Self-organised networks in the First Global Age: The Jesuits in Japan

Abstract

The paper intends to explore the strength of individual and group agency in the scope of Portuguese overseas expansion at a global level. It further seeks to emphasise the mechanisms of cooperation, both between European agents and between those and local agents and authorities, sometimes led even against the interests of the Portuguese crown. Finally it argues that the success of these contacts depended more often than not on an active process of acculturation and miscegenation, rather than on imposition mechanisms, traditionally regarded as the lever of colonial and empire building processes. To discuss the evidence underlying these assumptions, it focus on the Portuguese case, first at a general level, then from a micro-approach centred on the Jesuit enactments in Japan and their interaction with trade networks in the Pacific Ocean