On the American Indians

Overview

About sixty pages, a lecture delivered at the University of Salamanca in 1539 by the Dominican theologian Francisco de Vitoria on the justice of Spain’s conquest of the Americas. He argues that the Indians were the true owners of their lands before the Spaniards came, and rejects the claims of the emperor and the pope to universal dominion, the right of discovery, the refusal of the faith and the sins of the natives as just titles to conquest.

He then sets out grounds on which Spanish rule might be lawful, such as the right to travel and trade and to defend the innocent. The lecture is a founding text of international law.

What happens

Whether the question may be asked. Vitoria opens by insisting that the conquest raises a question of conscience that theologians are competent to judge, since it concerns divine and natural law, whatever the lawyers and the crown may say.

Whether the Indians had dominion. He considers the arguments that sinners, unbelievers, madmen and irrational creatures cannot own property, and rejects each, concluding that the Indians had true public and private dominion, with their own cities, laws, marriages and magistrates.

The unjust titles. Vitoria examines seven grounds on which the conquest had been defended, the emperor’s lordship of the world, the pope’s, the right of discovery, the refusal of the faith, the sins of the natives, their voluntary submission and a special gift of God, and finds each of them void.

The just titles. He then sets out grounds that might justify Spanish presence: the natural right of all peoples to travel, trade and settle among others, the right to preach the gospel and protect converts, the defence of the innocent from human sacrifice and tyranny, and true voluntary alliance.

The doubtful title. Vitoria considers, without deciding, whether the Indians’ unfitness to govern themselves might justify Spanish rule for their benefit, as a guardian rules a ward, and warns that the argument is dangerous.

The question of withdrawal. He closes by observing that even if all the titles failed, Spain could not now simply abandon the Indies, since trade and the crown’s revenues had come to depend on them, and the good of the Indians themselves must be considered.

How to read it

Read the opening argument for the theologian’s competence as the lecture’s key move, the conquest turned into a question of conscience that the university may judge.

Pay close attention to the rejection of the seven unjust titles, and notice that they are the grounds Spain had actually used, dismantled with the tools of the theology that had sponsored the conquest.

Notice the just titles that Vitoria leaves open, travel, trade, preaching and the defence of the innocent, and ask whether they limit the conquest or give it a better justification.

Consider the doubtful title, the Indians ruled for their own good as wards, and trace how far later empires took the argument Vitoria only raised.

Read this lecture alongside the Requerimiento to see the claim of papal donation that Vitoria demolishes stated in the document the conquistadors read aloud to villages before attacking them.

Questions it raises

• Did Vitoria limit the conquest by striking down its titles, or license it by supplying better ones, and can a reader decide from the text alone?
• What does it mean that the founding text of international law was a lecture on whether one’s own nation’s empire was just, and does the law of nations still carry that origin?
• Is the right of all peoples to travel and trade among others a principle of equality or a charter for the stronger party, given who could actually travel in 1539?
• How does the defence of the innocent, invoked against human sacrifice, compare with later humanitarian justifications for intervention?
• Why does Vitoria raise and not decide the doubtful title of guardianship, and what became of the argument in the centuries after him?
• What did the crown make of a lecture delivered in its own university that found its titles void, and why was Vitoria not silenced?