Gauvin Alexander Bailey – författare

Most monumental buildings of France’s global empire – such as the famous Saigon and Hanoi Opera Houses – were built in South and Southeast Asia. Much of this architecture, and the history of who built it and how, has been overlooked.The Architecture of Empire considers the large-scale public architecture associated with French imperialism in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century India, Siam, and Vietnam, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century Indochina, the largest colony France ever administered in Asia. Offering a sweeping panorama of the buildings of France’s colonial project, this is the first study to encompass the architecture of both the ancien régime and modern empires, from the founding of the French trading company in the seventeenth century to the independence and nationalist movements of the mid-twentieth century. Gauvin Bailey places particular emphasis on the human factor: the people who commissioned, built, and lived in these buildings. Almost all of these architects, both Europeans and non-Europeans, have remained unknown beyond – at best – their surnames. Through extensive archival research, this book reconstructs their lives, providing vital background for the buildings themselves. Much more than in the French empire of the Western Hemisphere, the buildings in this book adapt to indigenous styles, regardless of whether they were designed and built by European or non-European architects.The Architecture of Empire provides a unique, comprehensive study of structures that rank among the most fascinating examples of intercultural exchange in the history of global empires.

In recent years scholars in a range of disciplines have begun to re-evaluate the history of the Society of Jesus. Approaching the subject with new questions and methods, they have reconsidered the importance of the Society in many sectors, including those related to the sciences and the arts. They have also looked at the Jesuits as emblematic of certain traits of early modern Europeans, especially as those Europeans interacted with ''the Other'' in Asia and the Americas.

Originating in an international conference held at Boston College in 1997, the thirty-five essays here reflect this new historiographical trend. Focusing on the Old Society- the Society before its suppression in 1773 by papal edict- they examine the worldwide Jesuit undertaking in such fields as music, art, architecture, devotional writing, mathematics, physics, astronomy, natural history, public performance, and education, and they give special attention to the Jesuits'' interaction with non-European cultures, in North and South America, China, India, and the Philippines. A picture emerges not only of the individual Jesuit, who might be missionary, diplomat, architect, and playwright over the course of his life in the Society, but also of the immense and many-faceted Jesuit enterprise as forming a kind of ''cultural ecosystem''.

The Jesuits of the Old Society liked to think they had a way of proceeding special to themselves. The question, Was there a Jesuit style, a Jesuit corporate culture? is the thread that runs through this interdisciplinary collection of studies.

Recent years have seen scholars in a wide range of disciplines re-evaluate the history of the Society of Jesus. In 1997, a group of scholars convened a major international conference to discuss the world of the Jesuits between 1540 and 1773 (the year of its suppression by papal edict). This meeting led to the creation of the first volume in this series, The Jesuits, which examined the worldwide Jesuit undertaking in such fields as music, art, architecture, devotional writing, mathematics, physics, astronomy, natural history, public performance, and education, with special attention to the Jesuits'' interaction with non-European cultures.

This second volume, following a second conference in 2002, continues in a similar path as its predecessor, complementing the regional coverage with contributions on the Flemish and Iberian provinces, on the missions in Japan, and in post-Suppression Russia and the United States. The performing arts, like theatre and music, are broadly treated, and, in addition to continued attention to painting and architecture, the volume contains essays on a range of objets d''art, including statuary, reliquaries, and alter pieces - as well as on gardens, mechanical clocks, and related automata. Other themes include finances, natural theology, censorship within the Jesuit order, and the Society''s relationship to women.

Perhaps most important, the volume gives particular attention to the eighteenth century, the ''age of disasters'' for the Jesuits - the negative papal ruling on Chinese Rites, the destruction the of Paraguay Reductions, and the suppressions of the order that began in Portugal and that culminated in the general Suppression of 1773. With contributions from distinguished scholars from a dozen different countries, The Jesuits, II continues in the illustrious tradition of its predecessor to make an important contribution to religious memory.