Far Outliers

by Joel | 16 February 2011 · 7:21 am

Ethiopia’s Discovery of Europe, 1306–1458

The December 2010 issue of the Journal of World History (on Project MUSE) has a very interesting article by Matteo Salvadore on “An Ethiopean Age of Exploration: Prester John’s Discovery of Europe, 1306–1458.” Here are some excerpts (footnotes omitted, links added).

Before the age of European expansion overseas and the Portuguese circumnavigation of Africa, Renaissance Italy became a common destination for scores of Ethiopian monks and dignitaries. These travelers presented themselves on the European scene as active agents of transcontinental discovery: interested in learning more about a region they regarded as the ultimate center of organized Christianity, they became the protagonists of an Ethiopian age of exploration. This article examines the dynamics of interaction between Italian elites and Ethiopian travelers throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The episodes of interaction here considered had lasting consequences for Ethio-European relations: they engendered dynamics of reciprocal understanding based on a common religious identity that ran counter to ideas of African and black inferiority that represented the cultural norm for much of the modern period. Ethiopians became in fact agents of discovery and purveyors of geographical knowledge in an era when the dominating paradigm of difference was grounded not in racial but rather in religious identity….

In 1122 a foreign visitor to Rome was audacious enough to introduce himself to Pope Callistus II‘s (1119–1124) entourage as a representative of “Patriarch John of India.” We know that by virtue of his alleged relation with Prester John the visitor was treated with deference throughout his sojourn. This is the first recorded encounter between a European sovereign and a Patriarch—or Prester—John who, together with his supposed representative, had by all means not even a remote connection to the rulers of Ethiopia. Less than fifty years later, in 1165, Byzantine emperor Manuel Komnenos (1143–1180) received a long letter through which a self-declared Prester John sought alliances with his European peers. It is undisputedly a forgery; the circumstances surrounding the drafting of the letter remain rather obscure, and a variety of theories have been advanced. What we know is that the author—most likely European—compiled a compendium of geopolitical knowledge injected with fragments of information about the distant Orient. In the twelfth century, Prester John is the quintessential representative of a distant and largely unknown Christian might, which by virtue of its faith embodies a very peculiar type of other. Prester John epitomizes a remote Christian world, thought superior to a debased Western Christianity that was losing its confrontation with Islam both in Jerusalem and in Southern Europe. It is telling that certain passages of the mentioned letter that meant to shed light on the reality of his kingdom had been inspired by St. Augustine’s City of God. In an era of defeat and regression for the Christian powers of Europe, Prester John seems to have been an icon used to exorcise the power of Islam and soothe the anxiety of the European elites.

The popularity of the imaginary sovereign was such that in 1177 Pope Alexander III (1159–1181) addressed a letter to “Prester John, the illustrious and magnificent John King of the Indies.” The letter epitomizes the Catholic Church’s effort to expand its rule over the known and unknown lands of the world as well as an attempt to find allies for the anti-Muslim cause. The idea of Prester John engendered a positive European outlook on the unknown and was instrumental to later efforts to explore and map the wider world during the European age of exploration. It stimulated the interest of European monarchs in overseas exploration, particularly in the quest for allies against Islam. In the second half of the thirteenth century, after the acquisition of a greater—or rather, less confused—understanding of the East, European elites relocated the imaginary sovereign from Asia to Africa. A number of chronicles compiled at the turn of the thirteenth century abounded with references to Prester John, yet his actual location became more and more the object of controversy. As the Mongols reached into Europe in 1237 and displayed traits that did not coincide with the European image of Christian piety, the figure of the pious Christian king from the Far East gave way again to that of the heathen barbarian. In the same years travelers to the Far East returned to Europe with information about the exploits of the Mongol Empire. The Mongols were not Christians and the fabulous Christian kingdom was nowhere to be found, yet the myth of Prester John grew larger.

These are some of the contingencies that eventually engendered Prester John’s relocation to Ethiopia, but what is the bigger picture beyond them? The thirteenth century in Europe was a period of unprecedented knowledge production about the Far East. Before the rise of the modern explorer, traders started to gather information from distant lands and carry it through unsafe and discontinuous networks of communication back to Europe. If we look beyond the intricate network of first- and secondhand accounts we see the emergence of a new European awareness of the East: the wave of knowledge production emerged from the cradle of a still-infant capitalist world economy whose expansion facilitated the flow of information between continents and imposed innovative standards of geographic and political knowledge….

As Rome was struggling to regain Jerusalem in the second half of the thirteenth century, Ethiopia experienced the so called Solomonic restoration, a dynastic shift that brought about a period of unprecedented state building. At the end of the thirteenth century, Ethiopia emerged from more than a century of Zagwe rule (1137–1270) that abruptly ended when Yekuno ‘Amlak (1270–1285) was anointed Ethiopian emperor in 1270. At first sight the passage from one dynastic tradition to the other seems to have had a much more political than religious meaning as both dynasties were Christian. However, the restoration initiated a period of dramatic change both in the religious and secular realms. Taddesse Tamrat offered a compelling overview of the period and referred to the changes triggered in the late 1200s as “outward movements of both Church and States.” The Ethiopian nobility initiated an intermittent but long-lasting policy of expansion and consolidation across the highlands and laid out the defining elements of one of the most resilient monarchies in world history by giving birth to a military-religious complex—the sword and the cross—that would define the history of Ethiopia throughout the modern era.

