the missionary paradox that to draw in pupils they needed to provide secular education, but that secular education was seen to lead both to a moral crisis and to anti-British sentiments.
Focusing on the six decades that German Moravian missionaries worked in the British colony of Victoria, Australia, this book enriches understanding of colonial politics and the role of the non-British other in manipulating practice and policy in foreign realms. Central to the transnational nature of the book are questions of identity and of how individuals, and the organisations they worked for, can be seen as both colluders and opposers within nation-state borders and politics. It analyses the ways in which the Moravian missionaries navigated competing agendas within the colonial setting, especially those that impacted on their sense of personal vocation, their practices of conversion, and their understandings of the indigenous non-Christian peoples in the settler society of Victoria.
Contents
Introcuction: Tracing “A Wonderful Record Of Patient Continuances In Well Doing”
God’s Lot: Moravians And Missions
“The Most Wretched And Bleakest”: Moravian Desire To Work Amongst The Australian Aborigines
“Ein Fauler Fleck”: Lake Boga, A Putrid Stain
“I Is Done: No More”: The First Converts
“Alles Geht Seinen Schleppenden Gang” – Expansion, Movement And Sluggish Progress
“Every Triumphant Death” – Closure In A British Colony
A global exploration of how Christians navigated the challenges of global conflict in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The role of religion in times of conflict and their aftermath has regained central importance in public discourse, particularly in Western countries. Following decades of research on religion and peace, public and academic attention has returned to war and violence in the history of religions generally, and Christianity in particular. This collection brings together scholars from theology, history, and area and cultural studies to examine the relationships between wars and Christian internationalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The contributions cover case studies from China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, the Middle East, North America, Scandinavia, and Southern Africa. The temporal scope extends beyond the confines of World War I and includes conflicts between non-Western countries as well as colonial wars. Many chapters broaden the discussion to include non-Western perspectives and enhance our understanding of the young ecumenical movement's role during and after major conflicts. Collectively, they demonstrate how in the wars of a century ago, Christians negotiated between internationalist and nationalist positions to manage and overcome wartime disruptions.
Translating Colonialism
Felicity Jensz
Edited Journal Special Issue • 2025 Itinerario49
A special issue of Itinerario exploring the relationship between translation and colonialism in imperial contexts.
An exploration of colonial traces in Münster and the Münsterland region, examining colonial legacies in Westphalia.
Der Kolonialismus hat sich als Ideologie, Sehnsuchtsort, Wirtschaftsraum oder handfeste politische Forderung tief in die Gesellschaft eingeschrieben – global wie lokal. Mit Blick auf Münster und das Münsterland decken die Beiträger*innen koloniale Denk-, Handlungs- und Konsummuster auf, die sich heute als Herausforderung für eine postkoloniale Geschichtskultur erweisen. Dazu fokussieren sie auf die Vielfalt der kolonialen Bezüge der Region, ihre lokalen Besonderheiten sowie ihre Nachwirkungen bis in die Gegenwart und laden zur weiteren Auseinandersetzung mit der Kolonialgeschichte der westfälischen Provinzhauptstadt und ihrer Umgebung ein.
Contents
Münster und das Münsterland als Kolonialschaufenster
Aus der Kolonie in die Körper: Wie Rassismus spürbar wurde
Heimat/Liebe
Imagination und Inszenierung des Fremden
Die Münsteraner Kolonialausstellungen 1897 und 1926
Koloniale Straßennamen in Münster: Ein Überblick
Die Initiative zur Umbenennung des Lüderitzwegs und des Woermannwegs
Koloniales Relikt, Streitobjekt, Lernanlass
Stein des Anstoßes?
Das Kriegerehrenmal in Dülmen
Kolonialismus als Thema in den Skulptur Projekten seit 1977
Die Kolonialgeschichte in der Debatte über den Namensgeber der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster 2018–2023
»Aufruf zur Sammlung für unsere Landsleute in Süd-West-Afrika«
Die Kolonialwissenschaften an der Universität Münster 1900–1945
Kolonialbotanik und der Botanische Garten in Münster
Ein Besuch aus Deutsch-Neuguinea im Münsterland
Kolonialismus in den schulischen Lehrplänen Westfalens 1919–1960
Münster als Koloniales Oberzentrum?
Kolonialgesellschaften und -vereine in Westfalen
Die Abteilung Münster des Frauenbundes der Deutschen Kolonialgesellschaft
Kolonialismus und weibliche Erinnerungsarbeit in der Stadt Münster
Die zeitgenössische Darstellung des Herero- Aufstandes in Münsters Tageszeitungen
Edited Journal Special Issue • 2024
History of Education
A specially edited section on sources and methods for researching boarding school history.
Boarding schools are well-known institutions that have been extensively studied by historians. Yet, there are still many hidden histories associated with this type of schooling. This section presents a range of methods that might fruitfully be applied to under-utilised sources to gain new insights into the history of boarding schools for children outside “mainstream” histories. The introductory article provides an overview of the different ways in which boarding schools have been theorised as institutions. This is followed by three articles that explore how music and photographs as well as ego-documents can be used to further develop social and cultural historical approaches to obtain a broader understanding of the complexities of boarding school life. Overall, this dossier provides insight into how different sources and methodological innovations can help us uncover alternative or hidden histories of historical actors in boarding schools.
Edited Book • 2024 • Greenland
Springer, Greenland
A German translation and examination of David Cranz's 1765 History of Greenland, part of an innovative AI translation project.
Dieses Buch bringt interdisziplinäre Wissenschaftler aus den Bereichen Geschichte, Theologie, Volkskunde, Ethnologie und Meteorologie zusammen, um zu untersuchen, wie David Cranz' Historie von Grönland (1765) in verschiedenen Disziplinen, Epochen und Ländern Resonanz fand. Gemeinsam zeigen die Autoren, dass das Buch über seinen ursprünglichen Zweck als Aufzeichnung der Missionsarbeit hinaus in weltliche und politische Bereiche außerhalb Grönlands und Deutschlands hineinwirkte. Die Kapitel zeigen auch, wie das Buch zu breiteren Diskussionen und Konzeptualisierungen von Grönland als Teil der atlantischen Welt beigetragen hat. Der interdisziplinäre Umfang des Bandes ermöglicht eine vielschichtige Lektüre von Cranz' Buch, die zeigt, wie unterschiedliche Bedeutungen aus dem Buch in verschiedenen Kontexten gezogen werden konnten und wie das Buch über Zeit und Raum hinweg Resonanz fand. Außerdem wird das Argument angeführt, dass die Konstruktion der Arktis im achtzehnten Jahrhundertunser Verständnis des Atlantiks erweitert hat.
Edited Journal Special Issue • 2023 Settler Colonial Studies13(4): 463-483
A trans-imperial analysis of children and institutions in settler colonial contexts. This article examines how children experienced institutional care in various settler colonial societies across the British Empire.
