ABSTRACT
The mission schools were a mechanism of integration which the colonial authorities quickly identified, working to bring them in line with their own needs and policies. As the population of Freetown grew under the influence of the Vice Admiralty Court, incoming formerly enslaved Africans were enrolled into the CMS-controlled schools within Freetown as a means of integrating them into the English societal structure. Importantly, however, that early CMS experience was supervised not by Englishmen, but by a complex group of men from central and northern Europe. The majority of pupils whom the CMS educated became tradesmen and women in their respective local regions, but some few pursued education as an aim unto itself. The pupil lists therefore offer insight not only into the way that education changed, but into the birth of a Sierra Leonean elite which had been shaped by the same organization which became the established colonial religion.
