In Our Time - The Valladolid Debate

Episode Date: February 20, 2020

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the debate in Valladolid, Spain in 1550, over Spanish rights to enslave the native peoples in the newly conquered lands. Bartolomé de Las Casas (pictured above), the Bishop of Chiapas, Mexico, was trying to end the encomienda system in which those who now owned the land could also take the people in forced labour. Juan Gines Sepulveda, a philosopher, argued for the colonists' property rights over people, asserting that some native Americans were 'natural slaves' as defined by Aristotle. Valladolid became seen as the first open attempt by European colonists to discuss the ethics of slavery, and Las Casas became known as 'Saviour of the Indians' and an advocate for human rights, although for some time he argued that African slaves be imported to do the work in place of the native people, before repenting.With Caroline Dodds Pennock Senior Lecturer in International History at the University of SheffieldJohn Edwards Faculty Fellow in Spanish at the University of OxfordAnd Julia McClure Lecturer in Late Medieval and Early Modern Global History at the University of GlasgowProducer: Simon Tillotson

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time. There's a reading list to go with it on our website, and you can get news about our programmes if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoy the programmes. Hello, in 1550, at Royal Command, two sides met in Valalod in Spain to debate the future of slavery in the new Spanish colonies in the Americas. One following Aristotle argued that native people were natural slaves

who went with the land, and should stay slaves. The other argued that others might be slaves with these were Spanish subjects and should be treated as equals. This defender of Native American rights was Bartolome de las Casas and some say he was one of the first proponents

of human rights anywhere. With me to discuss the Valadoid debate are Julia McClure, lecturer in late medieval and early modern global history at the University of Glasgow, John Edwards, faculty fellow in Spanish at the University of Oxford, and Caroline Dodds Penneck,

senior lecturer in international history at the University of Shep. field. Caroline Penne, just to go to the blunt beginning of it, Spanish went over, first Columbus in 1492, then Cortez in about 1519, and conquered the Aztecs, which was the start of the great movement of Spain into that part of the world. Yes, that's right. So first, they go into the Caribbean, following Columbus, as you say, in 1492, and then by the 1520s, they're starting to expand across the mainland, conquering large areas of territory in Central America. And it appears to the Spanish and to many people as almost a miraculous victory over so many people by so few.

Yes, and that's how it's been talked about since, that this is these few conquistadors and missionaries conquering huge areas of territory. It's a grand myth of conquest by an evangelical army. Yes, but they had guns, the others didn't, and cannons, the others didn't, and horses the other isn't, and they also made allies with other tribes. That's true. I would say that the technology actually is relatively minor, in my opinion. The two big factors are disease because the indigenous people don't have any natural resistance to European diseases

and also the alliances you mentioned with other indigenous groups. The Spanish exported the encomienda system, which is going to be important in this conversation to the new territories. What was that and why is it important? The encomienda system is a way of granting groups of indigenous people to specific Spaniards or institutions. It comes from the Spanish verb encomendar. which means to entrust.

And theoretically, it's a reciprocal system where a Spaniard gives Christianity and civilisation and protection to a group of Indigenous people in exchange for tribute from them in the form of labour or gold or goods that they produce. In reality, it becomes a kind of forced labour service, and it also extends to their land in reality. Very often, if you're given a village to look after, you essentially take their lands.

So some people have compared it to slavery. although the encomienda, Indians, as they're called at the time, actually have rather more legal rights than an enslaved person would. Yes, and that's where we're going to try to explore, whether it was slavery or whether there weren't slaves, and a huge debate really underneath it all between what is a slave, who is a slave and who is not a slave, and how do they arrive at those different as it were descriptions or destinations.

How did you get to grab this land? You went there as a conquist all. There weren't many of you. Did you have a piece of paper? from the king, what was going on? Essentially you had a piece of paper from the king. It goes back to Columbus discovering the land, discovering

obviously being a terrible word for somewhere where there are lots of other people originally. Anyway, but discovering, by right of discovery, the Spanish crown go to the Pope, and in 1493 the Pope gives them a papal called interketera, and that grants them the land on the right, on condition they evangelise it. And this is

important for understanding the encomienda, because a lot of what the Spanish do in this period is about evangelisation and proving they're doing that. But in practice on the ground, you need a contract from the Crown, giving you the right to either explore or to conquer or to settle, and there are slightly different kinds of contracts from the Crown. The Pope claims authority over all the land in the world

that he is not Christianised. He owns it, and you have to get his permission to move in it. Not literally owns it, though. That is how they behave. Is there a better word? claims, well, it's interesting because it comes into the Valadoly debates. There's a big debate about the right of what's called Dominion, the right to rule in your own lands. The Pope doesn't claim to have the complete secular right of dominion, the right to rule everywhere,

