Lecture | COGLOSS lecture
Financing the Basel German Evangelical Mission in South India during the 19th century
- Date
- Monday 31 March 2025
- Time
- Series
- COGLOSS seminars 2024-2025
- Location
-
Johan Huizinga
Doelensteeg 16
2311 VL Leiden - Room
- Conference room (2.60)
Abstract
The talk will examine the case of the Basel German Evangelical Mission Society (BGEM), which was set up in 1815 in Basel and engaged in various economic activities in its mission stations in South India. Its missionaries were recruited mainly from present-day Switzerland and South Germany. A formal branch of the Mission, called the Basel Trading Company (Basler Handelsgesellschaft, BHG) was created in 1859. It oversaw industries such as printing, weaving, tile- and brick-making and employed various Indian converts and non-converts from surrounding areas. The BGEM benefitted not only from the profits of the BHG, but also from fundraising schemes such as the weekly halbbatzenkollekte (collection of 5 cents) in Switzerland or the Piekollekte (collection of a pie, a denomination of the Indian rupee) in South India. Moreover, auxiliary societies were key to the financing of the mission; their collections from rural areas of Europe provided the necessary support for BGEM to expand its proselytising activities in the British colonies. Using English and German sources, this talk shows the intricate connections between Protestant Switzerland and Germany and financial exchanges enabled by the British Empire in the Indian subcontinent.
About the speaker
Amal Shahid is a postdoctoral researcher in the Swiss National Science Foundation project titled ‘Moral and Economic Entrepreneurship: A Collaborative History of Global Switzerland c.1800-1900.’ Her work focuses on the economic and social activities of the Basel Mission in India. She previously completed a PhD in International History from the Geneva Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. Her research interests are histories of imperialism, labour, and political economy.