Children in settler colonial settings engaged with institutions in diverse ways. They were sometimes coerced, benignly encouraged or lured into these engagements and sometimes they actively engaged and shaped the nature of these institutions over their childhood and subsequent adult years. This lead article provides the historiographical, methodical and conceptual framework for the special issue of Settler Colonial Studies on children, institutions and settler colonial contexts. It provides the basis for the discussion of the following articles which examine children’s interactions with and experiences of institutions in settler colonial contexts in Australia, Palestine, the Philippines, Poland, and Southern Rhodesia that were affected by American, British, German, and Japanese imperialism. Studies of colonialism, and settler colonialism in particular, have tended to overlook the role and position of children in these contexts as objects and agent of change. Rather, focus has been predominantly placed upon the actions and agency of adults of various cultural groups, ones who have left larger traces in the colonial archives. In this article, we provide an overview of some of the broad concepts that frame the special issue being: childhood and race; Institutions and motives; and settler colonialism and imperial contexts.
Edited Book • 2023 • Australia
ANU Press, Australia
The diary of Adolf and Polly Hartmann from 1863-1873, providing insights into missionary life in Australia.
This book contains the annotated diary of Adolf and Mary (Polly) Hartmann, missionaries of the Moravian Church who worked at the Ebenezer mission station on Wotjobaluk country, in the north-west of the Colony of Victoria, Australia. The diary begins in 1863, as the Hartmanns are preparing to travel from Europe to take up their post, and ends in 1873, by which time they are working in Canada as missionaries to the Lenni Lenape people.
Recording the Hartmann’s eight years at the Ebenezer mission, the diary presents richly detailed insights into the daily interactions between Aboriginal people and their colonisers. The inhabitants of the mission are overwhelmingly described in the diary as agents in their lives, moving in and out of the missionaries’ sphere of influence, yet restricted at times by the boundaries of the mission. The diary reveals moments of laughter, shared grief, community, advocacy and reciprocal learning, alongside the mundane everyday chores of mission life.
Through the personal writings of a missionary couple, this diary brings to light the regular, routine and extraordinary events on a mission station in Australia in the third quarter of the nineteenth century—a period just prior to British high imperialism, and a period before increasingly restrictive legislation was enforced on Indigenous people in the Colony of Victoria.
A comprehensive examination of boarding schools globally during the 19th and 20th centuries.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, thousands of pupils attended boarding schools in various places across the globe. Their experiences were vastly different, yet they all had in common that they were separated from their families and childhood friends for a period of time in order to sleep, eat, learn and move within the limited spatial sites of the boarding school. This book frames these ‘boarding schools’ as a global and transcultural phenomenon that is part of larger political and social developments of European imperialism, the Cold War, and independence movements. Drawing together case studies from colonial South Africa, colonial India, Dutch Indonesia, early twentieth-century Nigeria, Fascist Spain, Ghana, Nazi Germany, nineteenth-century Ireland, North America and the Soviet Union, this edited collection examines the ways in which boarding schools extracted pupils from their original social background in order to train, mold and shape them so that they could fit intothe perceived position in broader society. The book makes the broader argument that framing boarding schools as a global phenomenon is imperative for a deepened understanding of the global and transnational networks that linked people as well as ideas and practices of education and childhood in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Edited Book • 2021 • Greenland
Palgrave Macmillan, Greenland
An examination of the lasting legacies of David Cranz's influential History of Greenland from 1765.
This book brings together interdisciplinary scholars from history, theology, folklore, ethnology and meteorology to examine how David Cranz's Historie von Grönland (1765) resonated in various disciplines, periods and countries. Collectively the contributors demonstrate the reach of the book beyond its initial purpose as a record of missionary work, and into secular and political fields beyond Greenland and Germany.
Dossier: Non-European Teachers in Mission Schools
Felicity Jensz
Edited Journal Special Issue • 2016 Itinerario40(3)
A dossier examining non-European teachers in mission schools across various colonial contexts.
Missions and Media. The Politics of Missionary Periodicals in the long Nineteenth-Century
Felicity Jensz, Hanna Acke
Edited Book • 2013
Franz Steiner Verlag
An examination of the politics surrounding missionary periodicals in the long nineteenth century.
Edited Journal Special Issue • 2013
Church History
At the 1860 conference on Protestant missions held in Liverpool, a session was dedicated to the use of the reported 200,000 monthly missionary periodicals produced by various societies for encouraging the home support of missionary work. The 125 delegates from more than twenty-five Protestant missionary societies both in Britain and abroad had divergent opinions on the prospective contents and audiences for missionary periodicals.
At the 1860 conference on Protestant missions held in Liverpool, a session was dedicated to the use of the reported 200,000 monthly missionary periodicals produced by various societies for encouraging the home support of missionary work. The 125 delegates from more than twenty-five Protestant missionary societies both in Britain and abroad had divergent opinions on the prospective contents and audiences for missionary periodicals. One thing that they did agree upon, however, was their necessity. The Reverend Thomas Green from the Church Missionary Society noted that missionary periodicals provided a means of “influencing” the minds of readers in order to excite the missionary spirit among the home community. The high circulation of missionary periodicals was, according to the Secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society, Reverend Frederick Trestrail, an indication that they provided a source of information that was received willingly and consumed by the masses.
German and British Bible Societies and the Publication of Bible Translations in Colonial West Africa
Michael F. Wandusim, Felicity Jensz
Journal Article • 2025 • West Africa
Itinerario, West Africa
Recent studies in world Christianity have established that the missionary mother-tongue Bibles contributed essentially to the rise of indigenous forms of Christianity and its meteoric growth in Africa. However, these studies hardly give attention to the background processes that advanced missionary Bible translations. Using a case study approach and through a close reading of archival data on two missionary Bible translations in West Africa: the Ga Bible (1854-1866) of the Basel Mission and the Ewe Bible (1858-1913) of the North German Mission, this article reconstructs the multi-step background processes that produced these pioneering translations in the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries.
An exploration of the relationship between translation practices and colonialism.
Abstract This paper focuses on diplomatic training as a site for exploring the tensions in late colonialism around sovereignty and self-government. Training for the diplomats of soon to be independent states was understood by imperial governments as an ambiguous issue in this period immediately pre-independence: it offered the potential for the former metropole to sustain power and influence within a rapidly changing world, whilst at the same time challenging the very foundations of imperialism by empowering the diplomats of soon to be independent African states. Drawing on archives in France, the UK, and the US, as well as a newly recorded oral history interview with one of the first cohort of Ghanaian trainees, we focus on the development of diplomatic training from ad hoc responses to requests to a more formalised programmes provided by imperial powers and the United States, and tensions and competition between providers and over the content of the courses. We focus primarily on the Gold Coast/Ghana, contextualised within wider experiences of African colonies in both the British and French empires. We demonstrate that training for diplomats provides novel insights into the temporalities, spatialities, and agency that characterised the late colonial state.
The Global Bible and National Identity in the Age of Empires
Hilary M. Carey, Felicity Jensz, Michael F. Wandusim
Journal Article • 2025
Studies in World Christianity
An examination of how Bible translations contributed to national identity formation during the age of empires.
Wer schreibt postkoloniale Stadtgeschichte? Eine Zwischenbilanz aus Münster
Journal Article • 2025 transfer – Zeitschrift für Provenienzforschung und Sammlungsgeschichte4: 203-211
A case study on mapping non-European objects in small museums, examining provenance and collection histories.
