Max Weber’s classical notion of enchantment serves in this book to highlight the clash and rewiring of ethical and cosmological codes in European and Indian early modern cultural encounters from the 16th century onward. Since Portuguese imperialism was unable to justify itself without invoking otherworldly intervention, Catholic missionaries provided the vocabulary and narrative of global salvation. Each chapter in this volume explores a range of enchantment techniques used by missionaries, encompassing historical prose, poetry, images, and translations, woven through with emotions and wrapped in illocutionary force. Catholic missionaries in India wrote from and about the soft belly of tropical colonialism with certainty about the triumph of Christianity. Understanding the subterranean bond between history and fiction is at the heart of this book.
Ines G. Zupanov is a historian at CNRS, Paris. She is a social/cultural historian of Catholic missions in South Asia and the Portuguese empire. Author of three monographs and a dozen edited volumes, she has contributed many articles and chapters to scholarly books and journals in different languages.
List of figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Enchantment Never Ends
Part I: Hagiographies
1. Holy Zeal and Fervor: Jesuit Enchanted Geography in Asia
2. Holy Fear and Love: Jesuit Affective Economy
3. Accidental Global Historians: Jesuits and Discalced Carmelites
Part II: Martyrdom
4 “The History of the Future:” Missionary Enchantment of Self
5. From Pilot to Martyr: The French Connection in Southeast Asia
Part III: Knowledge
6. Learning about Buddhism: Correspondence between China and India
7. Neither White nor Black: Goan Brahman Oratorians in Sri Lanka
8. Science and Demonology: French Jesuits in South India
Afterthought
Bibliography
Index
