Discerning Providence in the Indies: Calvinist Constructions of Cultural and Physical Landscapes, 1600–1800

Abstract

Reformed Protestants in the Netherlands looked for the hand of God at work in the lives of people and in the world around them. As Calvinist ministers in the employ of the VOC embarked on overseas missions in the seventeenth century, they gained unprecedented opportunities for discerning divine providence in action. On the mission field in the East Indies, Formosa, and later in Ceylon, South Asia, and the Cape of Good Hope, ministers reflected anew on how to read the workings of God in humanity and in nature. This study seeks to illustrate the epistemological problems that gripped Calvinists in overseas missionary settings. Careful reading of Dutch Calvinist sources reveals the ways in which ministers overseas and in the Netherlands employed the body and the landscape to construct narratives of conversion and reprobation. These narratives masked complex religious interactions that informed and intersected Calvinist expectations of non-Christian peoples and cultures.