but he claims to have the right to tell people where they can go and teach the faith. And then there are big debates about the ways it's legitimate to do that. Can you use force or not, which we're going to kind of get into, I think. Yes. but so you go with this piece of paper literally and one isn't being dumbing down here you go to a piece of paper and you say I'm allowed

this lot of land there's a lot of people on it these people belong to me and they will do what I say pretty much and by it from 1513 when they invent a document called the requirement the Ricerimiento they kind of literally do that from 1513 to legitimate the conquest you turn up with a copy of the requirement the Ricerimiento and you read it out

and it says basically here's a potted history of the world, according to Christianity. God gave the world to the Pope. The Pope gave it to the Spanish. The Spanish have given the right to come here to me. Would you accept that and agree to listen to the faith? And if you don't, then we're allowed to make war on you. Now, of course, this is a joke. Often they don't even understand you. I was about to say, you read it out to whom?

To the indigenous people. Who don't understand the language? So that doesn't get very far, doesn't. No, exactly. Bartolome de Las Casas said he didn't. know whether to laugh or cry about the requirement. But this was enough to get the thing going. It was considered to be enough.

Considered to be a legitimating act. Something that made your conquest legal. You were actually supposed to do it in front of a notary. Someone was supposed to write down that you'd fulfill this requirement. Right. John Edwards, in the short term, an immediate term, what impact did the Spanish have on the peoples they encountered in that part of America, Mexico and around the Caribbean? Well, they had a reaction impact in various ways.

Of course, the religious question we've already started talking about, but simply the presence of people. And it's not only the Spanish, for example, who bring in their diseases, which the Native Americans would not have had immunity to, but also, I think even more important in some ways, livestock. And so you start getting two things happening, really, the exploitation of the labour force in an obsession, of course, to find gold, which is one other thing we need to mention here.

The belief, well, that gold would be found, even in the Caribbean islands and certainly in the mainland. This comes, of course, to be as vital as the evangelisation project. And both of them are seen as sort of central interests of the Spanish monarchy and then of the Habsburg Empire as it becomes part of that. Is the evangelisation a real purpose or is it a blind? If you look at the records that we've got, like some of the major writers,

some of whom were conquistadors, who did the conquering themselves, I think the ones who were not ordained or religious churchmen, they, of course, do, I think, were sincere, totally. the others, the secular colonists, as it were, often were simply conventional Spanish Christians of their own day. I think we have to bear in mind also that, of course, a lot of mental baggage comes with the Spaniards when they go to the new world,

including feudalism, which really underlies the incommienda thing. In other words, serfdom as well as actual slavery. But also the great sort of... shortages of bullion and resources which were, and when Columbus starts out for example, the first thing he does is desperately try and find any little nuggets of gold he can see

to brew to Ferdin and Isabella, the Catholic monarchs, that they were justified in funding his expeditions. Maybe I didn't make myself clear enough, I didn't. Was the drive to conversion, was it a very respectable cover for the drive to find gold? and exploit the people there? Or was it part of it in a profound way?

I think it's... The others may disagree, but I mean, I think this is a tough thing about the mentality of the period in which it genuinely is impossible to separate the religious motives from what we would call the economic ones or political.

Bartolamo de las Casas was one of the owners of these properties. His father had sail with Columbus. What abuses did he report? He's very important to the story. What abuses did he report in the beginning? He, it was actually another member of the order he joined, the Dominican Order of Friars, Alonso de Monticinos,

who first publicly denounced the behaviour of the colonists. He said they are also a man, didn't he? Yeah, well, he was, he started off by going for the abuse of the grants that had been made. In other words, the labour force was being treated back, it was being over-exploited, as well as any problems, about disease which we mentioned. And Las Casas seems to have had, well, conversion in two senses. One is that he converts literally, which is was the term,

by becoming a Dominican friar. And of course, this was the very active preaching order from Europe, which had already combated heresy. It was founded to do so, in fact, in the 13th century. And so what we have now is them among the Gentiles, as it were, the people who had never had Christian. Christianity. On the abuses question, yes, it is the beginning of Las Cattes' Crusade. Julia McClure, the Pope had granted the right, indeed, the duty, not only to conquer, but to

convert. How did the conversion happen? How did they set about doing it? Yes, indeed. To understand the importance of conversion for the Spanish Empire, we need to go back to this papal ball of 1493 into Kiterer, which in fact granted the donation of the lands in 100 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands to the Spanish crown for the purposes of conversion. So the mandate for conversion was central to the founding legitimacy of the Spanish Empire. Now, what happened was there was a debate about how that conversion should be carried out and the methodology of that conversion, particularly between the Franciscans and the Dominicans, there was a clash about the methodology of that conversion. and the Franciscans have been engaged with mass baptisms,

and the Dominicans came along and said this wasn't a real conversion because the Amerindians couldn't understand what had happened, they hadn't been brought to the faith by reason. This is significant because Bottle I de las Casas, as we've mentioned, joined the Dominican order, and he joined this debate, and significantly, in 1537, he published a tract de Unico Modo the only way of converting people to the true faith, in which he argued that it was really important to bring people to the faith by reason through peaceful proselytizing.

