Trading Territories: Mapping the Early Modern World

taught at Columbia University, the University of Nebraska Omaha, and Boston College’s School of Theology and Ministry. The book concentrates on the French missionary work of the seventeenth century—sources for that period are richer than those for the later periods. Nonetheless, it also covers development well into the eighteenth century. The book is divided into two parts: the first focused on the missions’ founding era and early decades of its development and the second part highlights the issues of continual warfare and metropolitan neglect as these shaped the Jesuit enterprise. Part I focuses on the mission’s founding, from 1610s to 1660s, and shows that missionaries under the leadership of Paule Le Jeune, François-Joseph Le Mercier and others who acted closely with French political and mercantile elites, particularly in the period of Cardinal Richelieu’s administration. French authorities in France and Canada decided to utilize the Jesuit access to the Native nations to help negotiate trade and military alliances for New France. The author demonstrates how the Jesuits contributed to the transformation of the woodlands and indigenous villages into secure and economically productive trade centers characterized by military preparedness. Part II covers the late seventeenth and eighteenth century, during which different political, social, and cultural realities shaped the French colonial world, a period that spans from the beginning of Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s ministry (1661) to the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763 when dreams of a French empire dissipated. During these years, the shift in metropolitan politics to Versailles and the decrease in interest in the colony resulted in diminished support (supplies and guidance) for Jesuit, suffocating imperial aspirations. As a result, the Jesuits “moderated their ambitions for a French Catholic empire in America, due more to metropolitan neglect than Native American resistance or English advances” (p. xviii). Although the book also deals extensively with the role of the Jesuits in the territorialization of New France (their role in negotiating peace treaties and demarcations is particularly well documented), their role in exploration in this study is somehow left behind. Exploration and mapping by the Jesuits were equally important for the establishment of French power and the economic prosperity of the colony. Yet, the book provides an excellent contextualization of the policies pursued in Paris and Quebec, which determined the fate of the Jesuits not only in their missionary work, but also in their exploration. The book represents a valuable contribution to French colonial history and transatlantic cultural and intellectual exchange, as well as to a better understanding of French influence on the development of modern American society in general.