John Crider on Ceremonies of Possession: Europe's

Patricia Seed. Ceremonies of Possession: Europe's Conquest of the New World, 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 undifferentiated 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 different 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 differences 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-field 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‐ fill 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, "field 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 conflicting 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 five 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" first 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 affections 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-fire, 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 benefit 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"--differed remarkably from its ment states: "[W]e will not compel you to turn perjorative primary meaning of "affectation" 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 significance 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 confirmed 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 influenced by Is‐ 51-52). lamic and Jewish intellectual traditions to a far Along with strategies of political alliance greater extent than previously realized.

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