>> Hello, everyone.
This week, we're going to be talking about
missionaries in our lesson in Module Three.
It, well, what are missionaries?
Of course, we've run across them before.
The idea of a missionary is one that you're
probably all familiar with.
What we are looking particularly at this week,
however, is the role of Jesuit missionaries
in colonial expansion in North American territories.
And so we're going to be looking at, to introduce
a concept that has been important in imperial
expansion lessons and previous discussions,
proselytization.
Missionaries proselytize.
That is, they try to create new converts or,
in this case, the Catholic Christian cause
by going out into new territories, such as
the indigenous territories that we're, we've
looked at in the last lesson and going to
be looking at more this lesson, and try to
convince or make the local peoples become
Christians.
There's a lot for us to think about in terms
of perspectives and significance and other
historical thinking concepts, but give us
a little bit more background, Ben.
>> Sure.
The Jesuits are, they're actually very famous
historically.
They still exist today.
>> Right.
>> Religious order.
You may, in fact, have seen a Jesuit in your
lifetime.
They dress entirely in black.
They wear, they continue to wear the long
black robes.
>> Yeah.
>> There's the film called Black Robe, which
is--
>> Yeah.
And the current pope.
>> The current pope is a Jesuit.
Yeah, exactly.
They're famous for a lot of things.
They're famous kind of for their vigour, their
strong faith.
>> Yeah.
>> They're often considered slightly over-the-top
in terms of their faith, but they're also
famous for education.
>> Yeah.
>> And they're famous as running very effective
schools and lots of--
>> Yeah.
>> You certainly see this in Africa and South
America.
They have a lot of schools that continue to
be run by Jesuits today, so--
>> Yeah.
>> That basic pattern that we see today is
begun in the 17th century.
>> Important for proselytization for missionary
work.
>> Absolutely, so they're bringing the Word
of God, the Catholic version of the Word of
God--
>> Yeah.
>> To the heathens of these countries and
then spreading the Christian faith in that
kind of manner.
So this is, so we're in North America, but
this is happening in Africa.
This is happening in Asia.
>> Yeah.
>> This is happening in Australia.
This is happening literally all over the emerging
colonial world in this time period.
So they're very, very important -- important
for a whole bunch of reasons.
And we're going to look at them as missionaries,
as people who are trying to spread the Words
of God, and that's certainly a clear role
that they play, but what if, because more
interesting, particularly for us in this course,
is understanding the other role that they
may have played, and this is a more contested
area -- their role as agents of empire.
>> Yeah.
>> Of encouraging and spreading colonization.
>> Okay, so the relationship between religious
and political life and, or the institutional
church--
>> Yes.
>> And the state.
>> Yeah.
We'll go back to that first lesson on imperial
expansion.
We saw people discussing the reasons to justify,
to legitimize expansion.
It was mostly about, you know, there are these
resources--
>> Yeah.
>> There that we can acquire for ourselves
and make ourselves richer.
But they always mention spreading the Word
of God.
The people that we've been focussing on are
doing the commercial end of that.
>> Yeah.
>> These are the people doing the religious
side of it.
And what we see is that they come together
in some ways, and they certainly advance similar
programs--
>> Yeah.
>> But their aims and their intentions are
something we can talk about and discuss.
>> So there's no clear separation of religious
values and economic values and political values?
We have to think of those as useful categories
for our own analysis, perhaps.
>> We can separate them, but ultimately--
>> Okay, yeah.
>> We see that they come back together again.
>> Okay.
>> Very, very important for understanding
that.
For historians, the Jesuits are really important
too because they wrote a lot.
>> Yeah.
>> There's a whole series of works that have
been published in--
>> Yeah.
>> A couple of editions, translated into English,
translated into French.
Many of them are written, most of them are
written in Latin, but called The Jesuit Relations.
>> Yeah.
>> And, of course, that means they were relating
their tales, the relations of the Jesuits.
>> Right.
>> And they wrote prodigiously.
They're writing letters back to Rome, back
to France telling what's going on.
So it's describing what's happening.
>> Right.
>> And these things play a very important
role because they're very detailed.
These are very educated men.
Early modern society doesn't have a lot of
very well-educated men.
All Jesuits are very well-educated men.
>> This might be--
>> They write well.
They write effectively.
They tell a lot of stories.
>> And they know multiple languages, which
is also significant in understanding the relations
with the people that were running across for
that first time.
>> Exactly.
>> Because they were interested, as I understand
it, deeply in understanding cultures from
the inside.
>> They firmly believed that conversion is
only possible if they understand the culture
they're encountering.
So they want, they're like anthropologists.
They're not, I mean, they're not trained like
them, but they think like anthropologists.
They're thinking, I want to understand--
>> Yeah.
>> Those people.
I want to understand their culture, and that's
a way for me to insert Christianity into the
culture.
>> So they are thinking in some ways as we
are trying to as historians.
>> Yeah.
>> They're trying to recognize their own perspective,
their own situation, their own place in the
world, and then where other people are coming
from, from their points of view, but with,
for them, a political--
>> Absolutely.
>> A religious, a--
>> That's right.
>> Purpose in mission work that's different
than our work as historians.
>> Absolutely.
And it allows us to get up close and see this
relationship often on a one-on-one level.
Oftentimes, they're talking about, I had a
conversation with a man last night, and he
told me this.
So we can see things that simply aren't available
to us as historians otherwise.
>> Yeah.
>> Problematic texts in all kinds of ways,
and that's what we're going to talk about
in these readings.
>> Yeah.
>> There's all kinds of critical perspectives
we can bring to bear here.
>> Yeah.
>> Still fabulous sources for understanding
this time period.
