Editing History of Ghana (section)

===Protestant missions===
The Protestant nations in Western Europe, including Britain, had a vigorous evangelical element in the 19th century that felt their nations had a duty to "civilize" what they saw as slaves, sinners, and savages. Along with business opportunities, and the quest for national glory, the evangelical mission was a powerful impulse to imperialism.<ref>{{Citation|title=nations-capital-had-most-deficient-bridges|work=SAGE Business Researcher|year=2017|publisher=SAGE Publishing|doi=10.1177/237455680305.n9}}</ref> Practically all of Western Africa consisted of slave societies, in which warfare to capture new slaves—and perhaps sell them to itinerant slave traders—was a well-established economic, social, and political situation.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Lewis|first=David M.|date=20 September 2018|title=Slave Societies, Societies with Slaves|journal=Oxford Scholarship Online|volume=1 |doi=10.1093/oso/9780198769941.003.0005}}</ref> The missionaries first of all targeted the slave trade, but they insisted that both the slave trade in the practice of traditional slavery were morally abhorrent. They organized to abolish the trade.<ref>{{Citation|title=Slave trade, slavery and sugar duties, 1839–1844|date=1 March 1970|work=The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade|pages=214–241|publisher=Cambridge University Press|doi=10.1017/cbo9780511759734.010|isbn=978-0-521-07583-1}}</ref> The transoceanic slave ships were targeted by the Royal Navy, and the trade faded away. 

The abolition of slavery did not end the forced labor of children, however. The first missionaries to pre-colonial Ghana, were a multiracial mixture of European, African, and Caribbean pietists employed by Switzerland's [[Basel Mission]]. The Basel Mission had tight budgets and depended on child labor for many routine operations. The children were students in the mission schools who split their time between general education, religious studies, and unpaid labor. The Basel Mission made it a priority to alleviate the harsh conditions of child labor imposed by slavery, and the debt bondage of their parents.<ref>Catherine Koonar, "Using child labor to save souls: the Basel Mission in colonial Ghana, 1855–1900." ‘’Atlantic Studies’’ 11.4 (2014): 536–554.</ref>