The transformation and political consolidation of the Ethiopian highlands that started with Yekuno ‘Amlak was continued by his successor, Yagbe Ṣeyon (1285–1294), crowned emperor as Solomon in 1285. Did the news of the restoration reach Rome and Nicholas IV’s ear, enticing his curia to reach out to a potential ally? There is not enough evidence to know whether the letter addressed to “Imperatori Aethiopiae Illustri” was indeed directed to the Ethiopian emperor, but we do know that by the end of the thirteenth century the activity within the still-undefined boundaries of an embryonic contact zone acquired momentum. In a way we could argue that the emergence of an Ethio-European encounter was the result of parallel expansionist attitudes emerging on both sides of the contact zone….

Until the end of the thirteenth century, Christian Ethiopia had maintained a good record of collaboration and coexistence with Islam on both the international and domestic fronts. Ethiopian Muslims had long been an integral part of the local economy and had been instrumental to Ethiopia’s contribution to the regional economy of the Red Sea basin. Furthermore, the Ethiopian Church had been receiving its ‘abuna ([fn:] literally meaning “our fathers” in Ge’ez, … used in Ethiopia to identify leading clerics, heads of monasteries, and the head of the Ethiopian Church) from the patriarch of Alexandria as part of a complex process of mediation between different economic and religious interests competing along the shores of the Nile. One could say that until the rise of a new Ethiopian system in the early fourteenth century, the relation between Christianity and Islam in Ethiopia developed along the line of Muhammad’s plea to “leave the Ethiopians alone,” a plea that had been reciprocated with a partial integration of the Ğabarti on the highlands.

This is the backdrop against which a little-known group of Ethiopians officially opened the age of Ethiopian exploration in 1306. The first recorded encounter in the Ethio-European contact zone took place in an era when, on both sides, otherness was shaped by similar anxieties at a moment when both sides were redefining their relationship with Muslims. Presumably, Wedem Ra’ad sent a delegation of thirty Ethiopians to Europe, most likely for the purpose of forging an anti-Islam alliance with European coreligionists.

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by Joel | 13 February 2011 · 8:52 am

Naipaul on Houphouët-Boigny’s Religion

From The Masque of Africa: Glimpses of African Belief, by V. S. Naipaul (Knopf, 2010), pp. 148-149:

[Houphouët-Boigny] died at the age of eighty-eight. This was his official age; he was believed by many to be much older. His great age was further proof of his fetish-given power. He was said to have died on an important political anniversary. But no one in the country at large knew for sure. The private life of the ruler, the king, was always a mystery.

The royal compound was in the middle of the town of Yamoussoukro. This town was built around the site of Houphouët’s natal village. A chief’s village, but it would originally (before the French) have been close to bush. The compound was now surrounded by a high ochre-coloured wall nine miles long and was closed to ordinary visitors. From the outside you could see something like a young wood behind the wall. Heaven knows what secret rituals, what sacrifices, served by heaven knows what secret priesthoods, contrived to keep the king and his kingdom safe, at a time when nothing in Africa seemed solid.

Far away from the royal compound, at two different points in the new town which he had built, were mighty emblems of the imported faiths: a beautiful white mosque in the North African style, a style that had had to cross the Sahara to this far-off place in the wet forests of tropical Africa; and a cathedral that in its design paid homage to St. Peter’s. It was said to be higher than St. Peter’s (in spite of the pope’s request that its dome might be shortened by a metre or two). This was more than cross-cultural town-building. Mosque and cathedral, growing out of no communities, might have seemed like a game in the desert, the whim of a rich ruler looking for foreign approval. But they were seriously meant. Religion mattered to Houphouët; it was what kept him afloat; he would have felt, almost, that he ruled because he was religious. It pleased him, in his expensive new town, to honour these two world faiths, even while yielding to the profounder African stirrings which might have been played out in private rituals, meant for the king alone, in the royal compound, beyond the moat with its sacred crocodiles, fed at great expense every day.

Richmond had said that Houphouët’s magic had worked for him. And so it had. Power had stayed with him to the end. But even a king was only a man, and when his time had come Houphouët had died from prostate cancer.

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by Joel | 9 February 2011 · 5:49 pm

Naipaul on Religious Conversion in Nigeria

From The Masque of Africa: Glimpses of African Belief, by V. S. Naipaul (Knopf, 2010), p. 79:

Adesina’s father was born in 1904. To understand a little of his history was to understand the important history of conversion (to Islam or Christianity) in Nigeria. He did not go to school. He converted first to Catholicism, but he was unhappy with it. He didn’t understand the church service, which was in Latin. Later he met Arabs who had come to northern Nigeria with the trans-Sahara trade. These Arabs were teachers and missionaries. They translated the Koran into Yoruba, and they also preached in Yoruba. This was much easier for Adesina’s father and he converted to Islam. He always wished after that to be a good Muslim; he didn’t think Adesina was a good Muslim, and so he didn’t eat in Adesina’s house. But he was open-minded. He let people in the family read the Bible and he liked to debate with friends who were Jehovah’s Witnesses.

