Thesis defence The Accommodation of the Conquest: Jesuit Missions in West Central Africa (1548-1681) Add to calendar 2025-11-05 16:30 2025-11-05 18:30 Europe/Rome The Accommodation of the Conquest: Jesuit Missions in West Central Africa (1548-1681) Sala dei Levrieri, Villa Salviati, and Zoom YYYY-MM-DD Print Share: Share on Facebook Share on BlueSky Share on X Share on LinkedIn Send by email Scheduled dates Nov 05 2025 16:30 - 18:30 CET Sala dei Levrieri, Villa Salviati, and Zoom Organised by Department of History PhD thesis defence by Tomás Motta Tassinari This dissertation focuses on the activity of the Jesuits in West Central Africa from the midsixteenth until the mid-seventeenth century. This period was marked by deep historical transformations, in a context of fluid frontiers. I based my research on the hypothesis that Jesuit missionaries continuously played a fundamental role in negotiating religious, political, and commercial alliances with diverse African authorities and Portuguese officials. This effort of intercultural mediation involved many agents, such as other Catholic missionaries, Portuguese officials, and Dutch merchants. However, unlike all these different groups, the Jesuits conserved a collective unity that no other group in the region would maintain throughout all these decades. This coherent presence in the region explains the social relevance that the Jesuits gathered, expanding their activities far beyond the mere religious conversion of the 'gentiles' and the instruction of Christian elites. The Jesuits also acted as healing specialists, diplomatic facilitators, military strategists, slave traders, etc. Thus, departing from the perspective of the Jesuits proved to be a strategic choice to frame my research from a global and relational perspective. I observed how, according to the circumstances, the Jesuits and their African interlocutors were keen to build communicative bridges between them. However, one of the main findings of my research was that, as far as the Portuguese presence in Angola expanded in the second half of the seventeenth century, the space of communication between the Christian missionaries and their African interlocutors diminished.