Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T01:22:12.396Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Francisco de Vitoria and Alberico Gentili on the Juridical Status of Native American Polities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2019

Daragh Grant
Daragh Grant*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Over the course of the sixteenth century, Europeans writing about the ius gentium went from treating indigenous American rulers as the juridical equals of Europe's princes to depicting them as little more than savage brutes, incapable of bearing dominium and ineligible for the protections of the law of peoples. This essay examines the writings of Francisco de Vitoria and Alberico Gentili to show how this transformation in European perceptions of Native Americans resulted from fundamental changes in European society. The emergence of a novel conception of sovereignty amid the upheavals of the Protestant Reformation was central to this shift and provided a new foundation for Europe's continued imperial expansion into the Americas.

Type
Articles
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 72 , Issue 3 , Fall 2019 , pp. 910 - 952
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

For helpful comments on this paper I am grateful to the participants in the Political Theory Workshop at the University of Chicago, as well as to Cliff Ando, Paul Cheney, Julie Cooper, Oliver Cussen, Christopher Dunlap, Michael Gilsenan, Andreas Glaeser, Rohit Goel, Sarah Johnson, David Lebow, Karuna Mantena, Patchen Markell, Pablo Maurette, Sankar Muthu, Jonathan Obert, Jennifer Pitts, Becky Ploof, Sayres Rudy, Céline Spector, Larry Svabek, Don Tontiplaphol, Lisa Wedeen, and the anonymous reviewers at Renaissance Quarterly.

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Acosta, José de. De Procuranda Indorum Salute. Trans. Stewart McIntosh, G.. 2 vols. Tayport: Mac Research, 1995–96.Google Scholar
Alfred, Taiaiake. Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Anghie, Anthony. Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Aquinas, Thomas. Political Writings. Ed. and trans. Dyson, R. W.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Aristotle. Politics: A New Translation. Trans. Reeve, C. D. C.. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2017.Google Scholar
Armitage, David. The Ideological Origins of the British Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.10.1017/CBO9780511755965Google Scholar
Asad, Talal. “Conscripts of Western Civilization.” In Dialectical Anthropology: Essays in Honor of Stanley Diamond, ed. Gailey, Christine Ward, 333–51. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1992.Google Scholar
Bacon, Francis. The New Organon. Ed. Jardine, Lisa and Silverthorne, Michael. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.10.1017/CBO9781139164030Google Scholar
Belda Plans, Juan. La Escuela de Salamanca y la renovación de la teología en el siglo XVI. Madrid: Biblioteca De Autores Cristianos, 2000.Google Scholar
Benton, Lauren, and Straumann, Benjamin. “Acquiring Empire by Law: From Roman Doctrine to Early Modern European Practice.” Law and History Review 28.1 (2010): 1–38.10.1017/S0738248009990022Google Scholar
Bodin, Jean. Method for the Easy Comprehension of History. Trans. Reynolds, Beatrice. New York: Columbia University Press, 1945.Google Scholar
Bodin, Jean. The Six Bookes of a Commonweale. Ed. McRae, Kenneth Douglas. Trans. Knowles, Richard. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962.10.4159/harvard.9780674733169Google Scholar
Brett, Annabel S. Liberty, Right and Nature: Individual Rights in Later Scholastic Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Brett, Annabel S. Changes of State: Nature and the Limits of the City in Early Modern Natural Law. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Brett, Annabel S. “The Subject of Sovereignty: Law, Politics and Moral Reasoning in Hugo Grotius.” Modern Intellectual History (2019): 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479244319000040.Google Scholar
Burgess, Glenn. Absolute Monarchy and the Stuart Constitution. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Burns, J. H. Lordship, Kingship, and Empire: The Idea of Monarchy, 1400–1525. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198202066.001.0001Google Scholar
Cawley, William. The laws of Q. Elizabeth, K. James, and K. Charles the First. London, 1680.Google Scholar
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Cicero. On Duties. Ed. Griffin, M. T. and Atkins, E. M.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Comaroff, Jean, and Comaroff, John. Of Revelation and Revolution, Volume 1: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.10.7208/chicago/9780226114477.001.0001Google Scholar
Deckers, Daniel. Gerechtigkeit und Recht: Eine historisch-kritische Untersuchung der Gerechtigkeitslehre des Francisco de Vitoria (1483–1546). Freiburg: Universitätsverlag, 1991.Google Scholar
Diamond, Stanley. In Search of the Primitive: A Critique of Civilization. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1974.Google Scholar
Fasolt, Constantin. The Limits of History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Fernández-Santamaria, J. A. The State, War and Peace: Spanish Political Thought in the Renaissance, 1516–1559. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Fitzmaurice, Andrew. Sovereignty, Property and Empire, 1500–2000. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.10.1017/CBO9781139924306Google Scholar
Gentili, Alberico. De Ivre Belli Commentatio Prima. London, 1588.Google Scholar
Gentili, Alberico. Regales Disputationes Tres. London, 1605.Google Scholar
Gentili, Alberico. Hispanicae Advocationis Libri Duo. Trans. Abbott, Frank Frost. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1921.Google Scholar
Gentili, Alberico. De Legationibus Libri Tres. Trans. Laing, Gordan J.. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1924.Google Scholar
Gentili, Alberico. De Iure Belli Libri Tres. Trans. Rolfe, John C.. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933.Google Scholar
Gentili, Alberico. The Wars of the Romans: A Critical Edition and Translation of “De armis Romanis.” Ed. Kingsbury, Benedict and Straumann, Benjamin. Trans. Lupher., David Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Grant, Daragh. “The Treaty of Hartford (1638): Reconsidering Jurisdiction in Southern New England.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 72.3 (2015): 461–98.10.5309/willmaryquar.72.3.0461Google Scholar
Grotius, Hugo. The Rights of War and Peace. Ed. Tuck, Richard. Trans. Morrice., John 3 vols. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2005.Google Scholar
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Ed. Malcolm, Noel. 3 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Koselleck, Reinhart. Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time. Trans. Tribe., Keith New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Koskenniemi, Martti. “International Law and raison d’état: Rethinking the Prehistory of International Law.” In The Roman Foundations of the Law of Nations (2010), 297–339.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199599875.003.0015Google Scholar
Koskenniemi, Martti. “Empire and International Law: The Real Spanish Contribution.” University of Toronto Law Journal 61.1 (2011): 1–36.10.3138/utlj.61.1.001Google Scholar
Lee, Daniel. Popular Sovereignty in Early Modern Constitutional Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198745167.001.0001Google Scholar
Lloyd, Howell A., ed. The Reception of Bodin. Leiden: Brill, 2013.10.1163/9789004259805Google Scholar
Malcolm, Noel. “Alberico Gentili and the Ottomans.” In The Roman Foundations of the Law of Nations (2010), 127–45.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199599875.003.0007Google Scholar
Merrell, James H. “Second Thoughts on Colonial Historians and American Indians.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 69.3 (2012): 451–512.10.5309/willmaryquar.69.3.0451Google Scholar
Miaja de la Muela, Adolfo. “El Derecho ‘Totius Orbis’ en el Pensamiento de Francisco de Vitoria.” Revista Española de Derecho Internacional 18.3 (1965): 341–64.Google Scholar
Mousourakis, George. The Historical and Institutional Context of Roman Law. Farnham: Ashgate, 2003.Google Scholar
Muldoon, James. “Discovery, Grant, Charter, Conquest, or Purchase.” In The Many Legalities of Early America, ed. Tomlins, Christopher L. and Mann, Bruce H., 25–46. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Nicholas, Barry. An Introduction to Roman Law. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962.Google Scholar
Pagden, Anthony. The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology. Rev. ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Pagden, Anthony. The Burdens of Empire: 1539 to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.10.1017/CBO9780511979200Google Scholar
Panizza, Diego. “Political Theory and Jurisprudence in Gentili's De Iure Belli: The Great Debate between ‘Theological’ and ‘Humanist’ Perspectives from Vitoria to Grotius.” In The Roots of International Law / Les fondements du droit international: Liber Amicorum Peter Haggenmacher, ed. Dupuy, Pierre-Marie and Chetail, Vincent, 211–47. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2014.Google Scholar
Pennington, Kenneth. The Prince and the Law, 1200–1600: Sovereignty and Rights in the Western Legal Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Pereña, Luciano. La Idea de Justicia en la Conquista de América. Madrid: Editorial MAPFRE, 1992.Google Scholar
The Roman Foundations of the Law of Nations: Alberico Gentili and the Justice of Empire. Ed. Kingsbury, Benedict and Straumann, Benjamin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199599875.001.0001Google Scholar
Schröder, Peter. “Taming the Fox and the Lion—Some Aspects of the Sixteenth-Century's Debate on Inter-State Relations.” In War, the State, and International Law in Seventeenth-Century Europe, ed. Asbach, Olaf and Schröder, Peter, 83–102. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010a.Google Scholar
Schröder, Peter. “Vitoria, Gentili, Bodin: Sovereignty and the Law of Nations.” In The Roman Foundations of the Law of Nations (2010b), 163–86.Google Scholar
Schröder, Peter. Trust in Early Modern International Political Thought, 1598–1713. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.10.1017/9781316798515Google Scholar
Scott, David. Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.10.1215/9780822386186Google Scholar
Skinner, Quentin. The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Springborg, Patricia. “Hobbes, Donne, and the Virginia Company: Terra Nullius and ‘The Bulimia of Dominium.’” History of Political Thought 36.1 (2015): 113–64.Google Scholar
Straumann, Benjamin. “The Corpus iuris as a Source of Law between Sovereigns in Alberico Gentili's Thought.” In The Roman Foundations of the Law of Nations (2010), 101–23.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199599875.003.0006Google Scholar
Straumann, Benjamin. Roman Law in the State of Nature: The Classical Foundations of Hugo Grotius’ Natural Law. Trans. Cooper, Belinda. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.10.1017/CBO9781316143629Google Scholar
Tanner, Joseph Robson, ed. Tudor Constitutional Documents, A.D. 1485–1603. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922.Google Scholar
Tierney, Brian. The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law, and Church Law, 1150–1625. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2001.Google Scholar
Tierney, Brian. “Vitoria and Suarez on ius gentium, Natural Law, and Custom.” In The Nature of Customary Law: Legal, Historical and Philosophical Perspectives, ed. Perreau-Saussine, Amanda and Murphy, James B., 101–24. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Tomlins, Christopher L. Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580–1865. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Global Transformations: Anthropology and the Modern World. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.10.1007/978-1-137-04144-9Google Scholar
Tuck, Richard. Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.10.1017/CBO9781139163569Google Scholar
Tuck, Richard. The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and the International Order from Grotius to Kant. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Ullmann, Walter. “This Realm of England is an Empire.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 30.2 (1979): 175–203.10.1017/S0022046900034874Google Scholar
Vitoria, Francisco de. De Indis et de Ivre Belli Relectiones. Ed. Nys, Ernest. Trans. Pawley Bate., John Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution, 1917.Google Scholar
Vitoria, Francisco de. “De Bello [on ST IIaIIae 40].” Trans. Williams, Gwladys L.. In The Spanish Origins of International Law: Francisco De Vitoria and His Law of Nations, James Brown Scott, appendix F, cxv–cxxxi. Oxford: Clarendon, 1932a.Google Scholar
Vitoria, Francisco de. “De Jure Gentium et Naturali [on ST IIaIIae. 57.3].” Trans. Macken, Francis Crane. In The Spanish Origins of International Law: Francisco De Vitoria and His Law of Nations, James Brown Scott, appendix E, cxi–cxiv. Oxford: Clarendon, 1932b.Google Scholar
Vitoria, Francisco de. Comentarios a la Secunda secundae de Santo Tomás, Lomo III: De Justitia (qq. 57/66). Ed. de Heredia, Vicente Beltrán. Salamanca: Apartado, 1934.Google Scholar
Vitoria, Francisco de. Comentario al tratado de la ley. Ed. de Heredia, Vicente Beltrán. Madrid: CSIC, 1952.Google Scholar
Vitoria, Francisco de. Political Writings. Ed. Pagden, Anthony and Lawrance, Jeremy. Trans. Lawrance., Jeremy Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991a.Google Scholar
Vitoria, Francisco de. “Letter to Miguel de Arcos, OP, Salamanca, 8 November, 1534.” In Political Writings, ed. Pagden and Lawrance (1991b), 331–33.Google Scholar
Vitoria, Francisco de. “On Civil Power.” In Political Writings, ed. Pagden and Lawrance (1991c), 3–44.Google Scholar
Vitoria, Francisco de. “On Dietary Laws, or Self-Restraint.” In Political Writings, ed. Pagden and Lawrance (1991d), 207–30.Google Scholar
Vitoria, Francisco de. “On Law [on ST IaIIae 90–105].” In Political Writings, ed. Pagden and Lawrance (1991e), 155–204.Google Scholar
Vitoria, Francisco de. “On the American Indians.” In Political Writings, ed. Pagden and Lawrance (1991f), 233–92.Google Scholar
Vitoria, Francisco de. “On the Evangelization of Unbelievers.” In Political Writings, ed. Pagden and Lawrance (1991g), 341–51.Google Scholar
Vitoria, Francisco de. “On the Law of War.” In Political Writings, ed. Pagden and Lawrance (1991h), 295–327.Google Scholar
Vitoria, Francisco de. “On the Power of the Church I.” In Political Writings, ed. Pagden and Lawrance (1991i), 47–108.Google Scholar
Vitoria, Francisco de. “On the Power of the Church II.” In Political Writings ed. Pagden and Lawrance (1991j), 111–51.Google Scholar
Vitoria, Francisco de. Relectio de Potestate Civili. Ed. Pando, Jesús Cordero. Madrid: CSIC, 2008.Google Scholar
Von Friedeburg, Robert. Luther's Legacy: The Thirty Years War and the Modern Notion of “State” in the Empire, 1530s to 1790s. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.10.1017/CBO9781316282298Google Scholar
Wagner, Andreas. “Francisco de Vitoria and Alberico Gentili on the Legal Character of the Global Commonwealth.” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 31.3 (2011): 565–82.Google Scholar
Warren, Christopher N. “Hobbes's Thucydides and the Colonial Law of Nations.” The Seventeenth Century 24.2 (2009): 260–86.10.1080/0268117X.2009.10555630Google Scholar
Watson, Alan, ed. The Digest of Justinian. 4 vols. Rev. ed. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Williams, Robert A. The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: The Discourses of Conquest. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.Google Scholar