Neither of the texts translated and published in this volume acquired a large readership at the time when they were written near the end of the seventeenth and the early eighteenth century. Guy Tachard’s Relation de Voyage aux Indes has never been published, and the manuscript is available in its original French version at the Bibliotheque National de Paris (in pdf form on Gallica 18030). This is the third and the sole unpublished voyage written by this indefatigable Jesuit whose correspondence and life is relatively well known. The second and shorter account of his travels in the East by Nicola Cima, an Augustinian friar has not attracted much attention in the scholarship although the text had been published in Italian in 1976 by Francesco Surdich.

In the erudite introduction to the volume and to each author, Halikowski Smith is successful in showing the interest for these two “missionary” accounts. They are, in fact, not so impressive for their strictly speaking missionary subject matter, but for their nationalist (avant la lettre) and mercantile attitude that they did not even try to hide. Each of them is writing to motivate their home audience to take note of the economic and colonial advantages of trading in the east Indies—India and Southeast Asia—and grabbing a piece of economic cake already in the hands of other seafaring Europeans.

Guy Tachard’s document was written in Versaille during the three years (1699–1702) before his fifth and the last journey back East from which he did not return, and it was meant to inform the French king and the Compagnie Royale des Indes of various coastal places in the Indies where French could and should establish trading stations (loges) or even try to buy or conquer the territory to make commercial profits. In the Memorandum to the King written in 1700 and published in the volume, Tachard insisted that Mergui in today’s southern Myanmar rather than Pondicherry was the best port in the East from which to conduct trade with China and with India. Halikowski Smith points to the fact that, Tachard’s was completely fanciful and wishful thinking project, as were probably some of the descriptions of the courteous reception of the French at the court of Siam after the palace “revolution” of 1688.

Cima’s account is even more unmissionary since it is a straightforward advertisement and advocacy before the Venetian Savii Grandi de Consiglio to make a deal with the Danes who were already sailing to the Indies and to establish a Venetian trade business. He had it all planned, and his account ends with an eighteen-point proposal of what had to be done concretely.

Both Tachard and Cima express an excess of patriotism and tie it up with the business venture in the East. For Cima “a virile and vigorous spirit is required, whilst the action [navigation to the Indies], just by itself is so beautiful, useful, glorious and magnanimous” (226). According to Tachard the shipwrecks killed off more than half of the Jesuits sent to the East, which makes Cima’s statement quite disingenuous. In fact, Tachard’s descriptions of monsoon storms and the episodes of famous ocean tragedies are detailed and told in dramatic style and with scientific observation. Tachard’s narrative wants to reclaim French valour and reputation of “bravery, good faith, loyalty, and generosity” (144) that had “withered” ever since they lost their footing in Bangkok and Mergui. The two accounts converge on the point of the importance of retaking or regaining presence in the kingdom of Siam.

Only as an afterthought, the two missionaries assert that if France and Venice established a strong regional economic position, the missionaries could proceed with their own work of conversion. “Within four years,” claims Tachard, “we will have baptised more than ten or twelve thousand gentiles in the Kingdom of Tenasserim (Myanmar) and within ten years [that] all the kingdom’s population would become Christian and good Frenchmen” (144). Side by side with this imperial wishful thinking, he also remarked on religious toleration. “Everyone then has the liberty of residence in that kingdom and the right to live according to his religion and to profess it publicly as do the Tartars of Laos, the Japanese, the Muslims, Englishmen, Dutch, Portuguese, and all the Catholics and others, among whom our men of the cloth may wear their habits publicly and thus go about the whole kingdom and undertake processions and exercise all their rites solemnly, whether in conducting the last rites (portare il santissimo Viatico), or in burying the dead, the churches being public places, as too the bells and organs, where celebrations, prayers, and everything is conducted as if we were in Italy itself” (204). What Cima is referring to here, without mentioning it directly, is the question of missionary accommodation, heralded by the Jesuits. It was obviously not needed in Siam, which for all the Jesuit opponents was a good thing, as was the fact that missionaries had “great freedom and […] security” (205) since “everyone in his own colony and church professed his or her own rites” (204). Religious pluralism and toleration that Cima extolled in the kingdom of Siam as a perfect place to expand Christianity is something Jesuit missionaries remarked in many other places such as in Madurai Mission and Mughal and Chinese empire but by the mid-seventeenth century it was clear to all that the competition among religious specialists and their teaching in the completely free and tolerant situation did not necessarily favor Catholic conversions. In this case also, Cima had a cavalier attitude to facts to promote his cause in the Venetian Council.

Tachard who promised in the beginning of his text that the last part would be devoted to the events in the Madurai Mission completely forgot about it by the end. Equally sparse and indifferent are his remarks about other Jesuits, for example, those he met during his first and last visit to Goa (116). From Jesuit correspondence we learnt to expect outpouring of love for their brethren of any nationality, but it was obviously not Tachard’s priority in his text even if he obviously had closer relations with French Jesuits.

Halikowski Smith writes in his introduction that the late seventeenth century was “the end of one missionary era” (7). Indeed, it was the end of the heroic, universalist missionary figures such as St. Francis Xavier and the beginning of the new breed of missionaries who belonged to “national” orders. The Jesuits found themselves divided by nations despite the rules enshrined in Ignatius of Loyola’s Constitutions.

The two travel accounts are otherwise a rich canvas of events, places, actors, and curiosities encountered along the way. Both authors invent, lie, and misunderstand the situations, but the variety of details and their opinions are precious for understanding the European attitudes in the East and the strategies employed in intercultural encounters. The editor and translator, Halikowski Smith must be commended for a learned and polyglot commentaries and ample footnotes. They are a treasure trove for future research.

With erudite books like this, a special attention must be given to details which require careful editing and printing. There are quite a few typos and mistakes that mar the reading of this otherwise extremely interesting book. One Jesuit is misread by the translator as Manduits, although at times he appears in the correct form of Mauduit; the Protestant Halle, a missionary who accompanied Ziegenbalg was not Fabricius (who was still a child) but Plütschau (176); Mathurinus (de la Croze) had been a Benedictine monk, but by the time he corresponded with Leibniz he had been converted to Protestantism (167). Nevertheless, the volume is precious for all students of early modern world in Asia and Southeast Asia since it is a welcome addition to historiography and history of travel and Christian missions.