African missions, education and the road to independence

The Archive of the Sudan United Mission (SUM), held at the Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World, New College, University of Edinburgh, is an important resource for the study of missionary work, educational work, medical work, evangelism, the emergence of indigenous churches and the growth of nationalist sentiment in Africa in the twentieth century. Initially founded as the Sudan Pioneer Mission, SUM took its name from the concept of Greater Sudan. At the beginning of the twentieth century many of the colonial boundaries were in a state of flux and Greater Sudan comprised a vast area of Africa stretching from the coasts of Nigeria and the Cameroons in the west, to Chad and Anglo-Egyptian Sudan further east. The main aim of the SUM was to halt the advance of Islam across this huge swath of territory. Initial efforts focused on the Benue region in Nigeria.