This volume collects essays from a 2003 symposium at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Early Modern History. The workshop’s intention, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, was to use early modern examples from around the world to reflect on enduring issues of religious conflict and accommodation. The volume does not present a single argument, but it offers an interesting assortment of case studies.
Not all the essays address the topic, but one that does is James Tracy’s “The Background War of the Early Modern Era: Christian and Muslim States in Contest for Dominion, Trade, and Cultural Preeminence.” Tracy emphasizes what he sees as a “conflict of civilizations” — a term echoing Samuel P. Huntington’s characterization of cultural relations in the modern world — between Christian Europe and the Ottoman Empire (13). He outlines the conflict in warfare, in commerce, and in cultural competition. But the early modern conflict was a background war, since European countries were often more preoccupied by rivalries with each other than with the Ottomans. Indeed, he presents much evidence contrary to his argument about conflict. The Habsburgs fought the Turks, but the French made alliances with them to oppose Habsburg power. The Venetians, English, and Dutch pursued good commercial relations with the Ottomans, specifically to undermine their European rivals’ trade. The Ottomans warred against the Habsburgs but also arranged numerous truces with them. No one would deny the reality of Ottoman-European competition, but accommodation was just as common as conflict.
Timothy Brook in “The Battle of Christ and Lord Guan: A Sino-European Religious Conflict in the Philippines, 1640” recounts the history of a Chinese rice growers’ revolt in Luzon against Spanish authorities. The revolt’s roots were economic not religious but as it developed, both sides defined themselves as “communities of worship” (130). The Spanish soldiers followed a statue of Christ, and the Chinese rallied around one of the deity Emperor Guan. The conflict started as a conflict over the mistreatment of farmers, but the Spanish and rebels saw its end as a victory for the Christian God.
In “Pleas for Peace, Problems for Historians: A 1455 Letter from Juan de Segovia to Jean Germain on Countering the Threat of Islam,” Anne Marie Wolf examines a Spanish theologian who argued for Christian-Muslim dialogue rather than war. For Wolf, Segovia’s chief importance is to demonstrate that the concept of tolerance began well before the Enlightenment. But as she points out, Segovia sought to convert Muslims. Tolerance was temporary, lasting only until Christianity’s ultimate triumph.
Stephen Blake examines the Mughal emperor Akbar’s efforts to find common ground among competing religions in “Religious Conflict in Early Modern India: Akbar and the House of Religious Assembly.” Between 1572 and 1579, Akbar assembled representatives of the various faiths found in his realm — Hindus, Jains, Zoroastrians, Christians, and Muslims — to discuss issues of belief and practice. The discussions led to his requiring officials to practice toleration and to his establishment of the Divine Monotheism order. Blake argues that Akbar’s purpose was political, to mitigate religious conflict and further his imperial control.
This role of states in promoting religious accommodation is also the theme of Graeme Murdock’s “Transylvanian Tolerance? Religious Accommodation on the Frontier of Christian Europe.” By the 1560s, five churches had support among Transylvania’s linguistic groups: Lutheran, Reformed, Anti-Trinitarian, Catholic, and Orthodox. The ethnic and political situation led the country’s diet by the end of the century to grant rights of worship to them all. Local majorities had the right to decide their communities’ worship. Forced conversions were outlawed, as was behavior offensive to any of the accepted churches.
The remaining essays are worthwhile but do not particularly address the volume’s themes. Denis Crouzet considers changes in representations of the French monarchy’s use of violence in the sixteenth century. Luca Codignola discusses how the Catholic Church established itself in Canada and the United States by following a conservative policy of support for non-Catholic governments. And while Frederick Asher does examine Hindu-Muslim conflict in India in the famous case of the Ayodhya mosque, his focus is on the modern, not early modern, period.
In a book that offers no general statements about religious conflict and accommodation, it is the lesson of Blake’s and Murdock’s essays concerning the state’s role in religious accommodation that offers the most fruitful idea for further consideration. Religious conflict was widespread and brutal. But states could and did encourage accommodation and even tolerance as a means of keeping peace.
