| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 36.4

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 36.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Converting California: Indians and Franciscans in the Missions. By James A. Sandos. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. xix + 251 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $35.00.)

California mission studies scholars have long awaited a book like this. Forever, it seems, broader interpretation of the Spanish missions' place in history has, with a few notable recent exceptions, foundered between two polarized ideological factions. Mission defenders, composed of latter-day Franciscans, historical preservationists, and romantic imperialist historians following in the path of Herbert Eugene Bolton, have portrayed the missions as benevolent institutions, successfully converting Indians and awakening them to the advantages of European civilization. Mission critics, including Indian militants, some anthropologists, and more recently emergent anti-imperialist historians, have attacked the missions and specifically the Franciscans as racist and cruel in their destruction of native cultures and peoples. While writers in each warring camp have, in their own way, unearthed abundant details about the missions, higher understanding of these critically important, but complex and contradictory, institutions has gone begging.

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