Ceremonies of Possession in Europe\'s Conquest of the New World 1492-1640

Ceremonies of Possession/Differences in How America Was Settled

Patricia Seed in her book, Ceremonies of Possession, assumes a novel position in regard to the settlement of the New World by the various European powers. Seed's theory is that each of the five main nations involved in the settlement of the New World: England, France, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands, did so in their own unique way and that these unique ways were more closely related to the individual country's rituals and practices as opposed to their inherited traditions. Reducing Seed's theory to its least common denominator: "Englishman held that they acquired rights to the New World by physical objects, Frenchmen by gestures, Spaniards by speech, Portuguese by numbers, Dutch by description

The demonstration of the English dependence on physical objects can be seen in their heavy reliance on building, erecting, and planting as part of their cultural development when they began settling in the New World. Unlike the other cultures that relied upon other factors, the English did not rely upon their having discovered the lands in which they settled or any justifiable occupancy on legal precedent or divine right, but rather, the English built settlements and villages in an effort to establish themselves in the New World. The more flamboyant French, on the other hand, were more concerned with establishing themselves in the New World by acquiring the consent of the inhabitants that already occupied the land. For instance, unlike the English who made little or no effort to gain the approval of the Native American population in the New World, the French attempted to endear themselves with the same people. Thus, the French were able to establish their presence in the New World by lavishing the American Indians with gifts while the English largely ignored the same Indians. The English, in fact, justified their displacement of the Native Americans on the fact that such people refused to adopt the English life style which was based on the building of communities. Similarly, the Portuguese, who were deeply defined by their dedication to navigation, made their claim to the new lands by describing their ownership based on latitude and longitude; the Spanish, meanwhile, based their settlement on the military conquest of the Natives they found. According to Seed, the Spanish were merely applying the methods that they had observed and suffered under the Muslim conquest of their own land. Like the Muslims before them, the Spaniards were forcing the Natives they found in the New World to submit to the superiority of the Catholic religion. This explains why, unlike the other nations involved in the settlement of the Americas, the Spanish made proselytizing by the Catholic missionaries such a major part of their settlement efforts.

The ceremonial aspects of the different nations explain to some degree the measure of success that each of them had in the settlement of the New World. Arguably, the approach adopted by the English and Spanish proved to have the most long lasting effects. The ceremonial approaches utilized by the French, Portuguese, and Dutch were doomed to failure from the beginning. France's attempt to endear the local population proved successful in the short-term but the French and Native American cultures could not long endure as one population and when the French ceremonial endearment began to wear thin on the Native Americans so did the French attempts at settling in the New World. Additionally, the French reluctance to establish settlements and build structures like the English failed to encourage widespread settlements like developed in the English colonies. The Portuguese and Dutch, meanwhile, never viewed the New World has a source of new settlements. They were more concerned with the aspects of trade in the case of the Dutch, and in the development of navigation and the building of maps in the case of the Portuguese. Once the English and Spanish had built their settlements, Dutch trading opportunities diminished and once the navigation charts were completed Portugal's interest in the New World diminished as well. The English, meanwhile, through their system of building, planting, and establishing settlements gradually established a stranglehold in North America while in Central and South America the Spanish were using their conquest and proselytizing to extend their influence.

The importance of the differences noted by Seed is that the different European nations pursued colonization for different reasons and understood it differently as well. These differences resulted in the influence of the various nations being reflected differently in the cultures that developed in the New World but it also affected how the European nations viewed themselves through the colonization process. In the short-term, the colonization process created a feeling of great pride among the European nations as they established themselves in the New World but, in the long-term, such feelings allowed a spirit of nationalism to develop among the European nations.