Now there's three important implications of that text that he publishes. It shows that there's no kind of mandate for force that people need to be compelled through peaceful methodologies. This also has implications for the political sphere because it ties into later arguments about the needs to have consent for sovereignty. and it also ties in, interestingly, to the way he's been fitted into the intellectual history of rights in that it focuses on the importance of the will, so that people must be free to choose and have their freedom respected in this. If they converted them to Christianity, the implication is that they thought they had a soul to be saved. If they had a soul to be saved, didn't that make them equal to other Christians?

Exactly. And so this text that Las Casas wrote, the only way, was in fact influential. for Pope Paula 3rd in the bull that he issued also in 1537, Sublimus Diaz, which recognised the rationality of the Amerindians. And so recognising that they had a soul to be saved. So that plays a part in what we're going towards, which is what is slavery, what is their position? And these phrases came up all the time. Are they monkeys not men?

This is part of it. The soul is part of it. Exactly, yes. The capacity for human reason in particular. They thought to be without reason by something. people. By some people, for example, Sepulveda, who are going to come on to with the debates.

Without reason. And yet we're talking about a city bigger than any city in Europe. We're talking about a place with laws. They can do writing. I mean, magnificent place. And they still, what was staring them in the face didn't matter one way or another. Well, it's interesting. The Sepulveda who puts forward some of these arguments that

you've just mentioned had in fact never visited Latin America. Although, of course, he'd have read different reports from Conquisodos. There was knowledge of the Americas in Spain at this time, but he had never himself visited. Thank you. Caroline Pennock, what were the new laws of 1542? They're there. Cortez has arrived 23 years earlier, and they're taking over all over the place. There's brutality. People are being forced labour and so on and so forth. These new laws came in. What were they?

So what happens is... And who said, who promulgated them? The laws are promulgated by the Spanish Crown. in 1542, and they are intended to defend the indigenous people and to improve their rights and their treatment. What's happened is that Las Casas and many other missionaries have been campaigning at court across the early part of the 16th century and saying to the Crown, look at the abuses that are happening. People are publishing, they're writing, they're appearing at court and campaigning essentially on behalf of the indigenous people. And in 1542, they issue these laws which have essentially three central points. There's lots of smaller points, but essentially three central

points, to treat the Indigenous people better. So there are a number of laws about what they can and can't be used for in terms of their labour, what they should receive in terms of support and well-being, that they cannot, under any circumstances, be enslaved. And before this point, there were justifications for slavery. But at this point, they said, from henceforth, you cannot hold Indigenous people as slaves. And if you think you have the right to do so, you have. have to come to Spain and prove your legal title to the Indigenous people you hold. And thirdly, they abolished the Encomienda effectively by declaring that when Encomenderos, holders of Encomienders died, their encomienders would revert to the crown. How effective were these new girls? How long did

last? Not very long. Well, technically quite long, but in reality not very long, because what happens is that the Encomenderos, who are the most powerful figures amongst the colony, are not very happy about this. They've been happily exploiting indigenous labour, forcing people to work for them, and so they're pretty angry about it. In Peru, there is an actual revolt, a sort of civil war,

and they cut off the governor's head and carry it around on a string. The viceroy of Mexico sees what's happening in Peru and thinks, this isn't a very good idea. So he suspends the laws. He applies to the Crown to suspend the laws. He doesn't implement them.

And letters and emissaries go back to the Crown saying, idea we shouldn't do it. The interesting thing from my point of view though, which gets forgotten often, is that the laws remain in effect in Spain. So indigenous people who are in Spain are able to use them to

apply for their freedom from enslavement, things like that. But not the millions over in Mexico and middle America. John Edwards, so there's pressure on the Spanish crown. Is it the sense of this crown versus the Pope here over these new laws? that's a very interesting way of putting it

not a not a usual way because of course the Spanish crown regarded itself as the big defender of the papacy and its claims all over the place they seem to mean at odds here they were yes and I think you've got to open this out a bit actually into European politics we'll do just briefly but to understand what's going on you've not only had in 1492

the conquest of the last bit of Muslim Spain by the Trastamaran dynasty, but then the descent to the Habsburgs of Charles the 5th, who becomes Holy Roman Emperor, hence the 5th, who's first of Spain, and he therefore becomes a defender of Christendom. Great fears that he will be the universal monarch, in other words, a hegemon over all of Europe.

