Missionaries and Modernity

This book examines the changing landscape of evangelical British missionary education in the British Empire of the nineteenth century. It clearly argues that over the course of the nineteenth century many aspects of mission schools were secularised, leading missionary societies to question the ambivalent legacy of mission schools.

Many missionary societies established mission schools in the nineteenth century in the British Empire as a means to convert non-Europeans to Christianity. Although the details, differed in various colonial contexts, the driving ideology behind mission schools was that Christian morality was highest form of civilisation needed for non-Europeans to be useful members of colonies under British rule. This comprehensive survey of multi-colonial sites over the long time span clearly describes the missionary paradox that to draw in pupils they needed to provide secular education, but that secular education was seen to lead both to a moral crisis and to anti-British sentiments.