The papers in this volume substantially derive from a conference held in the spring of 2000. They reflect in part the even more long-standing project to study the overseas missions of the Iberian states, while some of those involved, mainly younger scholars from both France and Italy, have also been associated with a naturally related programme of studies on the period, either side of 1600, during which Claudio Acquaviva was father-general of the Society of Jesus. The elapse of time since the original conference has clearly presented the editors with some potential problems, solved in part by additions made to references to secondary literature, though a certain sense that the resulting volume does not clearly produce a single dominant theme remains. The distinct sections of the book all contain contributions of value and some of undoubted importance however. In the first section the papers focus on vocation, and through analysis of formal requests by Jesuits, in the centuries between the foundation and suppression of the Society, to be sent to overseas mission-fields they prove to substantiate a crucial finding, already well demonstrated by one of the contributors to the present volume. For, in his seminal book Evangelizzare il mondo: le missioni della Compagnia di Gesù tra Europa e America (secoli XVI–XVII) (2004), Paolo Broggio showed how remarkably slow to emerge was clear articulation among Jesuits of a concept of mission, let alone of ‘missionary’, or of discourse relating overseas activity in such a sphere to operations among the population of European, particularly Mediterranean, backwoods, known as ‘our Indies’. In the first section of the present volume there also emerges the highly distinctive identity of the Society within Portugal and its overseas areas of empire or influence, even as compared with the Spanish outreach to transatlantic or cross-Pacific territories, including Peru and the Philippines. The ‘problem of Portugal’ is indeed directly addressed by Pierre-Antoine Fabre and others, in the second section, in papers not only on Portugal itself, but on parallels in Goa and Brazil also. From both sections there additionally come suggestions of peculiarities in the Spanish missionary presence in the Philippines and of tensions, among other religious orders as well as the Society, between members of European birth and those of European descent but overseas birth. Most rewarding, on both counts, is the group of studies, in the second section, on the work of both Jesuits and mendicants from three orders in the Philippines. Questions about Japan and China are naturally touched upon throughout the volume. But in the final section Paolo Broggio and others examine aspects of ‘missionary’ technique as much in the European ‘internal missions’ as overseas. Portugal, Spain and Italy are all considered, while a further focus upon Portugal is provided in a paper on the approach there, more complex than usually supposed, of Catholic authority to those of Jewish faith or descent. At intervals through the volume brief comments are added from established scholars, probably reflecting the conference origins of the book. Among such senior contributions the most profound and stimulating appears, in the concluding remarks to the whole volume, from Louis Châtellier.