This paper examines the role that representatives of the London Missionary Society in central southern Africa during the nineteenth century may have played in the development of geographical debates concerning the long-term desiccation of the African continent. Observations on climate included within missionary documents are used to reconstruct a chronology of intra-decadal climatic variability for the period 1815-1900. This reveals six drought periods and seven wet phases that affected large areas of the region, but identifies no evidence for progressive desiccation. The chronology is then used as a framework within which to view missionary perspectives on drought and desiccation. Major influences upon the development of desiccationist theory appear to include the prevalence of contemporary moral economic explanations of climatic variability, as well as the uptake and acceptance of indigenous understanding of climate change. Significantly, many of the key observations by eminent missionaries used as supporting evidence for progressive desiccation are identified as having been made during periods of severe drought. This is used to suggest that the most widely propagated evidence for desiccation may, therefore, simply be the end-product of periods of short-term drought rather than long-term climatic deterioration.

中文翻译：

---

干旱、干燥和话语：中南部非洲的传教士通信和 19 世纪气候变化

本文考察了 19 世纪中南部非洲伦敦传教士协会的代表在有关非洲大陆长期干旱的地理辩论的发展中可能发挥的作用。传教士文件中包含的气候观测资料用于重建 1815-1900 年间年代际气候变率的年表。这揭示了影响该地区大片地区的六个干旱期和七个潮湿期，但没有发现逐渐干燥的证据。然后将年表用作一个框架，在其中查看传教士对干旱和干旱的看法。对干燥论发展的主要影响似乎包括当代对气候变化的道德经济学解释的盛行，以及土著对气候变化的理解的吸收和接受。重要的是，许多著名传教士的主要观察结果被确定为是在严重干旱期间进行的，这些观察被用作逐渐干燥的支持证据。这被用来表明最广泛传播的干燥证据可能只是短期干旱期的最终产物，而不是长期气候恶化。