Trade and Finance in Global Missions (16th-18th Centuries) is a collection of twelve articles focusing on missionary economic practices, often perceived as an important tool in their spiritual and missionary endeavours, but also raising controversies in Europe and in the overseas missions. Missionaries, just like merchants and other investors, sought the most profitable ventures and tapped into transcontinental flow of capital during the first globalisation. All the chapters in this volume address the question of Catholic missionary economy in the early modern period by looking into concrete cases of the opening, financing, growth and preservation of Christian missions and related institutions such as churches, colleges and other permanent endowments in Asia, Europe and Latin America.
Hélène Vu Thanh is Associate Professor at the University of Bretagne-Sud (France) and member of the Institut Universitaire de France. She has published several articles and a book on the Catholic missions in Japan.
Ines G Županov is Senior Research Fellow at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. She has studied social history of the Catholic missions in South Asia. She is currently at the Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities in New Delhi. Her latest edited book is Oxford Handbook of the Jesuits (2019).
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Maps
Abbreviations
Notes on Contributors
Chapter 1: Preface
Ships of Dreams
Hélène Vu Thanh
Chapter 2: Profit and Souls in Global Missions (16th–18th Centuries)
An Introduction
Hélène Vu Thanh and Ines G. Županov
Part 1: Missionaries as Traders: The Case of the Society of Jesus
Chapter 3: The Cross and the Silk
Trading Activities by the Society of Jesus in Japan (1549–1650)
Hélène Vu Thanh
Chapter 4: Yerba Maté in the Jesuit Reductions
From Ritual Drink to Economic Resource (17th–18th Centuries)
Claudio Ferlan
Part 2: The Integration of Religious Orders into Global/Local Economic Networks
Chapter 5: From Tenants to Landlords
Jesuits and Land Ownership in Japan (1552–1614)
Rômulo da Silva Ehalt
Chapter 6: Going Local, Becoming Global
The Connected Histories of Early Modern Missionary Economies in Persia and the Persian Gulf
Christian Windler
Chapter 7: Monsoonal Missions
Asian Trade Diasporas in Spanish Missionary Strategies, 1570–1700
Ryan D. Crewe
Part 3: Funding the Missions: Finances and Evangelization
Chapter 8: Funding the Propagation of the Faith
Noble Strategies and the Financial Support of Jesuit Colleges in France and Italy (c.1590–c.1650)
Ariane Boltanski
Chapter 9: The College of San Hermenegildo in Seville
The Centerpiece of a Global Financial Network
Sébastien Malaprade
Part 4: Moralizing the Economy: Religious Controversies and Debates
Chapter 10: Missionaries as Merchants and Mercenaries
Religious Controversies over Commerce in Southeast Asia
Tara Alberts
Chapter 11: Regulating the Forbidden
Local Rules and Debates on the Missionary Economy in the Jesuit Province of Paraguay (17th–18th Centuries)
Fabian Fechner
Chapter 12: Afterword
For What Is a Man Profited, if He Shall Gain the Whole World, and Lose His Own Soul?
Ines G. Županov
Index of Names, Places, Concepts
