Birgit Emich, “Localizing Catholic Missions in Asia: Framework Conditions, Scope for Action, and Social Spaces”, in: Catholic Missionaries in Early Modern Asia: Patterns of Localization (Religious Cultures in the Early Modern World), edited by Nadine Amsler, Andreea Badea, Bernard Heyberger, and Christian Windler, London/New York: Routledge, 2020, pp. 218–229.

This contribution is an afterword to an edited volume dealing with Catholic missionaries in early modern Asia. Over recent decades, historians have become increasingly interested in early modern Catholic missions in Asia as laboratories of cultural contact. This book builds on recent ground-breaking research on early modern Catholic missions, which has shown that missionaries in Asia cooperated with and accommodated the needs of local agents rather than being uncompromising promoters of post-Tridentine doctrine and devotion.