Overseas Empires Research Articles

The Making of an Enterprise: The Society of Jesus in Portugal, Its Empire, and Beyond, 1540-1750 by Dauril Alden

The Making of an Enterprise: The Society of Jesus in Portugal, Its Empire, and Beyond, 1540-1750. By Dauril Alden. (Stanford: Stanford University Press. 1996. Pp. xxxi, 707. $75.00.) Worldwide evangelical campaigns by religious orders were inalienable parts of that period known until recently as of Europe. No order was as dynamic, effective, or controversial as Society or Company of Jesus, which received papal approval in 1540. Sons of Loyola were active partners in Portuguese and Spanish initiatives in establishing a European presence in Africa, Asia, and Americas. For more than two decades Dauril Alden-while authoring a steady stream of meticulously researched and pioneering articles primarily on Brazil-has dedicated himself to researching Portuguese Assistancy. This included continental Portugal and its empire and parts of India,Japan, China, and Southeast Asia. This is first of a projected two-volume study and carries story from 1540 to 1750. The primary focus is not on spiritual, educational, or cultural dimensions of Assistancy, but on organization and economic and financial underpinnings which enabled Society to fulfill its mission as specified in Constitutions and subsequent responsibilities not initially considered. Reflecting this emphasis, bulk of book treats governance, recruitment, manpower, and fiscal administration (Part III, pp. 229-318) and financial resources and economic foundations of enterprise (Part IV pp. 321-567). Parts I and II provide an excellent overview of founding of Society and Portuguese Assistancy, and expansion of Jesuit enterprise into Africa, India, Asia, and Brazil. A concluding section examines lack of support beleaguering Society at home when confronted by a hostile monarch, erosion in Southeast Asia and China, problems in India stemming from indigenous and European conquests of Portuguese holdings, successes in Brazil and even more heated controversy over allegations of excessive wealth, and suggestion that sons of Loyola had strayed from God and embraced Mammon. Alden is global in his approach but focus is on Portugal, India, East Asia, and Brazil. The author locates Society with regard to medieval precedents and to contemporary orders in Europe, and readers will find comparisons to missionary activities in other European overseas empires. At all times Jesuit enterprise is seen in global context of military, political, and economic change. He makes important point that Jesuit pragmatism and close relations with secular and religious leaders in Europe and overseas enabled Society to enjoy exceptional success but exposed it to hostility. In Portugal fate of Society was closely linked to fortunes of crown and, on a more personal note, to relationship between kings and their Jesuit advisers and confessors. The Society was vulnerable to political, military, and economic circumstances beyond its control: Anglo-Dutch and indigenous attacks by Sinhalese, Mughal, Omani, and Marathi resulting in Portuguese territorial losses denied Jesuits their spiritual outposts and contributed to collapse of Portugal's Eastern empire. The Society as here presented fully merits assessment (p. 4) that it was the most dynamic, successful, influential, and controversial of new Orders created during turbulent sixteenth century. The new Society had unique features: a centralized pyramidal system of governance, a general appointed for life, absence of distinctive garb, failure to sing Mass and office in choir, refusal (with rare discretionary exceptions) to admit women, and no Third Order. Alden notes how Society assumed responsibilities not contemplated initially: most significant was in higher education. Others were wholly secular and inappropriate: royal assignments to mint coins, manage granaries, serve as superintendents of fortresses in northwestern India, manufacture armaments, and undertake delicate diplomatic assignments. …

Taking Possession and Reading Texts: Establishing the Authority of Overseas Empires

Taking Possession and Reading Texts: Establishing the Authority of Overseas Empires

Global Patterns of Decolonization, 1500-1987

This paper examines global patterns in the breakdown of Western overseas empires between 1500 and 1987. It counterposes the implications of world-economy, Marxist, and institutional arguments for the timing of decolonization. Nonparametric analyses indicate great variation in the rate of decolonization over historical time, and virtually no variation over dependency age. This suggests that the processes producing decolonization are primarily external rather than internal to the dependency. The presence of a hegemonic power, the rise of an anticolonial political discourse, and diffusion processes within and across empires help to explain shifts in the rate of decolonization over historical time.

The first imperial age: European overseas expansion c. 1400-1715 (review)

