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Abstract
Anti-European upheavals and revolutions play a prominent role in Latin American and African history. Surprisingly, there exist few contemporary visual representations of these rebellions, and most of those that do exist were produced in Europe. Seeing them as a threat to the colonial order, Europeans generally visualized the events of overseas rebellions as satires that played with the motif of the “world turned upside down.” People of color in a superior rank or position were presented as anomalies. This chapter explores three of these rare visual representations and discusses how overseas history influenced European pictorial traditions around 1800.
Abstract
Economic activities of religious orders were often a hidden necessity, but could end up being considered a “scandal.” Economic sustenance was continuously debated––within the framework encompassing and mobilizing the concepts ranging from the profane to the sacred––at various institutional levels of religious orders. The case of the South American Jesuit provinces (1568–1767) reveals the way they discussed economic matters whilst often showing subtle semantic differences between what was to be permitted or forbidden. A characteristic structure of these debates is the interplay of collective decision-making processes and the well-known top-down principle of Jesuit government.
The inner dynamics of collective decision-making processes cannot be gleaned and understood from the printed Constitutions, the ultimate normative document for the Jesuits, and other printed Jesuit decrees and rulings, which are generally the only sources taken into consideration when looking into legislative questions concerning the Jesuits. Instead, little known and until now neglected local manuscript rules reveal internal debates on economic topics such as the slave trade, production and distribution of goods, debates on just pricing, and financial services to non-Jesuit and lay merchants. The decision-making far away from the Roman headquarters had been in fact quite autonomous. When the Curia’s voice from the Jesuit headquarters in Rome emitted its opinions and decisions, it was mostly ad hoc and unhelpful for the local decision-makers.