The Delights of Nature in This New World: A Seventeenth-Century Canadian View of the Environment

2001 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynn Berry
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New World

Apostolic Colleges of the Propagation of the Faith-Old And New World Background

1962 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-58
Author(s):  
Kieran McCarty
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New World ◽  
Temporal Order ◽  
Human Endeavor ◽  
History Of ◽  
Spiritual Conquest

In the history of Spain's spiritual conquest of the New World, a definite cycle of enthusiasm may be observed. In the seventeenth century, for example, there was a noticeable falling off of Spanish missionary effort in the direction of the tribes yet to be converted. It is interesting to speculate on the causes of this phenomenon. An obvious cause, and certainly a contributing one, lies in the very nature of man. Human endeavor in the temporal order tends now to wax, now to wane in enthusiasm, and since the mission effort in question was human as well as divine, this cycle would tend to appear here as well. Around midcentury this problem of lessening enthusiasm became acute.

Production, Communication, and Comprehension of Knowledge of the New World: Ethnographic Descriptions in Caspar Barlaeus’ Rerum per Octennium

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 223-246
Author(s):  
Britt Dams
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
New World ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Careful Selection ◽  
The Bible ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
Trading Network ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Dutch Brazil

This article deals with the textual legacy of Dutch Brazil, in particular the ethnographic descriptions in one of the most popular works about the colony: Barlaeus’ Rerum per Octennium in Brasilia et alibi nuper gestarum. Barlaeus never set foot in Brazil, but was an important Dutch intellectual authority in the seventeenth century. To compose the Rerum per Octennium, he relied on a wide variety of available sources, not only firsthand observations, but also classical, biblical and other contemporary sources. From these, he made a careful selection to produce his descriptions. Recent research shows that the Dutch participated in networks of knowledge and imagination as well as in a more familiar early modern trading network. This article reveals that Barlaeus’ descriptions not only circulated as knowledge, but also produced new knowledge. The Rerum soon became one of the standard works about the colony due to the importance of its author and its composition. Furthermore, the article discusses the rhetorical techniques used in some selected descriptions in order to shed light upon the strategies Barlaeus used in his discourse on the strange reality of the New World. For example, his ethnographic descriptions employed parallel customs or events from the classical Antiquity or the Bible. In these comparisons he displays both his intellectual capacities and shows his desire to comprehend this exotic reality.

“Civil in any Country, if They Are So in the Fashion of France”

2019 ◽  
pp. 105-158
Author(s):  
Céline Carayon
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
New World ◽  
Gestural Communication ◽  
State Control ◽  
Early Modern France ◽  
Universal Language ◽  
Nonverbal Expression ◽  
Modern France

As the 1550 Royal Entry in Rouen described in the opening of this chapter reveals, Renaissance and Early Modern France was home to a deeply ceremonial culture in which political and social rituals held complex meanings. This chapter reviews significant historical and cultural developments that transformed Europeans’ predominantly oral cultures after 1500. At the time of their explorations in the Americas, the French were familiar with a variety of sign traditions that informed their perception of Indigenous gestures and prepared them well to communicate with signs in the New World. In France, gestural communication was deeply connected to the realms of religious and secular oratory, drama (theatre), and court protocols. The seventeenth century saw a renewal of scientific and philosophical interest for manual eloquence with new universal language schemes being developed, including some of the first manuals of sign language. Increased state control over definitions of civility and ongoing distrust of theatrical gestures as unauthentic resulted in diverging types of nonverbal expression among the elite and the rest of the population. The chapter ends with an overview of early Atlantic repertoires of signs that evolved from the traditions of mariners and soldiers who participated in early voyages.

Claiming the New World: Empire, Law, and Indigenous Rights in the Mohegan Case, 1704–1743

2011 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 333-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Bryan Yirush
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New World ◽  
Indigenous Rights ◽  
Privy Council

In 1773, with the empire on the brink of revolt, the Privy Council gave the final ruling in the case of the Mohegan Indians versus the colony of Connecticut. Thus ended what one eighteenth-century lawyer called “the greatest cause that ever was heard at the Council Board.” After a decades-long battle for their rights, involving several appeals to the Crown, three royal commissions, and the highest court in the empire, the Mohegans' case against Connecticut was dismissed. The dispute centered on a large tract of land (~20,000 acres) in southeastern Connecticut, which, the Mohegans claimed, the colony had reserved for them in the late seventeenth century. Concerned that the colony had violated its agreements, the Mohegans, aided by powerful colonists with a pecuniary interest in this tract of land, appealed to the Crown for redress. As a result of this appeal, what had been a narrow dispute over land became part of a larger conflict between the Crown, the colony, and the tribe over property and autonomy in the empire.

Portuguese Diplomacy in Asia in the Sixteenth Century: A Preliminary Overview

Itinerario ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 13-37
Author(s):  
Zoltán Biedermann
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
New World ◽  
Small Country ◽  
Cape Of Good Hope ◽  
Portuguese Empire

Scattered as it was over thousands of miles of African and Asian coastline, the Portuguese empire in the East had a peculiar shape when compared to the Spanish one in the New World. As one author of the early seventeenth century put it, ‘the king our lord does not have more than twenty leagues of land in all Asia, from Macao to the Cape of Good Hope’. Portugal was a small country with a population of one and a half million people, and it is no surprise that the Portuguese presence in Asia - a ‘network’ rather than an ‘empire’, as some authors claim - had to rely heavily on diplomacy. The wholesale ‘conquest’ (conquista) of the East was perceived as a theoretical right of the Portuguese crown, but in practice most relations with Eastern polities rested on a complex set of negotiated links of ‘friendship’ (amizade) or indirect submission (uassalagem).

Reflections on Monopolies and Free Trade at the End of the Eighteenth Century: A Tobacco Trading Company between Puerto Rico and Amsterdam in 1784

Itinerario ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-90
Author(s):  
Ana Crespo Solana
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
New World ◽  
Santo Domingo ◽  
Trading Company ◽  
Economic Exploitation ◽  
Considerable Success ◽  
Direct Trade

Even after the passing of the ‘Free Trade’ acts in Europe and America between 1765 and 1803, colonisation still meant trade for European mercantile and maritime powers which were beginning to think of themselves as liberal in the politico-economic sense. As before, the only suitable way of obtaining profits appeared to be economic exploitation, albeit within a politico-institutional structure. This ideal had inspired the inflexible system that had dominated the relations of both Spain and Portugal with their respective transatlantic colonies. Likewise, ever since their first incursions into the New World, northern Europeans had encouraged the creation of commercial companies dedicated to monopolising any of the goods that colonies might possibly have to offer. Dutch, English and French merchants developed farreaching private and state programmes designed to direct trade and colonisation and to encourage the populating of the new lands. During the seventeenth century, some of these companies achieved considerable success. They were able to settle, with or without permission from the Spanish monarchy, in territories formally under Spanish control, such as Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo, coastal Venezuela or Guiana, regarded as areas eminently suited to business projects.

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