Various

Following the advances of the British South Africa Company (incorporated in 1889), northern Rhodesia (later Zambia) became a territory of the British Crown in 1894. Missionary work in northern Rhodesia, a remote and thinly settled region, was pioneered in the last decades of the 19th century.

The donor of these manuscripts, the Rev Canon James Smith Robertson (b 1917), served the UMCA (Universities Mission to Central Africa) in northern Rhodesia, 1945-1950, and worked in Mapanza, 1950-1955, and Lusaka, 1955-1965.