| Senior Research Fellow | |
| Herkunftsinstitution: | Universität Bern |
| Zeit am Institut: | 2026 |
| Förderung: | IEG Senior Research Fellowship |
| Forschungsthema: | Catholic Clergy in the Making of British Company Rule in Asia (1642–1749) |
| "In the settlements of the British East India Company, the small English communities, which were predominantly composed of Protestants, were outnumbered by far by Catholic Luso-Indians who played a significant role in the making of Company rule in Asia. Yet, the question of coexistence with Protestants has so far hardly been explicitly raised in the extensive literature on Catholic missionaries in Asia. Some studies from the colonial period that are rich in source material still provide valuable insights into the history of Catholic communities in the early period of English rule. However, even the most recent studies share with these older works an emphasis on the perspective of the East India Company as a Protestant authority, beside which Luso-Indians and their Catholic clergy only occupy a subordinate place as objects of English confessional policy. My book project addresses these research deficits. Rather than focusing on the perspective of the East India Company and its servants, it explores the practices of Catholic clergymen and their relationships with the British in various settings, such as cities under the Company’s rule (particularly Madras and Bombay), places beyond these still tiny British dominions, and British ships used for their travel by non-Portuguese clergymen who were sent out by the Pope and, to a lesser extent, by the French crown. These explorations have two objectives: first, to gain insight into the missionaries’ life experiences, and second, to combine these findings to create a picture richer in contrasts. This includes, on the one hand, a “composite Catholicism” specific to the early modern period and, on the other hand, an early English presence in Asia that cannot be adequately described in terms of “empire.”" |
(c) Christian Windler