It seems from this that religion had become a kind of intellectual activity, perhaps the only one, in the newly educated house. Adesina’s father’s younger brother stayed a Christian, while the third brother remained firm in the traditional African religion. Adesina, growing up, had the full range of available Nigerian belief to choose from. He was technically a Muslim, following his father, but he liked the uncle who practised the traditional religion because this uncle was a great one for sacrifices and in that house Adesina was always given meat from the sacrifices to eat. His parents disapproved and beat him, but still he went to the unconverted uncle’s house. He would go and watch the sacrifices, eat his meat, and come home to a beating.

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by Joel | 9 February 2011 · 5:34 pm

Christianity Growing Fast in Africa

Last Sunday’s Charlotte Observer reported on A religious revolution in Africa described by Philip Jenkins, author of The Next Christendom: The Rise of Global Christianity, who spoke at Westminster Presbyterian Church there. Here are a few statistics from that talk.

In 1900, Europe and North America accounted for about 85 percent of the world’s Christians. By 2050, that number will have shrunk to about 25 percent.

During the same period, he said the number of Christians in Africa have, well, skyrocketed seems too tame a word. In 1900, there were 10 million; in 2000, 363 million. By 2015, Jenkins expects 500 million. And, by 2050, he predicted that Africa would become the first continent to have 1 billion Christians. Put another way: One of every three Christians in the world will be African – and that’s not counting the Africans who will have moved to the United States or Europe.

In the 20th century, about half of the people on the African continent moved from a tribal or pagan religion to either Christianity or Islam. And, Jenkins added, “Christians outpaced Muslims considerably” – by a margin of about 4 to 1.

The Welsh-born Jenkins, a professor at Penn State and Baylor whose books are lauded by both conservative evangelicals and liberal scholars, was brought to town by Union Presbyterian Seminary at Charlotte….

In 1900, Jenkins said, Europeans outnumbered Africans 3-1. But by 2050, he said, there will be three Africans for every European.

Meanwhile, in Europe, population is stagnant. In Italy, the median age is 40, Jenkins said. In Uganda, it’s 14.

And any growth in the ranks of the religious in Europe – the continent that was the capital of Christianity for millennia – tends to come from migrants: Muslims from Turkey or Pakistan and Christians from Africa or the Caribbean.

via RealClearReligion

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by Joel | 6 February 2011 · 12:55 pm

Naipaul on Stanley on Ugandan Warfare

From The Masque of Africa: Glimpses of African Belief, by V. S. Naipaul (Knopf, 2010), pp. 21-23:

IN 1875, WHEN Stanley passed through Uganda on his east-to-west crossing of the continent, he saw Mutesa, then about thirty-eight, at war against the Wavuma people on the northern shore of Lake Victoria. Mutesa’s army was vast. Stanley, doing a rough and ready calculation (and perhaps exaggerating), makes it 150,000, adding in 100,000 followers and women (Mutesa went everywhere with his harem), to make a grand total of 250,000 in Mutesa’s camp.

There were musketeers now in Mutesa’s army, but this did not give them anything like an overwhelming advantage. The Wavuma, who used only spears, knew about muskets and were not frightened of them. They were also skilled fighters on water. Mutesa’s people were better on land; on water they were nervous of tipping over; and for much of the time the advantage seemed to be with the Wavuma. People came out on to the hills above Lake Victoria to see the battle. The engravings in Stanley’s book, many of them based on photographs by Stanley, show what the watchers would have seen. They show the beautiful boats lined up, and the formations of the two disciplined armies, though the details of boats and fighting men in the distance are crowded and not always clear. The battle would have been frustrating for the watchers; since the fighters took their time, seeming to retire after every little episode. When Stanley sought Mutesa out to give advice about the battle, Mutesa appeared to have lost interest in it, and wanted to talk only about religion.

War was noise, to frighten the enemy. Mutesa had fifty drummers, as many flute-players, and any number of men ready to shake gourds with pebbles. There were also more than a hundred witchdoctors, men and women, specially selected, fantastically dressed (the Wavuma were no doubt meant to notice), who had brought along their most potent charms, to keep the evil eye off Mutesa and to sink the Wavuma. Before any action they presented their charms to Mutesa who, already half Muslim and half Christian, acknowledged these precious things of Africa—dead lizards, human fingernails and so on—with great style, pointing an index finger at what was presented, not touching it, and then, like a sovereign at a levee, waiting to see what came next.

Protected in this way, Mutesa began to threaten his commanders. He was going to strip the cowards of all their dignity and all the blessings he had given them. They had started life as peasants; they were going to be returned to that state. Some he was going to burn over a slow fire. (Burning: Mutesa’s mind often went back to this punishment, which he had narrowly escaped as a young man.) The chief minister, recognising the passion of his ruler, threw himself on the ground before the Kabaka and said, “Kabaka, if tomorrow you see my boat retreating from the enemy, you can cut me into small pieces or burn me alive.”

When Stanley next saw Mutesa, Mutesa was in high spirits. His men had managed to seize an old chief of the Wavuma and Mutesa intended to burn the old man alive, to teach the Wavuma a lesson. Stanley talked him out of that, and Stanley also, to everyone’s relief, mediated a peace between the parties.

