Cultivating Empire Through Print The Jesuit Strategy For New France And The Parisian Relations Of 1632 To 1673 Bronwen Catherine Mcshea by Bronwen Catherine Mcshea instant download after payment.

In accounts of French colonial activity and cultural encounters in North America in the seventeenth century, Jesuit missionaries typically appear as ambivalent toward the political, economic, and "civilizing" aims of French empire builders in Paris and Québec. They also appear as relatively accommodating to indigenous ways of life and concerned to safeguard Native American Christians, by means of segregated mission "reserves," from a morally corrupting French civilization. Such views are challenged by reading the Relations from New France (1632-1673), authored by Paul Le Jeune and other missionaries, in the light of their original, Parisian milieu of publication and reception, and by examining the metropolitan history of the mission enterprise. In partnership with their powerful publisher Sébastien Cramoisy and coteries of French government officials, wealthy nobles, and merchants, the Jesuits of New France were precocious proponents of a Paris-centered civilizing mission to other parts of the world by means of an expanding, French-imperial state and economy. Their program, urged very publicly in Paris, had implications for poor, socially marginal populations within and emigrating from France as well as for missionized Native Americans. These Jesuits were committed, for religious and secular reasons, to cultivating a trans-Atlantic, imperial culture of French "civility," material consumption and aesthetic tastes according to new elite, urban standards, and deference to new political and social hierarchies. As is seen especially in their steady, if largely unsuccessful campaign in France for a war of conquest against the Five Nations Iroquois, the missionaries at times favored violence and coercion to achieve this vision of French hegemony in North America. The Relations not only raised awareness about the missions among pious Catholics and potential donors, but also propagandized on behalf of royal power and marshaled colonial experiences to influence the agendas of wealthy and educated elites interested in social and cultural change both within France itself and abroad in the expanding network of French overseas possessions.