"Richard Henry Stone's memoir of his six years as a Southern Baptist Convention missionary to the Yoruba first appeared in 1899. A standard source for anthropologists and historians, it has been reissued in the University of Alabama's 'Religion and American Culture' series with a new introduction by Stone's great-granddaughter, Betty Finklea Florey. She has also added an appendix of the letters Stone wrote from western Nigeria from 1859 to 1863 and 1867 to 1869. Florey (Univ. of Alabama) praises Stone for his 'surprisingly objective record of what he saw,' but acknowledges that he was very much a man of his time. Born and raised in slaveholding Alabama, Stone learned Yoruba, carefully documented the often-fraught politics of western Nigeria, and praised the industriousness of the Africans among whom he lived. Yet he did not condemn the continued enslavement of Africans and African Americans in his home state, and when he was detained in Virginia on his return in 1863, he refused to sign an oath of loyalty to the Union. Personal politics aside, Stone was a thoughtful observer of precolonial Yoruba society, and scholars and students will benefit from this new edition of his African memoir. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries."
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"This book represents interesting archival material for all those interested in African (Yoruba) history and processes of proselytisation in Africa. It will doubtless inspire new investigations into some of the dimensions adumbrated in existing narratives on social and political discourse among the Yoruba people and their missionary principals at the twilight of the nineteenth century."--Journal of Modern African Studies
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“Stone … provides rare details about diplomacy and intrigues among the locals at that material time [of the 19th century]. But this title is also significant in two other ways. First, Stone’s journal on some of his daily activities, the pictures, and the correspondences with James B. Taylor of the secretariat of the Southern Baptist Convention in America reveal a lot about the perception and attitude of the denomination and its aficionados towards Africa, and indeed towards the Yorubas. Secondly, the title offers, on the one hand, new evidences about religious interactions among the church people and the natives, and on the other, the status of the Muslims, their institutions, and the Christians, or more appropriately, Stone’s perception of Muslims and their interactions with other religionists. By and large, this is an archival material for all those interested in African (Yoruba) history and proselytism enterprise in 19th century Africa. It will doubtless inspire new investigations into some of the dimensions adumbrated in the narratives on social and political discourse among the Yoruba people and their missionary principals at the twilight of the 19th century.”—Amidu Olalekan Sanni, Journal of Oriental and African Studies
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