CHARLES BOXER AND THE CHURCH MILITANT: RACE, MISSIONARY ACTIVITIES AND EMPIRE IN THE IBERIAN EXPANSION IN THE 16TH AND 17TH CENTURIES

Abstract

This article aims to present an overview of the work from the British historian Charles Boxer, which was dedicated to the catholic missionary activities in the Spanish and Portuguese America during the 16th and 17th centuries. Boxer concentrated great part of the discussion on the subject, after a lifelong research, in his 1978 book, The Church Militant and Iberian Expansion, 1440-1770. The religious question accompanied him throughout his historiographical work dedicated to the Portuguese maritime empire. This article seeks to explore the way Boxer understood the Iberian policies of native conversion and its intertwinement with the colonization policies themselves.