Taking Norbert Elias’ ideas about emotional change as its foil, this paper explores the changing role and function of emotion on late-nineteenth century Protestant missions in Australia. Like Elias, though for religious rather than historical reasons, missionaries during this period conceived of emotional control in terms of social development. Yet missionaries were not the only agents of emotional change, and their emotional agendas were not always realised in the ways that they had anticipated. Rather, this paper proposes that both missionaries and Aboriginal residents were participants in systems of emotional circulation and exchange which I conceptualise as ‘emotional economies’.