Now, the Habsbergs and the papacy, clashed very often in Europe. They clashed over how to deal with Martin Luther and the reformers, and they clashed over other things. So, yes, we can say that by this time, 1542 and onwards with the new laws and then the debates, there was a great deal of tension between the two. And so the Habsburgs are actually in quite an awkward position because they've got to deal with their own Spanish subjects and their interests.

But they were also trying to sort out the reformation. And so, yes, I mean, I think that... So we all have a clash between the Pope and the Crown. Yes, and it gets very bad. I mean, by the time we get to Pope Paul the 4th, 1555 to 9, he wants to excommunicate the Habsburgs, the Homey Roman Empire. I'm sorry, it's in trouble. Julia, Julie McClure.

So they gathered, they gathered, who are they, in Baladolid, in Spain, in 1550? What was the purpose of that? Well, I think actually we need to start that the story of the debates with 1547, which is when Juan Inez de Svelvida, well not publishes, sorry, composes this key text, Democrates Alta, also known as Democatus Secundus, at the bequest of the Council of the Indies. And this is that you had in petitioning by the likes of Bartolome de Las Casas and others, contesting the legitimacy of the conquest, challenging the violence of the Encomonderos,

and the Council of the Indies and also the Crown wants a kind of tract that asserts the legitimacy and the fact that it's a just war of the Spanish Empire. So this text is composed, but it's not published, it's withheld from publishing, and in fact it's put under investigation. And Sepulveda, who was a key humanist at the time, very important in Spanish society, was really upset by the withholding of this work and publication. and this kind of dispute between Bartolome de Las Casas and Sepulveda escalates from 1497. And then what happens is on the 16th of April...

So that's brilliant, but just to get everybody, keep us up. Now let's leave it with these two men. Las Casas and Sepulveda. Now, Sepulvades, classicist is translated Aristotle. He believes in Aristotle's idea, they're natural slave. Daskas says this is terrible. we cannot put up with this. These are human, these are people.

And let's use these two as the centre of the debate. So what's Sevilleveda up to? The council is called on the 16th of April in 1550 in order to resolve this. And Sepulveda has effectively argued that the war in Latin America is a just war because the Amerindians can be classed using the Aristotelian category of natural slavery.

And he argues that this is because, as he sees it there, religion, without customs laws, without cities, that they have barbaric customs, including the slaughtering of the innocence, and that in fact

this can be framed to just war, because, for example, there's a saving of the innocence that could be argued. So it's kind of really about a framing of just war around this issue. Most of what you said about him is just plain wrong. What he said about them. Did it be

hadn't been there, as you say. Who gave him this false information? Well, I think he was basing on a compilation of sources and reports and also responding to demands of the Encommoderos who were also kind of describing the Amerindians, and so this was kind of, you know, where he was

getting his material from for writing this tract, but he's also referring back to how he could fit the category of the Amerindians within pre-existing categories. And in this case, he already has the category of Aristotle's natural slaves. and he kind of thinks about the way this could be imposed upon the Amerindians who... And you also said they were more like monkeys than men?

Well, so he actually describes them as somewhat lesser than humans, but he accepts that they're humans. But the category of natural slavery is not a fixed state. It's one that you can actually graduate out of with the right kind of stewardship and protection. And so he says, you know, as he describes them as children to adults, and nearly as monkeys to men, although whether he actually said that

or whether that was polemicising by Las Casas, we're not entirely sure. Well, let's turn to Las Casas. What did he argue, Caroline? What was his case? So Las Casas argued, and he took a long time to argue it. So Pulvada presented quite a short tract,

and Las Casas talked for five days, and it's not at all clear whether he said everything he was going to or whether they stopped him after five days. But he had an enormous amount of ethnographic information suggesting that these people were civilised and in his view very innocent, very open to conversion. He even makes the case that human sacrifice shows how devout they are, that if only you could turn them to Christianity, they would be the most

devout people on earth. So he counters the idea that they're uncivilised. But he also is very strongly against the idea that there is any justification for war to impose the faith. As Julia said, there's a big debate here about what a just war is and how one can impose one's beliefs, the method you can do that. He never says that empire is wrong during the debates or that they shouldn't be trying to convert these people and change their beliefs. He believes that it should be done by peaceful means. And he very strongly denounces the abuses of the conquistadors and of the encomanderos as essentially making a proper conversion impossible. How can you bring people to the love of Christ through violence, this kind of argument? And you spoke in myrials.

