Religious Conversion and Imperial Rule. Self, Otherness, and Power in a Global Perspective (16th-19th Centuries)

von Ricarda Vulpius, Guillermo Wilde (Hrsg.)
© campus

For centuries and across continents religious communities have shaped the ways in which individuals position themselves within their societies. While historians and anthropologists have increasingly focused on the phenomenon of religious conversion, studies on the relationship between conversion and imperial rule have remained sporadic and geographically isolated. To remedy this, the present volume adopts a global and comparative approach. Focusing on efforts to spread Christianity and responses from different faith communities, the authors engage in a debate that goes beyond specific confessions or imperial configurations. The case studies presented here powerfully illustrate the multidirectional nature of religious conversion practices. They demonstrate how local structures both enabled and limited the changes brought about by conversion. The volume also addresses notions of subjectivity within convert communities which shaped their reactions to imperial strategies. “Religious Conversion and Imperial Rule” thus illuminates the interplay between power, conversion, agency, and social transformation.

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Zur Schriftenreihe Religion und Moderne

  • Inhaltsverzeichnis

    Preface

    Introduction
    Locating the Self, Negotiating the Other: Conversion and Imperial Rule in the Early Modern Period
    Ricarda Vulpius and Guillermo Wilde

    Section I: Knowledge, Texts, and Translation
    Conversion, Evangelization and Indigenous Agency in Colonial Mesico (16th Century). The Florentine Codex as a Space of Negotiation
    Andrea Maria D'Amato

    Opening the Doors to Conversion: The Reformed Mission and Antiquarianism in the Open Door to Hidden Paganism
    Benjamin Leathley

    Section II: Hybridity and Indigenous Appropriation
    Evangelization Struggle on the Margins of the French Empire: Conversion in the Illinois Country in the 18th Century
    Thomas Croisez

    Adaptation and Ambiguity: Indigenous Engagement with Catholic Devotions in the Jesuit Missions of Spanish Amazonia (1638-1768)
    Francismar Alex Lopes de Carvalho

    Imperial Catholicism and Indigenous Cosmologies. An Approach to Religious Conversion on the Frontiers of Colonial Latin America
    Guillermo Wilde

    Section II: Imperial Control and Coercion
    Baptism and Bureaucracy: Religious Conversion of the Yakut under 17th-Century Russian Rule
    Angelina Kalashnikova

    Conversion by Deception: The Case of the Uniates inside the Russian Empire
    Barbara Skinner

    Conversion as a win-win-situiation? Russian Imperial Policies and Kalmyk Strategies of Adaptation in the 18th Century
    Ricarda Vulpius

    Section IV: Confessional Politics and Individual Agency
    Negotiating Faith: Jewish Conversions, Imperial Policies, and Confessional Choices in Russia
    Victoria Gerasimova

    Armenians, Empire, and the Politics of Conversion in 19th Century Russia
    Paul W. Werth

    Contributors

Ricard Vulpius, Guillermo Wilde (Hrsg.): Religious Conversion and Imperial Rule. Self, Otherness, and Power in a Global Perspective (16th-19th Centuries), Frankfurt am Main / New York: Campus Verlag, 2025 (Reihe 'Religion und Moderne' 35).