Les missions jésuites dans l’Océan Indien: Madagascar, La Réunion, Maurice, written by Stéphane Nicaise
Year: 2017
Type: article
Abstract: Les missions jésuites dans l'Océan Indien: Madagascar, La Réunion, Maurice.Paris: Éditions Jésuites, 2015.Pp. 174.Pb, €12.What are the links and continuities between the various outposts of Jesuit missionary presence in the western Indian Ocean, both chronologically and geographically?This is the central question that animates Stéphane Nicaise's slim but ambitious volume, which considers the work of French and native-born francophone Jesuit missionaries in the Indian Ocean islands of Madagascar, Réunion, and Mauritius.The author, an anthropologist of religion and a Jesuit in Réunion, weaves together a longue durée account of the missionaries who came before him, with an analysis of present-day challenges and suggestions for the future of Jesuit efforts in the Indian Ocean.The book attempts to position these three islands at the center of analysis, rather than as marginal or peripheral satellites to better-known (and much better studied) Jesuit missions in China and in India.The desire to place the islands and their religious history front and center is laudatory and much needed, since both the Jesuit presence in the western Indian Ocean, and the French presence in the Indian Ocean more generally, are topics that have been woefully neglected.The islands each have a rich and complicated political history, and Jesuit missionary efforts have been a feature of life in them since the seventeenth century, through periods of significant political upheaval.Mauritius first became a French colony in 1715, named Île de France, following several decades of Dutch colonization.It became a British holding in 1810, and remained so until its independence in 1968.Réunion, claimed by the French in the mid-seventeenth century as Île Bourbon, has been an overseas department of France (dom) since 1946.The population of both islands is a testament to this colonial history, with inhabitants tracing their origins to a diverse group of colonists, merchants, slaves, and indentured servants, with roots in Africa, Asia, Madagascar and Europe.In both Réunion and Mauritius, the presence of the Jesuits was inextricably tied up with the political and commercial efforts of the French state.In the much-larger Madagascar, which had a history of human settlement stretching back thousands of years and well-developed local state systems, Jesuits navigated a very different terrain, and the French missionaries who arrived on the island the 1840s pursued their work with approval from the Kingdom of Madagascar.The island became a French possession in 1897, and remained so until its independence in 1960.In all three locales, the presence of the Jesuits is a constant in the transition from the colonial to the post-colonial era, and the relationship between the
Source: Journal of Jesuit Studies
Author: Danna Agmon
Institution: Virginia Tech
Language: French
Subfield: Religious studies
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2595711320