Book contents
- Protestant Empires
- Protestant Empires
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Reworking Reformation in the Early English Atlantic
- 2 Puritanism in a Local Context: Ministry, People, and Church in 1630s Massachusetts
- 3 Learned Reading in the Atlantic Colonies: How Humanist Practices Crossed the Atlantic
- 4 Portable Lives: Reformed Artisans and Refined Materials in the Refugee Atlantic
- 5 Idolatry, Markets, and Confession: The Global Project of the de Bry Family
- 6 “Better the Turk than the Pope”: Calvinist Engagement with Islam in Southeast Asia
- 7 Inventing a Lutheran Ritual: Baptisms of Muslims and Africans in Early Modern Germany
- 8 Conversion and Its Discontents on the Southern Colonial Frontier: The Pietist Encounter with Non-Christians in Colonial Georgia
- 9 Globalizing the Protestant Reformation through Millenarian Practices
- 10 Global Protestant Missions and the Role of Emotions
- 11 The Sacred World of Mary Prince
- 12 New Perspectives on Gender and Sexuality in Global Protestantism, 1500–1800
- Index
5 - Idolatry, Markets, and Confession: The Global Project of the de Bry Family
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 August 2020
- Protestant Empires
- Protestant Empires
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Reworking Reformation in the Early English Atlantic
- 2 Puritanism in a Local Context: Ministry, People, and Church in 1630s Massachusetts
- 3 Learned Reading in the Atlantic Colonies: How Humanist Practices Crossed the Atlantic
- 4 Portable Lives: Reformed Artisans and Refined Materials in the Refugee Atlantic
- 5 Idolatry, Markets, and Confession: The Global Project of the de Bry Family
- 6 “Better the Turk than the Pope”: Calvinist Engagement with Islam in Southeast Asia
- 7 Inventing a Lutheran Ritual: Baptisms of Muslims and Africans in Early Modern Germany
- 8 Conversion and Its Discontents on the Southern Colonial Frontier: The Pietist Encounter with Non-Christians in Colonial Georgia
- 9 Globalizing the Protestant Reformation through Millenarian Practices
- 10 Global Protestant Missions and the Role of Emotions
- 11 The Sacred World of Mary Prince
- 12 New Perspectives on Gender and Sexuality in Global Protestantism, 1500–1800
- Index
Summary
Theodor de Bry, his sons, Johann Theodor and Johann Israel, and their son-in-law, Matthäus Merian, are famous for chronicling the expansionist politics of European nations outside of Europe. Following closely the English, French, and Spanish into the Americas, and the Portuguese and Dutch into Asia, they created the first Protestant travel collection with truly global ambitions. Building on the latest research, this essay will show how this first global Protestant travel collection used Calvinist migrant networks to successfully address the European elites beyond all confessional barriers. The way in which the de Brys dealt with the question of idolatry is of particular interest, as it was so central to discussions of European belief at the time. Fascinated by South-American goldwork, they cherished their indigenous colleagues as equals while at the same time harshly condemning the production of idolatrous images and rituals by "heathens" as well as by Catholics. However, the first Protestant comprehensive travel collection, paradoxically, relied on images that continue to define our pictorial archive of early European expansion.
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- Information
- Protestant EmpiresGlobalizing the Reformations, pp. 140 - 176Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020