From French Orientalism to Global History: Preliminary Remarks on the Legacies of Western Knowledge on Southeast Asian Religions

Abstract

Travel accounts and missionary writings played a pioneering role in introducing Asian societies to Europe from the 16th century onward. Later, Western imperialism imposed both political domination and intellectual frameworks commonly associated with Colonialism and Orientalism. Debates remain active regarding the extent to which Christian missions and evangelization were intertwined with colonial expansion. Scholars have also examined whether the institutionalization of Asian religions, such as Buddhism, and new religious movements, such as Caodaism, was influenced by Christian ecclesiology or broader Western models of State - Church relations. Less studied, however, are the tensions that emerged between local elites (Buddhist sangha, Confucian mandarins, modernist intellectuals), anticlerical administrators and missionaries during the end of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th century, a period when the “religious sciences” gradually gained autonomy from other “thought sciences” (theology, philosophy, history) and above all from political agendas. During these decades, empirical and theoretical knowledge significantly advanced the understanding of Southeast Asian religious texts, rituals, practices, and concepts. Through an epistemological and historiographical approach, this paper examines the evolution of Orientalist religious studies over the past two centuries and highlights how global and connected history now contribute to renewed interpretations of Asian religious modernities, particularly in Vietnam and Southeast Asia.