Over the last decades, museums in large cities and in places known for their colonial entanglements such as Berlin, Bremen, Cologne and Hamburg have often been the focus of studies to determine what non-European objects are in their collections. Smaller museums and museums in places far from these larger centers remain on the margins of research. This is partly because small museums often have limited budgets and not the personnel to undertake the time-consuming task of examining records and checking deposits for non-European objects. With our project we wished to gain an overview of the number and diversity of non-European objects in Westphalian-Lippe museums. The project contributed to the important task of creating an overview of objects with colonial contexts in small museums by examining and reviewing the collections both through the creation and cleaning of databases and through the physical viewing of objects in a number of collections, supporting museums in making their collections broadly accessible through the online database, and presenting our results as part of an educational program. Through our research we were able to identify some 1.700 non-European objects in 44 museums in Westphalia-Lippe. Of these objects, under 10% are likely to have a connection to the German colonies. This result suggests that colonial objects were also collected in small museums, although not systematically. Our study provides a first quantitative overview of the number of non-European objects in small museums and underscores the further need for qualitative analysis to be undertaken to determine more exact origins of these objects.
Journal Article • 2025 • East Africa The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History53(5): 1132-1158
Informed by an attention to global and transnational entanglements, this article examines the context and process of bible translations from German East Africa at the tail end of German colonial rule in the early twentieth century. Translation is always a process of negotiation and compromise, and through examining the processes behind the translation and publication of the Bible into Kinyiha and Kinyamwezi a number of imperial as well as religious tensions become evident. The publication of the Kinyamwezi translation was undertaken quickly in order fend off Catholic and Islam threats to the Protestant efforts of conversion.
German Missions in German Colonialism. A historical contextualization of Afterlives
Felicity Jensz
Journal Article • 2026
A historical contextualization examining the afterlives of German missions in the context of German colonialism.
Journal Article • 2025 • East Africa German History43(2): 200-220
During the First World War, German and British citizens in British and German colonies in East Africa were placed in internment camps. Men, women and children were separated and transferred over imperial boundaries to keep enemy citizens apart from their erstwhile colonial lives. Amongst the interned were many Protestant missionaries and their families, who had not expected to be affected by the European war and believed themselves above worldly politics. This article examines reports from British and German missionaries, focusing on the narratives of three men interned and deported from East Africa: a German in British East Africa; a British man in German East Africa; and a German in German East Africa.
Abstract During the First World War, German and British citizens in British and German colonies in East Africa were placed in internment camps. Men, women and children were separated and transferred over imperial boundaries to keep enemy citizens apart from their erstwhile colonial lives. Amongst the interned were many Protestant missionaries and their families, who had not expected to be affected by the European war and believed themselves above worldly politics. This article examines reports from British and German missionaries, focusing on the narratives of three men interned and deported from East Africa: a German in British East Africa; a British man in German East Africa; and a German in German East Africa. By attending to this array of voices, the article can demonstrate how religious figures adopted a political stand in their denunciation of enemy policy towards missionaries. The prewar Anglo-German relationship between Protestant missions in East Africa had been characterized by collaboration, and offers of assistance were made in the early months of the war. Once missionaries had been interned, however, the relationship was severely damaged, and it remained so in the decades after the First World War.
Journal Article • 2025 Journal of World History36(1): 85-119
An exploration of Papuan children and Catholic missionaries in the formation of transimperial networks in late nineteenth-century Europe.
Abstract: In 1890, the French Catholic Bishop Louis Couppé took Tolika to Kagai and Auguste to Kadalama from a mission station on German New Guinea on a tour to Europe. Within a year, these Papuan children—known by their European names Louis and Auguste—met the Pope in Rome, met members of the German imperial government in Berlin, spoke with influential anthropologists, church officials, and the general public in several North-West European countries. This article examines the children’s function in the circulation of missionary ideals of empire, colonial practices of governance, and notions of imperial belonging across national and imperial borders. We argue that children were central in the formation and coalescence of transimperial networks, but have been hitherto overlooked in historical studies. As children were considered not yet fully formed, various ideals of imperial subjecthood could be projected on to them that appealed to diverse nationalities and ideologies.
Journal Article • 2024 • Germany Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Religions- und Kulturgeschichte118: 19-38
An examination of films depicting faith and colonial fantasy, exploring postcolonial religious memories in interwar Germany. This article analyzes how religious films from the interwar period reflected and shaped colonial imaginations in Germany.
Journal Article • 2024 Journal of Moravian History24(1): 27-55
At the end of July 1919, members of the American, Continental, and British Provinces of the Moravian Church came together for the first time in five years to discuss the state of the church's missions after the end of World War I. The preceding years had resulted in problems in terms of finances, administration, and labor as well as put into question the future of many mission fields. Nationalistic tensions ran high between members of the church, and there was a real concern that the worldwide Moravian Unity would be dissolved. That it did not was in part due to the sustained efforts of many members of the administrative bodies of the church.
ABSTRACT At the end of July 1919, members of the American, Continental, and British Provinces of the Moravian Church came together for the first time in five years to discuss the state of the church’s missions after the end of World War I. The preceding years had resulted in problems in terms of finances, administration, and labor as well as put into question the future of many mission fields. Nationalistic tensions ran high between members of the church, and there was a real concern that the worldwide Moravian Unity would be dissolved. That it did not was in part due to the sustained efforts of many members of the administrative bodies of the church who discussed how to resolve these tensions in various internal, international, and ecumenical settings. Through examining the reports from various missionary conferences in the aftermath of World War I, this article postulates that the structure of the Moravian Church allowed for the reconfiguration of the mission stations to fulfill external political, economic, and social expectations. The structure, however, also limited the work of the Continental Province of the church and created artificial distance between the Provinces.
Journal Article • 2024 History of Education53(1): 144-156
An examination of sources and methods for researching the history of boarding schools. This article provides guidance on the archival sources available for studying boarding school history and the methodological approaches researchers can employ.
Die Basler Mission und der Erste Weltkrieg: Die Verwendung der Berichte der aus Kamerun deportierten Missionspersonal für die deutsche Kriegspropaganda
Felicity Jensz
Journal Article • 2022 • Cameroon, Switzerland
An examination of the Basel Mission during World War I and how reports from deportees were used for German war propaganda.
Neptune's visit made palatable. Journeys over the line in the nineteenth and twentieth century
Felicity Jensz
Journal Article • 2022 Yearbook of Women's History41: 95-111
An exploration of maritime journeys and the crossing of the equator in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Journal Article • 2022 International Journal of Maritime History34(4): 597-613
An analysis of shipboard diaries as sources for understanding the nineteenth-century maritime spectator.
In contrast to shipboard journals of the eighteenth century, which often served the function of providing ‘objective’ information for scientific and political networks, shipboard diaries of the nineteenth century reveal a discursive change in which there is a subjectification of the journey. This subjectification, we argue, is evident in the ways in which fee–paying passengers used such diaries as a way to make sense of their experiences of being at sea. Here we examine the 1829 journal of James A. Gardner on his travels aboard a ship from Britain to Australia. We focus on how Gardner described trial scenes on board in the confined space of the ship and his fantasies of the potential of Australian land for settler–colonists. These two aspects of the subject–orientated nineteenth century shipboard diary illuminate how the sea influenced and nurtured contemporaneous British ideas of entertainment, moral codes and hierarchies, as well as colonial ideologies.
