The Americas In The Spanish World Order: The Justification For Conquest In The Seventeenth Century

253 Pages·1994·12.896 MB·English

by  James Muldoon

The Americas in the
Spanish World Order
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The Americas in the
Spanish World Order
The Justification for Conquest
in the Seventeenth Century
James Muldoon
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia
Publication of this volume was assisted by a subvention from the Program for
Cultural Cooperation Between Spain's Ministry of Culture and United States
Universities.
Copyright © 1994 by the University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Muldoon, James, 1935-
The Americas in the Spanish world order : the justification for conquest in the
seventeenth century / James Muldoon.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8122-3245-3
i. Solorzano Pereira, Juan de, 1575-1655. De Indiarum jure. 2. Latin America — Politics
and government — To 1830. 3. Spain — Colonies—America—Administration. 4. Law—
Spain — Colonies — History. 5. Christianity and politics. I. Tide.
Fi4ii.S6973M85 1994
325'.346098'09032 —dc20 93-505^9
CIP
Cover: Columbus Welcomed to Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella. From Arthur
Oilman, A History of the American People (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1883),
p. 19. Used by permission.
For Judith
Who Held My Hand Along the Way
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Contents
Preface ix
Introduction 1
1. The Law of Christian-Infidel Relations: The Spanish Title
to the New World 15
2. To Civilize the Barbarian —The Anthropology and
the History 38
3. The Mechanics of Political Evolution 66
4. The Mechanics of Political Evolution—The Natural Law 78
5. A Legitimate Claim to the Indies—The Theory of
Papal Power 96
6. A Legitimate Claim to the Indies — Papal Jurisdiction
over the Infidels 110
7. A Legitimate Claim to the Indies —The History of
Papal-Royal Relations 127
8. Order and Harmony Among Nations 143
Conclusion 165
Notes 177
Bibliography 219
Index 235
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Preface
As I finish this book dealing with the way in which one important seven-
teenth-century Spanish lawyer and imperial official justified the Spanish
conquest of the Americas, the United States and the nations of western
Europe find themselves asking questions about their role in the world that
echo the questions that dominated Spanish intellectual life several centuries
ago. Should American troops remain in Somalia in an attempt to establish
stable government? Should the major powers of Europe stop Serbian ex-
pansion? What justifies military intervention in other countries? Is it legiti-
mate to seek change in another state's policies by employing economic sanc-
tions? In the United States, the federal government has engaged in a variety
of actions, military, diplomatic, and economic, to force changes in other
societies. Even state and local governments have passed laws forbidding the
investment of public pension funds in the securities of countries that pursue
policies, such as apartheid, that are repugnant to U.S. standards.
But what is the legal or moral basis for such intervention? Pronounce-
ments of the United Nations are sometimes used to justify intervention in
countries that fail to live up to what are seen as world standards of political
behavior. In other cases, proponents of intervention simply assert that the
need to intervene in another state is obvious to any right-minded observer.
When state and local governments in the United States condemn South
Africa's racial policies, they generally do so from the perspective of domestic
politics.
What is lacking is a coherent body of thought underlying late twen-
tieth-century judgments about correct or legitimate state behavior. Critics
often point out the inconsistencies in these judgments, where behavior
condemned in one society is tolerated or ignored in another, again for
reasons of U.S. domestic policy. There is a general sense, however, that it is
the responsibility of the developed nations of the world, especially the
United States, to encourage all nations to adhere to a high standard of
human rights for all their citizens and that, when governments fail to act
according to such standards, the developed nations have the right to inter-
vene on behalf of those being oppressed.
x Preface
Juan de Solorzano Pereira (1575-1654), the subject of this book, and
his contemporaries would not necessarily assert the same bases for interven-
tion that twentieth-century government officials would, but they would
agree that what we now call developed nations have a responsibility to assist
less-developed nations in the process of developing modern state institu-
tions. Twentieth-century governments no longer declare that they have a
responsibility to Christianize non-Christian societies, but they would argue
that the international community should impose sanctions on governments
that oppress their own citizens. Unlike Solorzano, we do not look to
natural law to provide guidance when seeking to determine whether a
government is oppressive, but we do speak of universal human rights as a
basis for judgment. In other words, although the language has changed,
five hundred years after Christopher Columbus reached the Caribbean and
began the European encounter with the previously unknown peoples of the
Americas, Europeans and their American heirs are again wrestling with
fundamental questions of international relations and world order.
Furthermore, in the late twentieth century, as in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, the debate about intervention in other societies pits
moralists against realists. Those who defended the conquest of the Amer-
icas centuries ago generally did so on the ground that Christians had a
moral responsibility to eliminate the evils that they claimed characterized
American societies. These evils included cannibalism, human sacrifice, and
idolatry. When Solorzano and other Spanish writers defended the conquest
in moral terms, they were consciously reacting against the contemporary
Machiavellian thinking that denied any role for traditional morality in
politics. At the end of the twentieth century the political realism that has
characterized much of U.S. foreign policy for the past forty years appears to
be giving way slowly, as moral arguments are again heard. Ever since the
war in Viet Nam generated opposition on the ground that it was not simply
the wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place but was rather an
immoral war, moral language has been heard more and more in foreign
policy debates. To be precise, several moral languages are being heard as
Americans debate public issues from a variety of moral bases, with the result
that there is little agreement on what constitutes behavior that would justify
U.S. intervention in the internal affairs of other states. At the heart of the
problem is the question of the relation of morality to politics. We find
ourselves now asking the questions that concerned Solorzano and his
contemporaries and looking for an intellectually coherent moral basis that
will enable us to act effectively and legitimately in the international arena.