Jesuit Presence in the Mariana Islands

A Historiographic Overview (1668-1769)

By Alexandre Coello de la Rosa, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

Abstract

My contribution is a historiographic overview of the scholarly research about the conquest and evangelization of the Mariana Islands (XVII-XVIII centuries) in the 21 st century. Since the pioneering work of renowned scholars of Micronesian history, such as Marjorie G. Driver and Francis X. Hezel, historians, archaeologists and anthropologists have analyzed Jesuit missions not only as a complement to colonial power dynamics in the Asia-Pacific, but also as a privileged field for analyzing cross-cultural encounters. Faced with essentialist approaches that question the “aboriginal” character of the current CHamoru of the Marianas, other studies reject their supposed disappearance, and appeal to their cultural continuity in historical time.