Secular Missionaries: Americans and African Development in the 1960s

In 1961, as President John F. Kennedy proclaimed the beginning of a "Decade of Development," the United States embarked on its first coherent "Africa" policy. Guided by the precepts of modernization theory, American policymakers, diplomats, academics, and Peace Corps volunteers were dispatched to promote economic growth and nation-building among the newly independent countries of sub-Saharan Africa. At the outset, Larry Grubbs shows, many of these" secular missionaries" were no less sang...