Heritage nightmare. "Timothy Daniel's House c.1854". One of the very earliest Colonial houses still standing in the Inner West, albeit much altered. Built of brick and Sydney Sandstone, it was converted to flats at some stage a long while back, and cement rendered. The timber shingle roof might even be close to original. Due to its heritage listing it can't be demolished, so what do developers do? Ah, bright idea! Buy up all the land and knock up apartment buildings on both sides and out the back. The house itself appears unoccupied, unmaintained, and water damaged with a perspex fence out the front. WTF? Demolition by neglect? Canterbury.
The Codex Egerton 2895 is an Early Colonial Mixtec manuscript recording the geneaological history of the Mixtec people. The codex presents a blend of traditional Mixtec iconography and Mixtec captions written in the Latin script introduced by the Spanish. The use of the Latin alphabet alongside Mesoamerican writing is common in the colonial period and speaks to the growing relationship between both the indigenous peoples and the Spanish colonists.
The Lienzo de Tlaxcala, or History of Tlaxcala, is a colonial Mexican manuscript documenting the events of the Spanish conquer up to the year 1585. It depicts the alliance between the indigenous Tlaxcalans and the Spanish to defeat their mutual Aztec enemies, adding a Mesoamerican perspective to the conquest of the New World. The lienzo is made of cotton cloth and features a blending of Mesoamerica and European iconography with both Spanish and Nahuatl captions.
For more information, check out the Introduction to the Lienzo de Tlaxcala.
Even as the conquest of the New World was often accomplished by military means or by occupation, its authority-that is, the right to rule- was established by language and ceremony. For Columbus, it was the ritual landing of the royal banner and twin flags, together with the language of his well-witnessed solemn declarations, that established the right of the crown of Castile to this territory, later known as the New World. Columbus's first step was to mark his presence on the land-the customary first element in the Roman tradition of taking possession. Like Venetian John Cabot, who had planted a cross and two flags on the coast of Cape Breton only a few years later, Columbus borrowed the ceremonial elements marking his arrival in the New World from his Mediterranean seafaring predecessors.
Patricia Seed, “Taking Possession and Reading Texts: Establishing the Authority of Overseas Empires.” The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Apr., 1992), pp. 183-209.
For English monarchs the language used to constitute their right was also embedded in a written text (letters patent), but the right was executed in the act of settling on land in the New World. In June I 578, four years prior to the voyage to Newfoundland at which he received the "rod and turf," Sir Humphrey Gilbert received a royal patent authorizing him to "discover . . . such remote, barbarous, and heathen lands, countreis, and territories not possessed by any Christian prince or people nor inhabited by Christian people and the same to have, holde, occupy and enjoy." This patent was subsequently renewed on behalf of Gilbert's half-brother, Sir Walter Ralegh, and used to found the first semi-permanent English settlement in the New World, the colony at Roanoke in the territory later known as Virginia.7 By contrasting the language of the official authorizations for empire-the English letter patent and the Spanish papal bull and their divergent forms of cultural expression-taking possession and reading texts-this article will contrast English and Spanish practices in establishing the authority of overseas empire.
The word "patent" comes from the Latin patente, signifying "open." Letters patent are open letters, as distinguished from letters close, private letters closed up or sealed.9 Letters patent came from a sovereign (or other person in authority) and were used to record an agreement, confer a right, title, or property, or authorize or command something to be done. Queen Elizabeth's letters patent to Gilbert and Ralegh authorized-that is, literally established the authority for-Englishmen to venture into the New World. From similar and sometimes identical patents in the next century came the authorizations for the settlement of Virginia, New England, Maryland, and the Carolinas.
The patent makes explicit what the queen legitimated. Her twin authorizations, on the one hand, to "discover, find, search out, and view" and, on the other, "to have, holde, occupy and enjoy" relate not to the peoples of the New World but to the lands, which are described as "remote, barbarous, and heathen." There is a critical elision at the core of this definition because, while land can be remote, it cannot be barbarous or heathen; only people can have these qualities. If, as is sometimes alleged, attributing a characteristic of a people to a place is common in English, this simply tells us that the language itself allows for suppressing knowledge of the existence of peoples. But far from being an insignificant or merely rhetorical feature of the English language, this omission of persons plays a central role within a crucial political document, the first formal authorization that actually led to English settlement in the New World and the model used for all subsequent English patents for occupying the New World.
Elizabeth's letters patent specify what Gilbert was entitled to "have, hold, occupy and enjoy," namely, "all the soyle of all such lands, countreis, and territories. .. and of all Cities, Castles, Towns and Villages, and places in the same."10The official authorization is limited to subduing space that is implicitly occupied but to whose inhabitants the patent does not refer. It is to the "soyle," not the people, that Gilbert and Raleigh were granted rights to hold and enjoy. The very definition of what is to be possessed elides-that is to say, suppresses by omission-the question of inhabitants by focusing on the "soyle." And it is possession of the soil that Gilbert then ceremonially enacted on the banks of Newfoundland in I 583.
[...]