This happened in 1875. In 1884 Mutesa was dead and was being buried in the tomb at Kasubi, which he had modelled on the tomb of his father Sunna at Wamala. He was, indeed, like his father. The country had given him no other model.

So Amin and Obote have a kind of ancestry. The British colonial period, with law and without local wars, has to be seen as an interlude.

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by Joel | 1 February 2011 · 4:18 pm

Legend of Sens-Pas-King in Kamtok & Tok Pisin

From West African Pidgin-English: A Descriptive Linguistic Analysis with Texts and Glossary from the Cameroon Area, by Gilbert Donald Schneider (Athens, Ohio, 1966), pp. 177-179. I have followed Schneider’s spelling of Kamtok (except for collapsing mid vowel distinctions) and his translation into English, and have added my own translation into Tok Pisin (New Guinea Pidgin). Both pidgin varieties here are likely to be somewhat rural and old-fashioned.

1k. Som boi i bin bi fo som fan kontri fo insai Afrika, we i bin get plenti sens.
1e. There once lived a very clever lad who lived in a beautiful part of Africa.
1p. I gat wanpela boi i bin stap long wanpela naispela hap long namel bilong Afrika, we em i saveman tru.

2k. I pas king fo sens sef, so i nem bi sens-pas-king.
2e. He was smarter than the King himself and so was given the name, Wiser-than-king.
2p. I winim king yet long save, olsem na ol i kolim em Save-winim-king.

(P olsem ‘so, thus’ < E all same)

3k. King i bin feks plenti, ha i bin hia sey, dis smol-boi i di kas eni-man fo sens.
3e. The King was very annoyed when he heard how this young boy was outwitting everyone.
3p. King em i kros tru, taim i harim tok olsem, dispela boi i save winim yumi olgeta long save.

(K ha ‘how, as’; K kas ‘catch, outwit’)

4k. So, king i bin mimba sey, i go kas i, i go win i fo sens.
4e. He decided to put the lad in his place with a few tricks of his own.
4p. Olsem na king i tingting olsem, em bai kisim em, em bai winim em long save.

(K mimba ‘think’ < E. remember; P kisim ‘catch s.t.’)

5k. I bin sen i imasinja som dey, we dem bin tok say, mek yu kom fo king i tong, na palaba i de.
5e. One day the King sent a messenger to the young man and summoned him to come to the palace for a discussion.
5p. Wanpela dei em i bin salim tultul bilong en bilong tokim em olsem em i mas kam long ples bilong king na toktok wantaim em.

(K tong ‘town, house, place’; P tultul ‘translator’)

6k. Sens-pas-king i bin go, i mas-fut fo rot, waka trong fo hil, sotey i rich fo king i tong.
6e. Wiser-than-king began his journey, up and down the steep hills he went and so finally arrived at the King’s palace.
6p. Save-winim-king i bin go, i wokabaut long rot bilong maunten, inap long em i kamap long ples bilong king.

7k. King i tok sey, yu don kom.
7e. (Upon arrival) the king welcomed him.
7p. King i tok olsem, yu kam pinis.

(K preverbal don and P postverbal pinis mark perfective aspect.)

8k. Mek yu klin ma het, biabia i don plenti tumos fo ma het.
8e. He asked the young man to cut his hair because it was so long.
8p. Yu mas klinim het bilong mi, gras bilong en i kamap planti tumas.

(K biabia, P gras ‘hair’)

9k. Sens-pas-king i bin tok gri sey, i go bap king i het.
9e. Wiser-than-king agreed to cut the King’s hair.
9p. Save-winim-king i tok olsem, orait, bai mi katim gras bilong het bilong king.

(K bap ‘[to] barber’)

10k. I bigin kot-am, bot ha i di kot-am, i di soso trowe simol kon fo fawu, we i de fo king i domot.
10e. But as he was cutting he was also continually throwing down a little corn for the chickens in the King’s courtyard.
10p. Tasol taim em i kirap long katim, em i tromwe liklik kon wantaim long ol paul i stap arasait long haus bilong King.

(K soso ‘only, just’; K domot ‘front yard’ lit. ‘door-mouth’)

11k. King i aks i sey, ha yu di soso trowe kon?
11e. The King asked him, “Why are you always throwing down corn?”
11p. King i askim em olsem, bilong wanem yu tromwe kon i stap?

(P bilong wanem ‘why’ lit. ‘for what’)

12k. Boi ansa i sey, na lo fo gif chop fo fawu?
12e. The lad answered, “Is there a law against feeding chickens?”
12p. Boi i bekim tok olsem, i gat lo long givim kaikai long ol paul?

(P ol plural marker < E all)

13k. Simol tam i don pinis i wok.
13e. Soon he finished his task.
13p. Liklik taim, em i pinisim wok bilong en.

14k. King i het don nyanga bat.
14e. The King’s head looked very fine.
14p. Het bilong king i naispela nogut tru.

(K nyanga ‘handsome’; K bat, P nogut ‘bad, very’)

15k. King i bigin hala, sey, na wati!
15e. The King (then) began to shout, “What’s going on here?”
15p. King i kirap long singaut, olsem wanem?

16k. Simol wowo pikin klin het fo bik-man?
16e. “Can a good-for-nothing youngster cut (shave) the hair of an elder?”
16p. Liklik pikinini nating i katim gras bilong het bilong bikpela man?

