Colonial America was born in a world of religious alliances and rivalries. Missionary efforts in the colonial Americas allow us to see how some of these religious alliances and rivalries played out. Spain, and later France, sent Catholic priests and friars to North and South America, and the Caribbean, purportedly to save the souls of Indigenous Americans by converting them to Catholicism. We also know that Protestants did similar work to help counteract this Catholic work in the Americas.
Kirsten Silva Gruesz, a Professor of Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, joins us to explore the life and work of Cotton Mather, a Boston Puritan minister who actively sought to counteract the work of Catholic conversion, with details from her book Cotton Mather’s Spanish Lessons: A Story of Language, Race, and Belonging in the Early Americas.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/376
Sponsor Links
Complementary Episodes
Listen!
Helpful Links
344 Music in British North America
343 Music and Song in Native North America
342 The Great Power of Small Native Nations
341 Possession and Exorcism in New France
340: Prisoners of War and the War of 1812
339 Women and the Constitutional Moment of 1787
338 The Early History of the United States Senate
337 Early America's Trade with China
336 Surviving the Southampton Rebellion
335 The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton
334 Missions & Mission Building in New Spain
333 Experiences of Revolution: Disruptions in Yorktown
332 Experiences of Revolution: Occupied Philadelphia
331 The Discovery of the Williamsburg Bray School
330 Loyalism in the British Atlantic World
329 Freemasonry in Early America
328 Free People of Color in Early America
327 Benjamin Franklin: A Film by Ken Burns
326 The Greek Revolution in Early America
325 Everyday People of the American Revolution
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
American Revolution Podcast
Revolutions
Key Battles of the Revolutionary War
Dispatches: The Podcast of the Journal of the American Revolution
Patriot Lessons: American History and Civics (Constitution, Declaration of Independence, etc.)