168 Reviews articles followed, including an article by Vincenzo Ferrone and Massimo Firpo in the Rivista storica italiano, 97 (1985), 177-238, a shortened version of the same article in the Journal of Modern History 58 (1986), 485-524, and a perceptive article by Richard S. WestfaU in History of Science, 26 (1988), 399415 . These and other reviewers attack Redondi firstly for his methodology, for confusing proofs with possibilities, for distorting texts, for refusing to take documents at their face value but using them instead as a source of 'hidden meanings, sidelong glances, and daring elucubrations' (Ferrone and Firpo, p. 513), and then justifying his approach by citing Carlo Ginzburg's 'circumstantial paradigm'. They attack him secondly for getting important details wrong. Not only is he wrong in attributing the document to Grassi, but also he is wrong in claiming that it was an official denunciation. They attack him thirdly for not having any evidence to support some of his crucial arguments; such as, his assertion that Galileo had two trials: a secret trial dealing with the eucharist and a mock trial dealing with Copernicanism. They attack him finaUy for presenting distorted pictures of Galileo, the Accademia dei Lincei, Pope Urban VIII, and the Jesuits. Regarding the latter, as the author of a book on The Jesuit mind I know Redondi's Jesuits weU. They are the Jesuits of the hackneyed stereotypes that modern scholarship seeks to dispel, cunning in advancing their cause, monolithic in their relations with others, unforgiving of any opposition, bound to the interests of Spain, military in their organization, and obscurantist in their opposition to innovation. One final point: if the Holy Office condemned Galileo for the atomist views of// Saggiatore and not for the Copernican views of the Dialogue, why did it place the Dialogue on the Index of Forbidden Books and not / / Saggiatorel Despite the criticism we now have an English edition. What next? Probably, according to one reviewer, a movie. A. Lynn Martin Department of History The University of Adelaide Scammell, G. V., The first imperial age: European overseas expansion c. 1400-1715, London, Unwin Hyam, 1989; paperback; pp. xx, 281; 6 maps; R. R. P. AUS$34.95. After a life devoted to scholarly study of the history of the sea and seafaring, Dr Scammell has been given the opportunity to present a semi-popular overview of the empire which the sea sustained between 1400 and 1715, only partially fettered by a scholarly requirement for footnotes. Such a challenge, however, may well be impossible to meet. The complexity of the interactions and linkages makes a simplified model too unreaUstic while space constrains a more Reviews 169 nuanced presentation and the structuring of the narrative makes simplifying choices inevitable. The result is a text which provides a useful summary of recent revisionist work on the subject, which sustains interest during the reading process, but which leaves many critical questions unanswered. Scammell thus provides a coherent summary of the complex Spanish government structure but does not really integrate this into his discussion of colonial society, which is handled with such brevity that, combined with his gloomy chapter on exploitation, it inevitably creates a picture of universal decUne and fall. Publisher pressure perhaps promoted the title; although, 'empire' is so widespread a phenomenon that a claim for priority may be hard to sustain. Underdevelopment theorists would doubtless also challenge the preliminary claim that the last remnants of Europe's overseas empires have now all but gone. However, to Dr Scammell's traditional Eurocentric viewpoint, the handing over of the formal instruments of government makes the assertion setf evident Dr Scammell offers a re-evaluation of European expansion from the specific standpoint of the late 1980s and has no hesitation in discarding explanations which he believes recent experience has shown to be fallible, though he has more difficulty in offering satisfactory alternatives. His own explanatory preferences are clear from his bibUographical selection. In the tradition of those committed to dismantling heroic myths, he takes care to include all evidence of weakness, venality and disorganisation. Only because other societies had indigenous problems even greater than Europe's, was Europe 'less at a disadvantage than mightfirstappear'. H e...