Very admiringly, although also quite patronisingly. So he sees them as children, as lambs to be led to the knowledge of God. He is very admiring of them, and he also talks admiringly of their institutions, but it's very much a paternalistic. So, for example, law, monarchy, writing, the recording of their histories. There are many missionaries in this period that spend a lot of time recording these indigenous civilizations because they're so sophisticated. And so he does speak very admiringly of them,

but it is also a very paternalistic viewpoint, the idea that he and his fellow missionaries need to lead them to Christ. Have we any idea, John Edwards, how these arguments went down, the Peronante? Was there any system of voting or judgments? What was going on? I think it's worth saying that the debates aren't really debates in the format we understand them,

cut and thrust, like in Parliament. They, I think, is a very interesting parallel with the, with what was also going on in Europe in that time, the Council of Trent that was supposed to be settling the future of the Catholic Church, its doctrine and reform. And the techniques are the same. People present their views. Are they unchallenged? They are.

Well, not they are, but usually in backrooms, in the committee meetings behind the scenes. In the formal sessions, everything will be very rigid. One person speaks, sits down, another one gets up. But a judgment is made by a designated group. I just want to say, though, that although you don't debate each other, Las Casas did write a response to Sir Pulveda's points. And Sir Pulverda was very angry about it because he thought he should have been allowed to do a response as well,

but actually only Las Casas does. There was a lot of dispute about that kind of procedure. there was in Trent as well, where everyone wanted a full say. But it was, there was this tradition, the Spanish themselves had a tradition, which they'd used with Erasmus a bit earlier, 1527, of having what they would call a committee in which a group of theologians in that case

would produce their own opinions. And then the Inquisitor General and the Crown would have a verdict, as it were. Was it an event, a debate, excuse me, that as it were all Europe are watching, Did it seem something central? John, can you give us some idea of that? I don't think it was. No, I mean, it was very much an internal Spanish matter.

And it went on being the question of the Indies, I mean, a bit after this, for example, not long after these debates, you see, in 1554, Prince Philip, but become King of Spain, became King of England. And there were debates about the Indies of the Spanish Council while they were in London, which the English were not in England,

included in. This stuff was very much kept, I think, as a Spanish matter. You know, not even a general Habsburg one, in fact. I think we've got the threads in the right place. I'm sure you've got, yes, we'll. So we're all right there. Okay, Julia. Julia McClure, it's tempting to see Las Casas as a hero in the arguments.

And he put good arguments. These arguments resonate with us in ways that the others don't. Can you just tell us more about those arguments, please, and what he founded them on? Well, I think there's been multiple attempts to go against the remodalisation of Las Casas in recent years. Why do you want to pull him down? Well, he's often associated with instigating the start of black slavery into the Americas, although we can debate this, it's probably not down to Las Casas, but in 1516, when he writes the Remedios, when he's thinking about how could the labor shortage be addressed,

in the Americas. He suggests that they could introduce black slaves. He then later recants on this. He recants on that. It's quite important that he recants on this, especially after the debate. He kind of is more polemical against slavery in general. But overall, he's not opposing slavery as an institution because there are different frameworks for understanding the legitimacy of slavery coming out of the late middle ages that he's not challenging. So for example, one could be a slave if they, you know, if they were considered to be a natural slave or if they were opposing a... Who would say they were natural? Who would do the considering?

This is a good question. So in the case of the black slaves that arrive in the Spanish Empire, effectively the Spanish Empire is able to outsource the moral questioning of that matter to the Portuguese Empire by saying, well, these people have already been enslaved in Africa by the Portuguese.

So that's somewhat sidestepping the issue on the case of the Spanish. But the other significant thing to say about the interventions in Las Casas and why they were so problematic is that he was on the one hand defending the Amerindians but he was also romanticising them and essentialising them and it's argued that in doing so he actually contributed to the racialisation of the Amerindians and he also created

by saying for example that they were that meek and humble in that in his defence of them he was kind of creating a certain essentialising depiction of them and this also played into how the Spanish Empire proceeded in terms of its constructing of its own legitimacy by thinking of the Amerindians as a protectorate, those who were too weak to be governed

and therefore needed to be governed on their behalf until they were able to graduate from this position. The other important thing that he does is that he creates a kind of moral hierarchy. He says famously that everyone is equal before God, but there's also space there for saying that they're not equal politically. And he actually kind of creates a framework

he's described by some as the founder of comparative ethnography, in fact, because he says that there are different groups that don't say that there's differences between the Amerindians. So, for example, the Chechemecas in the north were more wild, whereas the Teno was seen to be more meek and humble. And this hierarchy, this creates a framework for how the enslavement of the Amerindians actually plays out. Do you agree with this, this characterisation of Las Casas? Yeah, I think it's a fairly, it's a fairly well-established thing in the historiography, actually, that Las Casas is a complicated figure because he writes so much over his life. And he also changes his views over his life so much that it's very hard to be exactly clear about, to present him in a monolithic way.

You know, he's not a hero. He does suggest introducing slavery. He does legitimate empire. He does think that you should civilise indigenous people. He does treat them as if they are subjects for study who can be racially ranked. But at the same time, he is, I think, a man before his time, a man who is one of the first to suggest that all men are equal before God and that all are capable of civility. He never does take on the question of what happens if you refuse in the end to. be converted, you know, at what point, where's the edge of his tolerance for people's civility is an interesting question. What's the resonance of this argument in the streets of Spain at the time? It's hard to know how much people are actually talking about this argument, but it's certainly the case that we tend to think of this as a very abstract debate, something that's just happening amongst theologians and politicians and encomenderos as well, who are very keen to get the right results so they can carry on being in charge and impose, using their well on indigenous people.

But actually, there are thousands of Indigenous Americans in Spain at this time, probably tens of thousands. The statistics are very hard to get, many of them as enslaved people. And so I don't think you can divorce this from ongoing debates about how you treat the people that you're next to as well, about how you treat the people your workers. And I mentioned briefly earlier that the new laws carry on being implemented in Spain. And we see hundreds of Native Americans with the aid of the Spanish crown appealing for their freedom in the 1540s and 1550s. They see these debates happening, these questions, and they say, actually, I am a free person. I should not be enslaved. I'm not sure if I've answered your question.

But I don't think the debates resonate in the streets. I don't think people are chatting about them around the fountain. but I do think that the legal implications have much more of a resonance in Spain than perhaps we give them credit for. John, what bearing did this debate have on the new transatlantic slave trade? Well, I suppose if you look at it objectively, not a lot, because in fact the incommienda system does survive more or less. I mean, nothing really changes until we get to around 1800, really.

when the empire starts breaking up in the polionic period. Sorry, Caroline. I was just going to say, well, the encomianda system sort of dies its own death and is replaced by other forms of forced labour service, like the Repartimiento, right? Yes, which is another old medieval technique revived. You know, that was, the Repartiminto is an allocation of holdings by the Crown. And this begins back with the re-conquest of southern Spain in the 13th century. Repartimientes are held.

and so the yeah I mean that's another thing so the sorry you would say well just to add to that the first Asiento so licensed to introduce black slaves into the Caribbean was issued in 1518

and actually new data from the transatlantic slave database shows that there was a more a higher volume of black slaves into Latin America than previously thought so this was really starting from at least 1518 to impact on the composition of the labour force, but at the same time, it's crucial to notice that this is not

racialized Chatelle slavery in the same way that we're familiar with from the British Empire, and then in fact, there was also kind of substantial free black populations across Latin America in urban centres, especially, such as Mexico City, also in Lima. So this, black people are entering the Spanish Empire, and possibly as slaves, but not necessarily always staying as slaves. So, John, to a certain extent, it's in the next. a lot of sound and some fury signifying nothing. Well, it has, I do think it has European implications. I think that in the sense that the way we're dealing with all these questions in the new world

must never, we must never forget the old world. That in fact, as far as people in Spain were concerned, the Mediterranean, the Turks, were just as important as anything that happened in America. And there was a lot of link of people and ideas and behaviour between them. But was there any change in the attitude of the colonists after this treaty, after this meeting, they behave better to put it in its most simple? Well, I don't know what the others think, but I would say there was the mixture pretty much as before. In other words, there were idealists.

There were those who, as Caroline said, you know, had the gospel view as they brought it with them from Europe. And there could be friars or there could be priests. And they certainly were still there. And Las Casas was revered in his order, for example, you know, evermore. But on the other hand, you do have a situation in which, you know, basically the economic interests go on and it is very much to do with the catastrophic financial situation of the Habsburgs.

You know, the famous decline of space. insofar as it was one thing, begins, certainly by mid-century, about the time of these debates, and goes on until Spain stops being, you know, a top-class power. Is that because they're not getting enough gold? Well, it's one of the major factors. Caroline? I just wanted to say that it's easy to turn this into a debate as well that's about Spaniards imposing will on Indigenous Americans, but actually some of the Encomiendas are held by Indigenous people.

So Moctusuma's daughters and their descendants hold Encomiendas. And some of the indigenous Cabildos hold encomienders or want to hold uncomienders. So there are also indigenous people involved in this debate who are sending petitions either because they want to keep holding their encomiendas or more often because they want to contest the encomiendas system. You see Las Casas actually speaking as a representative of indigenous communities. It's very easy to deprive indigenous people of any agency in this debate at all. and it just become about the Spanish imposing things on them.