>> So a good point to introduce the big question,
or do we need some more background first?
>> No.
I think this, because this is the basic point
we're going to get at.
How could we characterize the role of Jesuits
in New France?
How this is, we're only looking at New France.
We're going to look at Acadia, modern day
Nova Scotia, and Canada, modern day Quebec.
We're going to look at a couple of Jesuits
in those territories and how they described
the people they were encountering.
And you'll see some remarkable things here.
You'll, but what we want to do is be able
to step back from that and say, how are they
understanding these people?
What's the general way we can characterize
their relationship with those people?
>> So worldview is again--
>> Absolutely.
>> Something that's significant here because
this is in fact how one group of people with
a particular Christian Catholic worldview
and a colonialist worldview are trying to
understand another people's worldviews, and
we're trying to understand their worldviews.
>> Exactly.
So we can look at them at--
>> Yeah.
>> One very simple level and say, what are
they doing?
>> Yes.
>> We can look at it and say, what are their
aims?
We can see that they express their aims.
They express very, very clearly.
Part of the thing we should perhaps mention
is--
>> Okay.
>> That the relations are, they're not just
letters.
They're not just saying, hey, guys, guess
what I'm doing?
There's a purpose here.
They're selling these tracts back in France,
back in Italy.
They're raising money for their colonization.
>> Oh, okay.
>> For their, sorry, for their missionary
activities through the sale of these, so they
want them to be engaging.
They want them to be interesting.
They want to tell interesting stories, but
they want the highlight that they're doing
God's work.
So when people buy these, they're not just
buying an interesting thing, which is certainly
part of what's being purchased, but you're
also purchasing something that advances Christianity's
cause.
So again, there's that dual purpose under
way there, and the relations have to be seen
through that kind of lens.
>> Okay, so there's money involved--
>> Money involved.
>> In this.
And we're going to be talking in a later lesson
in this module about consumerism.
>> Yes.
>> This is an early example of ideas in a
marketplace.
>> Absolutely.
>> Okay, that's a fascinating angle--
>> It is.
>> But it's one in the background.
And how much should everyone be paying attention
to that?
>> It's in the background, but it is colouring
their purpose.
It is--
>> Okay.
>> Very -- those guys are there for a particular
reason.
They're not just there to tell stories.
>> Yeah.
>> They're there to tell stories for a purpose,
so we need to know everything else.
>> Okay, so understanding the subtext.
>> Yeah.
>> Looking at the, what's on the page, but
then trying to figure out what's going on
in the minds of people and how they're seeing
the world and--
>> Exactly, and we could read those, and given,
despite all their biases, we could still read
them intelligently.
We could still learn from these sources.
>> Yep, like we always have to do as historians.
>> Exactly, and speaking of historians, historians
who work with these texts--
>> Yeah.
>> Have interpreted them really quite differently.
We're going to see a dimensional [inaudible]
this week as well.
>> Yeah.
Yes.
One of the big, important learning challenges,
historical thinking challenges for this module
and for the rest of the course, one that we've
already practised in some way, is adding a
dimension of historiographical thinking to
the historical thinking skills that we've
been learning and we've just discussed for
a few minutes now.
So for this week, we're going to be reading
excerpts from work by two historians, Blackburn
and Seaman [phonetic].
>> Carole Blackburn?
>> And--
>> Eric Seaman.
>> Eric Seaman.
Thank you.
And these two particular historians are each
providing an interpretation of quite a complex
and rich array of primary sources.
What we want everyone to do is think about
what each author says.
We're going to be getting each group to read
only one of the two texts for this week, so
when you read either Carole Seaman or Eric
-- Carole Blackburn or Eric Seaman -- what
you should do is think about what each, how
each interprets that role of the Jesuits in
their relationship with the indigenous populations
of New France.
But then, that's the historiographical dimension
-- what, how historians make sense of the
complex path -- then see what you can do to
contribute to or test what Blackburn or Seaman
say based on your careful, close reading of
the primary sources that we've provided.
And then you can also look at how the other
group using the text, the historiographical
text that you didn't read made sense of the
primary sources.
>> Right, and if you're listening to this
before you've read the introduction, we should
make clear that you're only going to read
one of the two primary sources.
>> Right, so you read either Blackburn or
Seaman.
>> Yeah.
>> You read all the primary sources and see
what sense you can make, what, the conclusions
you can draw about the worldviews of the authors,
the creators of these primary documents not
just in relationship to your own point of
view, but in relationship also to the point
of view of either Blackburn or Seaman.
>> And I think that's a really interesting
exercise this week because oftentimes we read
an historical text and we think, oh, I understand
the subject now.
But these two authors have really quite different
views on what that relationship was all about.
They see it really quite differently.
>> Yeah.
>> And I see, and I think in our discussions
this week, I think we can work with that basic
distinction.
>> Yeah, so keep an eye on the overall discussion
in your forum with an eye to how the other
group is understanding--
>> Absolutely.
>> The documents, the primary documents in
relationship to the secondary documents.
This exercise in historiographical and historical
thinking is related to some of, many of the
exercises that we've done previously in this
course, just to connect the toolbox project
for this lesson to earlier ones.
So if you think back, for example, to the
lesson on the British Agricultural Revolution
or revolutions, there we had everyone read
two historiographical sources or excerpts
from two, and we did the same thing last week.
This week, we're getting you to combine that
reading of secondary sources, historiographical
sources with your own close reading of primary
sources.
>> Good exercise.
>> Important exercise.
It's also important for the final project
and the final exam, so--
>> That's where we're headed.
>> That's where we're headed.
Practice regularly.
Practice weekly.
Practice really thoughtfully this week, and
you're on a great course to a good completion
of the course.
>> Excellent.
