Bronwen McShea. Apostles of Empire: The Jesuits and New France.

Abstract

Bronwen McShea’s book proposes multiple reading angles. It can be regarded as an in-depth analysis of the Jesuit mission to New France—the area that France colonized in North America—the first covering its entire period from the early seventeenth century to the late eighteenth century. It also tells the story of the long relationship between the Society of Jesus and the French Crown from the time of Henry IV until Louis XV’s suppression of the society in France. McShea’s study also explores the expansion of the Bourbon-era French empire from some of its fringes (French North America, in this case), giving prominence to—according to the author—a so far scholarly neglected pre-Revolutionary French colonialism. All these possible readings find connecting threads, the main being the “apostles of empire,” that is, the Jesuit missionaries in New France, and the Jesuit series Relations des Jésuites de la Nouvelle-France, published annually in Paris from...