For over five hundred years, since the great age of exploration, Western Christians have visited, traded with, conquered and colonized large parts of the non-Western world. In virtually every case this contact has been accompanied by an attempt to spread Christianity.

This volume explores the manner in which Western missionary Christianity has been shaped and transformed through contact with the peoples of Peru, Mexico, Africa, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, China, and Japan. Indigenous Responses to Western Christianity demonstrates how local populations, who initially encountered Christianity as a mixture of religion, culture, politics, ethics and technology, selected those elements they felt suited their needs. The conversion of the local population, the volume shows, was usually accompanied by a significant indigenization of Christianity. Through the detailed examination and comparison of events in a range of countries and cultures, this book points provides a deeper understanding of mission history and the dynamics of Christianity's expansion. The encounter with Western Christianity is vital to the history of contact between Western and non-Western civilizations. Western Christians have visited, traded with, conquered and colonized large parts of the non-Western world for over five hundred years, and their migration has almost always been accompanied by an attempt to create new Christians in new lands. Just as indigenous people have been converted however, so too has Christianity become variously indigenized. Local populations initially encounter a Christian package of religion, culture, politics, ethics and technology. This volume illustrates the ways in which peoples have selected elements of this package to suit their specific needs, and so explores the myriad transformations missionary Christianity has undergone through contact with the peoples of Peru, Mexico, Africa, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, China and Japan. Contributing are Erik Cohen (University of Jerusalem), Yochanan Bar Yafe Szeminski ?, John F. Howes ?, D. Dennis Hudson ?, Daniel H. Bays (University of Kansas), and Eric Van Young (University of California, San Diego). The chapters are linked by their attempt to overcome conventional regional and disciplinary barriers in order to achieve a deeper understanding of mission history and the dynamics of the expansion of Christianity. A remarkable work, this volume will pave the way for entirely new approaches to a particularly complex and demanding subject.

China's overseas financing is a distinct form of patient capital that marshals the country's vast domestic resources to create commercial opportunities internationally. Its long-term risk tolerance and lack of policy conditionality has allowed developing economies to sidestep the fiscal austerity tendencies of Western markets and multilaterals. Employing statistical tests and extensive field research across China and Latin America, Stephen Kaplan finds that China's patient capital endows national governments with more room to maneuver in formulating domestic policies. The author goes on to evaluate the potential costs of Chinese financing, raising the question of how Chinese lenders will react to developing nation's ongoing struggles with debt and dependency. By disaggregating the structure of international finance, Globalizing Patient Capital has significant implications for the rise of China in Latin America, offering new insights about globalization and showing the costs and benefits of state versus market approaches to development.

China's overseas financing is a distinct form of patient capital that marshals the country's vast domestic resources to create commercial opportunities internationally. Its long-term risk tolerance and lack of policy conditionality has allowed developing economies to sidestep the fiscal austerity tendencies of Western markets and multilaterals. Employing statistical tests and extensive field research across China and Latin America, Stephen Kaplan finds that China's patient capital endows national governments with more room to maneuver in formulating domestic policies. The author goes on to evaluate the potential costs of Chinese financing, raising the question of how Chinese lenders will react to developing nation's ongoing struggles with debt and dependency. By disaggregating the structure of international finance, Globalizing Patient Capital has significant implications for the rise of China in Latin America, offering new insights about globalization and showing the costs and benefits of state versus market approaches to development.

In an age of financial globalization, are markets and democracy compatible? For developing countries, the dramatic internationalization of financial markets over the last two decades deepens tensions between politics and markets. Notwithstanding the rise of left-leaning governments in regions like Latin America, macroeconomic policies often have a neoliberal appearance. When is austerity imposed externally and when is it a domestic political choice? By combining statistical tests with extensive field research across Latin America, this book examines the effect of financial globalization on economic policymaking. Kaplan argues that a country's structural composition of international borrowing and its individual technocratic understanding of past economic crises combine to produce dramatically different outcomes in national policy choices. Incorporating these factors into an electoral politics framework, the book then challenges the conventional wisdom that political business cycles are prevalent in newly democratizing regions. This book is accessible to a broad audience and scholars with an interest in the political economy of finance, development and democracy, and Latin American politics.

