Reconceptualising the Missionary Process Diary: Robert Franz at Blaauwberg and the Genre of Missionary Life-Writing in Colonial South Africa, 1897–1906

This article re-examines the process diary as a qualitative and historical research instrument, drawing on the writings of Robert Franz, a missionary of the Berlin Mission Society (BMS), at Blaauwberg Station in the Northern Transvaal between 1897 and 1906. Unlike formal BMS reports, Franz’s diaries offer candid insights into illness, grief, and cultural encounters, revealing missionary concerns on youth discipline, African leadership under colonial labour demands, and the everyday burdens of missionary life. A close reading of Franz’s entries highlights the multidimensional role of missionaries as preachers, mediators, educators, and welfare providers during a period marked by famine, rinderpest, and the South African War. Methodologically, the article employs source criticism, narrative and phenomenological analysis, and triangulation with mission archives and colonial records. Situating Franz within the broader genre of missionary life-writing, the article argues that the process diary was not merely a personal record but a textual technology of colonialism, a site where African voices, missionary discourses, and imperial policies converged. In reconceptualising the process diary, this article highlights its value as a source for understanding the entangled worlds of mission, empire, and African society in southern Africa at the turn of the twentieth century.