The first two missionaries to set foot in Vanuatu, on Erromango in 1839. This inauspicious beginning, with the death of one of their most famous members (John Williams of the London missionary Society) prompted the mission societies to proceed somewhat more cautiously. For the following nine years, they used converted Polynesian missionaries. Polynesians were regarded as a form of cannon fodder - if they survived, Europeans could safely follow. In 1845, Turner landed Samoan teachers on Efate, but most had been killed within a few years.

The following years saw Catholic, Presbyterian and Anglican missionaries from England, Noumea and France making various short lived (through death) or aborted (rapid retreat) attempts to convert the ni-Vanuatu. However, they were nothing if not persistent and by 1860's various denominational mission stations existed throughout the islands.

The effect on the local populations varied. For those who converted to Christianity in one form or another, many soon died, mainly because they were more exposed to the entire range of introduced diseases. By then these included not only measles and dysentery, but smallpox, influenza, pneumonia, scarlet fever, mumps, whooping cough and the simple, but often quite deadly, common cold.
 

Traditional medicines, that, combined with a degree of genetic immunity, proved effective against endemic diseases, had no impact on these new medical horrors.
Consequently those who did not convert to the new religions took up interesting and entirely understandable viewpoints. Some considered that the new religion and its God were impotent in the face of disease.

Others took a more pragmatic view; as all illnesses stemmed from sorcery anyway, Christianity must be a particularly malevolent religion to attack its converts in such a violent manner. This attitude resulted in the death of several missionaries following epidemics.

Photo courtesy of Vanuatu Cultural Center. John Layard, Missionary on Malekula, 1914-1915

However, the missionaries kept coming and eventually proved to have a profound impact on Melanesian society, in some areas forever destroying a rich cultural heritage centuries, perhaps millennia old. Catholicism in particular was more readily embraced for surprisingly, the Catholic missionaries did not take a dim view of converts incorporating elements of their own animistic beliefs with Catholicism. The success of the Catholics was, in turn, to have an extraordinary effect on the way the country, then known as the New Hebrides, was to be eventually governed.