ABSTRACT
A number of important scholars have devoted a great deal of attention in recent years to the construction of religion both as an object of study and as an aspect of the social field and then on how the dynamics of that construction have shaped the scholarly approach to religion. Through the early modern period, new circuits of exploration, conquest, colonialism, missionizing, and trade brought the West into greater contact with new parts of the world, and through that contact, new information about the cultural practices and beliefs of various groups of people began to flow into Europe. Particularly through the early nineteenth century, raw material about the practices and cultures of China, India, and other parts of Asia and the Pacific flowed into Europe at an unprecedented rate. Teaching in the general history of religions took hold in Christian theological faculties in Switzerland through the middle decades of the nineteenth century.