(K wowo ‘useless, dirty’; P nating ‘useless’ < E nothing)

17k. Mek yu put bak ma biabia wan-tam!
17e. Put the hair back in place immediately!”
17p. Givim bek gras bilong het bilong mi kwiktaim!

18k. A go kil yu ifi yu no put-am!
18e. “I’ll kill you if you don’t put them back!”
18p. Bai mi kilim yu i dai sapos yu no bekim!

(P sapos ‘if’ < E suppose; kilim ‘hit, beat’, kilim i dai ‘kill’)

19k. Sens-pas-king tok sey, no kes.
19e. Wiser-than-king replied, “It doesn’t matter.”
19p. Save-winim-king i tok olsem, Nogat samting.

20k. A gri. A bi daso sey, mek yu gif bak ma kon bifo a go fiks yu biabia agen.
20e. “I will gladly put your hair back, if you return the corn I fed to your chickens.”
20p. Orait. Tasol mi tok, yu bekim kon bilong mi pestaim, orait, bai mi bekim gras bilong het bilong yu.

(K daso, P tasol ‘only, but’ < E that’s all; P pestaim ‘first’ < E first time)

21k. King i no sabi wati fo tok.
21e. The King was speechless.
21p. King i no save bekim tok ya.

22k. i mof don lok.
22e. He was dumbfounded.
22p. Maus bilong en i pas pinis.

(K lok ‘locked’; P pas ‘fast(ened)’)

23k. Sens-pas-king i di go daso. Man no fit fan i kes fo dis wan.
23e. Wiser-than-king went on his way and no one was able to find fault with him.
23p. Save-winim-king i wokabaut i go. Ol i no inap kotim em long dispela.

(K no fit, P no inap ‘not able < E fit, enough; kotim ‘take s.o. to court’)

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Filed under anglosphere, Cameroon, language, Papua New Guinea

by Joel | 29 January 2011 · 9:54 am

Varieties of Kamtok (vs. Tok Pisin)

From West African Pidgin-English: A Descriptive Linguistic Analysis with Texts and Glossary from the Cameroon Area, by Gilbert Donald Schneider (Athens, Ohio, 1966), pp. 226-229. Each English phrase is translated into three versions: a. anglicized Kamtok, b. “broad” Kamtok, and c. Tok Pisin of Papua New Guinea (the last being my translations). All varieties here are likely to be somewhat rural and old-fashioned.

ORTHOGRAPHY: Schneider writes the 7 vowels of Kamtok /a, ɛ, e, i, ɔ, o, u/ as a, e, ey, i, o, ow, u. Another source writes them a, eh, e, i, oh, o, u.

1. He married trouble.
a. hi don mari trobu.
b. i don mari trobu.
c. em i maritim trabel.

2. I stay in this town.
a. ay di silip fo dis tawn.
b. a di silip fo dis tong.
c. mi stap long dispela taun.

3. Do you have children?
a. yu get pikin?
b. yu get pikin?
c. i gat pikinini bilong yu?

4. They are pleased with my work.
a. dem di glad fo may wok.
b. dem di glat fo ma wok.
c. ol i laikim wok bilong mi.

5. My strength’s gone.
a. may strong hi don finish.
b. ma trong i don finis.
c. strong bilong mi i go pinis. / mi no strong moa.

6. Our Bible is on the table.
a. wi baybl dey fo tebl.
b. wi bau dey fo tebu.
c. Baibel bilong yumi/mipela i stap long tebol. (‘ours incl. you’/’ours excl. you’)

7. Pineapple is good food.
a. panapl na swit chop.
b. panabu na shwit chop.
c. ananas i switpela kaikai.

8. They’re having a meeting about coffee tomorrow.
a. dem get miting fo kofi tumaro.
b. dem get miting fo kofi tumaro.
c. ol i gat (wanpela) miting bilong kofi tumora.

9. Pardon me.
a. eskiys mi witi dis wan.
b. chus mi fo dis wan.
c. sori ya long dispela. (?)

10. This guava isn’t sweet.
a. dis gwava now di swit.
b. dis gwava now di shwit
c. dispela yambo i no swit.

11. Your oil isn’t good.
a. dat yu oyl now gud.
b. dat wuna oya now fan.
c. wel bilong yu i no gutpela.

12. He’s not speaking the truth.
a. hi now di tok tru.
b. i now di tok tru.
c. em i no tok stret.

13. I can’t sit on that chair.
a. ay now fit sidawn fo dat chea.
b. a now fit sidong fo dat chia.
c. mi no inap sindaun long dispela sia ya.

14. Come and scratch my back.
a. kom skrach mi fo bak.
b. kom kras mi fo bak.
c. kam skrapim baksait bilong mi.

15. We’re going to the town.
a. wi di kamawt go fo tawn.
b. wi di komot go fo tong.
c. mipela i go long taun i stap. (‘we’re on the way to town’)

16. Throw it on the ground.
a. meyk yu trowwey fo grawn.
b. meyk yu trowwey fo grong.
c. tromwe i stap long graun.

17. It has a strong odor.
a. hi di smel plenti.
b. i di simel plenti.
c. i gat strongpela smel (bilong en)

18. Who broke my pot?
a. wichman don browk may pot?
b. husman don browk ma pot?
c. husat i brukim sospen bilong mi?

19. My brother’s in the house.
a. may broda dey fo haws.
b. ma broda dey fo has.
c. Brata bilong mi i stap (insait) long haus.

