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Frontiers of Evangelization
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Description
Marshaling a wealth of data from sacramental, military, and census records, Robert H. Jackson explores the many factors that influenced the stability of mission settlements, including the indigenous communities' previous subsistence patterns and family structures, the evangelical techniques of the missionary orders, the social and political organization within the mission communities, and epidemiology in relation to population density and mobility. The two orders, Jackson's research shows, organized and administered their missions very differently. The Franciscans took a heavy-handed approach and implemented disruptive social policies, while the Jesuits engaged in a comparatively "kinder and gentler" form of colonization.
Yet the most critical factor to the missions' success, Jackson finds, was the indigenous peoples' existing demographic profile-in particular, their mobility. Nonsedentary populations, like the Pames and Jonaces of the Sierra Gorda, were more prone to demographic collapse once brought into the mission system, whereas sedentary groups, like the Guaraní of Chiquitos, experienced robust growth and greater resistance to disease and natural disaster.
Drawing on more than three decades of scholarly work, this analysis of crucial archival material augments our understanding of the role of missions in colonization, and the fate of indigenous peoples in Spanish America.
Product details
Binding:
Paperback
Number of Pages:
210
Release Date:
2025-08-26
Publication Date:
2025-08-19
Publisher:
University of Oklahoma Press
Languages:
Original:
English
ISBN10:
0806194588
ISBN13:
9780806194585
GPSR Manufacturer Reference:
Weight:
349 g
Height:
152 cm
Width:
229 cm
Thickness:
13 cm
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