Tensions, ironies, relationships among different people and intersecting webs of meaning all figure prominently in this history of Jesuit experiences in India during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Rather than focusing on how the Jesuits influenced India during these years, Ines G. Županov uses the topographical image of the “tropics” as a vehicle to show how experiences in India shaped the overall identity of the Society of Jesus.
The relationship between the center and the periphery, one of the most common themes in postcolonial studies, operates as a focus of the book. Established in the post-Tridentine era to support papal authority, the Jesuits, led by Ignatius of Loyola and highly influenced in Asia by Francis Xavier, developed a centralized authority and theology of obedience. Yet, Missionary Tropics shows how the tensions and ironies of the “peripheral” context of India shaped the center. At the end of the book, Županov concludes...