Ana Carolina Hosne

Defining “memory”, its functions and purposes, is a formidable challenge which can be analyzed only in specific historical contexts. This study investigates the different roles and purposes of memory in the overseas Jesuit missions in the late sixteenth/early eighteenth centuries, with a focus on the following case studies: Peru and Mexico, two colonial mission spaces, and China and Tibet, two non-colonial mission spaces. Europe forms the background against which to gauge the cultural baggage the Jesuits carried with them to their overseas missions, which comprised a multi-faceted interest in memory and its different purposes. However, it was unpredictable whether the purposes the Jesuits assigned to memory in their missions would remain the same once Europe was left behind. A priority goal in this study is to engage in their interaction with local mnemonic techniques and practices, thus transcending the mission spaces, as a further contribution to a historical analysis of the phenomenon of memory in the modern world from a cross-cultural and global perspective.