Early Modern Overseas Careers East-Central Europeans As Jesuit Missionaries And Dutch East India Employees

In the early modern period two European networks the Society of Jesus and the Dutch East India Company (VOC) spanned the globe and contributed to its multifaceted globalization. This book focuses on the members of the former Jesuit missionaries and the employees of the Dutch trading firm originating from Central and Eastern Europe. The well-chosen case studies examine the group characteristics career influences and narratives of these Central Eastern Europeans. They explore the question of why subjects of Polish kings Transylvanian princes or Habsburg emperors dreamed of venturing overseas with the colonial merchants or aspired to work as missionaries in China and Japan. The book examines the complexities of this early modern globalization: its scope limits importance social ethnic and political ramifications. It researches how these networks reached out to the region of Central and Eastern Europe. The authors argue that the region was hardly considered peripheral from the perspective of Rome (and the Jesuits) or the Netherlands (and the colonial traders). They do however explore whether there were glass ceilings or limits of reach within the two networks for individuals from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth or the Kingdom of Hungary. |Early Modern Overseas Careers East-Central Europeans as Jesuit Missionaries and Dutch East India Employees