Ulrike Strasser

How did gender shape the expanding Jesuit enterprise in the early modern world? What did it take to become a missionary man? And how did missionary masculinity align itself with the European colonial project? This book highlights the central importance of male affective ties and masculine mimesis in the formation of the Jesuit missions, as well as the significance of patriarchal dynamics. Focussing on previously neglected German figures, Strasser shows how stories of exemplary male behavior circulated across national boundaries, directing the hearts and feet of men throughout Europe towards Jesuit missions in faraway lands. The sixteenth-century Iberian exemplars of Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier, disseminated in print and visual media, inspired late seventeenth-century Jesuits from German-speaking lands to bring Catholicism and European gender norms to the Spanish-controlled Pacific. As Strasser demonstrates, the age of global missions hinged on the reproduction of missionary manhood in print and real life.

German Jesuits and Pacific Journeys

Missionary Men in the Early Modern World

Mary Jo Maynes

Ann Waltner

Birgitte Soland

Through twenty engaging essays exploring cultures ranging from ancient Judaic civilization to contemporary Brazil, Gender, Kinship and Power places important contemporary issues related to kinship--such as parental responsibility and female-headed households--in their proper comparative and historical framework.

A Comparative and Interdisciplinary History

Gender, Kinship and Power

Helmut Puff

Christopher Wild

Looking beyond the emergence of print, this collection of ground-breaking essays highlights the pivotal role of theology in the formation of the early modern cultures of communication.

Theologies of Media in Early Modern Europe and Beyond

Cultures of Communication

Hartmut Berghoff

Frank Biess

Traditionally, Germany has been considered a minor player in Pacific history: its presence there was more limited than that of other European nations, and whereas its European rivals established themselves as imperial forces beginning in the early modern era, Germany did not seriously pursue colonialism until the nineteenth century. Yet thanks to recent advances in the field emphasizing transoceanic networks and cultural encounters, it is now possible to develop a more nuanced understanding of the history of Germans in the Pacific. The studies gathered here offer fascinating research into German missionary, commercial, scientific, and imperial activity against the backdrop of the Pacific’s overlapping cultural circuits and complex oceanic transits.

Germans in Pacific Worlds from the Early Modern Period to World War I

Explorations and Entanglements

An important contribution to the historical study of sexuality and the growing feminist literature on the state

Ulrike Strasser

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