Craig Clunas writes:

The book does not claim to give a full account of the Jesuit presence in China but rather a history of the vice-province of China, founded in 1619 and always organisationally a dependency of the (then flourishing, but ultimately abortive) province of Japan. Dominated by Portuguese personnel, and dependent logistically on the Portuguese crown and its enclave of Macau, the vice-province saw itself as competing even with other Jesuit missions. With other elements of the Catholic Church, the relationship was positively hostile, and Brockey is never unsure whose side he is on. He writes, for example, that ‘a tide of rivals from Manila, Rome and France gathered on Chinese shores; soon it would crash against the vice-province.’

(LRB 7 February 2008)

Harvard | hardback 496 pp. |ISBN: 9780674024489