For centuries and across continents religious communities have shaped the ways in which individuals position themselves within their societies. While historians and anthropologists have increasingly focused on the phenomenon of religious conversion, studies on the relationship between conversion and imperial rule have remained sporadic and geographically isolated. To remedy this, the present volume adopts a global and comparative approach. Focusing on efforts to spread Christianity and responses from different faith communities, the authors engage in a debate that goes beyond specific confessions or imperial configurations. The case studies presented here powerfully illustrate the multidirectional nature of religious conversion practices. They demonstrate how local structures both enabled and limited the changes brought about by conversion. The volume also addresses notions of subjectivity within convert communities which shaped their reactions to imperial strategies. "Religious Conversion and Imperial Rule" thus illuminates the interplay between power, conversion, agency, and social transformation.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Preface
Introduction
Locating the Self, Negotiating the Other: Conversion and Imperial Rule in the Early Modern Period
Ricarda Vulpius and Guillermo Wilde
Section I: Knowledge, Texts, and Translation
Conversion, Evangelization and Indigenous Agency in Colonial Mexico (16th Century). The Florentine Codex as a Space of Negotiation Andrea Maria D Amato
Opening the Doors to Conversion: The Reformed Mission and Antiquarianism in the Open Door to Hidden Paganism
Benjamin Leathley
Section II: Hybridity and Indigenous Appropriation
Evangelization Struggle on the Margins of the French Empire: Conversion in the Illinois Country in the 18th Century
Thomas Croisez
Adaptation and Ambiguity: Indigenous Engagement with Catholic Devotions in the Jesuit Missions of Spanish Amazonia (1638 1768)
Francismar Alex Lopes de Carvalho
Imperial Catholicism and Indigenous Cosmologies. An Approach to Religious Conversion on the Frontiers of Colonial Latin America
Guillermo Wilde
Section III: Imperial Control and Coercion
Baptism and Bureaucracy: Religious Conversion of the Yakut under 17th- Century Russian Rule
Angelina Kalashnikova
Conversion by Deception: The Case of the Uniates inside the Russian Empire
Barbara Skinner
Conversion as a win-win-situation? Russian Imperial Policies and Kalmyk Strategies of Adaptation in the 18th Century
Ricarda Vulpius
Section IV: Confessional Politics and Individual Agency
Negotiating Faith: Jewish Conversions, Imperial Policies, and Confessional Choices in Russia
Victoria Gerasimova
Armenians, Empire, and the Politics of Conversion in 19th Century Russia
Paul W. Werth
Contributors
