This new study of the Catholic missions in South East Asia fills a significant gap in the scholarship on the global history of Christianity in the early modern period. Situated between the cultural poles of China and India, the story of church development in the lands between the Malay Peninsula and Northern Vietnam had received little attention – despite the presence of significant Christian minorities in the region today. What counts for received wisdom about the topic tells a French story: following in the footsteps of the famed Jesuit Alexandre de Rhodes in the 1620s, the Roman Congregation of the Propaganda Fide send French missionary resources to the kingdoms which would later become the nation of Vietnam where they were met with relative success. Alberts's study is a useful corrective to this old tale, properly placing the Spanish, Portuguese and Italian contributions to the missionary effort at centre stage. There were, indeed, French priests and bishops involved in the early history of the South East Asian missions, but they arrived only after more than a century of work by southern Europeans. The first half of Conflict and conversion presents the broad lines of the chronology of these first endeavours, and identifies the primary ecclesiastical actors (Jesuits, Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians and members of the Missions Etrangères de Paris). Alberts then analyses three case studies: Malacca, a Portuguese colony until 1641 and afterwards a Dutch colonial city; Siam, the core area of modern Thailand; and Tonkin and Cochinchina, the northern and central parts of modern Vietnam. Each of these sites offers a different perspective on the Catholic presence in the region, since the political and religious context of each differed greatly, and helps to explain the different outcomes of the missionary endeavours across mainland South East Asia. The presence of Islam in the Malay Peninsula, as well as the different forms of Buddhism in the kingdoms to the north and east, are revealed as important factors in the outcomes of the missionaries' efforts. The second part of the book is thematically organised, with chapters devoted to missionary strategy, the use of devotional texts, the development of specific devotions, and the place of women and slaves within the emergent Churches of the area. To reach her conclusions, Alberts relies on a wide range of sources in European languages, and cites a number of South East Asian texts. Recognition of the need to incorporate such a multitude of voices is laudable, and convinces the reader of the difficulty of the author's task. While ambitious, however, Conflict and conversion seems disjointed: it is hard to understand what colonial Portuguese Malacca in the mid-sixteenth century has to do with independent Tonkin or Cochinchina in the late seventeenth century beyond the accident of relative proximity. Furthermore, the book's thematic sections do not hew closely enough to the chronological development of Christian communities, blurring important distinctions between different phases and eliding crucial differences of colonial context. As a starting point for future work on Catholicism in this interesting region, however, Alberts's study is a valuable contribution.