Missionaries and Modernity offers a valuable contribution to an expanding field of studies on the education of non-Europeans in the British Empire through examining the role of Protestant missionary schooling in the process of empire building. At the front and center of Felicity Jensz’s study are the ideals and ideologies of evangelical missionary bodies, non-Europeans, and imperial and colonial governments concerning the purpose and outcomes of Christian education in the British Empire, in a period spanning the introduction of the Negro Education Grant in 1835 to the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh in 1910. Using the British West Indies, British India, southern Africa, and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) as regions of reference, Jensz centralizes the role and motivations of Protestant missionary bodies in the development of colonial education, while also furthering our understanding of the variety and complexity of forces that shaped it.

At the heart of Missionaries and Modernity lie two intersecting frameworks for understanding the ambitions and challenges that shaped Protestant missionary schooling. First is the idea of “missionary modernity,” a term which Jensz coins in order to center the role of religion in the processes of modernization and empire-building, in contrast to David Scott’s framework of colonial modernity, in Colonial Governmentality (1995) centered on the role and impact of government(ality) and politics (2). A cornerstone of missionary modernity was a belief that Christian moral instruction would produce a rising generation of “civilized” colonial subjects and lead to self-sustaining native Christian churches in the British Empire. Mission schools were a central instrument in this process, Jensz argues. The second framework is focused on the forces of secularization, largely manifested through government interference and oversight of colonial education and the emergence of national education systems. Missionary bodies worked with British imperial and colonial governments to establish Christian education in the British Empire, Jensz argues, but despite a shared mission to, as they thought, civilize non-Europeans, this relationship was complicated by competing ideals and expectations. To counter the effects of secularization, Protestant missionary groups sought to legitimize their status as the most appropriate conduits of Christian education in the British Empire through increasing the range and scope of different mission schools, increasing the numbers of local (native) teachers, and promoting their agendas at the Liverpool Missionary Conference in 1860 and Edinburgh World Missionary Conference in 1910. By the early twentieth century, however, the spread of Islam, the rise of nationalism, growing anti-British sentiment, and the expansion of national education systems extinguished the confidence and optimism that had been a hallmark of missionary zeal a century earlier and resulted in a profound sense of disappointment that the ideals and expectations of Christian education and morality in the British Empire remained largely unfulfilled.

Chapter 1 introduces the ideas and debates that surrounded the introduction of the Negro Education Grant in the British West Indies in 1835. Providing for the religious and moral education of emancipated children was essential to the British government’s plan for a peaceful and orderly transition from an enslaved to a free society, following the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act. Jensz suggests that Nonconformist missionaries refashioned calls for a “liberal and comprehensive” education system in the West Indies in order to cement their role as the principal agents of Christian and moral instruction of the newly emancipated population.

Chapter 2 explores missionary testimony presented between 1836 and 1837 to the Select Committee on Aborigines (British Settlements) amid growing public and political concerns, led by the abolitionist Member of Parliament Thomas Fowell Buxton in Parliament, as well as missionary bodies outside of Westminster, about the morality of the British Empire. Through highlighting the testimony of Xhosa chief and Christian convert Jan Tzatzoe, Jensz provides an important insight into the views and experiences of non-European converts concerning the role and impact of mission schools. The Select Committee also bore witness to a subtle but significant change in the aims of colonial education, Jensz argues: from “religious and moral education,” as articulated in the Negro Education Grant, to “religious instruction and education” (23). This shift in emphasis meant that missionary bodies increasingly found themselves operating in tension with secular systems of education.

Chapter 3 examines the key themes of the 1860 Liverpool Missionary Conference. Delegates seized the opportunity to stress the importance of Christian moral instruction in colonial schooling, Jensz observes, by claiming that no Christianized Indians took part in the 1857 Indian Uprising. They also emphasized the importance of female education in the process of missionary modernity, a subject that Jensz explores through studying the views of Behari Lal Singh, one of the main discussants on the subject of women’s education and the only non-European delegate at the conference.

Chapter 4 traces the complex interplay between government and mission schools in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and the increased secularization of missionary education over the course of the nineteenth century. Through studying the autobiographical writings of non-European Christian converts in Ceylon, Jensz reveals how their lives were differently shaped by missionary education, with some becoming local teachers, while others became catechists and ordained ministers. The latter group includes B.P. Weerasinghe, whose journey Jensz traces from baptism into the Church Missionary Society and attendance at a CMS vernacular school in his youth through to becoming a catechist and ordained minister. Hendrick de Silva followed a similar path and also wrote movingly about his conversion to Christianity. In highlighting the personal stories and autobiographies of these and other converts, Jensz establishes an important counter-balance to the dominance of European missionary narratives and conversion experiences.

Chapter 5 considers the main discussions and outcomes of the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh in 1910. Two points are notable. First, delegates called for more manual training for women in the African Protectorates, echoing the racialized attitudes of their US counterparts that African Americans were more suited to agricultural training and manual labor than academic instruction. Second, delegates acknowledged that one of the main goals of missionary modernity—to establish a rising generation of local Christian leaders and native churches in the British Empire—had failed to materialize, as missionaries struggled to assert their legitimacy in the face of increased secularization, nationalism, and the spread of Islam.

Missionaries and Modernity illustrates that the ideologies and ideals that shaped Protestant missionary schooling in the British Empire were both complex and nuanced. In some ways, they were modern (providing education for females), but in other ways (singularly prioritizing Christian moral instruction) perhaps not modern enough to compete with the forces of secularization and colonial modernity. More in-depth analysis working through this tension would have strengthened and enriched this study. Notwithstanding, by amplifying the voices and experiences of non-European missionaries and converts, Jensz makes an important and compelling contribution to studies on missionary and colonial education in the British Empire.