Jesuits at the Margins : Missions and Missionaries in the Marianas (1668-1769)

In the past decades historians have interpreted early modern Christian missions not simply as an adjunct to Western imperialism, but as a privileged field for cross-cultural encounters. This book is framed within the process of historiographical renovation of the scholarship on the early modern Christian missions in the Pacific, studying the complexities of Jesuit missionisation in the Micronesian islands of Guam and the Marianas. It grounds the analysis in the transoceanic relationship of the archipelago and the Viceroyalty of New Spain, which included the Philippines. It also shows the resistance and adaptive capacity of Chamorro culture that enabled its members to adjust to outside influences and to construct new identities.

In the past decades historians have interpreted early modern Christian missions not simply as an adjunct to Western imperialism, but a privileged field for cross-cultural encounters. Placing the Jesuit missions into a global phenomenon that emphasizes economic and cultural relations between Europe and the East, this book analyzes the possibilities and limitations of the religious conversion in the Micronesian islands of Guåhan (or Guam) and the Northern Marianas. Frontiers are not rigid spatial lines separating culturally different groups of people, but rather active agents in the transformation of cultures. By bringing this local dimension to the fore, the book adheres to a process of missionary “glocalization” which allowed Chamorros to enter the international community as members of Spain’s regional empire and the global communion of the Roman Catholic Church.