Education was a crucial transfer point within modern imperial projects; it was a key domain through which relationships between the state, religious institutions, various agents of reform, and Indigenous, colonised and enslaved peoples were negotiated. Exploring a range of case studies, this article highlights the multiple trajectories of colonial education in the modern British empire and the Pacific region, charting both continuities and moments of change, commonalities and divergences. Particular emphasis is placed on the centrality of evangelicalism in fashioning strong connections between education and social reform, both within the project of empire and in a range of indigenous social reform and anti-colonial movements. Within this context, the article also highlights the strong interplay between education and the construction of cultural difference, including through the changing shape of ethnological and anthropological knowledge. Exploring these questions, it is suggested, opens up fundamental questions about empire, colonialism and modernity itself.