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Because missionaries and missionary organizations had regularly to report on their activities, the data situation for this indicator of social transformation is better than for others. However, there are the recurring problems of the areas reported not corresponding to actual state boundaries. Furthermore, the number of converts reported by different churches are sometimes exaggerated, in certain cases the numbers combined exceed the (estimated) total population of the area. Most data come from the World Christian Handbook (1949, 1952), the World Christian Encyclopedia (Barrett/Kurian/Johnson 2001), the Dictionnaire de la colonisation française (Liauzu, ed., 2007), Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450 (Benjamin, ed., 2007), and the Handbuch 3.Welt (various vol.) and were checked by colony-specific sources and comple¬mented for countries/areas not mentioned. The data (number of Christians per population) have to be controlled for older religious groups which have no relation with colonial missionary activities, e.g. the Copts in Egypt and Ethiopia, for the number of settlers (e.g., almost all of the 100’000 Catholics in Libya before WWII were immigrants from Italy) and for Christian work immigrants (e.g. in some oil-producing countries).
In general, missionaries of any Christian church were protected by the colonial government. In some areas, a protestant colonizing power followed a catholic one (e.g., in Sri Lanka and parts of the South-east Asian archipelago). Therefore, we coded all converts to Christianity as ‘impact of colonialism’. Again, we defined a year before independence as reference, because in some cases decolonization led to emigration of Christians. Therefore, we coded “percentage of Christians (Catholics, Protestants), years before independence”. Following the construction of other variables, we transformed the data into a pentatomy:
Obviously, Japanese colonies (Korea, Taiwan, Manchuria) have to be coded differently. There were Christians under Japanese rule, in Taiwan mainly proselytized by American Presbyterians, while in Korea a process of “self-proselytization” had taken place in parts of the elite since late 18th century. In 19th century, before the onset of Japanese colonialism, there were around 20’000 Christian converts in Korea (Kim 2005: 100-103; Seth 2006: 220f). Under Japanese rule, coercive measures to assimilate culturally at least parts of the population were taken, including the participation at state-Shinto rituals. However, these had little effect on everyday religious practices. Korea and Taiwan were coded as ‘level 1’-countries.
37 countries of our sample (45%) did not experience a significant religious transformation (either with or without missionary activities; ‘level 1’ or ‘0’), among them all Islamic North Africa and West/South Asia as well as the semi-colonial countries. There are 12 ‘Level 2’ countries (15%), among them India, several Southeast Asian countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Burma/Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia), five African countries (Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Liberia) as well as Lebanon. Among the 25 ‘Level 3’ countries (30%) are only two non-African countries, namely Sri Lanka and Papua New Guinea. Among the nine countries with the strongest impact of missionary activities (conversion of more than 50% of the population) are the Philippines, three Pacific Islands (Vanuatu, Fiji and the Solomons) and five African countries (Lesotho, Equatorial Guinea, Zambia, Swaziland, South Africa). Consequently, there is a statistical significant, positive relationship between MISSION and sub-Saharan Africa respectively a negative one for Asia /North Africa (see 'Descriptive Statistics').
The religious impact of colonialism was stronger in areas which were longer under colonial rule (COLYEARS), which were economically more transformed (positive correlations with FDICON, INVEST, PLANT, GOLD) and which experienced colonial measures related to ethnic heterogeneity (ETHNFUNC, WORKIM, BORDERS).
