Butterflies & Barbarians: Swiss Missionaries and Systems of Knowledge in South-East Africa - Hardcover

"Harries points out in detail the intellectual heritage of the missionaries in terms of their anthropological, religious, geographical, scientific, and linguistic beliefs... The book is deeply researched and gives the reader a strong sense of the ferment out of which missionaries tried to make sense of their vocations." - International Journal of African Historical Studies "(T)his lavishly illustrated volume remains a towering achievement that lifts mission studies to a level of sophistication rarely achieved in the past." - Journal of African History "This book is a masterly work of detailed transnational research in at least five languages, deft analysis, and intentional crafting. With sure deliberation, the narrative steps between continents and forward and backward in time. The prose is smooth, the photographs evocative. Many thanks to the publisher for reproducing a set of them in colour." - Environment and History "The intellectual lives of one small group of Swiss missionaries suggest a new perspective on the dynamic relationship between Europeans and Africans involved in missions." - Terrae Incognitae "This is a book about Swiss missionaries, Thonga, and systems of knowledge in southeast Africa, but it is also very much about power and its limits in contested intellectual and cultural arenas...This is a satisfying and detailed book. Whether on the topic of butterflies, botanizing unexplored terrains, the implications of literacy, or the politics of university appointments, Harries efforts are clearly up to Junod's high standards." - H-Luso-Africa "Harries excels in describing the intellectual influences that informed the scientific endeavors of the missionaries. His focus on the Swiss missionary contribution offers a unique angle on the history of science in Africa." - ISIS, Journal of the History of Science Society "Butterflies and Barbarians deserves a wide audience. Students in advanced undergraduate and graduate courses on African history, imperialism, and missionaries would find many insights here on the politics of knowledge in a colonial setting." - African Studies Quarterly "Taking apart Junod's categorical and analytical modes of understanding and sorting through them, Harries shows us exactly how the levered interactions of knowledge, power, and negotiation worked, in the critical era of missionaries' assemblage of ethnographic knowledge." - American Historical Review

Swiss missionaries played a primary and little-known role in explaining Africa to the literate world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This book emphasizes how these European intellectuals, brought to the deep rural areas of southern Africa by their vocation, formulated and ordered knowledge about the continent. Central to this group was Junod, who became a pioneering collector in the fields of entomology and botany. He would later examine African society with the methodology, theories, and confidence of the natural sciences. On the way he came to depend on the skills of African observers and collectors. Out of this work emerged, in three stages between 1898 and 1927, an influential classic in the field of South African anthropology, Life of a South African Tribe.