Hovland's book analyses the work of Lutheran missionaries of the Norwegian Missionary Society (NMS) and their encounter with the Zulu and colonial Natal in the second half of the nineteenth century. She draws comprehensively on earlier studies: historical accounts of the period; reports and correspondence; and recent work in the anthropology of Christianity. Her original contribution is three-fold. She delves into the large body of unpublished material in the NMS archive, uncovering a narrative fraught with questions and debates redacted out of the published story. She explores how the Pietist theology and practices of her protagonists shaped the encounter. And she considers the existential impact on both the Zulu and the missionaries themselves. These allow her to construct a more convincing account than those offered by strict secularists such as Webb Keane, Joel Robbins or the Comaroffs who, while they may ‘factor in’ the theology, tend to underestimate the centrality of the fides sola to such projects.

As historical anthropologist Hovland covers the ground: the history and culture of the Zulu and colonial Natal; matters of structure and agency; the reciprocity of influence. She sets the codes shared by all engaged in the ‘civilising’ venture against their very different goals: for the colony, the acquisition of imperial land and labour; for the missionaries, the salvation of souls for the kingdom of God.

But Hovland is preoccupied with a big question, and it is this that finally marshals her material. Why and how did the NMS agents move from a view of colonialism in the 1850s as wicked, greedy, and subversive of Christian civilisation, to wholehearted support for the British invasion and annexation of the independent Zulu kingdom in the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879?

The missionaries found the Zulu bound into a cohesive polity made up of polygamous families, households and clans. At its centre were arrangements for the distribution of land, cattle and wives, and compulsory military service for all young men. These arrangements generated a strict code of reciprocal obligations, reaching into every aspect of life: relations between the sexes, young and old, clans, headmen and chiefs, culminating in the ritual powers of the king. Decision-making was communal, with individual choice regarded as selfish and detrimental to the social good. These norms had come down from the ancestors, understood to be the nation's repository of history and values. The Zulu do not sin, claimed Cetshwayo. Only white men sin. The Zulu simply honour their obligations, and everyone is happy.

From the start, the king was convinced that the individualist prescriptions of Christianity posed a threat to his authority and were destined to unravel his polity. He was right. The radical Pietism espoused by the NMS was to have precisely this effect. Their regimen of conversion began with an acknowledgement of one's sinful, worthless state, and progressed via Bible study to a deliberate choice of faith followed by a life of abnegation and self-scrutiny. Zulu pride, hedonism and self-satisfaction were major obstacles to be overcome. The inward effects of the encounter for both parties were profound. The Zulu must wrench themselves free from their communal identity with its intricate mesh of ties and obligations to make the obligatory choice, while the Norwegians suffered cultural isolation and feared that their own faith was being ‘contaminated’ by their intimate coexistence with the Zulu.

Hovland argues that the decision to set up self-contained ‘stations’ aggravated the situation. Intended as models of an ‘alternative Christian society’, the stations soon became a hub for services and exchange (barter, education, medical care, provision of food and clothing). And, given the formidably high requirements to meet the mark, very few Zulu were converted. There was constant concern that such ‘external’ work, was setting back the real ‘internal’ work of conversion. Cetshwayo insisted that the missionaries had set up as rival headmen or chiefs who, having taken his subjects into their clan, should assume all the responsibilities appropriate to such a role. When the missionaries demurred, they were understandably accused of shirking their duties. The stations also attracted malcontents and refugees from Zulu justice, which multiplied disputes with the king.

Then Hovland moves on to examine missionary support for the war. She considers the anthropological consensus that the historical function of missions was to produce the new ‘capitalist subject’ required by modernity. But she is more interested in how their paucity of converts convinced the NMS that their goals could never be achieved as long as a strong Zulu polity survived. For God's sake it would have to be dismantled.

Thus the world-forsakers who on their arrival had railed against the evils and rapacity of empire, found themselves in the late 1870s being courted for expert advice by Bartle Frere and his generals. These men who for decades had been despised by the colonists for being poorly-educated, lacking in culture and worldly goods (in the words of Wolseley they were ‘half-kaffir’), had their heads turned. Their knowledge of Zululand was extensive. They handed over their maps and all the information asked of them regarding routes, the location of military kraals, population densities, health hazards and so on, and agreed to report on developments in the kingdom. In an uncanny convergence of interests, both parties were convinced that their quite distinct goals could only be achieved through a dismantling of the Zulu system. The British needed land and labour for the economic development of southern Africa. The missionaries needed human material more tractable to conversion.

For the missionaries this volte-face involved an existential crisis. They had to abandon their conviction that faith alone would effect miracles, and concede that the Zulu system had defeated it. Hovland tracks this painful learning process. Her book is a valuable case study in the dynamics of cultural and personal transformation.