Transnational childhoods and religious migration: the case of missionary children in East-Central Africa

Briscoe, Hannah Joanne (2023). Transnational childhoods and religious migration: the case of missionary children in East-Central Africa. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

This thesis examines the lives of the children of British evangelical Anglican missionaries in the region of east-central Africa from 1890 to 2020. Throughout, it is guided by its dual research questions asking how missionary children have influenced the history of missions, families, institutions and communities; and how their experiences and identities have been shaped by relationships, generational processes and every day and extraordinary circumstances. The thesis draws from extensive archival sources and qualitative interviews with former and current missionary children and parents, thus bringing children’s perspectives into greater light by presenting a more complex compilation of voices.

The first chapter is a generational analysis of the Ruanda Mission. It investigates the flow of knowledge and values between generations and argues that missionary children were a significant factor in the history of the Ruanda Mission and its relationship to the East African Revival. Chapter two continues to apply relational and generational lenses for its case study on the correspondence between Handley and Cicely Hooper and their young sons during their period of separation from 1921-1926. It examines strategies employed in co-constructing intimate relational identities across space and time and through the imagination. Chapters three and four offer a comparative analysis of children and young people’s lives and experiences in diverse temporal, spatial and social settings. These chapters examine young people’s experiences of transition and disruption and factors that affect the wellbeing and emotional- and identity-formations of children.

Together, the four chapters argue for the importance of children as historical subjects and the interpretive value of relational and generational approaches to children’s history; provide insights into continuance, change and individual and family identity-formation; and examine factors that affect the wellbeing of children. Its interdisciplinary, transnational and cross-chronological approach contributes to scholarship in a range of disciplines including Childhood Studies; histories and geographies of children/childhood and emotions; British world, colonial and transnational histories; epistolary scholarship, oral histories and participatory and qualitative research methods.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):