In an age of financial globalization, are markets and democracy compatible? For developing countries, the dramatic internationalization of financial markets over the last two decades deepens tensions between politics and markets. Notwithstanding the rise of left-leaning governments in regions like Latin America, macroeconomic policies often have a neoliberal appearance. When is austerity imposed externally and when is it a domestic political choice? By combining statistical tests with extensive field research across Latin America, this book examines the effect of financial globalization on economic policymaking. Kaplan argues that a country's structural composition of international borrowing and its individual technocratic understanding of past economic crises combine to produce dramatically different outcomes in national policy choices. Incorporating these factors into an electoral politics framework, the book then challenges the conventional wisdom that political business cycles are prevalent in newly democratizing regions. This book is accessible to a broad audience and scholars with an interest in the political economy of finance, development and democracy, and Latin American politics.

...balanced and well informed...a striking piece of scholarship aimed at demythologizing the origins of the Ethiopian Falasha.
-Foreign Affairs

Kaplan's definitive treatment will be of interest to students and scholars of Jewish history, African history, and comparative religion, as well as anyone interested in Jewish affairs and the modern Middle East.

The Midwest Book Review

Kaplan's conceptualizations are judicious and clearly expressed...incisive and well documented... and provides essential background for the process of assimilation now taking lace in Israel.
-The International Journal of African Historical Studies

Kaplan's able interdisciplinary approach is of great value for persons interested in religion, civilization, and process of change.
-Religious Studies Review

Kaplan's well-written, lucid presentation make[s] this important, competent contribution accessible to all levels of readers. Highly recommended.

Choice

Insightful and thorough, a welcome contribution.Kay Kaufman Shelemay, Professor of Music, Harvard University

Undoubtedly the most detailed, most scholarly, and most dispassionate argument of Falasha history hitherto published. [T]his work deserves ... the most careful study by all those (and in particular in Israel) who have any practical or scholarly connection with the Beta Israel.
-- Edward UllendorffEmeritus Professor of Ethiopian Studies, University of LondonFellow of the British Academy

Given Kaplan's facility with both written and oral sources, he is in a unique position to synthesize and reconcile the new historical findings of ethnographers with the written sources and differing conclusions of earlier historians andlinguists. His work is insightful and thorough, a welcome contribution.
-- Kay Shelemay, Wesleyan University

The origin of the Black Jews of Ethiopia has long been a source of fascination and controversy. Their condition and future continues to generate debate. The culmination of almost a decade of research, The Beta Israel (Falasha) in Ethiopia marks the publication of the first book-length scholarly study of the history of this unique community.
In this volume, Steven Kaplan seeks to demythologize the history of the Falasha and to consider them in the wider context of Ethiopian history and culture. This marks a clear departure from previous studies which have viewed them from the external perspective of Jewish history. Drawing on a wide variety of sources including the Beta Israel's own literature and oral traditions, Kaplan demonstrates that they are not a lost Jewish tribe, but rather an ethnic group which emerged in Ethiopia between the 14th and 16th century. Indeed, the name, Falasha, their religious hierarchy, sacred texts, and economic specialization can all be dated to this period. Among the subjects the book addresses are their links with Ethiopian Christianity, the medieval legends concerning their existence, their wars with the Ethiopian emperors, their relegation to the status of a despised semi-caste, their encounters with European missionaries, and the impact of the Great Famine of 1888-1892.
Kaplan's definitive treatment will be of interest to students and scholars of Jewish history, African history, and comparative religion, as well as anyone interested in Jewish affairs and the modern Middle East.

Despite growing awareness of feminist sensibilities, single women remain polarized in the popular imagination. Either old maids or power women, they remain defined in relation to men--women who can't get, or, unnaturally, women who don't want a man. Through extensive historical research as well as interviews with dozens of women from San Francisco, London, and Helsinki, Tuula Gordon here forcefully exposes the artificial nature of this perceived dichotomy. The single woman is mistakenly seen to be a product of the twentieth century. Drawing on figures as diverse as Joan of Arc, Elizabeth I, and the Amazons, Gordon brings to light a powerful tradition of single womanhood and calls the marginality of single women into question. Conceptions of woman are important in shaping the possibilities and limitations of single women. A heterogeneous group in terms of occupation, ethnic grouping and sexual orientation, the women portrayed in this book serve to emphasize the diversity of single women, while indicating that their societal and cultural integration is still not wholly free of problems. Tuula Gordon's incisive application of feminist theory further add to a fascinating and invaluable study of an increasingly significant segment of society.