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Missionaries and modernity

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This book examines the changing landscape of evangelical British missionary education in the British Empire of the nineteenth century. It argues that over the course of the nineteenth century many...
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  • 22 February 2022
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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.
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Price: $120.00
Pages: 288
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Imprint: Manchester University Press
Series: Studies in Imperialism
Publication Date: 22 February 2022
ISBN: 9781526152978
Format: Hardcover
BISACs: History of education, Social and cultural history, History of religion
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'Missionaries and Modernity is an invaluable contribution to the burgeoning fields of mission studies, education, and humanitarianism, and should be a key assigned reading for numerous graduate courses as well as a discursive linchpin for any further discussion of imperialism, mission education, and competing definitions of “modernity” and subjecthood.'
Journal of Moravian History, Volume 23, Number 2, 2023, pp. 157-160

'This book is a must for any scholar wishing to study empire and the missionary dynamic that operated within it.'
International Journal for Indian Studies, Volume 8, Issue 2. December 2023, pp. 116-117

'Overall, Missionaries and modernity is a valuable analysis of how missionaries adapted to an increasingly secularised environment in order to justify their existence. The book provides an impressive survey of key moments in missionary societies’ histories, through carefully selected case studies of policy and conferences, to demonstrate how a ‘missionary modernity’ was sought after, sometimes in polarity with colonial government ideals.'
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 76 , Issue 3, July 2025 , pp. 700 - 702

'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... 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.'
Inge Dornan, Journal of British Studies (2025), 64, e140, 1–3

Felicity Jensz is a historian in the Cluster of Excellence for Religion and Politics at the University of Münster, Germany

Introduction: entangled histories of missionary education
1 ‘Liberal and comprehensive’ education: the Negro Education Grant and Nonconforming missionary societies in the 1830s
2 ‘The blessings of civilization’: the Select Committee on Aborigines (British Settlements)
3 Female education and the Liverpool Missionary Conference of 1860
4 Sustaining and secularising mission schools
5 Missionary lessons for Secular States: the Edinburgh World Missionary Conference, 1910
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index