But although they're experiencing devastating loss of populations and of communities, destruction of communities, they also are fighting to find their own place in these debates. Yes, so just the significance of this action is that the Spanish Crown effectively suspends the licensing of further conquest while this debate takes place. And what this shows is that the Spanish Crown is prepared to give time to consider this matter, and it considers this matter to be important.

And to echo what Caroline just said, this shows also to people within empire that there's a place for those petitions from across empire that are sent by Molatos from Mexico City, from black people from Lima, will be heard eventually by empire, even if that doesn't happen all the time because of many of these petitions are lost,

might not reach the crown, but there's a framework where at least it's established that is important to the way that the empire operates. So what would you say the legacy of this debate was, this 1550-51 debate? I think because the texts that were talking about this democratus altar and some of the publications, some of the texts also of Las Casas weren't actually published during this time.

And I think the legacy has been in many ways a kind of delayed legacy because actually some of the reporting of these, that what's happening in the council of this, of the Vidal-Lid Council, aren't even being reported back to the Council of Castile at this time. And so in many ways it's being discovered later when people are looking at these texts also in the 19th century. And it's at this point that you have in the 19th century, also the likes of independence leaders like Simone Bolivar

talk about the importance of Las Casas as the first defender of Latin American rights, for example. And then later on in the 20th century, you have the Theology of Liberation Movement takes up Las Casas as a defender of the rights of the Amerindians and many of the rights centres in Latin America today are named after Las Casas. Was there any sense of improvement of the condition of the Native Americans after this? Not really, I'm afraid. The new laws do give the scope for Indigenous people to challenge their treatment. They're actually reissued in a way.

watered down version that allows encomienders to survive for two generations in the first instance in 1552. So you do get some more protections for Indigenous people. And as I said, you do continue to have Indigenous councils and Indigenous nobles and in some cases groups of commoners or ordinary people petitioning within this structure that Julia talks about. They're aware that there are ways of petitioning, ways of getting to the Crown and getting to authority. And the Aztec people or the former Aztec people actually get into that really quickly because they had a big petitioning legal system. So they quite quickly adapt to the Spanish legal system and start getting involved with it. But I wouldn't say that anything changed as a result of

the Valadoly debates at all specifically, though there are incremental shifts in what people can do legally all across that period. John, was there a sense that the idea of this battle between who is, what is a slave and who is a slave and who is a slave and who is a half-slave and who is a natural does that feed into an ongoing argument? I think it does, definitely, and into the debate, as we tend to know it for much more recent times. Yes, I think it does. And I think another thing about long-term influence,

which, as we've been saying, you know, takes a while to get going after the debate, is, of course, that Las Casas' portrayal of the behaviour of the colonists, particularly, for example, in his Belivisima Relation, his short account, of the debate, of the destruction of the Indies, as he calls it, is it does begin to develop something that was already going on in Europe, a black legend about Spanish society and its behaviour abroad.

And this applies as much in Europe as it does in America. But what's interesting from our point of view is, of course, that instantly the potential rival imperial powers in Europe take this stuff up. It's an absolute gift to the French, the Dutch, later to the English, to show that the Spanish are in fact misgovernors. And so in that sense, it has a great

influence, I think. Well, just to add to that, this devastation of the Indies that Bartonle de lais Casas writes, it gets illustrated by theatre debris, and this creates this imagery of the excessive violence of the Spanish Empire. And in fact, the British Empire uses that as legitimation

for incursions into the Spanish Empire in the North by saying, It's liberating the Amerindians from the excessive violence of the Spanish. Well, thank you all very much. Thank you, Julie McClure, John Edwards, and Caroline Dodd-Spanic. Next week, it's the evolution of horses, from their dog-sized ancestor to their mass extinction in the new world and domestication in Asia.

Thank you very much for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. Thank you. That was a gallop. Yes. It's all worldwide here, you know, over the centuries here. There's a lot going on. Would you like to have said you didn't say?

I mean, I talked a little bit about the agency of Indigenous people, and I think it's very easy in these debates, isn't it, to make it all about Europeans talking about Indigenous people and blur them out. And I tried, because that's obviously what I'm interested in, as a scholar of Indigenous people, to try and sketch them back in a little bit. But because it's also theoretical and so,

top down, I suppose. It can be very difficult to see them being an influence in these debates until you start recognising the way in which the different issues overlap. So as you said, it was a gallop through a lot of different issues.

And the problem is that Valodolid is an exemplar of lots of things that are going on, isn't it? So Las Casas is appearing, not just petitioning in the Validolid debates, but he's appearing as an expert witness on behalf of Indigenous people who would like to be freed. testifying that they're speaking Mexican languages. He writes a big, absolutely excoriating petition

on behalf of a Meshika who is imprisoned for his part in the Mishton Revolt and he's campaigning on his behalf in Spain. All of these kinds of things are going on at the same time and they overlap and feed into those debates. Just to add to that, I think it's important to see Las Casas, in many ways, a tip of an iceberg of this system of petitioning, which in effect is coming from all over the Spanish Empire. And that is driving legislative change in a way that you see the empire is being responsive.

