This article analyses two databases with information on traveling Jesuit missionaries to calculate the human cost of connecting Europe and China between 1500 and 1800. After combining analysis of these statistics with travel accounts, the article argues that when missionaries did not arrive at their intended destination, it was more often the case that they had been redirected than that they had died en route. Particular groups and individual Jesuits were redirected as a result of political fissures within the global Jesuit network. Since Jesuit missionaries held allegiances to competing state patrons based on their national background, their travel patterns were altered significantly either by choice or by force.