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This book investigates and assesses how and to what extent the French Catholic missionaries carried out their evangelical activity amid the natives of Acadia/Nova Scotia from the mid-seventeenth century until 1755, the year of the Great Deportation of the Acadians. It provides a new understanding of the role played by the French missionaries in the most peripheral and less populated area of Canada during the colonial period. The decision to focus on this period is dictated by the need to investigate how and to which extent the French missionaries sought to carry out their activity within a contested territory which was exposed to the pressures coming out of both French and British imperial interests.
List of contents
1. Introduction.- 2. A Distant Land: The State of the Missionary Church in Acadia/Nova Scotia in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century.- 3. The Last Years of Preaching.- 4. The Rise of Tension.- 5. A Difficult Cohabitation: The French Missionaries and the British Conquest of Acadia/Nova Scotia.- 6. Coping with the Impossible: The French Missionaries and the Anglo/French Conflict over Acadia/Nova Scotia.- 7. The End of an Era.- 8. Conclusion.
About the author
Matteo Binasco is Adjunct Professor at the Foreigners' University of Siena, Italy. He is also principal investigator in the project 'I+D+I en el marco del Programa Operativo FEDER Andalucía 2014-2020' at the Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville. His previous monograph with Palgrave Macmillan, Making, Breaking and Remaking the Irish Missionary Network: Ireland, Rome and the West Indies in the Seventeenth Century, was published in 2020.
Report
"Matteo Binasco's French Missionaries in Acadia/Nova Scotia, 1654-1755: On a Risky Edge is a much-needed, comprehensive, English-language overview of French missionary endeavour ... . The book also offers a detailed account of the heated interplay between the Recollets, the Diocese of Quebec, and other religious congregations ... . Each chapter is supported by hundreds of endnotes, which is a testimony to the historical master detective at work here." (Mark G. McGowan, Church History, Vol. 92 (3), September, 2023)
