In God's Empire

Owen White is Associate Professor of History, University of DelawareJ.P. Daughton is Assistant Professor of History, Stanford University

• Acknowledgments ; Contributors ; Introduction: Placing French Missionaries in the Modern World, Owen White and J. P. Daughton ; Part I: French Missionaries in the Atlantic World ; 1. When Catholic Worlds Collide: French Missionaries and Ecclesiastical Politics in Louisiana, 1803-1845, Michael Pasquier ; 2. Creating "The People of God": French Utopian Dreams and the Moralization of Africans and Slaves, Troy Feay ; 3. Bretons in Conquest of a Former Colony: French Catholic Missionaries in Haiti, 1860-1915, Philippe Delisle ; Part II: The Ottoman Empire, North Africa, and the Middle East ; 4. Charity Begins Abroad: The Filles de la Charite in the Ottoman Empire, Sarah A. Curtis ; 5. Muslim Princes, Female Missionaries, and Trans-Mediterranean Migrations: The Soeurs de Saint-Joseph de l'Apparition in Tunisia, c. 1840-1881, Julia Clancy-Smith ; 6. Missionary Militarism? The Armed Brothers of the Sahara and Leopold Louis Joubert in the Congo, Bertrand Taithe ; 7. Flourishing in Exile: French Missionaries in Syria and Lebanon under Mandate Rule, Jennifer M. Dueck ; Part III: East and Southeast Asia ; 8. Measuring Catholic Faith in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Northeast China, Ji Li ; 9. A Colonial Sacred Union? Church, State, and the Great War in Colonial Vietnam, Charles Keith ; Part IV: Africa and Oceania ; 10. When French Protestants Replaced British Missionaries in the Pacific and Indian Oceans; Or, How to Avoid the Colonial Trap, Jean-Francois Zorn ; 11. The "Catechist War" in Interwar French Cameroon, Kenneth J. Orosz ; 12. A Mission in Transition: Race, Politics, and the Decolonization of the Catholic Church in Senegal, Elizabeth A. Foster ; Afterword: The Missionary Experience in the British and French Empires, Norman Etherington ; Select Bibliography ; Index

An excellent foray into the complicated relationship between missionaries, empire, and modernity. The volume engages scholarship on race, colonialism, and gender while adding an important and heretofore understudied element: missions and religion... Comparative exploration of French religious and secular policy across the colonies helps to explain the multiple contradictions of the imperial project and its complicated relationship with secularism. The thoughtful contributions span geographical, temporal, and ecclesiastical boundaries and provide fodder for many future conversations. This volume will engage scholars working on the history of empire, religion, and the contradictions of modernity, and is crucial reading for anyone examining these topics.