Nationalismus in der deutschen Missionswissenschaft der Zwischenweltkriegszeit am Beispiel von Josef Schmidlin und Julius Richter
Journal Article • 2020 Zeitschrift für Weltgeschichte21(2): 297-314
An examination of cigarette cards as a window to distant lands, exploring colonial imagery in popular culture.
So präsentierte sich das erste Album der Serie Die Welt in Bildern und eines der ersten deutschen Zigarettensammelbilderalben überhaupt, das im Jahr 1927 gedruckt wurde und als Werbemittel für mehrere Firmen der Zigaretten-Industrie diente. 1 Diese Art von Zigarettenwerbung fand in Deutschland ab den späten 1920er Jahren große Resonanz. Nach 1942 wurde die Produktion von Zigarettensammelbildern in Folge von Ressourcenknappheit – verursacht durch den Krieg – eingestellt. 2 Nichtsdestoweniger blieben die Bilder und Alben auch weiterhin im Umlauf und werden noch heute auf Flohmärkten, in Antiquariaten und online verkauft; viele sind noch in Familienbesitz. Bis in die 1940er Jahre wurden über vier Milliarden Zigarettensammelbilder gedruckt, verkauft, gesammelt, getauscht und aufgehoben. 3 Trotz der Verbreitung dieses Mediums gibt es wenige Studien zum Thema Zigarettensammelbilder, gelegentlich wurden sie als Unterkategorie der Sammelbilder oder als ein Beispiel von Kriegs- und Propagandamotiven, die das Dritte Reich unterstützten, bearbeitet. 4 Aber Zigarettensammelbilder thematisierten nicht nur Krieg. Sie sprachen jedes Alter und Geschlecht an und prägten so das kollektive Bildgedächtnis der Deutschen, wie Hiram Kümper in einer der wenigen Studien, die sich mit dieser besonderen Form von Sammelbildern auseinandergesetzt haben, feststellt. 5 Dieser Beitrag untersucht die Geschichte der Zigarettensammelbilder und Alben; er geht dabei besonders der Frage nach, welche politischen Ziele und welche Beziehungen zwischen Deutschland und der Welt in den Bildern projiziert werden.
Silence around miscarriage remains within Western countries despite contemporaneous prevalence of miscarriages. This article examines the diaries of two religious women in colonial Australia and British India around the 1860s to question how mid-19th century women responded to their experiences of miscarriage before the beginning of the medicalisation of pregnancy in the 1880s. Their emotional responses reflected contemporaneous discursive practices, particularly those (quasi)medical ones warned women to maintain a neutral emotional state or risk a miscarriage.
Journal Article • 2018 • Australia Postcolonial Studies21(1): 96-112
This essay critically reviews the textual archive related to the two German mission stations in the South Australian Lake Eyre basin: the Lutheran Hermannsburg mission at Killalpaninna and the Moravian mission at Kopperamanna. The multiple entanglements of these stations far beyond their missionary activity become evident through examining distinctly religious material, such as mission journals, and secular texts, in German-language newspapers and scientific journals.
Journal Article • 2018 History of Education47(3): 399-414
In 1910 some 1200 delegates from Protestant missionary societies came together in Edinburgh, Scotland to attend a World Missionary Conference. This paper examines the discussion within the report regarding governmental attitudes to missionary education within colonial spaces. It provides a comparison between the aims of missionary education and the recorded experiences under various governments, particularly at times when they contrasted and conflicted.
Journal Article • 2017 • Australia Anthropological Forum27(3): 209-223
Notes from Moravian missionaries in Australia exploring their relationship with anthropological investigation. This article examines how missionaries engaged with (or resisted) anthropological discourse in the Australian colonial context.
This dossier focusses on non-European teachers within mission schools in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially in the period of colonial control. These teachers were central to the missionary project and helped to disseminate both Christianity and Western knowledge across the globe. Local teachers, alongside other mission assistants and helpers, also helped translate, transmit, and transform both Western and local forms of knowledge and contributed to broader discourse about knowledge.
This dossier focusses on non-European teachers within mission schools in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially in the period of colonial control. These teachers were central to the missionary project and helped to disseminate both Christianity and Western knowledge across the globe. Local teachers, alongside other mission assistants and helpers, also helped translate, transmit, and transform both Western and local forms of knowledge and contributed to broader discourse about knowledge, yet the importance of their work has often been overshadowed by the work undertaken in examining missionary elites. This dossier, with its extended introduction and three case studies from Africa, the Danish West Indies, and Bolivia, sheds light on the roles of non-European mission teachers as well as their recruitment and training, their self-representations, and methodological as well as conceptual issues about how information on these often inconspicuous intermediaries of mission education can be retrieved from disparate sources.
Journal Article • 2015 Journal of Moravian History15(1): 1-28
An examination of the Moravian periodical Accounts and the pressures of publishing in eighteenth-century Britain. This article explores how the Moravian Church navigated print culture and publication in the early modern period.
ABSTRACT From the eighteenth century dedicated missionary periodicals were published by every major Protestant missionary society as an important means of informing a broad public about work amongst non-Christians throughout the colonial world. One of the very first missionary specific periodicals, the Periodical Accounts Relating to the Missions of the Church of the United Brethren, Established Among the Heathen, was printed in London by the English Moravian Church's “Brethren's Society for the Furtherance of the Gospel among the Heathen” (SFG) from 1790. The idea to publish the Periodical Accounts had, however, been raised some twenty years earlier. The article examines how the English Moravian Church, as part of a larger transnational church with its headquarters in Germany, was able to devise a publication which would be broadly acceptable to the church's German administrative body, yet specific enough to reflect the norms and interests of a local English audience, and in doing so, to establish the new genre of missionary periodicals within England.
Journal Article • 2015 Journal of Australian Studies39(1): 20-31
Women were an integral, yet often overlooked, aspect of Protestant mission work in the nineteenth century. Married female missionaries were seen as important workers especially as their common gender identification allowed them to more easily communicate with indigenous women than male missionaries were able to. The diaries and letters of one female missionary, Mary (Polly) Hartmann (1838-1916), who worked on the Ebenezer mission station in Colonial Victoria from 1863 to 1875, provides an unusual insight into the daily life of a European woman on the Aboriginal mission in the nineteenth century.
The Cultural, Didactic, and Physical Spaces of Mission Schools in the Nineteenth Century
Felicity Jensz
Journal Article • 2013 Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft24(2): 71-92
Nineteenth century Protestant Mission schools were dynamic spaces, constantly reacting and adapting to hierarchic and hegemonic demands, whether of political, religious or societal nature. They were also ideological spaces, which through their form and function, articulated notions of the 'proper' place of non-Europeans in colonial society. This article examines the interconnected cultural, didactic and physical 'spaces' of mission schools in which a variety of competing ideologies and expectations were negotiated.
Journal Article • 2013 Church History82(2): 368-373
At the 1860 conference on Protestant missions held in Liverpool, a session was dedicated to the use of the reported 200,000 monthly missionary periodicals produced by various societies for encouraging the home support of missionary work. The 125 delegates from more than twenty-five Protestant missionary societies both in Britain and abroad had divergent opinions on the prospective contents and audiences for missionary periodicals.
