From Canton to Rome, and Back: Control and Tension in Propaganda Fide’s Accounting Practices and Financial Networks in the Eighteenth-Century China Mission

The economic system sustaining the Propaganda Fide’s missions in East Asia relied on the shipping of silver from Europe and the colonies; loans from European and Chinese merchants, and religious institutions; spogli of deceased missionaries; rents from real estate and land in Asia and elsewhere; charitable donations and “foundations” by European princes and ecclesiastics, Chinese officials, and Qing emperors; and interests from deposits in the Iberian system of the Casas de Misericordia . The management of the economic and logistical workings of the missionary machine was in the hands of a procurator in the Pearl River Delta. Financial leverage became a way to direct and control the missions from afar and was used both by the Propaganda Fide in Rome and by the procurators in China to influence their subjects in East Asia. Such authority did not go uncontested, but oversight over money afforded superiors the possibility to render rebellious individuals more pliable. This framework relied on global trade networks of trade, finance, and ecclesiastical backing, and the strategic positioning of the procurator in south China – amidst tensions between central authority and local realities – highlights the complex dynamics of governance, resistance, and survival in the missionary enterprise.