Talk:Joseph Booth (missionary)

Primary Sources for Booth

 * Essays by Booth




 * During Booth`s Seventh Day Baptist years. The editor of the Sentinel presents Booth`s account of the native concern for colonial practices. The natives inquire about the sixth and eighth commandments, re: killing and stealing and the behavior of the British soldiers. This type of inquiry illustrates the problem Booth had with European authority over the natives. DonaldRichardSands (talk) 11:48, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Chronology for Joseph Booth
born, Derby, England, to a very religious family.
 * 1851

He emigrated to New Zealand. He farmed.
 * 1880

Moved to Australia; ran a successful small business. He became a Baptist and began to view himself as a missionary to Africa.
 * 1887

Despite the death of his first wife whom he had married in 1872, he left Australia with his two young children.
 * 1891,

Arrived in Nyasaland (Malawi); established the Zambezi Industrial Mission (ZIM). He hoped ZIM would develop into a network of self-supporting communities in which there was to be no colour bar.
 * 1892


 * Zambezi Industrial Mission at Mitsidi, close to Blantyre and the
 * Nyasa Industrial Mission.
 * He recruited locals to plant coffee, and within a year had over 30,000 acres (120 km²) being worked.

Published Africa for the Africans


 * 1897

He made a trip to Britain and the United States in 1897, taking along household employee John Chilembwe. Chilembwe stayed in Virginia to study.

Booth returned in 1899 and established a new mission to the south of Blantyre.
 * 1899

Booth continued his pro-African efforts, proposing that the colony revert to local control in 20 years, and that at least five percent of the natives should receive higher education. These views did not go over well with the colonial administration, and commissioner

Alfred Sharpe threatened to deport Booth for his "seditious remarks".


 * 1900

After an unrelated dispute with his coreligionists, Booth went to South Africa in 1902.
 * 1902

While in Scotland, Booth learned of Charles Taze Russell. He met with him in New York. Russell's Watch Tower Society appointed Booth as a missionary
 * 1906

In 1907 he was officially barred from returning to the Blantyre colony.
 * 1907

Booth and Kamwana had no relationship with the Watch Tower Society, but their distribution of literature and activist teachings began what came to be known as the so-called Watchtower movement in central Africa, now known as "Waticitawala" or "Kitawala" (a local term for "Tower") in Congo.
 * 1910

His activities led to him being accused of contributing to Chilembwe's uprising in Malawi and he and his second wife Annie were deported from Basutholand to England.
 * 1915

In an April 22 letter to his daughter Mary, Booth describes himself as a 'pro-African politico-religious freelance type of self-assertive, & somewhat self dependent missionary advocate'.
 * 1916

After World War I they went to South Africa where their daughter provided accommodation for them and where Booth's wife died in 1921.
 * 1920?

Booth and his third wife Lillian were forced to return to England because of ill health and possibly because Booth's renewed contacts with Africans were beginning to attract the attention of the authorities. He remained in England suffering bouts of illness until his death in 1932.

November 4, 1932, died.
 * 1932

His daughter Emily Booth wrote of their experiences in Africa.
 * 1952?

Referring to Booth and his African associate Elliott Kamwana, a 1976 Watch Tower publication noted, "they never became Bible Students or Jehovah's Christian witnesses. Their relationship with the Watch Tower Society was short and superficial." Booth's teachings included advocating for social change, which disagreed with the Watch Tower literature he distributed.
 * 1976