At the 1860 conference on Protestant missions held in Liverpool, a session was dedicated to the use of the reported 200,000 monthly missionary periodicals produced by various societies for encouraging the home support of missionary work. The 125 delegates from more than twenty-five Protestant missionary societies both in Britain and abroad had divergent opinions on the prospective contents and audiences for missionary periodicals. One thing that they did agree upon, however, was their necessity. The Reverend Thomas Green from the Church Missionary Society noted that missionary periodicals provided a means of “influencing” the minds of readers in order to excite the missionary spirit among the home community. The high circulation of missionary periodicals was, according to the Secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society, Reverend Frederick Trestrail, an indication that they provided a source of information that was received willingly and consumed by the masses.
Journal Article • 2013 Church History82(2): 374-380
During the nineteenth century, over 300 missionary periodicals were established in Britain, along with hundreds in North America, Europe, and the colonial world, yet little has been written about the rationale behind their establishment. From their beginnings as sources of intelligence, periodicals developed into vehicles of influence by the first decades of the nineteenth century, with missionary organizations also using this reduplicated commodity to deliberately persuade and mold public attitudes.
During the nineteenth century, over 300 missionary periodicals were established in Britain, along with hundreds in North America, Europe, and the colonial world, yet little has been written about the rationale behind their establishment. From their beginnings as sources of intelligence, periodicals developed into vehicles of influence by the first decades of the nineteenth century, with missionary organizations also using this reduplicated commodity to deliberately persuade and mold public attitudes. This article examines some thirty inaugural editorials and first volume prefaces to Protestant missionary periodicals, including those from “new series,” to uncover how editors justified their establishment to their potential readership.
Journal Article • 2012 • Greenland The Library: Transactions of the Bibliographical Society13(4): 457-472
An examination of the publication and reception of David Cranz's History of Greenland from 1767. This article traces how this important Moravian publication was received in Britain and its impact on understandings of Greenland and indigenous peoples.
Abstract Between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, religious books proportionally lost popularity while travel books became more popular. This paper examines a hybrid of these two genres, Protestant missionary monographs, through a detailed analysis of David Cranz's 1767 History of Greenland , including the rationale behind publishing the book; its translation from German into English; how it was used as a political tool to influence British foreign policy; and how the book was received by British literary critics and scientists. This analysis demonstrates how authorial intentions that the religious and secular components of Protestant Missionary literature be considered as parts of a whole produced confusion and tension in the secular reception of such books.
In Future, Only Female Teachers: Staffing the Ramahyuck mission school in the nineteenth century
Felicity Jensz
Journal Article • 2012 • Australia Provenance: The Journal of Public Record Office Victoria11
An examination of staffing practices at the Ramahyuck mission school in nineteenth-century Australia.
Journal Article • 2012 Journal of Religious History36(2): 234-255
The nineteenth century was a boom time for the genre of missionary periodicals. Missionary periodicals were established by religious organizations, societies, and churches for their members, for the general public, for theologians, for women, for children, and for converted non-Europeans, and their growth reflected the expansion of missionary societies into the non-European colonial world. This article examines the rationale behind the establishment of three Moravian Church missionary periodicals.
The nineteenth century was a boom time for the genre of missionary periodicals. Missionary periodicals were established by religious organizations, societies, and churches for their members, for the general public, for theologians, for women, for children, and for converted non‐Europeans, and their growth reflected the expansion of missionary societies into the non‐European colonial world. Despite the abundance and wide range of these publications, research on the origins, form, and function of missionary periodicals remains limited. This article examines the rationale behind the establishment of three Moravian Church missionary periodicals: the British Periodical Accounts (1790–1970); the German Missions‐Blatt (1837–1941); and the North American The Little Missionary (1870–1920). The article elucidates both broader similarities and differences in missionary periodicals, as well as distinguishing how intentions behind the establishment of missionary periodicals differed from the practice of how religious organizations, societies, and churches utilized these periodicals in presenting themselves to the outside world.
Journal Article • 2012 History Compass10(4): 294-305
Part 1 of an examination of missionaries and education in the 19th century English-speaking world, focusing on church-state relations.
Abstract Missionaries were major providers of education in the colonial world, and in many cases were the initial and exclusive agents of education for Indigenous and non‐European people, whom they hoped could be converted to Christianity through religious schooling. However, by the end of the 19th century many governments in colonial lands were keen to take more active roles in providing secular education for their subjects, which, in turn, engendered tensions between missionary groups, governments, and the Indigenous communities for whom education was provided. Although the article of missions has received increasing attention in the last few decades, especially with the advent of postcolonial studies, there are still many aspects of missionary schooling that are understudied. This research overview examines the debates and research directions which are evident in the article of missionaries and their education of Indigenous and non‐European peoples in the 19th century, and focuses particularly upon major themes emerging from the literature: Two of these themes—Church‐State relations and Indigenous action and reaction will be examined in this article, whilst the themes of race, class, and gender will be examined in the second part.
Journal Article • 2012 History Compass10(4): 306-317
Part 2 of an examination of missionaries and education focusing on race, class, and gender dimensions.
Abstract Missionaries were major providers of education to Indigenous peoples in the colonial world. They hoped both to convert their pupils to Christianity as well as to ensure that their converts had a Christian environment in which aspects of Western education were taught within the class room. The relationship between missionaries, Governments and Indigenous peoples was, however, often strained as has been demonstrated in Part I of this two‐part article, which examined various responses in different geopolitical and social settings to missionary education. Part II examines some of the scholarly debates and research directions surrounding how missionaries, as some of the first as well as the longest serving providers of education to Indigenous peoples, transmitted and instilled Western notions of race, class and gender to those peoples amongst whom they worked. Although the study of missions has received increased attention in the last few decades within areas such as anthropology, gender studies, post‐colonial studies and area studies, there are still many aspects of missionary schooling that remain understudied. This research overview therefore also provides some future directions for the study of missionaries and their education of Indigenous and non‐European peoples in the long 19th century.
Journal Article • 2012 Journal of the History of Collections24(1): 63-76
As proto-ethnologists, missionaries represented an important source of ethnographical material, collecting for many museums and displays. It is contended here that European missions affected the collecting habits of their missionaries through actively encouraging or discouraging collecting on behalf of certain institutions. The motivation behind the endorsement of certain collecting habits and not others was linked to the missionary societies' perceptions of themselves.
Moravian Mission Education in the Nineteenth Century: Global Patterns and Local Manifestations at New Fairfield, Upper Canada
An examination of Moravian mission education patterns and their local manifestations in Upper Canada.
Firewood, Fakirs and Flags: The Construction of the Non-Western Other in a Nineteenth Century Transnational Children's Missionary Periodical
Felicity Jensz
Journal Article • 2011 Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Religions- und Kulturgeschichte105: 167-191
An analysis of how non-Western others were constructed in a nineteenth-century children's missionary periodical. This article focuses specifically upon The Little Missionary, published between 1870 and 1920 by the Moravian Church in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Journal Article • 2010 • Australia Aboriginal History34: 35-54
An examination of Friedrich Hagenauer's control over marriages of Indigenous Western Australian women in colonial Victoria. This article explores the intersection of mission policy, colonial law, and gender in the control of indigenous women's marriages.
