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A Vietnamese Moses is the story of Philiphê Binh, a
Vietnamese Catholic priest who in 1796 traveled from Tonkin to the
Portuguese court in Lisbon to persuade its ruler to appoint a
bishop for his community of ex-Jesuits. Based on Binh’s
surviving writings from his thirty-seven-year exile in Portugal,
this book examines how the intersections of global and local Roman
Catholic geographies shaped the lives of Vietnamese Christians in
the early modern era. The book also argues that Binh’s
mission to Portugal and his intense lobbying on behalf of his
community reflected the agency of Vietnamese Catholics, who
vigorously engaged with church politics in defense of their
distinctive Portuguese-Catholic heritage. George E. Dutton
demonstrates the ways in which Catholic beliefs, histories, and
genealogies transformed how Vietnamese thought about themselves and
their place in the world. This sophisticated exploration of
Vietnamese engagement with both the Catholic Church and Napoleonic
Europe provides a unique perspective on the complex history of
early Vietnamese Christianity.