The Scandinavian Corps in the Second Anglo-Boer War

The short-lived Scandinavian Corps, like so much else in the annals of the Second Anglo-Boer, was unquestionably of little military significance, yet it nevertheless merits scholarly attention as an expression of minorities within certain European immigrant groups who felt strongly enough about the republican cause to risk, and iv.in many cases, lose, their lives for it. In terms of their varied and inconsistent attitudes towards the Boers and British alike, as well as their accounts of their lives as combatants and prisoners, the Nordic pro-Boers left their mark on the ethnic and military history of the pluralistic society of which they chose to be a part. The Scandinavians in question entered the war from an oblique angle, and their saga is thus but one of the many perspectives which must be included in historians\u27 ever-widening perception of that conflict

Janet Campbell Hale

In the early 1970s, at an early stage of the “Native American Renaissance,” a period that witnessed a recrudescence of tribal literary efforts, historical consciousness, and demands for civil rights, Janet Campbell Hale quietly began to make her mark on the Native American cultural landscape. A young member of the Coeur d’Alene tribe, she was then residing in the San Francisco area and had written a novel for adolescents titled The Owl’s Song, which inaugurated a noteworthy career in ethnic fiction and has gone through many printings. Like most other Native American authors, Hale has not been highly prolific with the pen. Nevertheless, she has written books of poetry, autobiography, and fiction. Most of her work vividly reflects her background in a Plateau Indian culture, but it also sheds much light on her displacement from it and on her often tribulative life in ethnically disparate urban areas of the Pacific Northwest and northern California. Coupled with her facility as a writer, this dual cultural-geographical focus (relatively new in Native American literature when she began her career) ensures Hale a place in the annals of Western American literary history. The magnitude of that niche will presumably depend on the scope and quality of her production in the twenty-first century

The missionary career and spiritual odyssey of Otto Witt

Bibliography: pages 325-334.This thesis is a theological and historical study of the Swedish missionary and evangelist Peter Otto Helger Witt (1848-1923), who served as the Church of Sweden Mission's first missionary and as such launched its work amongst the Zulu people of Southern Africa in the 1870S before growing disillusioned with his national Lutheran tradition and, after following a tortuous spiritual path through generally increasing theological subjectivity, eventually becoming a loosely affiliated Pentecostal evangelist in Scandinavia. Undoubtedly owing to the embarrassment he caused the Church of Sweden Mission by resigning from it while it was in a formative stage, but also to tension between him and its leaders, Witt has never received his due in the historiography of Swedish missions. For that matter, his role in Scandinavian nonconformist religious movements for nearly a third of a century beginning in the early 1890S is a largely untold chapter in the ecclesiastical history of the region. This thesis is intended to redress these lacunae by presenting Witt's career as both a foreign missionary and evangelist as well as the contours of his evolving religious thought and placing both of these emphases into the broader history of Scandinavian and other missionary endeavours amongst the Zulus, late nineteenth-century developments in Swedish Lutheranism, and the coming to northern Europe of those religious movements in which he successively became involved. As the copious documentation indicates, it is based to a great extent on little-used materials in the archives of the Church of Sweden Mission and other repositories in Scandinavia, South Africa, and the United States of America. Witt's own numerous publications also provide much of the stuff for it. The structure of this study is essentially chronological and, within that framework, thematic with clear precedents in previous missions and ecclesiastical historiography. The first chapter is largely a critical review of previous pertinent literature, professional and otherwise, emphasising its general misunderstanding and neglect of Witt. Chapter II covers his background in nineteenth-century Swedish Lutheranism, call to the Church of Sweden Mission, and role in establishing that organisation's endeavours amongst the Zulus. Chapter Ill deals with the trauma of the Anglo-Zulu War of 1819, particularly Witt's controversial but misunderstood role in it and the place of this in the existing historiography of that conflagration. Chapter IV surveys his part in re-establishing the Swedish Lutheran mission following the war and his co-operative and at times creative role in this major task. Chapters V and VI, on the other hand, have as their respective themes Witt's consequential spiritual crisis of the mid-1880s and resulting gradual departure from the Church of Sweden Mission. The seventh chapter is a consideration of Witt's Participation in and temporarily great impact on the Free East Africa Mission, a pan-Scandinavian free church undertaking which undertook evangelisation in both Durban and rural Natal in 1889. Chapter VIII treats Witt's generally independent career in Scandinavia from 1891 until his death, focusing on the new developments in which he became involved. The final chapter is an attempt to assess his general place in the missions and ecclesiastical history of Scandinavia and Southern Africa

