The missionary in South Africa found himself, from the earliest years of the 19th century, in an equivocal position, and the role he actually played was the result of the varied and sometimes conflicting hopes and expectations entertained by the Bantu people, by the white settlers and, not least, by the missionary himself. Though he was at this period usually racially tolerant, the missionary was nevertheless out of sympathy with many aspects of traditional Bantu life. There were in consequence certain social changes which he regarded as a necessary preliminary to the establishment of Christianity on a permanent basis. Many of the modifications in Bantu living which the missionary favoured encouraged the gradual transformation of the Bantu population into a reservoir of labour for the growing European economy; while rudimentary education, European crafts, and Christian (or Protestant) individualism, which the missionary taught, contributed to the same end. For this reason, and because of their pacifying influence upon tribes antagonistic to the Europeans, the missionaries enjoyed the support of colonists urgently in need of an amenable labour force. It was widely believed in the early years of the 19th century that only among those Africans who were under missionary influence was there to be found a strong desire to adopt western habits; and colonists who, for other reasons, were not friendly to the missions, freely admitted that personal safety during an armed raid by Bantu tribesmen could be obtained only in refuge at a mission station.