Sepulveda Democrates Alter
The New World: an Introduction
In 1493, Pope Alexander VI issued a Papal Bull granting a protectorate of the New World to Spain. The subsequent attempt to rationalize and justify administrative dominance in lands with complex indigenous cultures (Inca and Aztec) led to much debate and to attempts to reconcile European political ideas with "new world" social and economic conditions. The trans-Atlantic encounter gave impetus to the development of international law, comparative ethnology, and theories of cultural development. By 1520,
"New Spain" comprised two viceroyalties, in Mexico City and Lima. Meanwhile, encomiendas or feudal fiefdoms had been established on the conquered soil by the colonizers. In 1542, the Spanish "New Laws" decreed the indigenous peoples to be unenslaveable freemen (slaves from Africa had begun arriving in the 1530s).
It was in this context that Bartolomé de las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepulveda debated the issue of supposed Indian inferiority and the concomitant right to enslave them at a session convoked by Emperor Charles V at Valladolid, in North-central Spain, in 1550-51. The touchstone of the debate was Aristotle and his ideas on "natural slavery;" as early as 1512, Aristotle had been deployed as a theoretical justification for slavery.
Ginés de Sepulveda (1490-1574) was a neo-Aristotelian humanist who translated
Aristotle's Politics; his Democrates Alter, written in 1544 and excerpted below was the most strident argument for Indian inferiority in its day. His argument is two-fold: the
"cultural barbarian" is subject to the "civilized man" by nature; and slavery is a punishment for sin.
De las Casas (1474-1566), a Dominican friar who had arrived in the West Indies in 1502, had by 1514 become an advocate for the Indians. Indeed, with the publication of the
Apologetic History of the Indies, written in 1527 (and excerpted below), he acquired the epithet "Protector of the Indians." In this work, and in the Thirty Very Juridical
Propositions
In 1493, Pope Alexander VI issued a Papal Bull granting a protectorate of the New World to Spain. The subsequent attempt to rationalize and justify administrative dominance in lands with complex indigenous cultures (Inca and Aztec) led to much debate and to attempts to reconcile European political ideas with "new world" social and economic conditions. The trans-Atlantic encounter gave impetus to the development of international law, comparative ethnology, and theories of cultural development. By 1520,
"New Spain" comprised two viceroyalties, in Mexico City and Lima. Meanwhile, encomiendas or feudal fiefdoms had been established on the conquered soil by the colonizers. In 1542, the Spanish "New Laws" decreed the indigenous peoples to be unenslaveable freemen (slaves from Africa had begun arriving in the 1530s).
It was in this context that Bartolomé de las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepulveda debated the issue of supposed Indian inferiority and the concomitant right to enslave them at a session convoked by Emperor Charles V at Valladolid, in North-central Spain, in 1550-51. The touchstone of the debate was Aristotle and his ideas on "natural slavery;" as early as 1512, Aristotle had been deployed as a theoretical justification for slavery.
Ginés de Sepulveda (1490-1574) was a neo-Aristotelian humanist who translated
Aristotle's Politics; his Democrates Alter, written in 1544 and excerpted below was the most strident argument for Indian inferiority in its day. His argument is two-fold: the
"cultural barbarian" is subject to the "civilized man" by nature; and slavery is a punishment for sin.
De las Casas (1474-1566), a Dominican friar who had arrived in the West Indies in 1502, had by 1514 become an advocate for the Indians. Indeed, with the publication of the
Apologetic History of the Indies, written in 1527 (and excerpted below), he acquired the epithet "Protector of the Indians." In this work, and in the Thirty Very Juridical
Propositions