The Danish Colonization Society of 1879

The Danish Colonization Society of 1879 (Den danske Kolonisations-Forening af 1879) is one of several organizations which historians have generally ignored. An analysis of it, however, could illuminate further a number of matters pertinent to the general theme of Scandinavian emigration. Essentially, it was an association that intended to assist economically deprived Danes in securing a collective home overseas as well as passage to it at the least possible expense. The Society was short-lived, apparently disbanding a little more than a year after coming into being. Moreover, the only direct evidence of its activity is its truncated biweekly newspaper, Udvandrings-Tidende (Emigration Times). Yet the Society\u27s activity and rhetoric touched on earlier colonization efforts, the rise of Danish socialism, the role of emigration agents, projects to prepare prospective emigrants for their new environment, and other matters of common interest to students of international migration. In the present article I shall discuss the background from which the Society emerged, its activities, and its abrupt demise. By examining more carefully the limited evidence than has hitherto been done, I shall correct certain mistakes in the brief consideration of it in Kristian Hvidt\u27s study of Danish emigration

H R Trevor-Roper vs. Arnold Toynbee: A post-Christian Religion and a new Messiah in an age of reconciliation?

That the twentieth century witnessed massive secularisation in Europe and certain other parts of the world is beyond dispute, as is the fact that the general phenomenon of religion and its role as a factor shaping history remain potent on a broad, international scale. There is no consensus, however, about the future place or status of Western Christian civilisation or �Christendom� in a shrinking and pluralistic world also struggling with the challenge of reconciliation. During the 1950s two controversial giants of� British historiography, Arnold Toynbee and HR Trevor-Roper clashed on this issue. Their severe differences of opinion were conditioned in part by the Cold War, general retreat of imperialism from Africa and Asia, and the growth of the economic, military, and political power of previously colonised or otherwise subjugated nations

Rasmus Sorensen and Danish Emigration, 1847-1863

Probably no individual played a more seminal role in the limited Danish emigration to North America before and during the Civil War than Rasmus Sorensen. From the late 1840s until the early 1860s this author, educator, politician, and social reformer led three groups of his countrymen to Wisconsin and, through numerous booklets, speeches, and letters encouraged others to settle elsewhere in the United States and Canada. Yet Sorensen has generally been little more than a supernumerary in the historiography of this transatlantic migration. Its pioneering historian, Peter Sorensen Vig, devoted twelve pages to him in his mammoth compendium, a dozen more than John Bille allowed him in his disjoint narrative of 1896. Arne Hall Jensen described Sorensen \u27s life in two paragraphs in 1937, giving various biographical details without interpreting their significance. There is little to indicate that the recent revival of interest in the Danish-American field will reverse this long tradition of neglect. In his monumental study of emigration from Denmark, Kristian Hvidt relates his activities in a scant paragraph, perhaps justifiably, because Sorensen \u27s lifespan fell completely outside Hvidt\u27s chronological framework

Norwegian missionary correspondence from Natal and Zululand during the nineteenth century

This documentary dissertation contributes to scholarly understanding of the history of missionary endeavours in Natal and Zululand by making accessible a carefully edited compilation of documents written by Norwegian missionaries in those areas between 1844 and 1899. From thousands of pertinent extant documents, the editor has selected a representative crosssection of the most revealing letters and reports that Lutheran and other missionaries sent to their sponsoring organisations and the related periodicals. Each document has been translated from Norwegian into English, suitably excised of superfluous material, and given a brief introduction. Annotations explain theological jargon and identify people, places, and phenomena to which the writers of these letters and reports referred. The documents are divided into four chapters, each of which begins with an introduction by the editor. An introductory chapter provides information about the Norwegian missionaries in question, the general history of their work, the nature of the correspondence, and the consequences of the failure of many other historians of foreign rnissions in Southern Africa to avail themselves of this invaluable historical source.M. Th. (Missiology)Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiolog