Editing Dominican Order (section)

===From the Reformation to the French Revolution===
[[File:Fray Bartolomé de las Casas.jpg|thumb|right|[[Bartolomé de Las Casas]] ({{c.|1484–1566}})]]

[[Bartolomé de Las Casas]], as a settler in the [[New World]], was galvanized by witnessing the brutal torture and genocide of the [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|Native Americans]] by the Spanish colonists. He became famous for his advocacy of the rights of Native Americans, whose cultures, especially in the [[Caribbean]], he describes with care.{{sfn|Wagner|Parish|1967|p=11}}

[[Gaspar da Cruz]] ({{c.|1520–1570}}), who worked all over the Portuguese colonial empire in Asia, was probably the first Christian missionary to preach (unsuccessfully) in [[Dark ages of Cambodia|Cambodia]]. After a (similarly unsuccessful) stint, in 1556, in [[Guangzhou#Imperial China|Guangzhou]], China, he eventually returned to Portugal and became the first European to publish a book devoted exclusively to China in 1569/1570.{{sfn|Lach|1994|pp=742–743}}

The beginning of the 16th century confronted the order with the upheavals of Reformation. The spread of Protestantism cost it six or seven provinces and several hundreds of [[convent]]s, but the discovery of the [[New World]] opened up a fresh field of activity. In the 18th century, there were numerous attempts at reform, accompanied by a reduction in the number of devotees. The French Revolution ruined the order in France, and crises that more or less rapidly followed considerably lessened or wholly destroyed numerous provinces.{{sfn|Mandonnet|1911}}