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

Complementary Episodes

🎧 Episode 047: Emily Conroy-Krutz, Christian Imperialism: Converting the World in the Early American Republic

🎧 Episode 139: Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: Indian Enslavement in the Americas

🎧 Episode 170: Wendy Warren, New England Bound: Slavery in Early New England

🎧 Episode 196: Alejandra Dubcovsky, Information & Communication in the Early American South

🎧 Episode 242: Molly Warsh, Pearls & the Nature of the Spanish Empire

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