ABSTRACT
During the Church Missionary Society's first half-century, it was able to send many more missionaries abroad than it proved able to recruit in Great Britain. Its non-British missionaries did not come from other parts of the English-speaking world as would be the case later, but from mainland Europe. In the 1830s the attempt to initiate mission in Ethiopia was largely staffed from the Continent and included Samuel Gobat, later second Anglo-Prussian bishop of Jerusalem. Quite apart from Hinderer, Basel-trained personnel bore the burden of much of the early work in Nigeria. The Basel Mission is part of an extended family of organizations founded in connection with the Basel Deutsche Christentumsgesellschaft, literally the "German Christianity Society." This was started as a focus of pietist thought and activity in Basel in 1780. Conflict is a subject seldom touched on in conventional mission history.
