Heavenly Fatherland: German Missionary Culture and Globalization in the Age of Empire.

The article focuses on the role of German Protestant missionaries in colonial East Africa and their influence on Germany's engagement with global modernity during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It highlights how these missionaries promoted an internationalist, Christian vision that often contrasted with the nationalist and racially chauvinist tendencies of secular colonial agents, emphasizing indigenous languages and economic autonomy for African converts. The study also explores the development of Missionswissenschaft, the scholarly "science of missions," and the missionaries' impact on both German colonial culture and international Protestant networks, including their participation in the 1910 Edinburgh World Missionary Conference. While acknowledging limitations and internal confessional disputes, the work argues for a reassessment of German colonialism that includes the significant, though ultimately marginalized, alternative perspectives offered by Protestant missionaries.