The authority invoked by Elizabeth originated first, in the words of the patent, from her own "especial grace, certaine science, and mere motion." "Especial grace" designated the source of royal authority in medieval English thinking-the idea that royal authority derives from God and comes to the crown by grace. The queen's special grace is therefore a power that comes to her directly from God, a concept of kingship unique in Western Europe in medieval and early modern times.13 Grace also signified favor or benignant regard on the part of a superior, as the ground of a concession (as opposed to a right or an obligation) or manifestation of favor. "Science"in the sixteenth century signified knowledge, but knowledge as a personal attribute. And "motion"was either moving, prompting, urging, instigating, or bidding-a ground or cause of action. The adjectives that qualify the three bases of royal authority are special (favor), certain(knowledge), and mere(motion), all personal: they depend solely on the distinctive qualities of the queen. The queen's authority derives from her direct and personal relationship with the ultimate source of power. Neither popes nor compacts with the people or commonwealth disturb the singular assertion of that authority in granting land.
The second source of the queen's authority is the absence of dominion over the lands by any other Christian ruler. Her grants are to those "lands, countreis, and territories not possessed by any Christian prince ... nor inhabited by Christian people." Here, for the first and only time, the letters patent refer to human beings, but the word "people" only encompasses Christians: the presence of native peoples is still suppressed by omission. In making possession possible for Christian sovereigns, the letters patent tacitly acknowledge the legitimacy of dominion of other Christian (that is, European) rulers while passing over in silence the potential legitimacy of the New World's inhabitants. Although this right of other Europeans was not always respected in practice, it was at least enshrined in theory.
[...]
Another dimension of English thinking on possession is expressed most vividly in a popular version of the old legal proverb--"possession is nine-points of the law"--meaning that possession constitutes nearly all of the legal claim to ownership. Pollock and Wright establish this principle succinctly: "possession is the root of title," and the right to ownership (unaccompanied by actual possession) is merely a right to sue the possessor.25 Where Roman law distinguished possession from the right to possess, English law collapsed the two categories.26 Thus in English law and, interestingly, in English law alone, the fact of ownership creates a virtually unassailable right to own as well.
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The culturally distinctive characteristics of the English act of taking possession become apparent when contrasted with the practices of other European powers. In the conquest of the New World, as well as in their expansion into Asia and Africa in the sixteenth century, European explorers used a variety of symbolic acts to mark their presence or their contact. Beginning in I483, Portuguese explorers placed padries (pillars of stone) bearing the royal arms along the coasts of Africa, India, and Brazil. The first Portuguese to sail to Brazil in I 500 erected a cross similarly emblazoned.33 A Dutch expedition to the East Indies landed on the uninhabited island of Mauritius, where the vice admiral nailed a wooden board bearing the arms of Holland, Amsterdam, and Zeeland to a tree. Jacques Cartier raised a cross with a shield bearing the fleur-de-lis and the text "Vive le Roy de France"at Gaspe harbor on the St. Lawrence River in 1534... Some of these devices were not related to formal acts of authority but were designed to ceremonialize the occasion. And when the discoveries were unexpected, as was Balboa's, the signs of possession--the stones and graffiti--were hastily improvised on the spot. But other actions, such as the placing of the stone pillars by the Portuguese, crosses by the Spanish, and wooden boards by the Dutch were regarded by their rulers as official acts indicating their dominion over the territory. The Portuguese saw the stone pillars as signaling their possession of territory following the Roman tradition of stone markers; the French and Spanish envisioned the cross as a sign of having taken possession of the territory; and the Dutch similarly regarded nailing the arms of the States General to a tree.
Because their concept of dominion was bound up with residence on the land and with the nearly synonymous use of "possession" and "property," the English believed that symbolic manifestations such as crosses, shields, and stone pillars functioned merely as mnemonic devices, or at best as navigational beacons...
[...]
Unlike other Europeans, the English rejected the idea that signs, markers, pillars, plaques, or piles of stone could establish dominion over a territory or that anything other than "taking possession" (constructing permanent residences) constituted dominion. Where Portuguese sovereigns saw their stone pillars with crosses and royal arms "as a sign of how they saw said lands and islands . .. and acquired ... dominion over them," the English refused to recognize anything other than occupation or settlement. Because the concepts of what constituted possession were mutually exclusive and the respective imperial aims competitive, conflict over the meaning of sovereignty was inevitable.
In I 562 the Portuguese ambassador to Elizabeth's court lodged a formal protest against English trading in Guinea on the west coast of Africa, justifying an exclusive claim on the basis of Portugal's discovery, propagation of Christianity, and peaceful domination of the commerce of that territory for sixty years. He further complained that the English had placed an arbitrary interpretation on the concept of dominion and asked the queen to forbid her subjects to trade in Portuguese areas. "They [the English] decide that he [the Portuguese king] has no dominion but where he has forts and receives tribute .... but as the words are doubtful, he desires her [Queen Elizabeth] ... to change them into such others [words] as may comprehend all the land discovered by the Crown of Portugal." The queen replied that "her meaning ... is ... to restrain her subjects from haunting [frequenting] ... land ... wherein the King of Portugal had obedience, dominion, and tribute, and not [to prevent their trading] from all places discovered whereof he had no superiority at all." An annoyed ambassador responded that "his master has absolute dominion ... over those lands already discovered."
