In God's Empire French Missionaries and the Modern World

by White, Owen; Daughton, J.P.

• ISBN13: 9780195396447
• ISBN10: 0195396448
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-08-28
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

A collection of thirteen essays by leading scholars in the field, In God's Empire examines the complex ways in which the spread of Christianity by French men and women shaped local communities, French national prowess, and global politics in the two centuries following the French Revolution. More than a story of religious proselytism, missionary activity was an essential feature of French contact and interaction with local populations. In many parts of the world, missionaries were the first French men and women to work and live among indigenous societies. For all the celebration of France's secular "civilizing mission," it was more often than not religious workers who actually fulfilled the daily tasks of running schools, hospitals, and orphanages. While their work was often tied to small villages, missionaries' interactions had geopolitical implications. Focusing on many regions--from the Ottoman Empire and the United States to Indochina and the Pacific Ocean--this book explores how France used missionaries' long connections with local communities as a means of political influence and justification for colonial expansion.In God's Empireoffers readers both an overview of the major historical dimensions of the French evangelical enterprise, as well as an introduction to the theoretical and methodological challenges of placing French missionary work within the context of European, colonial, and religious history.

Author Biography

Owen White is Associate Professor of History at the University of Delaware and the author of Children of the French Empire: Miscegenation and Colonial Society in French West Africa, 1895-1960 (OUP, 1999).

J.P. Daughton is Associate Professor of History at Stanford University and the author of An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of French Colonialism, 1880-1914 (OUP, 2006), which won the George Louis Beer Prize of the American Historical Association and the Alf Andrew Heggoy Prize of the French Colonial Historical Society.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Contributors	p. ix
Introduction: Placing French Missionaries in the Modern World	p. 3
French Missionaries in the Atlantic World
When Catholic Worlds Collide: French Missionaries and Ecclesiastical Politics in Louisiana, 1803-1845	p. 29
Creating "The People of God": French Utopian Dreams and the Moralization of Africans and Slaves	p. 47
Bretons in Conquest of a Former Colony: French Catholic Missionaries in Haiti, 1860-1915	p. 67
The Ottoman Empire, North Africa, and the Middle East
Charity Begins Abroad: The Filles de la Charité in the Ottoman Empire	p. 89
Muslim Princes, Female Missionaries, and Trans-Mediterranean Migrations: The Soeurs de Saint-Joseph de l'Apparition in Tunisia, c. 1840-1881	p. 109
Missionary Militarism? The Armed Brothers of the Sahara and Leopold Joubert in the Congo	p. 129
Flourishing in Exile: French Missionaries in Syria and Lebanon under Mandate Rule	p. 151
East and Southeast Asia
Measuring Catholic Faith in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Northeast China	p. 173
A Colonial Sacred Union? Church, State, and the Great War in Colonial Vietnam	p. 195
Africa and Oceania
When French Protestants Replaced British Missionaries in the Pacific and Indian Oceans; Or, How to Avoid the Colonial Trap	p. 215
The "Catechist War" in Interwar French Cameroon	p. 233
A Mission in Transition: Race, Politics, and the Decolonization of the Catholic Church in Senegal	p. 257
Afterword: The Missionary Experience in British and French Empires	p. 279
Select Bibliography	p. 303
Index	p. 311
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