Dmitri van den Berselaar’s Creating ‘Union Ibo’: Missionaries and the Igbo Language is a useful tool to consider when arguing that missionaries had a negative effect on African villages in the 1950’s, because it goes into great detail about why missionaries were sent to Africa and explores the strategies that they used to effectively persuade others to believe and behave as they saw fit. This is a major component of the Things Fall Apart and affects the way that events unfold in the book significantly. By using a resource that clarifies the purpose of missionaries and gives two examples of African tribes who were influenced by them, I am able to compare the two and understand an essential part of the novel, reinforcing my initial argument.
Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart highlights the influence of missionaries in pre-colonial Africa to invoke the question of whether it is justified for one culture to impose their beliefs upon another because they have a different set of morals and values. The Ibo civilization that Okonkwo, the main character, resides in was already rich in culture, tradition, and religion before the missionaries came to convert them to Christianity, yet they were viewed as savages. The Christian missionaries overlooked that cultural richness and believed that they were morally superior to the Ibo people.
Creating ‘Union Ibo’: Missionaries and the Igbo Language supports the argument and offers credible facts for the reader to consider. Berselaar says of missionaries that “most of the earliest descriptions of African ethnic groups were produced by missionaries. They were often the first- or among the first- Europeans to visit African communities and, for many years, their information shaped the Westerners’ perception (and that of many Africans) of Africa and its peoples” (Berselaar 273). Even though his opinion regarding missionaries is more positive than how they are portrayed in Things Fall Apart it is still useful because it provides...