¹ For the purpose of interpreting the successful transfer of Christianity to the New World, and also of explaining the more difficult survival of other religious traditions found or brought there, it may be useful to employ the ideas of “acculturation” and “transculturation” as analytical concepts. In his Acculturation: the study of culture contact (New York, 1938), Professor M. J. Herskovits has discussed at length a theoretical idea to which he has devoted very great attention. Its application to New World studies, very relevant to the present discussion, is considered in his Myth of the Negro Past (New York, 1941), and in his anthropological studies dealing with communities in Haiti and Trinidad, and with the Bush Negroes of Surinam.

The term “transculturation,” devised by Fernando Ortiz of Cuba, is discussed and applied especially to the study of the use of tobacco in his Cuban Counterpoint (New York, 1947), which has an introduction by Malinowski, expressing his approval of the use of the term.

Besides these, there are many other works on the West Indies which contain material of significance in interpreting the complexity of religious development in this region as elsewhere in the New World. On Haiti, always an interesting subject in this connection, there is the very informative study by Leyburn, J. G., entitled The Haitian People (New Haven, 1941).Google Scholar

² The question of cultural tolerance is one generally related to the problem of acculturation and transculturation. On the one hand, cultural intolerance may force a rapid disappearance of alien customs. On the other, cultural tolerance permits not only cultural diversity but also cultural borrowing, and tends to encourage a certain scepticism about absolute values in any one culture. It is thus a breeding ground for cultural exchange.

Gilbert Chinard’s work, which is a contribution to the study of European interest in the New World, provides a great deal of valuable information on the growth of cultural tolerance in Europe. His two books— L’exotisme américain dans la littérature française au XVIe siècle (Paris, 1911), and L’Amérique et le Rêve Exotique dans la Littérature Française au XVIIe et XVIIe siècle (Paris, 1934)—make it possible for the historian of religion to assess how much clerical writers contributed to the development of the “primitivistic” ideal in France, and, through France, to its popularity in Europe.

³ In his little book Slave and Citizen (New York, 1946), Frank Tannenbaum takes a view very similar to that put forward in the provisional chapter regarding the influence of religious attitudes on slavery. The evidence which contradicts this view in its application to the West Indies is to be found in such works as Wyndham’s, H. A. The Atlantic and Slavery (Oxford, 1935)Google Scholar; Lucien Peytraud’s monumental study, L’Esclavage aux Antilles Françaises avant 1189 (Paris, 1897); Martin’s, Gaston Histoire de l’Esclavage dans les Colonies Françaises (Paris, 1948)Google Scholar; Aimes’, H. H. S. Slavery in Cuba (New York, 1907)Google Scholar; and the more detailed and comprehensive analysis of Negro slave conditions in Cuba, Los Negros Esclavos (Havana, 1916) by F. Ortiz.

⁴ In his Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill, 1944), Eric Williams has analysed at length the economic factors at work in the creation of the movements in England against the slave trade and slavery.

⁵ A great deal of research needs to be done before we shall have sufficiently detailed knowledge of the work of missionaries in the West Indies. There are, however, some useful general studies, including: Caldecott, A., The Church in the West Indies (London, 1898)Google Scholar; Hutton, J. E., A History of Moravian Missions (London, 1923)Google Scholar; Findlay, G. G. and Holdsworth, W. W., History of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society (5 vols.; London, n. d.).Google Scholar Discussions of missionary attitudes are included, when they arise from the discussion of the histories, in my Study on the Historiography of the British West Indies (México, 1956).

I have omitted reference to the work of Professor Latourette, since he will be present at the conference.

⁶ A very informative article on the relationship between “The Christian Church and Slavery in the Middle Ages,” published by Pijper, F., is to be found in the American Historical Review, Vol. XIV, pp. 675–695.Google Scholar As far as I know, the most recent work on this subject appears in Verlinden’s, C. L’Esclavage dans l’Europe Medievale (Vol. I; Bruges, 1955).Google Scholar

⁷ Ragatz, L. J., The Fall of the Planter Class in the British Caribbean (New York, 1928), and Burn, W. L., Emancipation and Apprenticeship in the British West Indies (London, 1937)Google Scholar, both discuss the persecution of missionaries in the British territories in the period before emancipation.