Death elicits among many thoughts about eternity and sacredness, although the end of life involves several profound and long lasting transformations and is loaded with mundane concerns. Eric Seeman's Death in the New World explores the power of death to produce social change. Seeman argues that in the period covered by his book, death served as a ground upon which many important cultural exchanges took place, offering members of the different cultures and geographical origins meeting in the New World the opportunity to learn about each other's customs and beliefs.
In spite of its ambitious title, this book studies the history of a fraction of the New World, focusing on North America. Occasionally, the author draws examples and stories from the Caribbean and even Mexico, but overall this is a book about the history of the area that later became the United States and Canada. Thus, the author has a U.S. audience in mind, a choice reflected in the voice, examples, and allusions to contemporary situations made throughout the book.
The brief introduction explains with clarity the aims and scope of the study. The eight following chapters are organized according to a well-thought synthesis of thematic, geographic, cultural, and chronological criteria to comprehend an intricate, multifarious, world.
The first chapter, “Old Worlds,” furnishes brief surveys of the beliefs and practices surrounding death among the major groups meeting in Northeastern North America: Algonkian Indians, English Protestants, French Catholics, Akan Africans and Western European Jews. Chapter 2, “First Encounters,” argues that English and Spanish thought that the “reform” of Indian deathways was crucial for the success of Christianization. Seeman offers an overview of the relations between Amerindian and Europeans in the years following the discovery, conquest, and colonization of the Americas, noting that communication, cooperation and exploitation marked the interactions among the peoples of the Atlantic World. In this chapter we read about Columbus and the Taínos, and about Cortés and the conquest of Mexico, even though they do not form part of the peoples whose cultural background was studied in the previous chapter, and the subject is not dealt with again. Seeman studies Spanish activities in Florida and particularly Jesuit interactions with Amerindians and their tragic end. Throughout, the author highlights Spanish lack of flexibility when approaching indigenous peoples. This idea is further emphasized in his account of English encounters with Amerindians in southeastern North America, where he observes “moments of cross-cultural cooperation and understanding” that came to an end because of the “exploitative foundations of the colonization efforts” (77). Herein the author applies an approach that guides his assessment of cultural interactions: that of exclusive and inclusive reactions. In their contacts with the indigenous populations of the territories invaded, visited, or colonized, the Spanish, Seeman argues, tended to have exclusive reactions, whereas the English tended to have inclusive reactions, at least in the initial years.
The third chapter focuses on Virginia and English–Amerindian exchanges around burials. The study of incidents of interment and desecration using documentary and archaeological sources provide fascinating views about how each group observed, fought, and shared with the other. Chapter 4 focuses on French Canada and the well-documented Jesuit missionary activities. Here we learn about the intense interaction the Jesuits developed with the indigenous population, manifested in episodes of openness and acceptance, but also resulted in violence and martyrdom. New England is the location of the following chapter, where Seeman studies English isolated efforts to Christianize death. The archaeological sources used in this section illuminate our understanding of the impact English culture and English deathways made on the local population. Assimilation of European symbols and material culture is also manifest among individuals of African descent in Barbados and New England, as shown in chapter 6. Again, Seeman makes use of archaeological studies to furnish a detailed account of funeral customs. While most chapters present death as an event where different cultures converged, the section on Jewish deathways argues that among Jews, practices around death served to strengthen their identity thus highlighting the boundaries separating them from other groups in the Dutch Caribbean and in New England.
Death in the context of the Seven Years' War is the subject of the eighth and final chapter. After two centuries of interaction, Amerindians and Europeans put the knowledge gained about each others' customs about and around death to fight each other but also to build strategic alliances. Seeman maintains that from a British viewpoint such knowledge was crucial at a momentous political juncture.
The scope of this work is broad and the research underpinning it is wide-ranging. Seeman has used a varied repertory of written sources enriched by the addition of archaeological literature and personal observations of material culture. Since I am not a specialist of the area he studies, it would be inappropriate to assess the quality of his sources. However, a few comments about the analysis seem pertinent. Given the complexity of the subject and the many places and peoples this book investigates, the analytical tools displayed seem too simple, as the pivotal distinction between inclusive and exclusive reactions to other peoples' customs show. This distinction does not have the potential to explain, for instance, why Spanish Catholics where harsh toward indigenous religion in Mexico or Florida whereas French Jesuits were open and willing to compromise, thus looking more alike their brothers in Asia and much less than Jesuits in the Spanish American colonies active at the very same time. Aspects that would help explain the changes described, and understand the conditions behind the different scenarios studied are left largely unexplored, notably the role secular authorities and colonial powers played by either securing or remaining aloof from missionary activities. In sum, this book's strength resides in the impressive amount of information gathered and in its argument about death's transformative power.
