Patricia Seed. Ceremonies of Possession: Europe's Conquest of the , 1492-1640. Cambridge, England, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. xviii + 199 pp. $57.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-521-49748-0.

Reviewed by John A. Crider

Published on H-LatAm (October, 1996)

Patricia Seed's Ceremonies of Possession: Eu‐ ing that it is a single undiferentiated European rope's Conquest of the New World, 1492-1640 project has thus prevented us from understanding marks a fresh entry into an academic conversa‐ how contemporary struggles ... have taken distinct tion about the meaning(s) of New World conquest political directions in diferent regions of the and discovery--a conversation that has reached Americas" (p. 15). By countering this universaliz‐ out increasingly to felds of semiotics and dis‐ ing tendency, Seed has laid important ground‐ course theory in recent years. While the germinal work for future scholars interested in examining seed of this interest can be traced to passages of the institutional and discursive relationships link‐ Edmundo O'Gorman, La invencion de America ing early colonial arrangements in the New World (1958), studies of discovery and conquest empha‐ to the later systems of imperialism that fourished sizing humanistic analyses of discourse, text, icon, worldwide in the eighteenth and nineteenth cen‐ symbol, and performance have lately fourished turies. among a new generation of literary scholars and Utilizing a comparative framework to treat cultural critics.[1] Ceremonies of Possession, how‐ the explorational activities and colonial legacies ever, is the work of a broad-minded historian, and of fve nascent nation-states of early modern Eu‐ thus stands as a potential (and much-needed) rope, Seed's slender but dense volume attempts to bridge between literary and historical approaches isolate essential diferences in 1) each European to this topic. Ceremonies of Possession also con‐ society's initial approach to the New World, 2) the tributes to the feld of "comparative colonial stud‐ nature of their frst contacts with Amerindian ies"--an increasingly interdisciplinary sub-feld of "others," and 3) the mechanics of consolidating the social sciences[2]--by tackling the question of and maintaining their respective overseas how European colonialism(s) of the sixteenth and colonies. To do so, Seed tapped three "fundamen‐ seventeenth centuries were outgrowths of distinc‐ tal sources": "'everyday life,'...common colloquial tive national-cultural traditions. Remarking on language, and ... legal code[s]"(p. 4). To her credit, one of the book's more progressive objectives, Seed has reversed the usual priorities of histori‐ Seed writes: "Homogenizing colonialism by insist‐ H-Net Reviews ans by placing an emphasis on the two former lar, Seed shows how the latter pair, derived from sources and by reading law codes in ways that biblical tradition ("Be fruitful and multiply, and emphasize their linkages with vernacular cus‐ fll the earth and subdue it"--Gen. I:28), was toms, speech, and practices. One revisionist uniquely linked to agriculture and land posses‐ premise of the book is that these expressions of sion in numerous folk incantations, "feld rituals," proto-national culture played much stronger roles and sermons in medieval England. Without using than did commonly inherited traditions like Gre‐ the terms "discursive formation" or "ideology," co-Roman legalism and Medieval Christianity in Seed nonetheless implies that a pervasive, deep- determining the types of arguments and symbol‐ seated cultural symbolism, centering on ism of authority deployed by each nation in the metaphors of gardening, accompanied and legiti‐ New World (cf. pp. 185-87). Thus by carefully ex‐ mated English acts of delineating territorial spa‐ amining rituals, practices, and texts of possession ces. In the New World, Englishmen would come to against the inherited traditions that conditioned regard this symbolism as self-evident and univer‐ them, Seed endeavors to fashion a kind of "com‐ sal in the face of conficting claims with other Eu‐ parative grammar" of early European conquest ropean nations.[3] In the end, Seed argues that and colonialism. At its starkest level, Seed's book English proprietorship in North America was is reducible to the following formula: "English‐ mainly based on "clear acts" (erecting fences, men held that they acquired rights to the New hedges, and houses) and customary understand‐ World by physical objects, Frenchmen by ges‐ ings of those acts, rather than on legalistic theo‐ tures, Spaniards by speech, Portuguese by num‐ ries of "discovery" or "just occupation" as con‐ bers, Dutch by description" (p. 179). After summa‐ tained in written documents. rizing the basic arguments and methods of the In contrast to the folk-derived "clear acts" of fve main chapters, I will discuss a few of the English possession, French explorers enacted strengths and weaknesses of the work. multi-faceted, time-consuming ceremonies of pos‐ SUMMARY session, which had evolved from highly theatrical Chapter 1 ("Houses, Gardens, and Fences: rituals of the medieval French court. Using a com‐ Signs of English Possession in the New World") at‐ bination of historicist and semiotic analyses, Seed tempts to map out a distinctively English cultural looks at the transformation of French ceremonies complex associated with the foundation and pos‐ in the New World, and considers their function session of territorial units. After noting how the within French colonial strategies of "captivating" frst written accounts of English occupation in native populations by consent and alliance. Hav‐ North America prominently featured descriptions ing consulted a handful of accounts of French en‐ of building houses, planting gardens, and erecting counters with indigenous peoples along the coasts fences or hedges, Seed frst traces the background of Brazil, Florida, and the Caribbean, Seed begins of these practices, commenting on their meanings Chapter 2 ("Ceremonies: The Theatrical Rituals of in medieval custom and common law. To recover French Political Possession") by examining the the cultural logic of these meanings, Seed probes most complete account on record: Sieur Razilly's the etymological layers and historical usages of a landing on the Brazilian coast in 1612. Over the half-dozen key words in the English language: course of several months, Razilly and his compan‐ "improvement" (p. 24), "garden" and "gardening" ions staged elaborately orchestrated religious pro‐ (pp. 25-27), the "wild/cultivated" dichotomy (p. cessions, interspersed by long periods of waiting, 28), "planting" (pp. 29-30), "husbandry" (p. 30), "re‐ trading, and conversing with the local Tupi inhab‐ plenishing" and "subduing" (pp. 31-35). In particu‐ itants to assay the "sincerity and good afections of the Indians." Once the Razilly had received am‐

2 H-Net Reviews ple assurance of the Tupis' intention to embrace ties) as well as French strategic modes of main‐ Catholicism and join the French, a third, strictly taining power (e.g., trading luxury goods or form‐ political procession was staged: "the standard of ing military alliances based on voluntary con‐ our King of France" was planted, the Tupis were sent). informed of the terms of their vassalage to the Chapter 3 ("The Requirement: A Protocol for king, and amid a din of trumpets, tambors, and Conquest") examines a legacy of conquest unique musket-fre, an alliance was sealed. In the history to Spain. The requerimiento was a written state‐ of cultural encounters in the New World, this se‐ ment that all Spanish adventurers and colonists quence of ceremonies is unique for its level of were obligated to read aloud (usually without theatricality and its attention to the responses of beneft of translators) before subjugating indige‐ the native people involved. nous peoples. Composed in 1512 by the legal In a subsequent section of this chapter, Seed scholar Juan Lopez Palacios Rubios, the require‐ sketches out the inherited traditions that under‐ ment has long been known to students of Spanish- girded such ceremonies and gave them special American history not only for being a basic prominence among the French as mechanisms of source on Spanish notions of conquest as "just possession. First, Seed establishes how the seman‐ war," but also for its abundance of textual incon‐ tic feld of the word "ceremony" in French--simul‐ sistencies, which occasionally border on the ab‐ taneously connoting qualities of "complexity, seri‐ surd. To cite one example, the text of the require‐ ousness, and order"--difered remarkably from its ment states: "[W]e will not compel you to turn perjorative primary meaning of "afectation" in Christians. But if you do not ... I will enter force‐ other European languages (pp. 48-49). Second, she fully against you, and I will make war everywhere looks at the history of French coronation ceremo‐ and however I can, and I will subject you to the nialism from the fourteenth to the seventeenth yoke ... of authority of...." (p. 69). Thus, besides its century, noting that the scale and signifcance of status as a canonical historical source, the re‐ French succession rituals was unrivaled in the quirement is also one of history's enduring co‐ rest of Europe (pp. 50-54). Citing French canon nundrums. In this chapter, Seed seeks to provide and legal theorists Hotman and Bodin, who held a satisfactory solution. that France had a "'successive monarchy'... rather Notable for its etymological plumbs into key than a hereditary monarchy," Seed argues that it legal, martial, and political concepts, and for its was actually the coronation event, publicly per‐ rigorously cited synthesis of extant scholarship on formed in the presence of the masses, and not di‐ Christian and Islamic Spain, Seed's "archaeologi‐ vine disposition, that confrmed and legitimated cal" inquiry into the the origins of the require‐ the political power of the French royal house (pp. ment concludes that the text was infuenced by Is‐ 51-52). lamic and Jewish intellectual traditions to a far Along with strategies of political alliance greater extent than previously realized. The per‐ based on native consent, public ceremonialism plexing features of the document--which was re‐ served as a key mechanism for establishing and garded in its day by some Spaniards as "ludicrous‐ maintaining French political power in the New ly and tragically naive (Gibson, Spain in America, World. In keeping with her overall purpose, Seed 1966), utilized later by Protestant commentators argues that a historically constructed cultural log‐ as evidence of the depravity of the Spanish soul, ic permeated both French symbolic modes of es‐ and today recognized by us as idiosyncratic, if not tablishing authority (ceremonies integrating the paradoxical--are, in fact, the product of a hy‐ participation and feedback of subject communi‐ bridization of cultural logics alien to the main