Throughout the colonial world, sex, sexuality and intimacy were topics of intense scrutiny. In colonial spaces sexual control was, according to Ann Laura Stoler, a method in which colonial authorities could regulate not only the lives of the Europeans within colonial spaces, but also the lives of Indigenous peoples. Missionaries were also very concerned with the sexuality and sexual practices of the people amongst whom they worked, and often saw the female sexuality of indigenous peoples as being in need of controlling and according to Christian norms. This paper argues that not only exclusion from but also inclusion within Christian practices served as forms of punishment for Indigenous people seen to be at odds with the moral practices and sexual codes expected on a mission station. In particular, this paper contends that the arranged marriages of Indigenous females on Moravian mission stations in the Colony of Victoria in the mid-nineteenth century was undertaken by the missionary in charge in order to control the sexuality of these women.
Journal Article • 2010 • Australia Australian Journal of Politics & History56(3): 351-365
An examination of German Moravians at Bethel in colonial South Australia during 1851-1907.
During the evangelical awakening of eighteenth‐century Europe, numerous religious communities were founded in order to create a geographical space in which religious and social identities could be constructed, including several communities of the Moravian Church. This Protestant Episcopal Church was based in Germany, but expanded from the mid‐eighteenth century throughout the colonial world in response to political turmoil. This paper traces the establishment of the Moravian town of Bethel in South Australia and the role of religion and ethnic backgrounds in the identification processes of Europeans in the British colonial world. It further analyses the role of politics both locally and internationally in the formation of such a settlement, and the dynamic exchange between the European headquarters of the Brethren and the “colony” of Moravians in South Australia in order to demonstrate how interactions between migration and religion affected the European world.
Journal Article • 2009 • Australia Journal of Moravian History7(1): 6-30
An exploration of three distinctive features of the southern Australian Moravian mission field.
Abstract The nineteenth-century Moravian mission field of Southern Australia has received little attention in Moravian narratives or in contemporary historical analyses. Although it was relatively small in terms of converts, and short-lived in comparison to some other Moravian missionary fields, it had a profound impact on indigenous Australians and the colonial history of Australia. Tins essay provides an analysis of the Southern Australian Moravian mission field by examining three peculiarities of the field: the lack of native literature; the payment of a missionary by another church; and, the "double positions" held by Moravians as both missionaries and as governmental officials. These three peculiarities themselves diverge from the dominant Moravian missionary narrative, and thus, through their analysis, a more complex and nuanced history of this mission field is presented.
Flexibility in the Australian Higher Education Framework
Felicity Jensz
Journal Article • 2003 • Australia
An examination of flexibility in the Australian higher education framework.
Writing the Lake Boga Failure
Felicity Jensz
Journal Article • 2003 • Australia
A methodological examination of writing about the Lake Boga failure.
Book Chapter • 2026 • Switzerland
The Basel Mission between Switzerland, Germany and South India: Entangled Histories from Conversion to Commerce, Switzerland
A chapter examining interconnected approaches to Protestant mission histories, focusing on the Basel Mission.
This book traces the intricate entanglements between the Swiss-German world and South India through the history of the Basel Mission Society. Founded in 1815, the Mission drew its support from present-day Switzerland and the southern German region of Baden-Württemberg. In South India, particularly in Kerala and Karnataka, these missionaries combined theological ideals with technical expertise, fostering schools, industries, and congregations that linked Europe and India in unprecedented ways. The Basel Mission in India brings together, for the first time, a group of international scholars to provide a comprehensive, interdisciplinary account of the Mission’s activities in India since 1834. The chapters range from studies of pietism and industrial enterprise such as tile-making to examinations of caste, gender, education, and material culture, drawing on new archival and museum sources—including collections at the Museum der Kulturen Basel. By reassessing the Basel Mission’s theological, social, and economic legacy, this volume advances debates on colonialism, global Christianity, and transnational exchange. It offers fresh perspectives on how faith, labour, industry, and material culture intersected to shape an entangled world across Switzerland, Germany, and South India.
Purchasing Land in German East Africa
Felicity Jensz
Book Chapter • coming soon • East Africa
An examination of land purchasing practices in German East Africa by Moravian missionaries.
Book Chapter • 2025 • Cameroon
In: Emotion and Religion in Times of Crisis, pp. 215-230
An examination of women's experiences during WWI in German Cameroon.
Münster und das Münsterland als Kolonialschaufenster
Philipp Erdmann, Felicity Jensz
Book Chapter • 2024
In: Koloniale Spuren in Münster und im Münsterland, pp. 13-25
An examination of Münster and the Münsterland as a showcase for colonialism.
Ein Besuch aus Neu Guinea: Kolonialismus und Mission in Münsterland
Felicity Jensz
Book Chapter • 2024 • Papua New Guinea
In: Koloniale Spuren in Münster und im Münsterland, pp. 221-228
An exploration of visits from New Guinea and the relationship between colonialism and mission in the Münsterland.
Einleitung: Mehr als die Summe seiner Teile: David Cranz' Historie von Grönland
Felicity Jensz
Book Chapter • 2024 • Greenland
Vermächtnisse von David Cranz' 'Historie von Grönland' (1765), Greenland
Introduction examining David Cranz's History of Greenland as more than the sum of its parts.
A collection of Absurdities: Die Rezeption zweier englischer Versionen von Cranz' Buch in Großbritannien, 1767 und 1820
Felicity Jensz
Book Chapter • 2024 • Greenland
In: Vermächtnisse von David Cranz' 'Historie von Grönland' (1765), pp. 75-97
An examination of the reception of two English versions of Cranz's book in Britain in 1767 and 1820.
The Spanish Flu, First Australians and the trope of moral weakness
Felicity Jensz
Book Chapter • 2023 • Australia
In: Zwischen Gottesstrafe und Verschwörungstheorien. Deutungskonkurrenzen bei Epidemien von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, pp. 412-434
An exploration of the Spanish Flu and its impact on First Australians, examining colonial narratives of moral weakness.
Kolonialbotanik: Networks of collecting practices in colonial Germany
Felicity Jensz
Journal Article • 2022 Locus – Tijdschrift voor Cultuurwetenschappen25
An examination of networks of collecting practices in colonial Germany, focusing on botanical collections.
Koloniale Spuren und Strukturen in den musealen Einrichtungen Westfalen-Lippes
Felicity Jensz, Ute Christina Koch
Book Chapter • 2022 • Germany
In: Nordrhein-Westfalen und der Imperialismus, pp. 151-167
An exploration of colonial traces and structures in Westphalia-Lippe museum institutions.
Global Perspectives on Boarding Schools in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Daniel Gerster, Felicity Jensz
Book Chapter • 2022
In: Global Perspectives on Boarding Schools in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, pp. 1-33
A chapter providing global perspectives on boarding schools in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
a collection of absurdities: Religious and Scientific Reception of David Cranz's History of Greenland in Britain in 1767 and 1820
Felicity Jensz
Book Chapter • 2021 • Greenland
In: The Legacies of David Cranz's 'Historie von Grönland' (1765), pp. 71-92
An examination of the religious and scientific reception of David Cranz's History of Greenland in Britain.
