Bemba Chiefs and Catholic Missions, 1898–1935

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Abstract
The attempt to introduce an element of Indirect Rule into Northern Rhodesia after 1930 highlighted the extent to which the prestige and local influence of chiefs had been reduced by the loss of political and economic power and religious control. In Bembaland the evangelical work of the White Fathers, who were established in the centre of the area from 1898, contributed to the decline of the chiefs' spiritual authority. The principal mission station of the area was separated from the local Bemba chiefdom of Ituna by a grant of concession from the British South Africa Company, and up to 1914 the religious superior was given the powers of a native chief over the inhabitants of the mission. Within the concession, the economic, political and religious association between villagers and missionaries paralleled the network of relationships which had existed in the chief's capital village. In other missions in Bembaland, chiefs were obliged to admit the establishment of mission stations as a result of a Company policy of granting zones of influence with rights of evangelization to individual missionary societies. The influence of these missions was propagated mainly through the work of itinerant catechists who entered into dialogue with village headmen and established a chain of prayer houses and regular instruction throughout the woodland communities. Attempts at resistance by both chiefs and headmen were largely ineffectual, and by 1930 the White Fathers had, with government approval, achieved considerable influence in Bembaland. During the next decade, this influence was to diminish as colonial policies brought about political and social changes in which the mission had only an ancillary part to play.

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