Papers

• Unsilencing Vietnamese Catholic Experiences in the Early Modern Era Nhung Tuyet Tran University of Toronto

  In this presentation, I seek to do two things: to trace how silencing of local Catholic voices in the histories of Vietnamese Catholicism reveals the enduring coloniality of power in Global North narratives of the Global South, and to argue that local believers built and sustained the Vietnamese Catholic Church in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, unsettling implicit narratives of European exceptionalism and agency. To do so, I examine the writings and testimonies of believers preserved in European archives (particularly those of the Portuguese Jesuits) and long ignored by historians of Vietnamese Christianity to argue that believers articulated a Catholic identity which provided intergenerational care for the living and the dead around them.

• The Forgotten Lusitanian Thread: Rediscovering the Monteiro Family in Cambodia Helene Suppya Nut Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Université Paris Diderot

  This paper explores the little-known history of the Portuguese presence in Cambodia through the trajectory of the Monteiro family, one of the few Eurasian lineages to have maintained a visible social and cultural role from the colonial period to the present. Beginning with the arrival of Portuguese traders and missionaries in the sixteenth century, the study situates the Monteiros within the broader context of Iberian expansion and early modern cross-cultural exchanges in mainland Southeast Asia. Drawing on archival sources, oral histories, and family records, the paper examines how successive generations of the Monteiro family negotiated their identity between European, Catholic, and Khmer worlds.
  Their story reveals how small Portuguese communities adapted to Cambodian society through intermarriage, diplomacy, and religious networks, while preserving distinctive linguistic and ritual traces. The case of the Monteiro family thus illuminates the entangled histories of empire, conversion, and hybridity in Southeast Asia. By focusing on this enduring Eurasian lineage, the paper invites reflection on the long-term legacies of Iberian encounters and the subtle ways in which “minor” colonial presences shaped Cambodia’s multicultural past.

• Vietnamese Catholics in the East Tonkin Vicariate under Spanish Dominican Authority: The Role of the Vietnamese Clergy and Laity in the Formation and Survival of Vietnamese Catholicism Claire Thi Lien Tran Tran Université Paris Cité

  This paper explores the role of Vietnamese Catholics—both clergy and laypeople—in the Vicariate Apostolic of Eastern Tonkin, one of the historical centers of Christianity in Vietnam, evangelized by Spanish Dominicans (Province of the Philippines) since the late seventeenth century. It argues that the vitality and resilience of Vietnamese Catholicism were largely shaped by local agency and adaptation as much as by Dominican missionaries.
  First, the pioneering role of the Vietnamese clergy in community leadership is illustrated through the case of Vinh Sơn Liêm (1732–1773), sent with four companions to study at the University of Santo Tomás (Manila). Entered into the Dominican Order in 1753, he died as a martyr. Second, the contribution of lay members of the Third Order will be examined, emphasizing their crucial part in ensuring the community’s survival during periods of persecution by Vietnamese authorities, whose hostility was exacerbated by European imperial expansion in Asia. Finally, the paper explores the ways in which Vietnamese Catholics contributed to the cultural hybridization of Spanish and Vietnamese traditions in religious architecture, art, and devotional practices. Through these dynamics, it seeks to highlight the processes through which Vietnamese Catholicism became authentically local.

• Entre a pátria e a mátria. Macanese as a ‘sui generis’ community Daniel Nunes Amaral Université Paris Cité

  From the second half of the nineteenth century onward, Macau witnessed the gradual fading of the historical duality between the Christian city — mainly inhabited by a Catholic Luso-Asian population — and the Chinese quarters, following the dismantling of the walls that had separated these two societies. Within this initially “negotiated” separation, religion played a central role from the very foundation of the city (1554-7), contributing significantly to the construction of Macanese identity, alongside descent and racial mixing.
  This paper therefore seeks to examine the combined role of these as structuring elements of this mixed-race community. Drawing primarily on archival material, genealogical sources, and travel accounts, it investigates the formation and social structure of the Macanese community, as well as the articulation of its complex relationships with a broader Catholic milieu extending from Europeans to Chinese Catholics, including lower-ranking criolos or criações.
  This paper thus highlights the processes of integration and exclusion, communion, and identity reconstruction that shaped the Macanese community throughout its history. The latter proved capable of integrating new members through the Catholic Church or, at the very least, of creating forms of sociability within the framework of religious life, while nevertheless remaining relatively closed due to an almost “aristocratic” concern for preserving family lineages.

Abstract

Keywords

• Cambodia
• Catholic missions
• Dominican authority
• East Tonkin Vicariate
• Iberian Asia
• Luso-Asian networks
• Macanese
• Vietnamese Catholicism
• agency
• authority
• belonging
• community formation
• diaspora
• historical memory
• local clergy
• transimperial connections