20. Go and sit down outside.
a. meyk yu gow sidawn fo awtsay.
b. meyk wuna gow sidong fo ausai.
c. go sindaun long arasait / ausait long haus.

21.Who owns that oil?
a. na wichman get dat oyl?
b. na husman get dat oya?
c. dispela wel ya i bilong husat/wanem man?

22. Come and give me another one.
a. kom giv mi oda wan.
b. kom gif mi ada wan.
c. kam givim/bringim mi wanpela moa / narapela (‘more of same’ / ‘different’).
(More polite is: Wanpela moa i kam!)

23. They have many possessions.
a. dem get plenti kagow.
b. dem get plenti kagow.
c. ol i gat planti samting.

24. The medicine causes itching.
a. dat medisin di skrach.
b. dat metsin di kras.
c. dispela marasin i mekim skin i sikrap.

25. Who rang the bell?
a. wichman don ring bel?
b. husman don ring bel?
c. husat i pulim/paitim belo? (‘pull/strike’)

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Filed under anglosphere, Cameroon, language, Papua New Guinea

by Joel | 26 January 2011 · 9:06 pm

Common People’s Christianity in Gunma, 1880s

From: American Missionaries, Christian Oyatoi, and Japan 1859–73, by Hamish Ion (UBC Press, 2009), pp. 269-271:

Although many missionaries, unlike their Japanese colleagues, came from rural farming backgrounds (and thus possibly had a better appreciation of the importance of farming to national strength), they were restricted to the treaty ports. Unless missionaries were employed at Japanese schools or obtained leave to go into the interior for health reasons, they were not free to leave the treaty ports. Thus, the rural evangelistic effort had by necessity, to be largely conducted by Japanese evangelists. By 1884 thirteen churches had been established in the Kantō prefectures.” Kudō Eiichi has pointed out that the ten years from 1877 to 1887 saw a tremendous growth in the Protestant movement, much of which came from the creation of new churches in rural areas.” This growth owed a lot to the activities of students who had studied in Tokyo or Yokohama, where they had contact with Christians returning to their hometowns and villages in the provinces Back-up to the activities of returned Christians came from members of the new city churches in Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, and Kobe, joined shortly afterward by students from the Nihon Kirisuto Ichi Kyōkai Shingakkō in Tsukiji and the Dōshisha school in Kyoto.
…
As Christian activities in Annaka and Maebashi reveal, one of the first areas to be opened up was Gunma Prefecture, an agricultural area to the west of Tokyo with strong ties to the silk-exporting trade through Yokohama. The opportunities for rural economic development as a result of the silk trade helped to open this area to Western machinery and Western ideas. It was in Kiryū that evangelists belonging to the Shin Sakae Kyōkai were able to establish their first church among the rural folk in this important region. In its early years, the Kiryū Kyōkai lacked both a permanent worship place and a resident minister. It grew nevertheless because of the energy of visiting evangelists and its own members. In sharp contrast to many of the first converts in Yokohama and Tokyo, who were shizoku (descendants of samurai), the Kiryū Christians belonged to merchant and farming families. Indeed, the first shizoku member of the church, Ishii Yasaemon, became a member in August 1883 and was the 117th person to be baptized in that church. In microcosm, the challenges that the Kiryū Kyōkai faced help to explain how a Christian community was able to take root in a country area and shed more light on what church activity entailed for country Christians. Sumiya has pointed out that Gunma Christians were different from their counterparts in other places where shizoku had made up the majority of converts because Gunma Christianity was the common people’s Christianity (heimin no kirisutokyo). This was certainly true in the case of the Kiryū Kyōkai….

Between 1878 and 1888, twelve churches were established in the prefecture, with a total membership of 1,466. Among them was the independent church Nishi Gunma Kyōkai, Takazaki Kyōkai, established in May 1884 by Hoshino Mitsuta. The evangelistic power and vitality of the young Dōshisha graduates who formed the vanguard of the Kumiai Kyōkai’s endeavour in Gunma is reflected in the ownership of these twelve churches: nine belonged to the Kumiai Kyōkai, and only one each to the Nihon Kirisuto Ichi Kyōkai, the Baptists, and the Methodists. The majority of the churches were on the main road leading west across Honshu toward Niigata, as was the case in Kiryū, Maebashi, Takasaki, Annaka, and Harashi. Some of these also were on the route of the railway – Isesaki, for instance. Ōhama has pointed out that Gunma Prefecture had 985 Christians in its churches in 1888 and ranked fifth in terms of numbers of Christians living in Japanese prefectures or major cities, and, at 14.75, fourth overall in terms of Christians per thousand of population.

This adds new perspective to our visit to international Ota City in Gunma, which is now home to Japan’s largest Braziltown and has the highest proportion of foreign workers of any prefecture in Japan.

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by Joel | 25 January 2011 · 6:13 pm

Tokugawa Internationalists in Shizuoka, 1870s

From: American Missionaries, Christian Oyatoi, and Japan 1859–73, by Hamish Ion (UBC Press, 2009), 159-160:

In mid-November 1871, [Edward Warren] Clark arrived in Shizuoka as the first westerner free to teach Christianity outside the treaty concessions.

