The Americas in the Spanish World Order

The Justification for Conquest in the Seventeenth Century

James Muldoon

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9780812232455
  9780812232455
• eBook ISBN:
  9781512809572
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Renaissance History
• Index: History

Juan de Solorzano Pereira (1575-1654) was a lawyer who spent eighteen years as a judge in Peru before returning to Spain to serve on the Councils of Castile and of the Indies. Considered one of the finest lawyers in Spain, his work, De Indiarum Jure, was the most sophisticated defense of the Spanish conquest of the Americas ever written, and he was widely cited in Europe and the Americas until the early nineteenth century.His work, and that of the Spanish School of international law theorists generally, is often seen as leading to Hugo Grotius and modern international law. However, as James Muldoon shows, the De Indiarum Jure represents the fullest development of a medieval Catholic theory of international order that provided an alternative to the Grotian theory.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. The Law of Christian-Infidel Relations: The Spanish Title to the New World
• 2. To Civilize the Barbarian—The Anthropology and the History
• 3. The Mechanics of Political Evolution
• 4. The Mechanics of Political Evolution—The Natural Law
• 5. A Legitimate Claim to the Indies—The Theory of Papal Power
• 6. A Legitimate Claim to the Indies—Papal Jurisdiction over the Infidels
• 7. A Legitimate Claim to the Indies—The History of Papal-Royal Relations
• 8. Order and Harmony Among Nations
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index