El Correo sino-annamita (CSA) was one of the principal missionary periodicals of the Dominican Province of the Holy Rosary. First published in Manila in 1866, and issued annually until 1916—albeit with interruptions in 1896, 1898–1902, 1904, 1909 and 1915—it brought together correspondence, reports, and other materials relating to the Dominican missions in China, Tonkin/Annam, Formosa, Japan, and the Philippines. The Miguel de Benavides Library (Manila) describes it as the best source for the study of the Dominican missions from the mid-nineteenth century to the second decade of the twentieth, while scholarship has emphasised the breadth of its contents, which extend well beyond strictly ecclesiastical matters to include colonial politics, ethnographic observation, provincial social life, and the everyday experience of mission.
For EVANFE, the journal is of exceptional value because it combines historical and contemporary chronicles, statistical materials, and compilations of friars’ correspondence that bring us close to the everyday realities of missionary life, especially on the Asian mainland. We are currently working on an almost complete repertory covering the issues for 1866–1897 and 1903-1916. This corpus is complemented by later missionary periodicals published by the Province of the Rosary, including Misiones dominicanas (1917–1950), Ultramar (1951–1959), The Vineyard of the East (1920–1924), Campo misional (1958–1970), Huellas dominicanas (1970–1997), Ecos misioneros (1953–1970), Ecos de Japón (1970–1974), Información del Japón (1981–1982), and the series Cuadernos IV Centenario (1987–1988). The systematic indexing of these publications is of particularly high value for addressing key dimensions of our research.
The periodical’s long run, wide geographical coverage, and strongly documentary character make it an indispensable source for reconstructing missionary networks, institutional priorities, and everyday religious practice across Ibero-Asia, particularly because of the information it contains, transcribes, and analyses for the period covered by our research.
The scholarly value of a systematic repertory of CSA is especially high, since the collection is markedly dispersed—no complete series has so far been found in any library or archive—and the permanent loss of individual issues remains a real possibility.