Simon Larsson

1. Hydropower occupies a prominent position in contemporary energy-transition debates as a mature renewable electricity technology, valued for its contribution to low-carbon electricity generation,...

This chapter examines how missionaries of the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden sought to reorganize family and kinship relations in the Congo as part of a

This chapter examines how the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden sought to reshape work, labor, and economic life as part of its broader project of establishing

This chapter analyzes the Christian congregation as the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden’s primary institutional vehicle for making Christian life durable and

This chapter examines education and translation in the work of the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden in colonial Congo, showing how missionary schooling and

This chapter analyzes the relationship between the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden and the colonial state in the Congo as dependence, critique, and

This book as a whole examines Protestant Christian mission as an institutional project rather than primarily as the transmission of beliefs or cultural

This concluding chapter synthesizes the book’s central claim that Protestant mission in the Lower Congo was not primarily a matter of transmitting beliefs, but

This book offers a historical-anthropological study of Swedish Protestant missionaries in the Congo Free State during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It examines how a Swedish mission society, working in the Congo Free State during the brutal regime of King Leopold II, attempted to reshape Congolese society by transplanting Western Christian ideals into the local Kikongo-speaking context. The author analyzes the relationship between missionaries, the violent colonial state, and the Bakongo people among whom they worked, showing how mission stations became contested sites where Christian ideals were translated into institutional practices and repeatedly destabilized by colonial violence and existing social arrangements. The chapters document the missionaries’ activities and experiences using rich archival sources, drawing on Swedish-language mission archives and their personal writings such as letters, diaries, and reports. They tell a story of missionary efforts to improve the lives of Congolese converts, as well as failures, misunderstandings, and abuses of power. The author combines detailed empirical narrative with critical examination of topics including family and kinship, labor and economy, and state formation in a colonial context. By approaching Protestant mission in colonial contexts as a project of institutional reorganization, the book reframes familiar debates about domination, translation, hybridity, and local agency in mission studies and colonial history. It also offers a broader framework for understanding how transformative projects depend on the alignment of institutions, practices, and modes of governance, and why they tend to falter when such alignment cannot be secured.