Table of Contents

Introduction

The Arrival of the Jesuits in the Philippines

The Marianas as Part of the Universal Christian Project

Gathering Souls at the Margins of the Spanish Empire

To Retain or Abandon the Marianas?

Corruption, Greed, and Misgovernment

New Spiritual and Geopolitical Configurations

The Baroque Theater of Power

Lights and Shadows: The Virgin of Our Lady of Light

A New Foothold in the Nineteenth-Century Carolines

Twentieth-Century Jesuits at the Crossroads of the New Pacific World Empires

Chuuk

Yap

Palau and Pohnpei

The Marshall Islands

Conclusion

About the Author

Alexandre Coello de la Rosa, PhD (2001), SUNY at Stony Brook, is professor of Asian and Latin American Studies at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona, Spain). He has published a great deal of monographs, articles, and edited books on ecclesiastical history of the Marianas and the Philippines, including (with David Atienza) Scars of Faith: Letters and Documents of the Mariana Islands’ Jesuit Missionaries and Martyrs (Chestnut Hill, MA: Institute of Jesuit Sources, forthcoming, 2019).

Reviews

“This impressively erudite essay provides a condensed but informative history of Jesuit missionary engagement in Micronesia.”

John Barker, University of British Columbia. In: The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 72, No. 1 (2021), pp. 200–201.



“Alexandre Coello de la Rosa offers a brief history of the Jesuit missions in Micronesia from arrival in the Marianas Islands in 1668 to the conclusion of World War II in 1945. The fifteen high-quality images, sixteen sections, over four hundred footnotes, and a bibliography of fourteen pages made for an instructive narrative. I recommend this book as an overview of the Jesuits in Micronesia. In addition, Coello’s wide use of scholars of Pacific Islands studies has much to teach a worldwide audience. The author introduces the global mission of the Society of Jesus and “global modernity in the Iberian colonial empires,” connecting histories of the Jesuits from the Pacific Ocean to Atlantic histories, the Spanish monarchy, and world history, all in a worthy endeavor.”

James B. Tueller, Brigham Young University, Hawaii. In: Journal of Jesuit Studies, Vol. 7, No. 4 (2020), pp. 673–675.