Apart from the Coptic Church in Ethiopia and Egypt and the established settlements of Christian whites in North and South Africa and of Christian Creoles in Freetown, Christian influence in Africa was still largely restricted to a thin scatter of missionary outposts. Some of the most notable Christian advances had been made in the absence of foreign missionaries, and the future development and maturity of the indigenous churches would largely depend on the elimination of missionary control and paternalism. The pioneer pace-setters throughout the nineteenth century had been the great Protestant missionary societies, many of them originating from the evangelical revival at the end of the eighteenth century. With their Pan-African vision, the South African Ethiopians quickly established contact with black churches in the United States. The rapid Catholic expansion into tropical Africa which marked the closing decades of the nineteenth century was a direct consequence of the major reorganisation achieved earlier in the century.