Encountering Colonial Worlds Through Missionary Maps in the Late-Nineteenth-Century Grand Duchy of Finland - UTU Research Portal

A3 Refereed book chapter or chapter in a compilation book

Encountering Colonial Worlds Through Missionary Maps in the Late-Nineteenth-Century Grand Duchy of Finland

Authors: Skurnik Johanna

Editors: Raita Merivirta, Leila Koivunen, Timo Särkkä

Publication year: 2021

Book title : Finnish Colonial Encounters From Anti-Imperialism to Cultural Colonialism and Complicity

Series title: Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies

First page : 199

Last page: 222

ISBN: 978-3-030-80609-5

eISBN: 978-3-030-80610-1

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80610-1_8

Web address : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80610-1_8

Abstract

This chapter examines how the Finnish Missionary Society utilized mass-produced maps and related reading materials to fuel geographical imaginations that concerned non-European populations and lands to gain support for the missionary cause between 1859 and the mid-1890s. The chapter shows how the maps and texts entangled the Finnish audiences with the processes of colonization in complex ways: they reproduced discussions concerning human difference, generated geographies of cannibalism, and entwined Finnish missionary work with discourse of colonial philanthropy. Once the FMS started its own mission in Owambo, the maps were utilized to bridge the geographical distance and make the colonial space of “Ovamboland” their own.