This book is in four parts, each with three chapters, followed by two afterwords that investigate ‘History as the art of the “other” and the art of “in-betweenness”’ (Nicolas Standaert) and offers further analysis of the ‘framework conditions, scope for action, and social spaces’ of Asian Catholic missions (Birgit Emich). The four parts are arranged according to the spatiality of encounters between Catholic missionaries and their Asian ‘others’; they thus focus on missionaries at princely courts, in cities, in the countryside and in households. The authors seek to decentre the missionary as the pivot of Catholic missions, and instead suggest that the encounter itself, in those spatial categories, provided the setting for sliding scales of accommodation or localisation.

While the structure of this volume may seem multifaceted, it is organised in a tight and comprehensive fashion. The editors explain why the volume focuses on Catholic missions in Asia and not on similar missions in the Americas: it is precisely in many of these societies that missionaries did not have the colonial backing of their European states – politically or religiously (p. 6). Missions to Asia are then further divided according to the four spaces. The authors’ attention to the degree to which these spaces dictated the shape of interaction constitutes a flexible framework; across the chapters in part ii, ‘Missionaries in Cities’, and part iii, ‘Missionaries in the Countryside’, multiple authors (for example, Hsia, Tronu, Thanh, Tramontana and Emich) emphasise that patronage from local rulers was instrumental in directing the outcome of ongoing processes of localisation. Other themes, such as the relationship between missionaries and women, are however more restricted to the boundaries of space – in this case, all contributions concerning missionaries and households (part iv) place women front and centre in their research (p. 5). The editors acknowledge that ‘associat[ing] women exclusively with the domestic realm’ should indeed be challenged, and, within this volume, this is implicitly achieved by recognising the financial and material patronage provided by both male and female members of the Xu family in Hsia's chapter on ‘urban residences and rural missions’ (p. 77) and Amsler's discussion on ‘holy households’ in part iv (p. 167).

Overall the book succeeds in presenting multiple ‘normative systems’ in which missionaries, as cultural intermediaries, navigated to what extent the space (rural countryside versus princely court) and the place (India versus Japan) of the encounter directed them to different types of localisation. In this regard, the authors avoid presenting simplistic binary models such as ‘Jesuit accommodation versus Franscisan rigorism’ (Standaert, p. 217).

No lines were fixed; everything was negotiated (p. 4). The encounter and its corresponding localisation or accommodation also altered continuously, as interpersonal networks changed. Perhaps it is this ever-changing situation, affected by a multitude of variables, that drove the editors to implement a rigorous spatial structure. If these basic assumptions about the changing nature of accommodation are correct, it also means that there is room for future scholars to analyse more data on encounters similar to the ones examined in this volume.

Part i, ‘Missionaries at Princely Courts’, starts off with Christian Windler's examination of an Augustinian's, a Capuchin's and a Discalced Carmelite's integration at the Safavid court, before investigating debates between and within religious orders regarding accommodation. Windler's comparative analysis across orders and Asian regions is particularly thought-provoking (pp. 25–7). Eugenio Menegon focuses on the clothing adopted by Jesuit and Propaganda Fide missionaries at the Ming and Qing courts in late imperial China. In a comprehensive overview, by analysing the fashion choices from Matteo Ricci at the end of the sixteenth century until those made by missionaries accommodating courtly fashion at the beginning of the eighteenth century, Menegon convincingly argues that ‘“going local” was the inevitable outcome in China’ when it came to clothing and bodily practices (p. 31). Part i ends with Ines Županov's chapter on Rodolfo Acquaviva's fatal error as he moves between different spaces – from the Mughal court to the Salsete peninsula countryside – and fails to realise to what extent these spaces have shaped his understanding of accommodation (p. 51).

Part ii starts with Ronnie Po-chia Hsia's chapter ‘Urban residences and rural missions’ (pp. 67–81) which clearly outlines how, more so than place, economy or geography, it was patronage from local elites that determined the topography of Christian communities in China between 1600 and 1800 (p. 76). As such, it was the link between Chinese elites’ ancestral homes and the places of their administrative appointments that determined the missionaries' networks. Meanwhile, the next two chapters on missionaries in cities, the contributions of Carla Tronu and Cesare Santus, emphasise that missionary approaches did not necessarily align with any overall modus operandi attributed to a specific missionary order. ‘Stereotypical contrapositions’ simply do not hold, so claims Santus (p. 105). Santus further argues that the only, more general trend that he can distinguish is that all types of missionaries were more likely to accommodate local customs if they faced ‘economic insecurity or political isolation’ (p. 105). Tronu's chapter examines the engagement of Japanese Christians in Nagasaki's parish system, with additional attention to the way in which the funds for the building of churches shifted from European to Japanese sources (p. 93). This point of analysis continues Hsia's focus on patronage.

In part iii, ‘Missionaries in the Countryside’, one chapter focuses on the economic contributions of rural Japanese Christians (Hélène Vu Thanh), one examines Franciscans in semi-rural Palestine (Felicita Tramontana) and one tracks the engagement of missionaries in rural Tibet (Trent Pomplun). Hélène Vu Thanh's chapter continues a focus on economic and material aspects of Catholic missions during the early modern period, in line with Tronu's chapter (and, in a more indirect way, Županov's and Hsia's chapters). Vu Thanh argues that the Jesuits’ direct relationship with Japanese peasants was critical in providing material and economic support, as important as the local daimyō's purely financial contributions (pp. 122–3).

Part iv examines the relationship between women and missionaries in China (Nadine Amsler), Japan (Haruko Nawata Ward) and Aleppo (Bernard Heyberger). All three contributions highlight to what extent gender arrangements changed and moulded the shapes of localisation required of Catholic communities across Asia (Amsler, p. 158; Nawata Ward, p. 185; Heyberger, p. 191).