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| Non-fiction and essays |
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| University essays |
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| History Dissertation |
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| ENCOUNTER IN THE NEW WORLD: SPANISH ATTITUDES AND ACTIONS TOWARDS INDIGENOUS PEOPLES, LATE 15TH TO EARLY 16TH CENTURY |
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| Chapter Four: The Valladolid Debate On 16 August, 1550, King Charles V of Spain assembled a junta in Valladolid. This was a select group of theologians and counsellors whose task it was to debate from the perspectives of theology, civil law and canon law in order to determine a just method of conducting the conquest. The group of judges listened to the argument of Las Casas, who believed that the conquest should continue without violence on the grounds that the Indians ‘had sufficient “capacity” to become Christianised peacefully and live like Spaniards.’# Opposing him was Sepúlveda, who as discussed above was a keen advocate of the pursuit of conquest and conversion by any means necessary. The context of the debate at Valladolid pitched two of the most eloquent writers on the conquest in a scholastic battle on the question: ‘is it lawful for the king of Spain to wage war on the Indians before preaching the faith to them in order to subject them to his rule, so that afterwards they may be more easily instructed in the faith?’# This question had been considered previously by a junta in 1504. This first debate had led the Spanish crown to determine that on account of the papal bulls of 1493, Ferdinand and Isabella had been granted the right to conquer and even enslave the inhabitants of the Antilles. The legality of the Castilian crown’s actions was determined by the precedent established in these bulls. Already in 1455 Eximie devotionis had granted the Portuguese the right to enslave natives in Africa; so by extension the Spanish saw their rights over the Indians to be at least equal to those of their Iberian neighbours.# Yet Charles decided that he wanted a definite answer following reports from the Indies of harsh treatment of natives by the conquistadores. Sepúlveda spoke first, and discussed the ideas he had set down in Democrates Alter. Firstly he addressed the authority of the papal bulls of 1493, which he saw as a reinterpretation of Thomas Aquinas’ writings centuries before. According to Sepúlveda, Aquinas had declared that ‘wars may be waged justly when their cause is just and when the authority carrying on the war is legitimate and conducts the war in the right spirit and correct manner.’# Sepúlveda, however, did not mention that Thomist thought omitted discussion of ‘natural’ slavery, as Aquinas had declared that slavery was only just as punishment for a crime to restore the ‘violated moral order.’# Sepúlveda instead returned to the familiar precedent of Aristotelian grounds for natural slavery. According to Sepúlveda, justification for the conquest arose from a combination of the Indians’ grave sin of idolatry; the ‘rudeness of their nature’; to protect the weaker members of native society; and especially in order to spread the faith, which would be more easily achieved with their subjugation under the Spanish.# The fact that Sepúlveda had never been to the New World was made irrelevant by his learned position and use of authorities including Aristotle and Aquinas. European writers accepted the use of a set canon of authoritative works such as scriptures, commentaries and ancient thinkers through which to interpret the unknown. He could quite reasonably argue from his interpretation of these philosophers that the junta should decide in favour of a policy of conquest through any possible means. Las Casas effectively embodied the antithesis of Sepúlveda’s position. While Sepúlveda outlined his theories for three hours, Las Casas spoke for five days.# He read extended excerpts from his recently completed Apologetic History, which was filled with polemics against the conquistadores’ actions as well as information that he considered proof of the Indians’ humanity and consequent right not to be treated as slaves. Las Casas never questioned the Spaniards’ duty to Christianise the natives, but argued that ‘the use of force to “civilise” so-called barbarians’ was ‘not only self-defeating, but both inhumane and uncivilised.’# Sepúlveda’s reliance on Spanish superiority of arms as justification for conquest was, according to Las Casas, misguided and made King Charles a tyrant. Las Casas maintained that the king’s rights only came from ‘the extension of the gospel and the good government of the natives.’# This idea followed the logic of Vitoria, a precursor to Las Casas as a champion of the Indians, who had suggested that making war on the natives was like making war on the inhabitants of Seville, as both were in fact vassals of the crown.# Las Casas compared Sepúlveda’s words to a ‘honey-covered poison’ and pleaded with the Valladolid judges that ‘unless this deadly poison is stopped by your wisdom, so that it will not become widespread, it will infect the minds of readers, deceive the unwary, and arm and incite tyrants to justice.’# He was also keen to point out the difference in authority between himself and Sepúlveda. He referred to his own first hand experience of the natives and life in the New World, and contrasted it with Sepúlveda’s reliance on histories that were ‘nothing but sheer fables and shameless nonsense.’# According to Las Casas, Sepúlveda’s principal failure was in not recognising the capabilities of the Indians. In labelling them simply as ‘unbelievers’, Sepúlveda grouped the Indians with other unbelievers including Moors, Jews and heretics.# Las Casas argued that the Indians were distinct from these groups who had all rejected the Christian belief after they were aware of it, while the Indians, who had never heard of Christianity, were still capable of receiving and accepting the gospel. Las Casas claimed that all the Indians needed was patient, peaceful instruction, ‘compelling the human intellect rationally…not by armed attack or violence.’# As perhaps a final rebuttal to Sepúlveda’s grounds for subjugation of the Indians, Las Casas offered a different interpretation of Aristotle, arguing that the natives were not slaves by nature. Las Casas invoked Aristotle by saying that ‘in comparison with the greater evil, the choice of the lesser evil has the quality of a good….the death of a small number of innocent persons is a lesser evil than the eternal damnation of countless numbers of persons killed in the fury of war.’# By ‘innocent persons’ Las Casas meant the human sacrifices (previously) carried out by the natives. Las Casas was clearly not approving the practices of sacrifice or cannibalism, but in his opinion those few deaths were a price that should be endured rather than allowing countless thousands, even millions of natives to die in a ‘just war.’ He declared that ‘if those evils cannot be removed in any other way than by waging war, one must refrain from it and evils of this kind must be tolerated.’# The judges at Valladolid were unable to arrive at a definite decision while both participants claimed victory. Perhaps Las Casas was more justified in his claims of success since Sepúlveda was barred from publishing his treatise following the debate. Yet for Las Casas this must have been a hollow victory. The debate had probably occurred fifty years too late to have had any real impact on the progress of the Spanish conquest.. Just as Montesinos’s appeals for peaceful actions several decades earlier had fallen on deaf ears among his conquistador countrymen, so too Las Casas’s words did not result in a cessation of violence and Indian slavery. Increasingly the economic concerns of the Spanish empire began to overwhelm any consideration of the rights of infidels, and supplanted the spiritual goals originally declared as the basis for the conquest.# By 1550, the desire of a colonial elite to protect their privileged position outweighed any concern for the well-being of the natives under their dominion. If any concern did arise, it was often only when their workforce gradually dwindled through disease and overwork. Even though the debate’s impact in the New World was limited, it does have some lasting significance in the question of Spanish relations to the Indians. Las Casas was able to plead the Indian’s case in front of a learned audience, and felt able to rebut Sepúlveda’s claims of the natural slavery of the indigenous people of the Americas. The debate attempted to resolve significant questions concerning the nature of the Indians: ‘were they capable of becoming Christians; whether should they be converted peaceably or forcibly; whether they were rational beings possessed of the rights of Europeans; whether they should be enslaved, or, if already slave, liberated.’# The positions of Las Casas and Sepúlveda illustrate the opposing theoretical approaches to the treatment of Indians. Despite Las Casas’s efforts, the practical implementation of the Spanish conquest usually followed the position of his opponent. |
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