3 H-Net Reviews trunk-line of Western intellectual thought.[4] Seed Arabic scientifc literature written (with commen‐ demonstrates how the concept of jihad, a term taries) in Hebrew. Later under Christian rule, this meaning "fghting according to the proper legal corpus of knowledge and its Jewish caretakers principles" (p. 72), approximates the require‐ would prove vital to Portuguese seafaring ad‐ ment's notion of "just war," and how one of those vances.[5] "proper legal principles," the da a or "double sum‐ In the ffteenth century, the challenge of navi‐ mons" preceding a battle, was an Islamic precur‐ gating the unfamiliar currents, winds and tides of sor for the later Spanish practice of reading a for‐ the southern hemisphere (as well as its unknown mal speech prior to subjugating native Ameri‐ nighttime skies), led Portugal to be the frst Chris‐ cans. Furthermore, Seed efectively maps out sev‐ tian kingdom of early modern Europe to make use eral plausible pathways whereby these Islamic of trigonometry and the astrolabe, both of which concepts--as well as important institutions like they inherited from the Muslim world. Trigonom‐ tribute-collecting (jizya) (pp. 78-83), census-taking etry, for instance, had been perfected for the pur‐ (p. 83, n. 57), and ethnically segregated townships pose of orienting new constructions of mosques to (ahl al-dhimma) (pp. 84-88)--reemerged in the six‐ face toward Mecca (p. 119). In the hands of Por‐ teenth century as important colonial practices tuguese navigators, trigonometry became an in‐ and policies in Spanish America. dispensable tool for establishing the exact posi‐ Although the Muslim "core" of the require‐ tion of caravels as they tacked in and away from ment was seriously challenged by Las Casas in his shore (sometimes for weeks at a time)--a new debates with Sepulveda in 1550, it was not until mode of sea-travel adopted by the Portuguese in 1573 that signifcant changes of wording severed lieu of "coasting" after they encountered strong the document from its Moorish moorings (p. 95). head-winds beyond Cape Bojador (pp. 108-11). Im‐ By that time, the major part of Spain's conquest of provements to the astrolabe, notably its conver‐ indigenous territories had been completed. Thus, sion from a nighttime to a daytime instrument for in Seed's calculus of comparative colonialism, the measuring the height of the sun and fxing one's requirement was the most pervasive instrument latitudinal position at sea, represented an even for extending Spanish political power in the more spectacular implementation of Islamic Americas. knowledge (pp. 120-28). Later, such break‐ Chapter 4 ("A New Sky and New Stars: Arabic throughs at sea were replicated on land in the and Hebrew Science, Portuguese Seamanship, and form of new surveying techniques for delineating the Discovery of America") examines Portugal's property boundaries and the limits of political ju‐ use of its own Muslim and Judaic intellectual past. risdictions. Rather than being based on landscape Whereas Spain incorporated certain legalistic-po‐ features (rivers, hills, trees) as they were in Eng‐ litical traditions in framing its overseas colonial lish and Spanish colonies, Portuguese land bound‐ policies, Portugal inherited the lion's share of aries comprised imaginary lines expressed in Iberian Arabic-Hebrew scientifc traditions--a cir‐ terms of degrees (angles) and leagues (distance). cumstance owing both to historical conditions This assertion of space over place--that is, of mea‐ and necessity. Prior to the Christian reconquest of surements that could be independently verifed western Iberia in the mid-thirteenth century, Is‐ by precision instruments as opposed to boundary lamic traditions of religious toleration facilitated a traditions preserved by human (and thus fallible) climate of intellectual exchange between Muslim caretakers of local knowledge--constituted one of and Jewish scholars. One outcome of these collab‐ the triumphs of Portuguese scientifc imagination. orations was the production of a sizable body of

