International records / OpenAlex research

Capitalists and Preachers

One day during 1848 the missionary Hope Masterton Waddell was invited to preach to the leading men of Old Calabar, a port in eastern Nigeria famous for its palm oil. Waddell was a man from the heart of Roger Anstey’s world. Before settling in Old Calabar in 1846, he had worked for seventeen years as a Presbyterian missionary in Jamaica at the time when missionaries were seeking to teach the newly emancipated slaves the virtues of Victorian capitalism. Now, in his new post, Waddell seized the opportunity to preach the same gospel of Christianity and Commerce to the men of Old Calabar: I preache…