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A good historian, it has been said, is a prophet in reverse. The perceptive historian has the ability to look back at the past, identify issues overlooked by others, all the while stimulating the reader to search for the implications in the present of what has been discovered. Jan Snijders is such a prophet in reverse. He brings his shrewd intuitions and scholarly reflections to the material of this book as no previous writer on Colins leadership in 18351841 has so far been able to achieve.
This is a landmark book for historians, but more than that as well. It is the first in-depth scholarly publication on Father Jean-Claude Colin as the French founder of the Marist Missions in the South Pacific. It is an enthralling read for anyone who wonders how French countrymen coped when trying to open a Catholic mission in the New Zealand and in the Polynesian Islands of the 1830s and 1840s. And anyone interested in cross-cultural processes will get a very close look at the culture contacts between French Catholics, Polynesian people and British settlers, all pursuing their own objectives.