- Kazuhisa Takeda, Assistant Professor (January, 2015)
Three Axes of Research Themes
I am a history specialist with a focus on the history of Latin America in the colonial period (the 16th to 18th century). My main research themes include: (1) the history of Christian missions in Latin America, (2) the social and cultural impact of Christian missions on the indigenous peoples in the Americas, and (3) the military aspects of Christian missions. In particular, I have been studying the missionary activities carried out by the Jesuits in the period of 1609 to 1767 in the Rio de la Plata region in the southeastern part of the South American continent (the area extending across modern-day southeastern Paraguay, northeastern Argentina, southern Brazil, and Uruguay) for more than 15 years. The Jesuits in the Rio de la Plata region managed settlements for indigenous people for about 150 years. These settlements were called reducciones or misiones in Spanish (singular, reducción or misión). At the peak period in the 18th century, the number of reducciones reached 30 and the total population over 140,000.
Figure 1: The Rio de la Plata region, the subject of my research. The blue dots on the right side shows the locations of reducciones.
Source: Sélim Abou, La “República” jesuítica de los guaraníes (1609-1768) y su herencia, Buenos Aires: Manrique Zago Ediciones, 1996.
Figure 2: The remains of San Ignacio Miní, one of the reducción churches. It is located in modern-day Misiones Province, Argentina. It was registered as a World Heritage Site in 1984 (Courtesy of Assistant Professor Kazuhisa Takeda).
Attracted by the History and Culture of the Spanish-Speaking World during a Trip
I majored in English during my undergraduate years, but I thought that I would like to learn other languages at the same time to expand my language ability. Then, I began seriously studying Spanish, my second foreign language. To this day, my life has been strongly influenced by a trip of about one week that I took to Madrid, the capital of Spain. I visited museums and galleries that exhibited Spanish history and culture, and was astonished to learn that Spain’s influence had strongly extended to distant Latin America hundreds of years before. In particular, I was interested in the transformation of the native cultures of indigenous peoples due to colonization and Christianization, which were promoted simultaneously under the leadership of Spain and Portugal after Columbus’ “discovery” of America in 1492.
I decided to become a researcher because I was driven by an impulse to look into these themes academically. Various materials necessary for research are scattered in archives and libraries in North and South America and around Europe, and I have visited many countries for this reason.
The Background that Initiated the Jesuit Activities in the Rio de La Plata Region
The “discovery” of America was an unprecedented event that greatly surprised and puzzled the people of Europe when Spain consulted the Pope (who was regarded as God’s vicegerent) on how to benefit from the greatest discovery in the century. The agreement concluded between Spain and the Pope was that if Spain could Christianize the people living in the discovered land, then the land would be authorized as Spanish territory.
With this background, it was the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) that aimed to Christianize mankind. A relatively new religious order, the Society of Jesus was officially authorized in 1540. The Jesuits are famous for actively going out into distant and unknown lands and making dogged efforts to Christianize the native inhabitants.
The Christianization of the Indigenous Guaraní in the Rio de La Plata Region
The majority of the indigenous people in the Rio de la Plata region are a people called Guaraní. They cultivated root crops such as cassava, and moved once every several years in search of other fertile land; they had adopted a semi-sedentary agricultural lifestyle. The Guaraní language they spoke was very different from European languages and had no written form. They lived in simple dwellings with straw roofs, and pagan-like elements (from a Christian perspective) were observed in their culture, such as polygamy and magic rituals.
Figure 3: The Guaraní before Christianization, as imagined by the Europeans
Source: Ulrich Schmidl, Americae pars VII, Frankfurt: Officina Theodori de Bry, 1599.
The Jesuits carried out sense-based missionary work for the Guaraní. Instead of trying to teach difficult doctrine or theoretically explain the concept of God, they adopted teaching methods with visual and auditory appeal, using paintings and music. They also worked on using the alphabet to make a dictionary and grammar book for the Guaraní language, which did not then have a written form. The members of the Society of Jesus included mestizos of Spanish and Guaraní descent as well as local born missionaries. These people played important roles as interpreters and intermediaries for the Guaraní.
In this way, the Jesuits gradually came to fit in with the Guaraní, and the Guaraní started to accept Christianity. What made a definitive impact on the Christianization of the Guaraní was the communal living of the Jesuits and Guaraní people, which lasted for 150 years, starting from the early 17th century in reducción mentioned earlier. The difficulties of cohabitating with people with a fundamentally different language and culture for a long period of time are beyond our imagination.
