What was the result of the Jesuits' missionary work in Asia?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answers will vary. The first missionary work in Asia was an effort by Francis Xavier, who worked from a Portuguese base in Goa and tried to find converts in India and Japan. He stayed two years in Japan, where some local rulers, who were crucial for the missionary's success, supported the Jesuits' efforts in order to strengthen commercial ties with the Portuguese. This approach was initially successful, with a Catholic Japanese community of approximately 250,000 by 1600. However, this community fell into conflict with the arrival of Spanish missionaries from the Philippines, and internal quarrels caused this community to collapse. Subsequently, the Japanese government repressed Christianity quite brutally, killing up to 40,000 converts and closed the door to the West. In China, with the efforts of the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci, efforts were not as dramatic in terms of gaining converts, but did expose both China and Europe to their respective cultures. Ricci maintained an effort to learn Mandarin, dress in the Chinese fashion, and appeal to the Chinese elite by pointing out similarities between Catholicism and Confucianism. However, this can be construed as a mixed success because, while the conversion efforts did not recruit as many as in other areas of Asia and the Americas, Ricci's firsthand accounts of the Chinese spread widely throughout Europe and raised the point that the Chinese were unquestionably "civilized," unlike the debates about indigenous populations of the Americas, which raised uncomfortable issues about the benefits of Christianity.