ABSTRACT
Protestant missionaries in nineteenth-century Africa were generally opposed to bride-price. In 1925 the Missionary Committee appointed a sub-committee of investigation to consider The possibility of purifying bride-price of wrong elements so that it may be allowed as a national custom’. Significant of the strong tradition of bride-price and of the ineffective nature of mission discipline in this respect is the fact that the same conference suggested in 1934 that bride-price be permitted by the Church under certain regulations. The general tendency in most Protestant missions was at first to condemn the payment of bride-price, but later to modify the ban. The London Missionary Society was not in favour of bride-price. In 1883–4 the matter was disputed, chiefs like Montshiwa of the Mafeking Barolong were consulted, and the mission ruled that bride-price had been shown to be ‘in deed and in truth a purchase’.