In the early 1870s, Shizuoka was by no means a simple provincial town in a prefecture well known for its mandarin oranges and tea. It was the ancestral home of the Tokugawa shoguns, and, as mentioned, it was there that Tokugawa Yoshinobu, the last shogun, retired after the Meiji Restoration. Many of his former retainers followed him there into semi-exile, and approximately six thousand ex-Tokugawa samurai were living in Shizuoka and its vicinity in late 1871.

Even though it had lost political power with the Meiji Restoration, the Tokugawa family initially hoped that it might regain its former control of Japan. For this reason, in the autumn of 1868, the Tokugawa family established the military academy at Numazu, approximately thirty miles from Shizuoka, with the leading Western studies scholar, Nishi Amane, as its first headmaster. They were able to marshal a very impressive roster of Dutch and English specialists. With less overtly militaristic aims in mind, the Tokugawa authorities also founded in late 1868 the Gakumonjo in Shizuoka, which in November 1868 began offering classes in English, French, German, and Dutch. There were two headmasters, Mukōyama (Mukaiyama) Komura and Tsuda Shin’ichi, the former a Chinese studies specialist. Nakamura Masanao was also listed as a Chinese studies specialist faculty member. The Tokugawa authorities drew some of the best Japanese foreign-language teachers so that the school would be regarded as equal to the Yokohama Gogakujo in its foreign-language offerings and to Edō Kaiseijo in its Chinese studies. There were some sixty teachers at the Shizuoka school, among them Sugiyama Sanhachi, a Dutch studies specialist. By 1871, this Shizuoka school was the higher education centre of a network of eight or nine junior schools, which the Tokugawa family had established in Shizuoka Prefecture. The purpose of the Gakumonjo was to provide education in Western studies for the sons of ex-Tokugawa samurai. Entry to the school was restricted to those of the samurai class and, importantly, tuition was free. Among the followers of the ex-shogun there was, very naturally, considerable resentment against the new Meiji government, as the déclassé samurai were living in conditions of great hardship and suffering. Katsu Kaishū and other Tokugawa elders thought that by educating the sons of ex-samurai in Western science at least, some of the former Tokugawa influence in Japan could be regained. Moreover, as the demand for experts in Western studies increased, there would be employment opportunities for these young men. In recognizing the future need for Western studies specialists, the progressive spirit of the Tokugawa exiles in Shizuoka Prefecture was clear, albeit directed toward the restoration of their own power rather than the good of all Japan.

Since the Gakumonjo’s founding in 1868, the Tokugawa authorities had wanted to hire a Western teacher for it. After all, the Gakumonjo had been founded to teach Western subjects – English, French, German, and Dutch languages; mathematics, and Western science – as well as traditional Chinese studies. The need for a Western professor became increasingly acute as the Gakumonjo expanded. By November 1871, it had grown to such an extent that it had been divided into four schools: the Shogakujo, the Denshujo, the Shugakujo, and the Shizuoka Honkō (formerly the Gakumonjo). What these divisions meant in practical terms was that Western subjects were now being offered from primary school through to the highest academic level, and to students ranging from young boys to mature men in their thirties. Compounding educational problems posed by expansion was the simply [sic] reality that English had replaced Dutch as the major language of Western studies. The shortage of English-language teachers became clear when, in 1871, the Tokugawa authorities sent Sugiyama Magoroku, the son of Sugiyama Sanhachi, to learn English in Yokohama instead of continuing his Dutch studies. As well as learning English, Sugiyama converted to Christianity and became in 1872 a member of the Yokohama Christian Band. Sugiyama was not the only convert from Shizuoka among the first group of the Yokohama Band; Shinozaki Keinosuke also came from there.

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by Joel | 25 January 2011 · 9:57 am

Japanese Attitudes toward Urakami Christians, 1868-1871

From: American Missionaries, Christian Oyatoi, and Japan 1859–73, by Hamish Ion (UBC Press, 2009), pp. 100-101, 121-122:

In June 1868, A. Bertram Mitford, then serving as British consul in Osaka, wrote a most interesting letter about Japanese views on the Urakami Christians. Mitford had polled his Japanese friends, very likely the same politically well-connected friends who had provided him with the political intelligence on the imperial side that allowed the British to navigate skilfully through the tortuous months leading up to the Restoration. Mitford observed how little sympathy there was for the Urakami Christians among Japanese of all classes because they had begun to openly preach the Gospel in defiance of the government’s prohibition. He stressed that the Japanese thought the Roman Catholic priests were trying to gain secular as well as spiritual power through their proselytizing activities in Urakami, known as a hotbed of anarchy and revolution. He also pointed out that a new Roman Catholic bishop had been appointed with the ill-chosen title of “bishop of Japan,” which Japanese regarded as “thoroughly offensive to the pride of the nation.” The Japanese saw the crisis in political terms: as a challenge to the political power of the government. According to Mitford, the Japanese already believed that Roman Catholic fathers were exerting an unfortunate influence on the Urakami Christians by forbidding them, to sell flowers as decoration in local temples and shrines and by preaching sedition and treason, which had led to the tearing down of images of the native gods. The spectre of religious warfare was raised.