4 H-Net Reviews

Much of Seed's presentation in this section is their large home populations) were actively pro‐ narratively structured like other histories of sci‐ moting "settlement" as the yardstick of legitimate ence and technology, where multiple sub-plots of possession abroad. Instead, the Dutch would technical problems and solutions, ever fortuitous‐ eventually come to adopt the novel view that ly converging with prior information and designs, "commerce"--that is, constant sailing and trading fnally culminate in the "great" discovery or in‐ in a specifc area--was the basis for legitimating vention. Here, however, Seed is less concerned their possessions. with those Portuguese feats known to schoolboys As in her previous chapters, Seed again (Vasco da Gama's rounding of the Cape of Good delves into the etymological sub-stratum and his‐ Hope or Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe; torical usages of key words with great success. Af‐ or even the lesser-known discovery of Brazil or ter establishing the existence of a network of de‐ the frst accurate astronomical description of the notative relations between the Dutch words for Southern Cross), but rather with how this legacy "discovery," "discrimination" (i.e., "meticulous of scientifc prowess translated into unique dis‐ sighting") and "description," she goes on to high‐ courses of rightful possession. At frst the Por‐ light passages in Dutch-authored travelogues and tuguese held that the mere fact of "discovery" or geographies that suggest connotative equivalen‐ "frst sighting" conferred possession, since these cies between "describing" and "claiming" (pp. feats were accomplished by means of instruments 161-63). According to Seed, "description" was, in and knowledge which they alone had developed. fact, more than a metaphor for the Dutch; it was a Later, the Portuguese would legitimate possession mechanism of possession. It was by "industries of by producing highly accurate measurements of description" that the Dutch broadcast their over‐ boundaries disputed with other European powers seas claims and colonial aspirations to the rest of (i.e., "fxing by numbers"). Seed shows how this Europe, for the best maps (bearing Dutch place- unique Portuguese legacy can be discerned from names) and the most accurate written accounts of the Tordesillas Compromise of 1494 to present- world geography were produced in Antwerp and day Brazilian property laws. Amsterdam in the seventeenth century (pp. In Chapter 5 ("Sailing in the Wake of the Por‐ 162-65). tuguese"), Seed looks at the epic rise of Dutch nav‐ EVALUATION igation and colonial adventurism in the seven‐ Because of its ambitious scope, Ceremonies of teenth century as both a continuation and a rup‐ Possession presented its author with overlapping ture with Portuguese precedents. The existence of challenges in the handling of sources, research strong commercial ties between Lisbon and design, and fnished presentation. The task of Antwerp fostered the transfer of Portuguese nau‐ comparatively exploring how national-cultural tical expertise, arriving either in the form of navi‐ traditions infuenced certain apparati of early gational treatises or as frst-hand knowledge ac‐ modern colonialisms required sifting through an quired by Dutch sailors serving on Portuguese incredible amount of secondary historical schol‐ vessels. Not surprisingly then, the Dutch initially arship (produced in diferent national contexts adopted the Portuguese-inspired notion that "dis‐ and languages). Moreover, primary documents covery" alone, in the absence of visible signs of left by the agents and state bureaucracies of these previous inhabitation, conferred the legal right of colonial societies difered greatly in quantity and possession. In the over-competitive seas of the kind. In addressing these obstacles, Seed shows seventeenth century, however, "discovery" or herself to be resourceful and creative, crafting a "frst presence" arguments would prove insuf‐ cient, especially as England and France (with

