Sep 11, 2022 11:24 PM
(This post was last modified: Sep 11, 2022 11:24 PM by C C.)
https://aeon.co/essays/the-legacies-of-c...tch-empire
INTRO: At the turn of the 1600s, a handful of Protestant pastors and chaplains in Amsterdam began accompanying ships of the United East India Company (VOC) to small Dutch commercial settlements in Southeast Asia. These Calvinist (also Reformed Protestant) ministers went to faraway lands to keep company employees from falling prey to false religions and to convert ‘heathens’ and ‘Moors’ (Muslims) to Protestant Christianity.
Thus, Calvinism went global in the 17th century and, by the time the VOC closed its doors in December 1799, the Dutch Reformed Church had established dozens of churches, planted hundreds of schools, and converted thousands of Indigenous peoples around the world.
Calvinism achieved these distinctions against all odds. Its operations got underway a century after Catholic missions; the number of its ministers paled in comparison with the legions sent out by the Roman Church; and Calvinists held to the doctrine of predestination, which taught that God had already decided everyone’s eternal fate before he created the world. In light of these sizeable disadvantages, how did Dutch Calvinists pull this off? And, what did they learn from their experiences?
The short answers are, first, that they turned out to excel at organising schools and translating languages, and, second, that global perspectives gave them new ways of viewing religion and culture in Europe.
From these beginnings in the Dutch Republic and in the United East India Company, Calvinism became a global religion entangled in the webs of commerce and empire. Launched in 1602, the VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) became highly profitable and managed an Asian/African commercial empire, stretching from the East Indies (Indonesia) to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) to the Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) and many sites in between. Almost 20 years later, the Dutch unveiled another corporation for trading colonies in the Atlantic world, known as the West India Company (WIC).
Ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church, so-called Calvinists because they followed the Protestant teachings of John Calvin, discerned a providential hand underlying the republic’s and companies’ good fortunes. They believed God was opening the door to carry the message of true Christianity to heathens and Moors at the ends of the earth.
Some Calvinists even suggested that preaching the authentic, biblical version of Christianity, and not the false religion of the Catholic Church, would lead to a worldwide conversion of Muslims and Jews, which would then trigger the second coming of Jesus Christ. As a result of these circumstances, somewhere close to 1,000 Calvinist pastors joined the trading companies from 1605 to 1799 to serve as company personnel, but also to try to turn people in the diverse lands in the Americas, Africa and Asia into proper, churchgoing, idol-hating Protestant Christians.
This effort was the earliest and most sustained Protestant missionary effort outside of Europe. Yet, in so doing, Dutch ministers endorsed slave trading, acquiesced to imperial violence, and suffered in distant foreign environments. Calvinist missions and their entanglements with empire reveal the complex interaction of cultures, and contributed to important global legacies as the world transitioned into the industrial age in the 19th century.
Calvinism’s global reach in the 1600s and 1700s has escaped most historians and underwhelmed most Dutch specialists. This lack of attention stems in part from the massive missionary endeavours of the Catholic Church, which overshadowed the much smaller operations of Dutch Calvinists. Religious orders within the Catholic Church, such as Jesuits, Franciscans and Dominicans, sent thousands of missionaries into vast lands colonised by the Spanish, Portuguese and French empires. Next to global Catholicism, global Calvinism was much smaller in scope and so has flown under the radar of most historians.
It also seems counterintuitive that Calvinism, which spread into several Reformed Protestant denominations (eg, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Anglicans) would have much impact outside European churches and universities, because of the doctrine of predestination. Why risk life and limb to languishing disease, drowning, getting eaten by a big fish and other forms of violent death to convert people – who, in most cases, didn’t appreciate the effort – if God had already decided the outcome?
