Lawful Conquest?

European Colonial Law and Appropriation Practices in Northeastern South America, Trinidad, and Tobago, 1498–1817

Constanze Weiske

• Publisher: De Gruyter Oldenbourg
• Year: 2021
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9783110690224
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean History
• Index: History

The global expansion of European colonization is commonly perceived as lawful according to the valid European colonial law of the time. This book is substantially challenging this belief by uncovering its legal justifications based on discovery and terra nullius as retrospectively created legal fictions and demonstrating it´s untenability in practice. Focused on the critical reconstruction of Spanish and Dutch colonization practices in northeastern South America, Trinidad and Tobago between 1498 and 1817, the book offers an illuminating view on the European shadow of the colonial past in the Americas. Based on the application of an innovative comparative spatio-legal Global History approach to 1,770 excavated European colonial written sources from archives of both sides of the Atlantic in comparison to the colonial legal provisions of Europe´s most influential legal writers, the book, moreover, provides a substantial argument to the contemporary Caribbean-European reparation debate in favor of the return of Indigenous Peoples´ historical territories. Therefore, the book calls for the extension of the traditional territory approach to reparations of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIPs) and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR).

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 European Colonial Law and Appropriation Practices in the Americas
• Chapter 3 Spanish De Jure Myths (1493–1573)
• Chapter 4 Spanish Colonial Appropriation Practices in Terra Firme and Trinidad (1503–1591)
• Chapter 5 San Joseph de Oruña (1592–1802)
• Chapter 6 Santo Tome (1595–1699)
• Chapter 7 Violent Capuchin Removal and Spatial Extensions (1682–1817)
• Chapter 8 Dutch De Jure Myths (1581–1764)
• Chapter 9 Dutch Appropriation Practices on the Wild Coast and Tobago (1581–1673)
• Chapter 10 Essequibo and the Limits of Plantations (1670/75–1803)
• Chapter 11 Dutch Inland Posts and the Limits of Jurisdiction and Interference (1737–1790)
• Chapter 12 Dutch Posts on the “Wild Coast” and the Limits of Alliance (1678–1814)
• Chapter 13 Conclusion
• List of Abbreviations
• Index