And Seventeenth- Century Spanish Empire

chapter 12 The Debate over the Enslavement of Indians and Africans in the Sixteenth- and Seventeenth- Century Spanish Empire Luis Perdices de Blas and José Luis Ramos Gorostiza 1 Introduction The purpose of this chapter is to study the two stages of the debate over slavery in the Spanish Empire as it developed during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—a debate in which the Aristotelian distinction between natural and legal slavery played a major role.1 The substance of the debate was fully defined in the sixteenth century, whereas in the seventeenth century the debate simply relapsed into arguments already pointed out by previous jurists and theologians. In its first stage the discussion revolved around the enslavement of Indians, having as its main contributors Francisco de Vitoria (1483?–1546), professor of the renowned School of Salamanca, along with his disciples, as well as the activist Bartolomé de las Casas (1484–1566) and the chronicler and human- ist Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda (1490–1573), both of whom had an intense con- troversy outside the university classrooms. In the second stage, thinkers like Domingo de Soto (1494–1570), Tomás de Mercado (1530–1576), Bartolomé Frías de Albornoz (16th century), Francisco García (16th century), and Luis de Molina (1535–1600), among others, discussed the slave trade in Africa. In nei- ther of the two aforementioned stages did the arbitristas (a group of late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century reformist writers that analyzed Spain’s moral and economic decline) pay any considerable attention to slavery. 2 The Debate on the Enslavement of Indians The debate on the enslavement of Indians arose immediately after the dis- covery of the Americas, with the Dominican Order playing the leading 1 This chapter was translated by Carlos Diego Arenas Pacheco. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004421882_014 296 Perdices de Blas and Ramos Gorostiza role.2 The Dominican Antonio Montesinos paved the way for the discussion with his 1511 sermons, where he denounced the mistreatment of the Indians on the Island of Hispaniola. His condemnations were followed by the promulgation of the Laws of Burgos in 1512.3 Since the 1530s Europeans acquired a sizable body of knowledge about the American indigenous population thanks to the news that arrived from the New World, while conquistadors like Cortés and Pizarro explored new territories in the Americas and came into contact with empires with complex social and economic systems, such as those of the Mexicans and the Incas. The censures against the increasingly oppressive treatment inflicted on the Indians as the conquest followed its course led to the publication of the bull Sublimis Deus by pope Paul III in June 2, 1537, which de- clared that the Indians had a right to freedom, and that the Christian faith was to be preached to them through peaceful means. Due to Charles V’s opposition, the bull was annulled by the apostolic brief Non incedens videtur, published in June 19, 1538, although the defenders of the Indians clung to the former papal document. This is the context in which we propose to frame Vitoria, Las Casas, and Sepúlveda’s discussions. The Dominican and professor at the University of Salamanca Francisco de Vitoria played a key role in the debate over the treatment of Indians.4 The main concern that guided this theologian and his disciples, all of whom enjoyed great reputation throughout Europe, was the spiritual salvation of human be- ings and whether their praxis in the different areas of secular life was governed by principles of justice. Among the topics of secular life they discussed were some of great contemporaneous interest, like the conquest of the American territories and the treatment given to its inhabitants. Vitoria’s thought on the Indians and slavery is found in his relections (relec- tiones), where he discussed subjects he had already treated in his ordinary lectures.5 Taking Thomism as his intellectual springboard, Vitoria attempted to 2 In this chapter we leave aside the debate over the titles of the Spanish monarchy to conquer American territories, and instead focus on the question of Indians. It must be noted, how- ever, that both issues were deeply related. 3 Immediately after the promulgation of the Laws of Burgos, the lawyer Juan López de Palacios Rubios wrote his De insulis maris oceani defending the legitimacy of the war against the Indians. 4 On the School of Salamanca and its members, see Perdices de Blas, L., and Revuelta López, J., “Markets and taxation: modern taxation principles and the School of Salamanca”, in Esic Market. Economics and Business Journal 138 (2011), 91–116. 5 We will pay attention chiefly to his De Indis and De iure belli, both from 1539. [Translator’s note: The Latin text is quoted from Vitoria, F., Relectio de Indis o libertad de los indios, Pereña, L. and Pérez Prendes, J.M. (eds.), Madrid, 1967. The English translation is taken from Vitoria, F. de, Political Writings, Pagden, A. and Lawrance, J. (eds.), Cambridge, 1991.].

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