Book Reviews

AbstractBook review in this ArticleIn the Workshop of History. By François Furet. Translated by Jonathan Mandelbaum.The Structure of Mind in History: Five Major Figures in Psychohistory. By Philip Pomper.F. W. Maitland. By G. R. Elton.The Creation of the Roman Frontier. By Stephen L. Dyson.Diocletian and the Roman Recovery. By Stephen Williams.The Jews of Islam. By Bernard Lewis.Prostitution in Medieval Society: The History of an Urban Institution in Languedoc. [Women in Culture and Society Series. Edited by Catharine R. Stimpson.] By Leah Lydia Otis.Russia and the Golden Horde; The Mongol Impact on Medieval Russian History. By Charles J. Halperin.The People's Reformation: Magistrates, Clergy, and Commons in Strasbourg, 1500–1598. By Lorna Jane Abray.The European Crisis of the 1590s. Essays in Comparative History. Edited by Peter Clark.Owen Roe O'Neill and the Struggle for Catholic Ireland. By Jerrold I. Casway.The Road to Revolution: Scotland under Charles 1, 1625–37. By Maurice Lee Jr.The Restoration: A Political and Religious History of England and Wales, 1658–1667. By Ronald Hutton.Party and Management in Parliament: 1660–1784. Edited by Clyve Jones.The Lost Elementary Schools of Victorian England. By Phil Gardner.The Imperial Idea and its Enemies: A Study in British Power. By A. P. Thornton. Second edition.In Defence of British India: Great Britain in the Middle East, 1775–1842. By Edward Ingram.The British Army and the Crisis of Empire, 1918–22. By Keith Jeffery.British Food Policy During the First World War. By L. Margaret Barnett.Mountbatten: A Biography. By Philip Ziegler.The Decline of Power, 1915–1964. By Robert Blake.France in the Making, 843–1180. By Jean Dunbabin.Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France, 1400–1750. By Robert Muchembled. Translated by Lydia Cochrane.Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth‐Century France. State Power and Provincial Aristocracy in Languedoc. By William Beik.At the Very Least She Pays the Kent: Women and German Industrialization, 1871–1914. By Barbara Franzoi.Armaments and Politics in France on the Eve of the First World War: The Introduction of Three‐Year Conscription. By Gerd Krumeich.The Navy and German Power Politics, 1862–1914. By Ivo Nikolai Lambi.Max Weber and German Politics, 1890–1920. By Wolfgang J. Mommsen. Translated by Michael S. Steinberg.German Nationalism and the European Response, 1890–1945. Edited by Carole Fink, Isabel V. Hull and MacGregor Knox.Students and National Socialism in Germany. By Geoffrey J. Giles.Education in the Third Reich: Race and History in Nazi Textbooks. By Gilmer W. Blackburn.The German Military in the Age of Total War. Edited by Wilhelm Deist.Bolshevik Culture: Experiment and Order in the Russian Revolution. Edited by Abbott Gleason, Peter Kenez and Richard Stites.Hankow: Commerce and Society in a Chinese City, 1796–1889. By William T. Rowe.P'eng P'ai and the Hai‐lu‐feng Soviet. By Fernando Galbiati.Japan's Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period. By Carol Cluck.Going to War with Japan, 1937–1941. By Jonathan G. Utley.Uncertain Dimensions: Western Overseas Empires in the Twentieth Century. By Raymond F. Betts.Cities Perceived: Urban Society in European and American Thought, 1820–1940. By Andrew Lees.A Diplomatic History of the American Revolution. By Jonathan R. Dull.The Radical Politics of Thomas Jefferson: A Revisionist View. By Richard K. Matthews.The Choctaw before Removal. Edited by Carolyn Keller Reeves.The Life and Adventures of Daniel Boom. By Michael A. Lofaro.Ar'nt I A Woman? Female slaves in the Plantation South. By Deborah Gray White.Shadow on the Church: Southwestern Evangelical Religion and the Issue of Slavery, 1783–1860. By David T. Bailey.Manifest Design: Anxious Aggrandizement in Late Jacksonian America. By Thomas R. Hietala.Harvest of Grief: Grasshopper Plagues and Public Assistance in Minnesota, 1873–78. By Annette Atkins.Workers On the Edge: Work, Leisure and Politics in Industrializing Cincinnati, 1788–1890. By Steven J. Ross.Law, Alcohol, and Order: Perspectives on National Prohibition. [Contributions in American History, No. 110.] Edited by David E. Kyvig.The Development of Law in Frontier California: Civil Law and Society, 1850–1890. By Gordon Morris Bakken.Essays on Walter Prescott Webb and the Teaching of History. Edited by Dennis Reinhartz and Stephen E. Maizlish.Foundations of American Foreign Policy: A Realist Appraisal from Franklin to McKinley. By Norman A. Graebner.

Uncertain dimensions: Western overseas empires in the twentieth century

Uncertain dimensions: Western overseas empires in the twentieth century

The old European States-system: Gentz versus Hauterive

The contemporary international system is at once the continuation and the negation ofthe old European states-system. It is the continuation in the sense that the world is nowpeopled with the same kind of political bodies that were formerly concentrated within thearea of Europe alone, namely sovereign states. The overseas empires of Britain, France, Spain, and others, represented both the subordination of the rest of the world to Europe, and the media through which the state as a political structure was exported from Europe. The dissolution of these empires, foreshadowed by the independence of the United States and the emancipation of Spain's Latin American colonies, and accomplished definitively in the half-century following the Great War, signified the extension of inter-state relationships to the world in general, while it marked the end of the domination of the European states in particular.

Book Review Section: First Poets: Trade and Dominion: The European Overseas Empires in the Eighteenth Century

Book Review Section: First Poets: Trade and Dominion: The European Overseas Empires in the Eighteenth Century

Trade and Dominion: The European Overseas Empires in the Eighteenth Century.

Trade and Dominion: The European Overseas Empires in the Eighteenth Century.

Trade and Dominion: The European Overseas Empires in the Eighteenth Century.

Trade and Dominion: The European Overseas Empires in the Eighteenth Century.

The Colonized as Child: British and French Colonial Rule

The European imperial powers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries viewed their African and Asian subjects as children, as men not fully grown, whose destiny had to be guided by the presumably more advanced states of Europe. As a result European administrators consciously, or not, often extended overseas a system of rule which appears to have been patterned after the relationship of authority which existed in the metropole between parent and child and school and child. This essay explores the connections existing between child-rearing practices and formal education in Britain and France and the methods of rule used by these two powers in their overseas empires. In addition, this article suggests that some of the differences in the colonial rule of Britain and France are grounded in the divergencies of these two countries' patterns of child-rearing. Such an interpretation would, of course, be in agreement with the view of social anthropologists and social psychologists who have long argued that all forms of interpersonal and intergroup relationships are molded by early patterns of child-rearing.