5 H-Net Reviews vessel capable of holding a heady swirl of dis‐ solved. Underlying Seed's stated purpose of treat‐ parate documentation within a cohesive whole. ing the "rationales and legitimation ... of imperial In dealing with the almost prohibitive abun‐ power as cultural constructions ... hav[ing] a cer‐ dance of existing scholarship, Seed condensed her tain logic with respect to the cultural, political, questions of inquiry to a manageable set of relat‐ economic, ecological and social history of each ed themes: ceremonies of original possession (acts nation" (p. 13, italics mine), there is a tension, per‐ of foundation, conquests, discoveries); cere‐ haps endemic to all comparative-historical stud‐ monies for maintaining possession (processions, ies, between essentialist and historicist modes of boundary surveys); legal and political arguments inquiry and argumentation. In uncovering and for legitimating possession; and the "technologies" plotting the "logics" of diferent variants of early used for claiming possession (cartography, astron‐ modern European colonialism (which, with some omy, nautical science, etc.). She often uses narra‐ qualifcation, are portrayed as unitary), Seed tive modes to introduce these themes, drawing posits the existence of collective national behav‐ closely on her sources to recreate case scenarios iors and inductively reduces these to a set of es‐ that efectively sensitize modern readers to specif‐ sential diferences. Although Seed tenaciously en‐ ic social realities in the historical past. Also, rather deavored to contextualize each country's legiti‐ than apply identically controlled modes of analy‐ mating discourses, possession ceremonies, and ac‐ sis to the documentation available for each soci‐ quisitional technologies as historically unfolding ety, Seed let the uneven nature of her sources de‐ phenomena, limitations of space (and perhaps of termine specifc approaches for each chapter. Of‐ time and energy) prohibited her from realizing ten Ceremonies of Possession seems more like a full serial analyses. As it stands, Seed's convictions collection of similar but autonomous essays. The about the diferent "national logics" that informed chapter on the Spanish requirement, for example, the apparati of early modern colonialisms are expends far more energy tracing the Islamic- stated more conclusively than her historical re‐ Iberian genealogy of a single text; while the chap‐ constructions of their genealogies necessarily per‐ ters on French processions and English "acts of mit. possession" focus more on performances and con‐ What distinguishes Cerermonies of Posses‐ structions in New World contexts. Complicating sion among works by historians of colonial Latin the symmetry of her analysis further, the require‐ America is the weight placed on language, dis‐ ment was mainly a relic of the frst half of the six‐ course, and culture as dynamic agents, not mere teenth century, confned to frst-encounter situa‐ epiphenomena, in the articulation of colonial tions between Spaniards and Amerindians, while power. Seed has wandered far from the legal-po‐ the aforesaid English and French practices were litical and economic-structural paths that former‐ used to establish, consolidate, and maintain pos‐ ly charted the study of colonialism. At the same session over longer periods.[6] Thus Seed's com‐ time, the present work complements these ap‐ parisons sometimes sufer a kind of apples-and- proaches by dealing almost exclusively with the oranges syndrome. To combat this idiosyncrasy, "dominant" half of the European-Indigenous Seed devoted a few pages at the end of each chap‐ equation, widely exploring and explicating the ter (and in the case of chapter 4, creating a sepa‐ cultural feld of the conquerers. By widening the rate appendix) for integrating her discussions and defnition of culture to include "familiar language, many excursions. gestures, and objects," Seed's book advances us Despite Seed's gift for innovative problem- beyond older, but still common interpretations of solving, other challenges were not so easily re‐ early modern colonialism as being intellectually inspired and ideologically cemented by notions of