Military Training for the Guaraní and the Banishment of the Jesuits
As the Rio de la Plata region is adjacent to Brazil, the Guaraní were intermittently invaded by expeditionary forces composed of Portuguese based in Sao Paulo. Nearly all of the reducción churches (villages) built by the Jesuits were attacked, and a large number of Guaraní were enslaved and taken away to Brazil. Facing such a dangerous situation, the Jesuits decided to arm themselves in self-defense, although it provoked controversy regarding Christian teachings. European military training was provided to the Guaraní to enhance the defense of the reducciones.
The Jesuits divided the Guaraní into military units such as infantry and cavalry, and trained them in the use of various European weapons, including firearms. The training was conducted with strict discipline and order, and the Guaraní soldiers were required to form tidy rows on orders or signals from their superiors like a machine, and to take offensive or defensive actions promptly. This style of fighting was very different from the practices that their ancestors had passed down. What made it possible to train the Guaraní in this completely new fighting technique was the presence of ex-army Jesuits who had battle experience in Europe and in Spanish territories in the Americas.
Figure 4: A military training manual describing how to form a semicircular formation, an example of a machinelike formation, published in Europe in the 16th century. The Guaraní were trained to form military formations like this by the Jesuits.
Source: Martín de Eguiluz, Milicia, discurso, y regla militar, Amberes: Casa de Pedro Bellero, 1595.
By gradually enhancing the power of the military and contributing to deterring the intrusion of the Portuguese and suppressing the warlike indigenous people a number of times, the Guaraní came to be praised as the keystone of the regional defense. However, during the years from the middle to the end of the 18th century, the Europeans came to regard the Guaraní as dangerous because it was rumored that they were quite capable of fomenting a rebellion or to use their forces to organize an independence movement against Spanish colonial rule. As a matter of fact, in the mid-18th century, the Guaraní troops rebelled over a change in colonial borders between Spain and Portugal. This military rebellion is now known as the Guaraní War. The Jesuits were subject to severe criticism because they were considered to be the masterminds behind the scenes.
In Europe, on the other hand, thoughts supporting absolute monarchy were gradually growing during this period. The role of defense that had been taken up by the Jesuits and the Guaraní in the Rio de la Plata region became the responsibility of the people who exercised governmental authority
Finally, during the period of 1767 to 1768, the expulsion of the Jesuits from all Spanish territories was officially ordered by the King of Spain. At that time, the Jesuits had already been banished from countries such as Portugal and France, including their overseas territories. However, this did not dispel the voices of those that regarded the Society of Jesus as dangerous, and in 1773, the Society was forced to dissolve by papal order. Fortunately, its reunion was officially approved by the Pope in 1814, and the Society exists even today.
It has long been said that the Guaraní who remained after the expulsion of the Jesuits recovered the ancient lifestyle of their ancestors. However, research over the last few decades has revealed that many of them had been Europeanized or Christianized from various perspectives as the reducción life extended over a long period of time. Instead, they are thought to have moved to cities to become workers, such as forgers and sewers; to have made their livings by farming or stockbreeding; or to have served as mercenaries in the wars of independence that embroiled all of Latin America after the 19th century. At any rate, it is supposed that they remained viable in the turbulent times by making use of the knowledge and skills they had gained in the reducciones.
Studying from Both Global and Local Perspectives
The Christian missions for the Guaraní conducted by the Jesuits in the Rio de la Plata region in the southeastern part of the Latin American continent, and the training in European military techniques and tactics were a local phenomenon. Looking at them from a global perspective, however, we can see that similar situations arose simultaneously across the world. In Ming Dynasty China, for example, there was a Jesuit appointed as an imperial military adviser. In the Philippines as well, the Jesuits played an important role in constructing a military fortification. The military reputation of the Guaraní spread over the Spanish territories in the Americas, and made the Spanish Empire consider establishing corps based on the Guaraní army for the defense of modern-day eastern Bolivia and Guam, which were territories of Spain until 1898.
Francis Xavier, who is well known in Japan, was a member of the Society of Jesus. The activities of the Society of Jesus developed on a global scale were the forerunners of current trends in globalization. Looking closely at the traces of the Jesuits, we can see that the local incidents and events were linked to global movements. I think that living in the 21st century, it is very important for us to have such perspectives of different dimensions.
Interview and Composition: Seiko Aoyama/Shotaro Hamaguchi
In cooperation with: Waseda University Graduate School of Political Science J-School
