"Elbourne shows that while the Khoekhoe used Christianity as a tool to combat aspects of colonialism, throughout the nineteenth century there were broad shifts in the relationship of missions to colonialism as the British missionary movement became less internationalist, more respectable, and more emblematic of the British imperial project. She argues that it is symptomatic of the ambiguities of this relationship that many Christian Khoekhoe ultimately rebelled against the South African colony.

Across the white settler empire missionaries brokered bargains - rights in exchange for cultural change, for example - that brought Aboriginal peoples within the aegis of empire but, ultimately, were only partially and ambiguously fulfilled."--BOOK JACKET.