Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia has edited a new volume of essays in A Companion to the Early Modern Catholic Global Missions, now available through Brill.
The collection of fourteen essays, according to the publisher, “offers not only a global view of the organization, finances, personnel, and history of Catholic missions to the Americas, Africa, and Asia, but also the complex political, cultural, and religious contexts of the missionary fields.” Differences emerge in this survey: “The conquests and colonization of the Americas presented a different stage for the drama of evangelization in contrast to that of Africa and Asia: the inhospitable landscape of Africa, the implacable Islamic societies of the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires, and the self-assured regimes of Ming-Qing China, Nguyen dynasty Vietnam, and Tokugawa Japan.”
A table of contents appear below, and more information is available at brill.com.
— Introduction: “Catholic global missions and the expansion of Europe”
Part 1. The Americas.
— 1. “Missionizing Mexico: ecclesiastics, natives, and the spread of Christianity” by Mark Christensen
— 2. “The Andes” by Aliocha Maldavsky
— 3. “The missions of Paraguay: rise, expansion and fall” by Guillermo Wilde
— 4. “Early modern Catholic missions in Brazil: the challenge of the outsiders” by Anne McGinness
— 5. “New France” by Dominique Deslandres
Part 2. Africa.
— 6. “Catholic missions and local rulers in Sub-Saharan Africa” by Alan Strathern
Part 3. Islamic world.
— 7. “Missionaries and French subjects: the Jesuits in the Ottoman Empire” by Adina Ruiu
— 8. “Ambiguous belongings: how Catholic missionaries in persia and the Roman Curia dealt with communicatio in sacris” by Christian Windler
Part 4. Asia.
— 9. “South Asia” by Ines G. Županov
— 10. “Missions in Vietnam” by Tara Alberts
— 11. “The Christian missions in Japan in the early modern period” by M. Antoni J. Ucerler, S.J.
— 12. “Imperial China and the Christian mission” by R. Po-chia Hsia
Part 5. The structures.
— 13. “Finances of the missions” by Fred Vermote
— 14. “Missionaries: who were they” by Christoph Nebgen