Ceremonies of Possession: How Five Nations Settled the New World

Introduction to Seed's Framework

Patricia Seed, in her book Ceremonies of Possession: Europe's Conquest of the New World, 1492–1640, assumes a novel position regarding the settlement of the New World by the various European powers. Seed's central argument 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 its own unique way, and that these unique ways were more closely related to each country's own rituals and practices than to any shared inherited traditions. Reducing Seed's theory to its least common denominator: "Englishmen held that they acquired rights to the New World by physical objects, Frenchmen by gestures, Spaniards by speech, Portuguese by numbers, Dutch by description."

Each Nation's Distinctive Colonial Ritual

The English dependence on physical objects is evident 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 colonizing cultures, the English did not ground their claims in having discovered the lands, in legal precedent, or in divine right. Instead, they built settlements and villages as a means of establishing themselves. The more demonstrative French, on the other hand, were primarily concerned with acquiring the consent of the peoples who already occupied the land. Unlike the English, who made little or no effort to gain the approval of Native American populations, the French attempted to endear themselves to those same peoples by lavishing them with gifts.

The English, for their part, justified the displacement of Native Americans on the grounds that such peoples refused to adopt the English way of life, which was centered on the building of permanent communities. The Portuguese, who were deeply shaped by their dedication to navigation, staked their claim to new lands by defining ownership through latitude and longitude. The Spanish, meanwhile, based their settlement on the military conquest of the Native peoples they encountered. According to Seed, the Spanish were applying methods they had themselves observed and endured during the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. Just as the Muslims had done before them, the Spaniards compelled the Natives they found in the New World to submit to the superiority of the Catholic religion. This explains why, unlike the other colonizing nations, the Spanish made proselytizing by Catholic missionaries such a central element of their settlement efforts.

Conclusion: The Value of Seed's Perspective

Seed's theories of colonization are not without their critics, but she does provide an interesting framework for examining the issues. She dismisses the notion that all the involved European nations pursued colonization for the same reasons, arguing instead that each nation approached the settlement of its particular sphere of influence according to its own logic and cultural imperatives. Acquiring property and building remain important features of the areas colonized by England, while Catholicism remains central to the culture of areas colonized by Spain. The English practice of marking property boundaries with fences and hedges persists in areas settled by England, while in areas once settled by the Portuguese, latitude and longitude remains the preferred method of spatial orientation. In the final analysis, Seed's theories offer another valuable lens through which to examine an important period in history — an illuminating perspective that might otherwise be lost through more traditional approaches to the subject.