Original Reviews

          Marvelous Possessions is a meditation on the ways that sixteenth-century Europeans thought about the inhabitants of the new world. The initial response of marvel and admiration was transmuted, Stephen Greenblatt contends, to a need to possess, to appropriate. To explain that transmutation, he does a close reading of late medieval and Renaissance travel accounts, including those of Christopher Columbus and Bernal Díaz del Castillo.

          He argues that their responses to the wonder of the new world was informed by earlier European travel writers and particularly Sir John Mandeville and Marco Polo. Pre-Columbian travel accounts provided a set of understandings about encounters with non-Europeans. True, both the Mayan and Aztec cultures had pictograms that involved memories of their past. But that historical memory provided no template for interpreting their first encounters with Europeans.

          Greenblatt uses Columbus’ account of an incident during the first voyage to illustrate his thesis. Columbus comes on shore and, in the presence of native American ‘witnesses,’ plants a standard declaring the land a possession of the Spanish crown. Hearing no objection from the Indians, he assumes their acceptance of Spanish sovereignty.

          There are several things wrong with this ritual of possession. For one thing it was in Spanish. There would soon be translators and go-betweens who would insure that each party knew what the other was saying; that was not the case with these early encounters. Unlike European travels to the east which involved crossing the porous frontier between Europe and Asia. There were not only translators available but also some experience with these ‘others’ that could help in that translation. For another, the Indians had no comparable notion of land ownership.

          Indians, it turns out, were skilled at acquiring new languages and soon could understand Spanish. The practice of seizing Indians, usually kidnapping young boys, and taking them back to Spain helped solve the translation problem for subsequent European explorers.

          Greenblatt has an interesting discussion of the importance of signs and gestures in the absence of a common language. Spaniard/Indian misunderstandings were created by what the Spanish believed to be the universality of signs. For example, it was assumed that the Indians gathered on the shore to greet the landing parties were there to conduct trade. But the Indians were not on the beach to trade and were confused by the gestures used to propose an exchange.

          Taking possession of Caribbean islands on behalf of the Spanish crown was never the prime motive for Columbus’s first voyage. Rather he was hoping to discover a new route to Asia as an alternative to the Mediterranean. 1492 can also be explained, in part, by the presence of a Spanish warrior class that needed opportunities for conquest and loot. Hence they responded to the gold body jewelry worn by the Indians with their historic brutality. What was admired could be grabbed.

          Columbus was part of what Greenblatt calls Christian chauvinism. Rather than seeing similarities in the Spanish devotion to sacred statuary, Columbus was enraged by the representations of their gods. He went around smashing their “idols.” As did the later Spanish discovers of Aztec and Mayan cities.

          Greenblatt, a superb Elizabethan scholar and writer, ends with an irony. The one aspect of American Indian culture that most offended Columbus — even more than their inebriation, fornication, and sodomy — was the practice of human sacrifice and cannibalism. But wait a minute, how much worse is it to roast and eat a man than to roast him for the pleasure of watching him die in agony. That was a common enough event in sixteenth-century Spain, and endorsed by both religious and secular authorities.

          Marvelous Possessions was required reading for a history course this past fall semester. If you think that reading requirements for UF courses are less strenuous these days, read this book.

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