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Summary

In the early seventeenth century, cannibalism became associated with a startling range of political and social transgressions in England. Since the term ‘cannibal’ developed out of European travel and expansion, especially in the Caribbean and South America, scholars have often viewed this term as an imperial trope designed purely to justify invasion. The lurid tales of physical incorporation that appeared in European travel writing, however, do not sufficiently explain why indigenous rites of violence pervaded post-Reformation English anxieties over the nature of civil society and state authority to the extent they did. A consideration of Tupi and Carib warfare becomes important for understanding why cannibalism became such a salient metaphor to discuss religious error, factionalism, rising litigations, and the breakdown of trust in Jacobean communities. The language of cannibal violence, with its specific connotations of indigenous belief, places the socio-political climate of London on the eve of the Thirty Years’ War within emerging English ambitions in the Atlantic.

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Chapter 3 - Cannibalism and the Politics of Bloodshed

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Chapter 3 - Cannibalism and the Politics of Bloodshed

Summary