A critical examination of the forces behind Igbo acceptance of Christianity during the first decade of this century reveals that British military imperialism and other forms of colonial exploitation were in fact basic to the decision of many Igbo communities to embrace Christianity. The adoption of the Christian religion, especially by the male adults, may be seen as a clear method of adjusting to the new colonial regime in which Christianity offered visible social advantages. Communities which embraced the new religion believed that by associating with the Christian missionaries, they would perhaps escape various forms of colonial over-rule.The expansion of British political authority in the Igbo country, therefore, widened the frontiers of missionary enterprise. And as the Christian missions found the Igbos remarkably receptive to missionary propaganda, each was more than anxious to exert its denominational influence on the people. Thus interdenominational rivalry, especially between the Roman Catholics and the Protestants, was acute. For various reasons, the Roman Catholic missionaries seem to have established a more preponderating influence than the other Protestant societies.

This article discusses missionary recruitment strategies from the perspective of missionary medicalwork in southeastern Nigeria. In otherwords, it examines missionary use of medical services as the bait to catch converts. Furthermore, the essay discusses the link between disease, missionary medicine, and Christian conversion. Attention is given to the roleofculturein the conversion process, as well as to the impact of missionary and colonial medical services on African health care systems. The study is based largely on archival mission sources, includingCatholic and Protestant archival materials collectedfrom missionary societies in England, France, Rome, and Nigeria. Finally, it looksat the Catholic and Protestant strugglefor dominance via the provision ofmedicalservices, and thepersistence of traditional African health caresystemsdespite missionary and colonial iconoclastic tendencies.

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The Holy Ghost Fathers have been in Kastern Nigeria for about eighty-five years. Not until after the recent Nigeria-Biafra War has their influence been somewhat minimized. Arriving originally from France in 1885, the Roman Catholic missionaries, as we shall see later in this essay, exerted a considerable influence far out of proportion to their number. But despite that they had become a factor to be reckoned with ever since, their missionary activity has scarcely been studied systematically. One principal reason for this has been the reluctance of the Roman Catholic authorities to permit scholars to use their private archives in Paris. In the last few years, however, the Roman Catholic authorities seem to have relaxed their one-hundred-year rule which has often been invoked to deny bone fide researchers access to the archival source materials. I am not sure, however, that this is yet an official policy, but I was permitted in 1968 and again in 1970 to use the archives. It is perhaps important to point out that the archival materials are still jealously guarded. During my research, for example, I was not permitted to examine certain dossiers perceived by the Archivist as “sensitive” and “not proper for public use.” The study that follows is partly based on the materials collected from the archives and partly from other sources, especially from the archives of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in London.