Fur Gott und Konig: Die Mission der Jesuiten im kolonialen Mexiko (review)

One of the continual controversies in mission studies has been whether the missions were beneficial or harmful to the indigenous people who lived in them. This book falls squarely in the latter camp. The author sees the mission as a crucial instrument in the bloody Spanish conquest of the natives of northwestern Mexico, with few redeeming values for the Indians. However, the book is much more than an indictment of Spanish or Jesuit colonial policies. Through the exhaustive use and sharp analysis of sources, the author also contributes much to our understanding of a whole host of other issues, including the colonial economy, indigenous reactions to the colonial enterprise, and labor systems. Few works can equal this book in its scope and thoroughness.

The book is organized in a roughly chronological manner, following the mission system in its life cycle. This highlights Hausberger's principal argument. The first two chapters deal with the mission as an instrument of conquest, following the story from subregion to subregion within northwestern Mexico. The author argues that the missions' establishment resulted from explicit or implicit coercion. Either the missionary took along soldiers to force the Indians to accept the missions, or the Spanish pressured the indigenous groups to such an extent that they accepted a mission. According to the author, the missionaries rarely went into a region that had not already been profoundly affected by the European presence, debunking the missionary chroniclers' claims of having been pioneers for the Spanish Crown. Hausberger is aware of the differences between regions and ethnic groups within northwestern Mexico and analyzes how these variations affected the missionary enterprise. For example, the lack of water made it impossible for the Jesuits to establish truly sedentary populations in Baja California, keeping the missionaries from converting their charges into agriculturists. This made these missions much more ephemeral than elsewhere in northwestern Mexico. Peasant cultivators such as the Yaquis in turn were doomed to accept the missions, for they had no way to escape the clutches of the Spanish.

Another chapter analyzes the management of the mission and the conversion of the mission population. Hausberger follows the lead of many mission researchers of the past decade or so, asserting that conversion was incomplete. Although the mission had tremendous effects on the lifeways of indigenous groups, the Jesuits were unable to change completely to their liking the Indians' beliefs or behavior. The author provides abundant evidence that coercion was a daily occurrence on the missions and that the missionaries felt that this quotidian violence was necessary to transform their subjects into good Christians and subjects of the Spanish Empire. Hausberger also shows how the Indians resisted in ways small and large, often with success.

In the last two chapters, Hausberger steps back from the internal workings of the missions to study their economy and their effects on the frontier as a whole. A lengthy chapter is dedicated to the mission economy; in it he examines the organization of work, the type of agriculture practiced, artisanal activity, ranching, mining, and commerce. He again takes into account regional variations, showing how the missions in the more agriculturally productive regions supported those such as in Baja California, where even the Jesuits' vaunted commercial abilities could not create profits. He demonstrates that the Jesuit colleges during the eighteenth century began increasingly to keep portions of the missions' income for themselves, including the royal subsidies that were supposed to support the missions. The last chapter is dedicated to the missions within the context of regional society, where the main focus is on the mission population as a labor reserve for colonial frontier society.

The research that went into this book is very impressive. Hausberger fully utilizes underused German-language sources left by the many German-speaking Jesuits. The bulk of the evidence comes from the eighteenth century and inevitably the book provides the most detailed picture...