Jesuits and Race
Jesuits and Race
A Global History of Continuity and Change, 1530-2020
Jesuits and Race examines the role that the Society of Jesus played in shaping Western understandings about race and explores the impact the Order had on the lives and societies of non-European peoples throughout history. Jesuits provide an unusual, if not unique, lens through which to view the topic of race given the global nature of the Society of Jesus and the priests’ interest in humanity, salvation, conversion, science, and nature.
Jesuits’ global presence in missions, imperial expansion, and education lends insight into the differences in patterns of estrangement and assimilation, as well as enfranchisement and coercion, with people from Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The essays in this collection bring together case studies from around the world as a first step toward a comparative analysis of Jesuit engagement with racialized difference. The authors hone in on labor practices, social structures, and religious agendas at salient moments during the long span of Jesuit history in this fascinating volume.
“This benchmark collection of essays offers the first comprehensive exploration of the long history of Jesuit entanglements in racialized views and practices.”—Ulrike Strasser, author of State of Virginity: Gender, Religion, and Politics in an Early Modern Catholic State
Nathaniel Millett is an associate professor of history at Saint Louis University. He is the author of The Maroons of Prospect Bluff and Their Quest for Freedom in the Atlantic World. Charles H. Parker is a professor of history at Saint Louis University. His publications include Global Calvinism: Conversion and Commerce in the Dutch Empire, 1600–1800; Global Interactions in the Early Modern Age, 1400–1800; and Faith on the Margins: Catholics and Catholicism in the Dutch Golden Age.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction. Jesuits and Race from the Sixteenth to the Twenty-First Centuries
Nathaniel Millett and Charles H. Parker
Chapter One. “The Society of the World:” Antonio Possevino (1533–1611) and the Jesuit Debate over Purity of Blood
Emanuele Colombo
Chapter Two. Eternal Blackness: Body and Soul in Jesuit Martiìn de Roa’s Afterlife
Erin Kathleen Rowe
Chapter Three. Jesuits and Unfree Labor in Early Modern East Asia
Liam Matthew Brockey
Chapter Four. Jesuits and “Race” in Early Modern Chile: Valdivia’s Letters to the King, 1604–1618
Andrew Redden
Chapter Five. How to be a Country Jesuit: Practices of Continence, Care, and Containment in a Racializing Religiosity
J. Michelle Molina
Chapter Six. “The Most Barbarous and Fierce Peoples in the New World”: Decoding the Jesuit Missionary Project in Colonial North Mexico
Susan M. Deeds
Chapter Seven. The Memory of Slavery at Saint Louis University
Nathaniel Millett
Chapter Eight. A Challenge to our Sincerity: American Jesuits Discover “The Negro”
James M. O’Toole
Chapter Nine. Trial by Fire: Father George Dunne and Race Relations in Cold War Los Angeles
Sean Dempsey, S.J.
Epilogue
John T. McGreevy
Contributors
Index
