ABOUT THIS BOOKIn the early modern period, two European networks, the Society of Jesus and the Dutch East India Company (VOC) spanned the globe and contributed to its multifaceted globalization. This book focuses on the members of the former, Jesuit missionaries, and the employees of the VOC originating from Central and Eastern Europe. The well-chosen case studies examine the group characteristics, career influences, and narratives of these Central Eastern Europeans. They explore the question of why subjects of Polish kings, Transylvanian princes, or Habsburg emperors dreamed of venturing overseas with the colonial merchants or aspired to work as missionaries in China and Japan.
The book examines the complexities of this early modern globalization: its scope, limits, importance, social, ethnic, and political ramifications. It researches how these networks reached out to the region of Central and Eastern Europe. The authors argue that the region was hardly considered peripheral from the perspective of Rome (and the Jesuits) or the Netherlands (and the colonial traders). They do, however, explore whether there were "glass ceilings," or limits of reach within the two networks for individuals from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth or the former Kingdom of Hungary.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHYIgor Iwo Chabrowski is an associate professor at the Faculty of History, University of Warsaw. Igor’s research concentrates on the late Qing and modern Chinese history, history of Southeast Asia and Overseas Chinese, global history, and global communism.Natalia Królikowska-Jedlinska is an assistant Professor at the University of Warsaw and an investigator in the ERC funded project The Diplomacy of Small States in Early Modern South-eastern Europe (HUN-REN Research Centre for the Humanities, Budapest). She has a background in Early Modern history and Ottoman studies, with a specific focus on the Early Modern Crimean Khanate and the Northern Caucasus.