Brill Research Perspectives in Jesuit Studies, 1, no. 2. Leiden: Brill, 2019. Pp. 115. Pb, $84.00. Available also in Open Access at https://brill.edhh.ma/view/journals/rpjs/1/2/article-p1_1.xml.

Alexandre Coello de la Rosa offers a brief history of the Jesuit missions in Micronesia from arrival in the Marianas Islands in 1668 to the conclusion of World War ii in 1945. The fifteen high-quality images, sixteen sections, over four hundred footnotes, and a bibliography of fourteen pages made for an instructive narrative. I recommend this book as an overview of the Jesuits in Micronesia. In addition, Coello’s wide use of scholars of Pacific Islands studies has much to teach a worldwide audience. The author introduces the global mission of the Society of Jesus and “global modernity in the Iberian colonial empires,” connecting histories of the Jesuits from the Pacific Ocean to Atlantic histories, the Spanish monarchy, and world history, all in a worthy endeavor (2).

Missionaries on Guam lead. Coello includes supporters, detractors, converts, and descendants who were and are the legacy of the Society of Jesus in the Western Pacific. The earliest and most successful Jesuit efforts took place in the Marianas Islands. Two martyrs on Guam, Blessed Diego Luis de San Vitores from Spain and Saint Pedro Calungsod from the Philippines both served and died in the first years of the Jesuit missions in the Marianas Islands.

Other archipelagos emerge in sketches of nineteenth- and twentieth-century missions. The Carolines, Chuuk, Yap, Palau, Pohnpei, and the Marshall Islands had Jesuit priests. We learn about the life of Fr. Santiago López de Rego y Labarta who led the return of Jesuits to Saipan in 1920 and became the bishop of the Micronesian islands in 1923. When López de Rego died in 1941, he had visited many of the islands that spread over 3,400 kilometers. It would take a much longer book to capture the adventure and motivation of such dedicated priests. And that is just the twentieth century. Coello concludes the chronological examination with the Japanese killing of Jesuits in the islands. I wanted to know more about the Filipino Chamorro family on Yap that was killed with their priests before the US invasion in 1944.

Prior to 1668 and the official arrival of Diego Luis de San Vitores and other Jesuits to Guam, other missionaries had attempted to evangelize the then Ladrones Islands. Coello helpfully summarizes Charles R. Boxer’s The Christian Century in Japan, 1549–1650 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1967) about Fray Juan Pobre de Zamora. Fray Juan had been a soldier in the tercios of the Duke of Alba in the Low Countries, a Franciscan mission inspector in Japan, shipwreck survivor, and visitor to Rota in 1602. Back in Spain, he traveled again to the Philippines and returned home in 1611 via India. This “peripatetic friar” died in 1615 just before an intended fourth voyage to the Philippines. Coello’s book is full of such adventurers (18).

Giovanni Antonio Cantova (1686–1731) appears as a principled Jesuit in the Marianas as well as the Caroline Islands. Cantova arrived on Guam in the 1710s and became rector of the school in Hagåtña. He preached against the abuses of Governors Juan Antonio de Pimentel and Luis Antonio Sánchez de Tagle. He had hoped for exemplary behavior among the leaders. Governor Pimentel exiled Cantova and Vice-Provincial Ignacio de Ibargüen from the capital to Humåtac. The dispute concerned forced labor, concubinage, and appropriating lands. After Carolinians came to Guam in 1721, Cantova worked towards proselytizing in the Caroline Islands. Witnessing corruption among the inhabitants of Guam, Cantova yearned for more receptive converts. Finding the ships, outfitting them and gaining permission took until 1728, when Cantova and soldiers first tried to reach the Caroline Islands. That initial voyage failed and Cantova kept trying until in 1731 he arrived on Ulithi. He wrote letters about the cordial reception and the misgivings of a Chamorro “refugee.” Fray Victor Walter tried to inform Guam but went to Manila. Walter and other Jesuits were unable to return until 1733. They found the remnants of a burned town and islanders telling them that the missionaries had gone to Yap. Not finding him, Walter ended up in Manila where from other Carolinians they learned that Cantova had been killed in 1731, trying to baptize an adult (64–66).

There are intriguing history questions throughout Coello’s book. Are the sources reliable? Why were the letters and hagiographic accounts produced? They were not intended for islander’s eyes. In 1994, Vicente M. Diaz addressed these issues in reviewing a collection of primary sources by Rodrigue Lévesque. We never just state facts about the Jesuits in Micronesia. The primary sources “betray the cultural and political interests of their production, their political and social milieu” (Vicente M. Diaz, “Review of Rodrigue Lévesque, History of Micronesia: A Collection of Source Documents, vol. 1: European Discovery 1521–1560,” The Journal of Pacific History 29, no. 1 [1994]: 112). Coello relies often on the Levesque collection. They derive from the archives in Mexico, Spain, and Italy but also from catalogs of book sellers. The locations of some sources are not available. The tangible documents exist in facsimile from the Dolphin Book Company or Maggs Brothers manuscript sale. Levesque transcribed and translated manuscripts in his twenty-volume collection of Micronesian history. They are treasures, but so much more could emerge about the microcosm of Micronesia.

Coello explains that the Jesuits believed that their methods were peaceful but “ended up being far more coercive and violent than expected” (12). The gap between beliefs and results is not much explored in the book. Coello writes that “Christianization was a fundamental aspect” of the Spanish colonialism but Chamorros experienced it as “an exercise in exploitation, forcefulness and humiliation” (24). Yet, Chamorros like Antonio Ayihi or Ignacio de Hineti helped the missionaries. I want to know more about the subsequent generations of islanders, newcomers, and their children in new circumstances. This is not the book on that subject. It emphasizes the missionaries, but the stories of the converts of later generations, deserve precedence.

doi:10.1163/22141332-00704008-06