Richard W. Thompson’s The Footprints of the Jesuits is a nineteenth-century history and critique of the Society of Jesus, tracing the order’s founding, expansion, and influence across centuries and continents. Thompson, an American statesman, surveys the Jesuits’ role in education, missions, and political affairs, writing from a strongly critical and Protestant point of view.
The book reflects the controversies that surrounded the order in its own day and the polemical spirit of much nineteenth-century writing on religion. While partisan in tone, it offers a detailed account of the Jesuits’ celebrated educational system and their broad reach in world events. Readers should approach it as a period document expressing one side of a long and contested debate about the order’s legacy.