The Japanese were too diplomatically astute to deny the excellence of Christian teaching but did argue that “the school of Urakami is but a bastard form of Christianity,” that the Roman Catholic priests were not famihar enough with the Japanese language to explain the dogmas of their religion, and that the Urakami Christians had little in common with true Christian. This argument was in keeping with a common snub about the missionaries language ability, with the hint that the Japanese knew a little bit more about the true nature of Christianity and of Urakami Christian beliefs than the Roman Catholic missionaries did. Mitford wrote, “The Japanese claim a high degree of merit for their own faith, which for centuries has taught the people the duties of children and parents, husbands and wives, masters and servants, brothers and friends. This is the religion which the people understand; the mystic doctrines of the Fathers only bewilder them.” Mirroring the contemporary position, he then added, “The danger of a little knowledge in matters of religion is shown by the Taiping Rebellion, which founded on a few Christian tracts, at one time threatened to lay waste the Chinese Empire.” Elements of Christianity could be seen in the ideology of the Taiping rebels, and 1868, the year in which Mitford was writing was only four years after that destructive rebellion’s final defeat. Although it is difficult to see the Urakami Christians leading a rebellion with the same impact on Japan as the Taiping had on China, the new government saw them-as a danger because they could spark a resurgence of armed Tokugawa opposition to the government’s rule. In any case, despite Western ministers’ calls for the Meiji government to take a more moderate stance, Mitford thought the government was still going ahead with its policy to scatter the Urakami Christians throughout the territories of different daimyo. Mitford’s intelligence was very good, for this scattering of Christians was, in fact, carried out. It was all about politics and political power.

…

In late November 1871, the British diplomat Ernest Satow had dinner with Kido Kōin, a senior member of the Meiji government, during which Kido said “he respected highly the Christian religion and was in favour of introducing it into Japan or at least of allowing its practice.” Certainly, this would appear to be a volte-face on the part of someone who was instrumental in carrying out the new government’s policies against the Urakami Christians in 1868. But by late 1871, Kido was concerned with currying favour with the Western powers in advance of the Iwakura embassy‘s imminent departure for the West. The persecution of Christians was an issue that was not going to go away quietly. As Helen Hardacre has pointed out, the question of religious freedom was “a tremendous stumbling block in the achieving of the main goal of Japanese diplomacy at that time,” that is, the revision of the treaties of 1858. When the Iwakura embassy was confronted with the issue of religious freedom, Japanese Christians had already been largely brought to heel.

The Meiji government was quite prepared to take down the public notice boards of edicts prohibiting Christianity (this was, in itself, an economizing measure, as the notice boards were expensive to maintain), but it had no intention of altering its proscription of Christianity. The timing of the removal of the public notice boards was dictated not by Western diplomatic pressure but by the Japanese government in light of its preparations to mitigate the potential harmful consequence to Japan of this action. The Japanese people understood from the example of the Urakami Christians what could happen if they became Christians. Given their determination during the Urakami crisis, it is quite clear that the Meiji oligarchs were not going to allow Christianity to gain headway in Japan. The removal of the notice boards was interpreted by missionaries as the start of a new era in which Christianity could be openly propagated among the Japanese, but it was, in reality, a hollow gesture by a government that had no intention of stopping its search for counter-Christian measures to contain Christianity. Indeed, the major beneficiaries of the dismantling of the anti-Christian notice boards were not Christians but Buddhists, who were now seen as playing an important part in countering any major Christian advance – with the removal of the notice boards, the Meiji government, which had previously been persecuting Buddhists as part of its attempt to promote Shinto, now looked to Buddhists to help them resist the spread of Christianity outside the treaty settlements (something that the government feared might be a possible and undesirable consequence of removing the proscription edicts from public view). Certainly, Ōhama Tetsuya sees Buddhist attempts to counter Japanese Christian evangelistic activities in the provinces becoming particularly pronounced in 1881 and 1882 at a time when Buddhist intellectuals were also trying to discredit Christian theological ideas. Christianity had failed in Japan before it was actively propagated among the Japanese. Missionaries, of course, did not recognize this. Their energies were directed toward overcoming all obstacles to their religious goal of spreading the Christian message throughout Japan. Optimism was a marked, if not an essential, characteristic of their work.

The uproar of protest against the deportation of the Urakami Christians came from Western diplomats and not from missionaries in Yokohama. In this, there is a residue element of anti-Roman Catholic sentiment that saw the persecution of the Urakami Christians as something involving the Roman Catholics and having little to do with Protestants. “Those horrible papists,” Verbeck (who was by no means unusual among Protestant missionaries in his contempt for Roman Catholics) was wont to call Roman Catholic priests. Yet, it is evident that anti-Christian Japanese polemicists saw Protestant missionaries as being as bad, if not worse, than their Roman Catholic counterparts. The Japanese government argued that the Japanese who wanted to learn about things Western found missionaries, in contravention of the treaties, forcing them to read the Bible as an English textbook. From the government’s perspective, private religious beliefs would be tolerated so long as the individual believer did not challenge the public policies of the government. Thus, in the opinion of the Meiji government, the Urakami Christians were not being persecuted for their private religious beliefs but because they had defied established authority.