This question comes from the way we think today, which is not the way Calvinists in the 17th century thought. They believed that preaching the word of God from the Bible was the means by which the saved would respond to God’s promise of salvation. They could point to many figures in the Old and New Testament, such as Jonah, the prophets, John the Baptist, and the apostles who followed God’s command to preach, even when God knew most people would reject the message. So, it’s been only fairly recently that historians have begun to investigate more fully the global work of Calvinists, and their legacies... (MORE - details)
INTRO: At the turn of the 1600s, a handful of Protestant pastors and chaplains in Amsterdam began accompanying ships of the United East India Company (VOC) to small Dutch commercial settlements in Southeast Asia. These Calvinist (also Reformed Protestant) ministers went to faraway lands to keep company employees from falling prey to false religions and to convert ‘heathens’ and ‘Moors’ (Muslims) to Protestant Christianity.
Thus, Calvinism went global in the 17th century and, by the time the VOC closed its doors in December 1799, the Dutch Reformed Church had established dozens of churches, planted hundreds of schools, and converted thousands of Indigenous peoples around the world.
Calvinism achieved these distinctions against all odds. Its operations got underway a century after Catholic missions; the number of its ministers paled in comparison with the legions sent out by the Roman Church; and Calvinists held to the doctrine of predestination, which taught that God had already decided everyone’s eternal fate before he created the world. In light of these sizeable disadvantages, how did Dutch Calvinists pull this off? And, what did they learn from their experiences?
The short answers are, first, that they turned out to excel at organising schools and translating languages, and, second, that global perspectives gave them new ways of viewing religion and culture in Europe.
From these beginnings in the Dutch Republic and in the United East India Company, Calvinism became a global religion entangled in the webs of commerce and empire. Launched in 1602, the VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) became highly profitable and managed an Asian/African commercial empire, stretching from the East Indies (Indonesia) to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) to the Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) and many sites in between. Almost 20 years later, the Dutch unveiled another corporation for trading colonies in the Atlantic world, known as the West India Company (WIC).
Ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church, so-called Calvinists because they followed the Protestant teachings of John Calvin, discerned a providential hand underlying the republic’s and companies’ good fortunes. They believed God was opening the door to carry the message of true Christianity to heathens and Moors at the ends of the earth.
Some Calvinists even suggested that preaching the authentic, biblical version of Christianity, and not the false religion of the Catholic Church, would lead to a worldwide conversion of Muslims and Jews, which would then trigger the second coming of Jesus Christ. As a result of these circumstances, somewhere close to 1,000 Calvinist pastors joined the trading companies from 1605 to 1799 to serve as company personnel, but also to try to turn people in the diverse lands in the Americas, Africa and Asia into proper, churchgoing, idol-hating Protestant Christians.
This effort was the earliest and most sustained Protestant missionary effort outside of Europe. Yet, in so doing, Dutch ministers endorsed slave trading, acquiesced to imperial violence, and suffered in distant foreign environments. Calvinist missions and their entanglements with empire reveal the complex interaction of cultures, and contributed to important global legacies as the world transitioned into the industrial age in the 19th century.
Calvinism’s global reach in the 1600s and 1700s has escaped most historians and underwhelmed most Dutch specialists. This lack of attention stems in part from the massive missionary endeavours of the Catholic Church, which overshadowed the much smaller operations of Dutch Calvinists. Religious orders within the Catholic Church, such as Jesuits, Franciscans and Dominicans, sent thousands of missionaries into vast lands colonised by the Spanish, Portuguese and French empires. Next to global Catholicism, global Calvinism was much smaller in scope and so has flown under the radar of most historians.
It also seems counterintuitive that Calvinism, which spread into several Reformed Protestant denominations (eg, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Anglicans) would have much impact outside European churches and universities, because of the doctrine of predestination. Why risk life and limb to languishing disease, drowning, getting eaten by a big fish and other forms of violent death to convert people – who, in most cases, didn’t appreciate the effort – if God had already decided the outcome?
This question comes from the way we think today, which is not the way Calvinists in the 17th century thought. They believed that preaching the word of God from the Bible was the means by which the saved would respond to God’s promise of salvation. They could point to many figures in the Old and New Testament, such as Jonah, the prophets, John the Baptist, and the apostles who followed God’s command to preach, even when God knew most people would reject the message. So, it’s been only fairly recently that historians have begun to investigate more fully the global work of Calvinists, and their legacies... (MORE - details)