Christian Missions in Colonial Africa
Protestant missions: Dataset containing information on 1,895 Protestant mission stations, including geographic coordinates, years of operation, and places of origin, based on the 1925 World Missionary Atlas by Harlan P. Beach and Charles H. Fahs.
Related publication: Becker, Bastian (2022), "The Empire Within: Longitudinal Evidence on the Expansion of Christian Missions in Colonial Africa" Journal of Historical Political Economy, 2(2), 333--362. [DOI]
Catholic missions: Dataset containing information on 770 Catholic mission stations, including geographic coordinates, years of operation, and places of origin, based on the 1929 Atlas Hierarchicus by Karl Streit.
Related publication: Becker, Bastian & Dulay, Dean (forthcoming), Between God and Nation: The Colonial Origins of Democracy Support in British Africa, Studies in Comparative International Development. [DOI]
Historical research on social policy is often hindered by a lack of comparative data. This is especially true for low income countries, thus inhibiting both theoretical and empirical advances in related literatures. With the construction of the Colonial Actors and Social Policy Dataset (CASP), we contribute to filling this gap. CASP provides information on British and French colonies in inter-war Africa (1919-39), with a focus on capturing variation in actor constellations and social policies across time and space. We hope CASP is a useful resource for researchers interested in the comparative-historical study of colonialism and social policy.
Related publication: Becker, Bastian & Schmitt, Carina (2019), The Colonial Labour Question: Trade and Social Expenditure in Interwar Africa, Global Social Policy, OnlineFirst [DOI]
COLDAT aggregates information on the reach and duration of European colonial empires from renowned secondary sources. By aggregating secondary sources, rather than collecting from primary sources, the new dataset reflects the accumulated knowledge in the discipline and relieves researchers from making hard to justify choices between different historical datasets.
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Related publication: Becker, Bastian (2019), Introducing COLDAT: The Colonial Dates Dataset, SOCIUM SFB 1342 WorkingPapers, 2019(2). [LINK]