Einleitung: Mehr als die Summe seiner Teile: David Cranz' Historie von Grönland
Felicity Jensz
Book Chapter • 2024 • Greenland
In: Vermächtnisse von David Cranz' 'Historie von Grönland' (1765), pp. 1-28
Introduction examining David Cranz's History of Greenland as more than the sum of its parts.
Poor heathens, Cone-headed natives and Good water: the production of knowledge of the interior of Australia through German texts from around the 1860s
Felicity Jensz
Book Chapter • 2020 • Australia
A reprint examining knowledge production about the Australian interior through German texts from the 1860s.
Silenced Women, Speaking Men: Locating Gendered Epistemic Violence in Nineteenth Century Missionary Representations of India
Felicity Jensz
Book Chapter • 2020 • India
In: Gender and Violence in Historical and Contemporary Perspectives: Situating India, pp. 58-75
An exploration of gendered epistemic violence in nineteenth-century missionary representations of India.
Dann kam der Krieg: Die Persönlichen Erinnerungen Deutscher Missionare im Ausland um 1914
Felicity Jensz
Book Chapter • 2019 • Germany
In: Mission Afrika: Geschichtsschreibung über Grenzen hinweg, pp. 87-104
An examination of personal memories of German missionaries abroad around 1914.
Hope and Pity: Depictions of Children in Five Decades of the Evangelisch-Lutherisches Missionsblatt, 1860-1910
Felicity Jensz
Book Chapter • 2018 • Germany
In: Menschen—Bilder—Eine Welt. Ordnungen von Vielfalt in der religiösen Publizistik um 1900, pp. 223-245
An analysis of depictions of children in the Evangelisch-Lutherisches Missionsblatt from 1860-1910.
Fischstäbchen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Eine Geschichte des Technologischen und Gesellschaftlichen Wandel
Felicity Jensz
Book Chapter • 2018
Epikur Journal
A history of fish sticks in the Federal Republic of Germany, examining technological and social change.
Kurze Anweisung Naturalien zu sammeln: Ein historischer Blick auf die Sammlungstätigkeit protestantischer Missionare
Felicity Jensz
Book Chapter • 2017
In: Missionsgeschichtliche Sammlungen heute. Beiträge einer Tagung, pp. 15-25
A historical examination of collecting practices by Protestant missionaries.
The voice of mourning
Felicity Jensz
Book Chapter • 2017
In: Stimmen aus dem Jenseits: Ein interdisziplinäres Projekt, pp. 137-147
An exploration of the voice of mourning in religious and historical contexts.
Eine Stimme auf Reisen. Mormonen und Schulmeister im 19. Jahrhundert
Felicity Jensz
Book Chapter • 2017
In: Stimmen aus dem Jenseits: Ein interdisziplinäres Projekt, pp. 126-132
An exploration of traveling voices, examining Mormons and schoolteachers in the nineteenth century.
With one voice. Quakers' use of print in 17th century England
Felicity Jensz
Book Chapter • 2017
Stimmen aus dem Jenseits: Ein interdisziplinäres Projekt
An examination of Quakers' use of print in seventeenth-century England.
Briefe, Bibeln und Bilder: Das Medienbewusstsein der Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge in Bezug auf die Verbreitung von Informationen über die Dänisch-Hallesche Mission in Tranquebar innerhalb der englischsprachigen Welt am Anfang des 18. Jahrhunderts
Felicity Jensz
Book Chapter • 2016 • India
In: Schrift Soll Leserlich Seyn: Der Pietismus und die Medien, pp. 611-624
An examination of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge's media awareness regarding the Danish-Halle Mission in Tranquebar.
The Representative Individuality of First-Fruit in Protestant Missionary Texts. Narratives of the Moravian Convert Kayarnak
Felicity Jensz
Book Chapter • 2015
An examination of the representation of the Moravian convert Kayarnak in Protestant missionary texts.
Reporting from the Religious Contact Zone: Missionaries and Anthropologists in Nineteenth-Century Australia
Felicity Jensz
Book Chapter • 2015 • Australia
In: European Missions in Contact Zones, pp. 125-141
An exploration of reporting from the religious contact zone between missionaries and anthropologists in nineteenth-century Australia.
Between heaven and earth: the German Templer colonies in Palestine
Felicity Jensz
Book Chapter • 2015 • Palestine
In: Imperial expectations and realities: El Dorados, utopias and dystopias, pp. 144-165
An examination of German Templer colonies in Palestine and their relationship to colonialism.
Introduction: Media and Mission. The Politics of Missionary Periodicals in the Long Nineteenth Century
Felicity Jensz
Book Chapter • 2013
In: Missions and Media: The Politics of Missionary Periodicals in the Long Nineteenth Century, pp. 9-17
Introduction to the volume on media and mission, examining the politics of missionary periodicals.
Diverging Reports of European Politics and Colonial Aspirations in the Periodical Accounts and the Missions-Blatt
Felicity Jensz
Book Chapter • 2013
In: Missions and Media: The Politics of Missionary Periodicals in the Long Nineteenth Century, pp. 39-56
An examination of diverging reports on European politics and colonial aspirations in missionary periodicals.
Book Chapter • 2013
In: Grenzüberschreitende Religion, pp. 263-285
An examination of laws, education, and race in the British colonial world, focusing on mission societies in Australia and Canada.
The Little Missionary: Freund-, Fremd- und Feindbilder am Beispiel einer Kindermissionszeitschrift im 19. Jahrhundert in Nordamerika
Felicity Jensz
Book Chapter • 2012
In: Von Ketzern und Terroristen, pp. 67-90
An examination of friend, stranger, and enemy images in a nineteenth-century North American children's missionary periodical.
Colonial Agents: German Moravian Missionaries in the English-Speaking World
Felicity Jensz
Book Chapter • 2010
In: Missionaries, Indigenous Peoples and Cultural Change, pp. 138-150
An examination of German Moravian missionaries as colonial agents in the English-speaking world.
Imperial Critics: Moravian Missionaries in the British Colonial World
Felicity Jensz
Book Chapter • 2008
In: Evangelists of Empire? Missionaries in Colonial History, pp. 187-200
An exploration of Moravian missionaries as imperial critics in the British colonial world.
Bachelor/Masters: An Australian perspective on the Anglophone perspective
Felicity Jensz
Book Chapter • 2007 • Australia
Looking Back to Look Forward. Analyses of Higher Education after the Turn of the Millennium, Australia
An Australian perspective on the Anglophone approach to bachelor's and master's degree structures.
Ohne Neid (Without Jealousy): Moravian Missionaries' Ideas of Land Ownership in Colonial Victoria
Felicity Jensz
Book Chapter • 2006 • Australia
In: Rethinking Colonial Histories: New and Alternative Approaches, pp. 219-231
An examination of Moravian missionaries' ideas about land ownership in colonial Victoria.
Moravian Missionaries' Contribution to Ethnographical Studies in Victoria: Both Then and Now
Felicity Jensz
Book Chapter • 2004 • Australia
In: The Struggle for Souls and Science. Constructing the Fifth Continent: German Missionaries and Scientist in Central Australia, pp. 29-35
An examination of Moravian missionaries' contributions to ethnographical studies in Victoria.
