Remarkable and well-known Jesuit missionaries have always proved to be an engaging subject for scholarly biographies, or works with a strong emphasis on biographical aspects of such figures in their overseas missions. Eloquent examples are Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia's A Jesuit in the Forbidden City: Matteo Ricci, 1552–1610 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010) and Trent Pomplun's Jesuit on the Roof of the World: Ippolito Desideri's Mission to Tibet (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

Liam Brockey's The Visitor: André Palmeiro and the Jesuits in Asia is a major contribution to this field, focusing on an exceptional, yet long-neglected figure: Visitor André Palmeiro (1569–1635). As Brockey claims, “a consignment to oblivion might be excusable in the case of figures who wrote little or disappeared off the map in distant missions, but a man like Palmeiro deserves better” (p. 5). Making good use of varied sources, and despite some archival lacunae, Brockey tells the story of Palmeiro, appointed visitor to Asia in 1618. Due to the long distances between the Society of Jesus's Roman curia and its overseas missions, the position of visitor—not exclusive to this religious order—mainly implied inspecting missions. Brockey makes Visitor Palmeiro's travels “the defining theme of this study and the primary reason for examining his life” (p. 427). Through Palmeiro, Brockey examines major historical and spatial contexts, that is, the Portuguese Empire in the early modern period, with special focus on the Estado da India's formative years and Jesuit expansionism unfolding inside the empire, as well as analyzing the tensions with both secular and religious authorities the latter entailed.

The book is divided into two parts: the first, “Inside the Empire,” begins with Palmeiro's early years in the Society, then focuses on his prolific academic career in Portugal, and ends with his two terms as visitor in South Asia. Throughout the chapters, the reader also gains insight into Palmeiro's personality and skills: a humble, self-effacing, renowned theologian in Coimbra, with a love of poetry, whose intellectual concerns never obstructed his pragmatism. Palmeiro became a sought-after candidate for an administrative post with public exposure, first as rector at the Colegio de São Paulo in Braga, and then as visitor of the Malabar Province in India, in 1618. Among the many challenges Palmeiro successfully dealt with in the Malabar Province were a theological controversy in the Madurai mission, cultural clashes among missionaries of different nationalities within a “supranational” order, and the weighty presence of European modern empires overlapping with the Society's own expansionism. His experience and accomplishments in a province that he learned to know well through his journeys led to the renewal of his post, now as visitor of the Provinces of Malabar and Goa. In tune with these achievements, Palmeiro “articulated an imperial vision” (p. 149), which grew even larger when he was appointed visitor of the East Asian missions in 1624.

The second part of the study, “At Empire's Edge,” explores Palmeiro's experience in the Japan province and the newly created vice-province of China, far beyond the Estado da India. In these new settings, where he spent the last nine years of his life, the anti-Christian persecutions in the Japan mission were among his main concerns. In China he visited the central regions of Jesuit activity within the Ming Empire. Inspections not being possible amidst persecutions, torture, and martyrdom, Palmeiro adopted bold measures to secure his needs of men and money in Japan, for instance, engaging in the silk and silver trade to sustain the Japan mission without dependence on Portuguese merchants. The purchase of a ship in 1628 was intended to solve communication problems with subordinates and to make it possible to profit from the sale of its cargoes, notwithstanding accusations of Jesuits' pursuit of riches. Brockey also analyzes how Palmeiro helped to spread Christianity in the Southeast Asia missions—Tonkin, Cochinchina, Champa, Cambodia, Laos, and Siam—by allocating manpower and resources.

The study concludes with Palmeiro's death in 1635, which, in Brockey's view, symbolizes the death of the universal dreams of a still young Society, for the second generation of Jesuits would lack that kind of large-scale ambition. Palmeiro's travels and their impact, both shaping and contributing to the globe-spanning Jesuit network in the early modern world, leads Brockey to reflect on their “global” dimension. Among other objections, Brockey believes that the “global” has so far disregarded the complexities of human beings, stating that his study's primary goal is “to give depth and texture to the flat silhouettes that mar recent accounts of the ‘global’” (p. 429). In this respect, we could wonder whether the “global” necessarily erases the depth of those historical individuals that scholars choose to follow through the archives.

The Visitor is a wonderful contribution to scholarship within the field of Jesuit studies and beyond, as it expands our understanding of the history of Christianity in Portuguese Asia in the early modern period. Moreover, its engaging literary style is likely to be attractive to the nonspecialist, curious reader.