ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book analysis the moral authority of female missionaries and the intersection of imperial and missionary discourses with local African world views. The Church Missionary Society (CMS) had been active in planning missionary party for Uganda visit of journalist turned explorer Henry Morton Stanley. The imaginings of an earlier explorer, John Hanning Speke, named the Lake Victoria after the English Queen, and thus it was called in British lexicon. The arrival of the party marked the beginning of women's Work, is, work specifically with women as a separate section of CMS work in Uganda. The book uses the term women's Work as it was used in CMS archival material. The women's movement led to disciplinary fields in feminist history and Women's Studies. Critiques of male control of knowledge production thus emerged paralleling critiques of imperialism and a decentring process in Western epistemologies.