German-speaking Missionaries and Their Concepts of Britishness
Felicity Jensz
Book Chapter • 2004
In: Exploring the British World: Identity, Cultural Production, Institutions, pp. 142-160
An exploration of German-speaking missionaries' concepts of Britishness.
Handbook Article • 2024
In: Handbuch Interkulturelle Theologie, pp. 1-12
A handbook article examining religious artifacts, spoils of war, and postcolonialism in the context of intercultural theology.
In den letzten Jahren wurde in der Öffentlichkeit verstärkt der unrechtmäßige museale Besitz von Objekten aus kolonialen Gebieten hinterfragt. Missionsmuseen sind weniger erforscht als öffentliche Museen, enthalten jedoch viele Objekte mit kolonialem Bezug. Viele dieser Objekte gelangten durch direkte Verbindungen zwischen Missionarinnen und Missionaren und kolonisierten Völkern, die sich im Einflussbereich der Mission befanden, in die Museumssammlungen. Aufgrund der oft spärlichen Dokumentation ist die Herkunft dieser Objekte und der Kontext, in dem sie nach Deutschland gebracht wurden, oft unklar. In diesem Beitrag werden zunächst einige für das Thema wichtige Definitionen untersucht, bevor die Missionssammlungen mit dem Schwerpunkt auf deutsche Sammlungen betrachtet werden. In einem weiteren Abschnitt wird der aktuelle Forschungsstand untersucht, bevor neue Wege aufgezeigt werden.
Global Bible - Vermächtnisse von (Post)Kolonialen Bibelübersetzungen in der Arktis, Ozeanien und Westafrika
Holger Strutwolf, Jan Graefe, Felicity Jensz, Michael Wandusim
Exhibition Catalogue • 2025 • Arctic, Oceania, West Africa
LIT Verlag, Arctic, Oceania, West Africa
An exhibition catalogue exploring legacies of (post)colonial Bible translations in the Arctic, Oceania, and West Africa.
Die Bibel in Australia and Oceania
Felicity Jensz
Exhibition Catalogue Contribution • 2025 • Australia, Oceania
Global Bible – Legacies of (post)colonial Bible translations in the Arctic, Oceania, and West Africa, Australia, Oceania
An exhibition contribution examining the Bible in Australia and Oceania.
Global Bible: British and German Bible Societies Translating Colonialism, 1800-1914
Felicity Jensz
Exhibition Catalogue Contribution • 2025 • Britain, Germany
Global Bible – Legacies of (post)colonial Bible translations in the Arctic, Oceania, and West Africa, Britain, Germany
An examination of British and German Bible Societies and their role in translating colonialism from 1800-1914.
Mission and colonialism
Felicity Jensz
Exhibition Catalogue Contribution • 2025
In: Missionssammlungen ausgepackt. Eine kritische Spurensuche, pp. 35-60
An exploration of the relationship between mission and colonialism in museum collections.
Schilderungen aus der Südsee: die Verbreitung von Missionsperiodika und ihre Rolle in der deutschen Öffentlichkeit
Felicity Jensz
Exhibition Catalogue Contribution • 2018 • Pacific
In: Aus Westfalen in die Südsee. Katholische Mission in den deutschen Kolonien, pp. 40-51
An examination of descriptions from the South Seas and the spread of missionary periodicals in German public life.
Popular Article • 2019 • Greenland, Denmark
The Conversation, Greenland, Denmark
A popular article providing historical context on Greenland and colonialism for contemporary political discussions.
Donald Trump is not the first US President to make an offer of buying Greenland from Denmark - but he might be the last. Home of some 56,000 people and around 80% covered by ice, Greenland is culturally connected to Europe - but physiographically it is a part of the continent of North America. This article provides an overview of the long history of American colonialism, including land purchases from Indigenous peoples and European powers, and the specific colonial history of Greenland under Danish rule. It argues that under current laws, Greenlanders have the right to self-determination, and any agreement to purchase Greenland would have to be agreed upon by Greenlanders. Denmark's prime minister has stated that 'Greenland is Greenlandic,' and the Prime Minister of Greenland has emphatically stated that Greenland is not for sale.
A biographical entry on Friedrich August Hagenauer, a German missionary in Australia.
Friedrich August Hagenauer was born in a small township near Gera, Thuringia. He was a Moravian missionary at Ebenezer (1859-1861) and Ramahyuck (1862-1907) and unusual for a missionary, became influential as a government official in Victoria. He was ordained in Herrnhut (6 January 1858) and left for Australia to accompany Rev. Friedrich Wilhelm Spieseke. Hagenauer became a member of the colonial government's Board for the Protection of the Aborigines (BPA), and mixed religious and secular work. He was part of the government committee that drafted the so-called 'Half-Caste Act' of 1886, which ejected all non-'full-blood' Aborigines under the age of 35 from Victorian mission and government stations. He died at Sale at the age of 81 after 51 years of missionary service.
Exploring Beef Jerky
Felicity Jensz
Online Article • 2012 • Australia
An exploration of beef jerky in Australian cultural history.
Radical Smog
Felicity Jensz
Magazine Article • 2006
An article on radical smog for a science education publication.
Light up my cells
Felicity Jensz
Magazine Article • 2007
An article on light and cells for science education.
Snot a problem
Felicity Jensz
Magazine Article • 2007
A science education article for children.
Do I have to eat my broccoli?
Felicity Jensz
Magazine Article • 2007
A science education article for children about healthy eating.
Say goodbye to sleepless nights
Felicity Jensz
Magazine Article • 2007
A science education article on sleep and biology.
So you want to be a chemist?
Felicity Jensz
Magazine Article • 2006
A career guidance article for aspiring chemists.
The Art of Chemistry
Felicity Jensz
Magazine Article • 2006
An article exploring the artistic aspects of chemistry.
Historian shares diary of missionaries at Ebenezer
Felicity Jensz
Press Article • 2023 • Australia
A press article about sharing the diary of missionaries at Ebenezer.
Historian Felicity Jensz has compiled a new story of the ordinary day-to-day activity of Ebenezer Mission
Felicity Jensz
Press Article • 2023 • Australia
A press article about a new book on the Ebenezer Mission.
A window into life at Ebeneezer Mission through a newly republished journal
Felicity Jensz
Radio Interview • 2023 • Australia
A radio interview about Ebenezer Mission and republished journals.
Website Interview • 2023
Manchester University Press
Many missionary societies established mission schools in the nineteenth century in the British Empire as a means to convert non-Europeans to Christianity. Although the details differed in various colonial contexts, the driving ideology behind mission schools was that Christian morality was highest form of civilisation needed for non-Europeans to be useful members of colonies under British rule. This comprehensive survey of multi-colonial sites over the long time span clearly describes the missionary paradox that to draw in pupils they needed to provide secular education, but that secular education was seen to lead both to a moral crisis and to anti-British sentiments.
Interview with Felicity Jensz about her co-edited volume, Global Perspectives on Boarding Schools
Felicity Jensz
Website Interview • 2023
An interview about the edited volume on global perspectives on boarding schools.