Biography of the first black South African to be ordained and who also worked to translate the Bible.

Biography of the first black South African to be ordained and who also worked to translate the Bible.

Presents a literary history of Tiyo Soga, the first black South African to be ordained and the most famous pupil of the Lovedale missionaries. Tiyo Soga also worked to translate the Bible.

The popularity of this biography is ascribed to the fact that it publicised a major success for Christian missionary endeavour in South Africa. Tiyo Soga was educated overseas, in Scotland, where he was lionised before he left for Caffraria in 1857. Although he was much respected in certain South African circles while working in Caffraria, he never published a book for the general missionary-reading public. Thus, when his biography by Chalmers appeared, it was eagerly read; South Africa, too, had produced evidence of true missionary progress, as amply proved by this life of an African Christian. The value of Tiyo Soga's biography in the latter part of the nineteenth century is matched by its importance as a historical document today.

Focusing on the problems and conflicts of doing African diaspora research from various disciplinary perspectives, these essays situate, describe, and reflect on the current practice of diaspora scholarship. Tejumola Olaniyan, James H. Sweet, and the international group of contributors assembled here seek to enlarge understanding of how the diaspora is conceived and explore possibilities for the future of its study. With the aim of initiating interdisciplinary dialogue on the practice of African diaspora studies, they emphasize learning from new perspectives that take advantage of intersections between disciplines. Ultimately, they advocate a fuller sense of what it means to study the African diaspora in a truly global way.

The presence of indigenous people among the ranks of British missionaries in the nineteenth century complicates narratives of all-powerful missionaries and hapless indigenous victims. What compelled these men to embrace Christianity? How did they reconcile being both Christian and indigenous in an age of empire? Tolly Bradford finds answers to these questions in the lives of Henry Budd, a Cree missionary from western Canada, and Tiyo Soga, a Xhosa missionary from southern Africa. He portrays these men not as victims of colonialism but rather as individuals who drew on faith, family, and their ties to Britain to construct a new sense of indigeneity in a globalizing world.