Readers of this Journal who may have secretly hoped for a let-down after Professor Strathern’s Unearthly powers will indeed be let down, as this book – aptly styled as a ‘companion’ rather than a follow up or sequel to its precursor, with the ‘theoretical equipment’ of the earlier ‘brutally condensed’ in part i of the latter (p. 14) – only furthers and heightens his impact on how we should be thinking about the historical workings of religious change (and, the present reviewer would dare urge, not only concerning the ‘top down’ sort). As before, Strathern’s analysis distinguishes between two contrasting forms of religiosity: firstly, immanentism, that which focuses on how divine powers might be channelled or even yoked for the present, worldly benefit of subjects/humanity; secondly, transcendentalism, that soteriological focus which aims to release humanity from the human condition; and each form is neatly illustrated in progression breakdowns of how, Strathern explains, each of them actually tend to evolve (Table 1.1, p. 15; Table 1.2, p. 18). If Converting rulers, part i, is a brutal condensation it is brutally effective, and his reader, whether old, i.e. of Unearthly powers, or ‘new’, i.e. of the present volume (p. 14), is well-prepared for the fascinating, interdisciplinary case studies that comprise its part ii. Those main chapters discuss why rulers of various sorts risked converting to religions brought to them by outsiders, and with great specificity show how Strathern’s theories test out as to the pivotal religious happenings in Kongo (chapter ii), Japan (chapters iii, iv), Siam (chapters v, vi) and Hawaii (chapters vii, viii) during his chosen 400-year period. Here ‘happenings’ is chosen carefully, as the case studies show that whilst patterns across conversion events do emerge, and can be used to inform the spiritual topography of our own times, it is not only where conversions to outsiders’ religions were ‘completed’, but often where conversions were truncated, even curtailed, by local realities, that we see in great depth how the workings of immanentism and transcendentalism affected the careers of rulers and the futures of their domains. In summary: ‘spectacular ruler conversions’ occurred in fifteenth-century Kongo and nineteenth-century Hawaii, but in sixteenth-century Japan results were mixed, and in late seventeenth-century Siam the very ‘suggestion’ of regal Christianity brought about civil unrest and coup (p. 341); the stories of ruler conversions, these case studies reveal, ‘express local logics and local agency above all’ (p. 342). Indeed. This, perhaps, is the single most refreshing aspect of Converting rulers, that victims are nigh if not totally absent from Strathern’s reportage, that his analyses, claims and conclusions do not fall into the too often easy, presumptuous discourses of victimisation, world religions being ‘engines of patriarchy’ and the like (p. 408). The succinct appendix to the volume, which is rightly concerned with the issues of how gender and religious violence interlace with his concepts of immanentism and transcendentalism, is judicious without being too careful, its best portion being the thought-provoking recap of the Hawaiian conversion, highlighting its evidentiary ‘ambivalence’ (p. 409) as to historiographical themes of gender, to wit:
The capacity of immanentism to hold aloft female metapersons for veneration and recognize female interlocutors with metapersons is most evident in the power and indeed violence of the volcano goddess Pele and the agency of her prophetesses. It is even fitting that the goddess and her mouthpieces appear to have played an important role in resisting the formation of a Christianising new order in the early 1820s. More striking still, however, is that the new order appears to have been driven most determinedly by the will of female chiefs, whose capacity to exert agency in this regard was testimony to the power and status that high-ranking women could attain in Hawaiian society. And yet, ironically, it was the exclusion of women from the climatic rites of human sacrifice of the state cult that may have pushed these chiefs towards abandoning it and eventually embracing Christianity (pp. 409–10).
Alan Strathern duly leaves the discussion opened for further consideration, as well he should have. Still, the well-considered, evocative cover art he and Cambridge selected for Converting rulers both introduces the reader to, and leaves the reader with an unforgettable image of, the dignified and formidable Ka’ahumanu, widow of Kamehameha (d. 1819), who ‘considers us confidently’ in a painting by Louis Choris made a few years before she overshadowed the king’s tabu-breaking son, Liholiho, and who, after the great king’s death, toured her islands to pull down the old idols, fully transitioning the kingdom to Christianity with her baptism in 1825 (p. 6).
If there is a weaker chapter in Converting rulers it is the discussion (arguably misplaced?) in part iii, chapter ix, which explores transcendentalism vis-à-vis the cross-cultural movements of Hinduism and Confucianism, and consciously looks over its shoulder, aimed toward developing and refining work Strathern presented in Unearthly powers, as an ‘interlude’ of theory (p. 315), inserted between the primary case studies and the summaries and conclusions per se of Converting rulers in part iii, chapter x. This is a minor criticism, as the elegant, connective prose and thinking keeps the approach to chapter ix feeling less like a real break, and more like an entr’acte. Otherwise, Converting rulers is accessibly written, scrupulously edited, its scholarly apparatus robust and with a superb bibliography, an index that is effective yet could be improved (but whose index could not do with some improvement?), and it includes some welcome, tactile supporting features – clear maps, intuitive tables, flavourful figures and essential glossary. Taken together, Strathern’s companion volumes effect satiety for scholars of religio-intellectual and politico-ecclesiastical histories, and on its own Converting rulers, with its theoretical concision and engaging, wide-ranging case studies, surely would be quite nourishing for graduate students and advanced undergraduates, as well.