6 H-Net Reviews universal Christianity or legacies of Roman impe‐ well as an agenda for future comparative investi‐ rialism. Some may complain that Ceremonies of gations. Monographic studies like Karen Vieira Possession overindulges in topics that have little Powers' Andean Journeys: Migration, Ethnogene‐ bearing on visible forms of social change, perhaps sis, and the State in Colonial Quito (1995) and Vi‐ like a medieval map girded with monsters and cente Rafael's Contracting Colonialism: Transla‐ chimera at its margins. Perhaps. To my mind, the tion and Christian Conversion in Tagalog Society most apt metaphor for Seed's book is that of a por‐ under Early Spanish Rule (1988), although focused tulans or early coastal chart drawn from the frst- on particular regions, can also be included here hand experience of mariners. As Charles Olson because their projects have been deliberately de‐ wrote of Columbus' cartographer in his poem "On signed in light of current, general debates about First Looking Out Through Juan de la Cosa's Eyes": colonialism and resistance, and thus generate "...before La Cosa, nobody/ could have/ a mappen‐ conclusions readily accessible to scholars working munde" So too here. As a map-making endeavor, outside these geographical areas. Seed's book traverses over immense stretches of [3]. Evidence of the persistence of this sym‐ documentation--four-ffths of it outside her specif‐ bolism can be found in the eighteenth-century ic area of expertise. It remains to be seen if this naval logs of Capt. Cook and, to a lesser degree, in book will inspire interdisciplinary scholars to fur‐ the U.S. Homestead Act of 1862 (pp. 35-36). ther explore the diferences among European [4]. Here Seed evokes M.M. Bahktin and Homi colonialisms and chart the linkages that exist be‐ Bhabha in discussing hybridization as a typical tween the symbolic and material sides of this his‐ mental-linguistic phenomena in colonial and mul‐ tory. I'm optimistic. ti-lingual situations (p. 94). NOTES [5]. According to Seed, "Jewish scholars were [1]. Works written or edited by scholars origi‐ probably politically far more acceptable to Por‐ nally trained in literary and/or cultural studies in‐ tuguese royalty than were Islamic ones," since clude Tzvetan Todorov's La Conquete de Portugal's mission against Islam had been envi‐ l'Amerique (1982), Rolena Adorno's Guaman sioned as an ideological and militaristic crusade. Poma: Writing and Resistance in Colonial Peru Portuguese scientifc inheritance was further aid‐ (1986), Peter Hulme's Colonial Encounters: Europe ed in 1391 after a series of pogroms against Jew‐ and the Native Caribbean, 1492-1797 (1986), ish communities erupted across Castile (followed Stephen Greenblatt's edited New World Encoun‐ in 1412 by anti-Semitic legislation in Aragon), re‐ ters (1993), Jose Rabasa's Inventing America: sulting in the migration of many Jewish scholars Spanish Historiography and the Formation of Eu‐ to Lisbon over the course of the ffteenth century-- rocentrism (1993), Margarita Zamora's Reading the heyday of Portuguese nautical science (pp. Columbus (1993), Francisco Javier Cevallos-Can‐ 118-19). A century later (1496-1506), ill-advised dau's edited Coded Encounters: Writing, Gender campaigns against in Portugal would play a and Ethnicity in Colonial (1994), role in debilitating Portuguese nautical and scien‐ and Walter Mignolo's The Darker Side of the Re‐ tifc superiority in Europe (pp. 135-36). naissance: Literacy, Territoriality, and Coloniza‐ [6]. Another observation on this point: In her tion (1995). attempt to economize, Seed settled on a shorthand [2]. The literature of this feld includes approach whereby "characteristic" forms of cere‐ Nicholas B. Dirks'Conquest and Colonialism mony and practice stand in as symptomatic of na‐ (1992), an edited collection of essays that attempts tional tendencies. This creates certain problems. to articulate common themes across regions, as To reduce the Spanish colonizing complex to the

7 H-Net Reviews requirement, for instance, is to impoverish the full variety of localized forms of possession enact‐ ed by the Spaniards. Why does Seed analyze a text for the Spanish and examine accounts of "acts" and "processions" for the English and French, re‐ spectively, when accounts of Spanish town found‐ ing-rituals, including the planting of crosses and ceremoniously "walking of" streets and plazas, abound in the archives of Latin America? Copyright (c) 1996 by H-Net, all rights re‐ served. This work may be copied for non-proft educational use if proper credit is given to the au‐ thor and the list. For other permission, please con‐ tact [email protected].

If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the network, at https://networks.h-net.org/h-latam

Citation: John A. Crider. Review of Seed, Patricia. Ceremonies of Possession: Europe's Conquest of the New World, 1492-1640. H-LatAm, H-Net Reviews. October, 1996.

URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=649

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

8