Okay, we can question how important law is in this sense of, is law then regulating violence, is it in the way that it's responding to the petitions? But there's a sense that marginalised voices could be heard, and that was part of the way that the Spanish Empire was conducting itself, part of the way that we can think of the constitutional mandate of the Spanish Empire, how it's thinking about its own validity. John?

I think going on again from that, I'm very conscious of the fact that there's a sort of intellectual basis for all this discourse, both sides in that debate. Aristotle again, mediated usually until the Renaissance period, throughout the Middle Ages, through the work of theologians, particularly, of course, and Thomas Aquinas, the great Dominican theologian. And that, but of course with the Renaissance

and the return to the original text to the sources, then you've got a different line. I mean, it's fascinating, but they've got a common discourse. And it's also I think a lot of it is about intellectual method. I mean, the other thing about the Dominicans, like Sir Cassus's order in this period, is the fact that Thomist scholarship, this is Colacissism of a Dominican kind.

This is Aquinas, absolutely. Particularly the University of Salamanca, but in others as well, was immensely powerful and dynamic and developing. It was affecting the way in which the Catholic Church tried to sort itself out in the Council of Trent and it was to do with these imperial disputes that we've been talking about, the fact that this was, as it were, the language which you used. You're right, it's tempting to set up

subpoveder and Aristotle and natural slavery against Las Casas, but actually Las Casas doesn't reject Aristotelian theory. He tries, exactly, and he tries to defend indigenous people based on Aristotelian theory and the idea that they fulfill all of Aristotle's criteria for the good life. And he doesn't reject natural slavery either, as I think you said, he simply argues that it is a category that is limited to a very few people. If it's not a category you can apply to a group of people is Las Casas. argument. But his methodologies are also interesting because he, on the one hand, is trained

as a lawyer and he's thinking about the arguments of Aquinas and so on. But at the same time, he's kind of very heterodox in his approach because he's bringing in the experience of living in Hispaniola. And for this reason, and it's kind of his more heterodox approach to Thomism, that in many ways he's been left out for many of the intellectual histories that have focused on, for example, Francisco Vittoria and his essay on the Indies. because it's more kind of orthodox in a way. The Dominican order was split over a number of things in this period, among itself, as it were.

There were bitter conflicts. Las Casas has his friends and his enemies in the order. He had some allies, but the whole thing was in flux, and I do think this is part of the whole crisis of the Reformation and the Council of Trent. You know, the Catholicism was having to re-examine itself. You could almost see this, almost, as a sort of subsection of that. Sorry.

Well, the councillors that were part of the Viala debate, in fact, two of them were dispatched to the Council of Trent, and that was what caused the delay in the verdict of the outcome. Yeah, we didn't mention that there wasn't a verdict. Yeah, in fact, Las Casas is widely regarded to have won because he won the propaganda war. His materials were widely published afterwards and widely circulated, where Sepulvitors were largely suppressed. And, of course, they fit much more neat.

with modern ideas from the 18th century forwards about human rights and so on. So he kind of is seen to have won, but both of them claim to have one. They both claim to win. But it's a terrific, it's fascinating power play, isn't it, between the church and the state, and you wonder how much they overlapped

and who really believed in what, and then the third element being them over there, getting on with it, one way nor other than not getting on with it, so you have at least a triangle. Yeah, although I didn't actually see it that much as Church v. State. I mean, I agreed with everything you said, but much of the pressure for Indigenous rights for want of a better word

comes from the Crown via the Church. So the Crown, people like Las Casas petition the Crown, but then it's the Crown that implements those laws. There's perhaps because of their sense of mission as the Catholic monarchs, which is a title given to them by the Pope, the Spanish Crown, what's the word? It may be partly a legitimating tool,

as you say, it's a kind of front. But they also are very possessed of a sense of mission. They, in 1492, they not only encounter the Americas, they also complete the reconquista from the Moors, as you said, and also they expel all of the Jewish people from their realms or force them to convert. So there's a real kind of religious fervor. And you actually see people saying things like,

well, God has given us these new lands to convert. Now we've finished with the... No more people to convert. Yes, we've finished with the ones in Spain, so we're ready to go to the Americas. So it's a, sorry, you want to say something? I think, yes, I mean, we've also got to bear in mind all the time that the Spanish church was almost independent by this time,

by Papal Grant, that the patronage of the New World was granted. Charles V actually got it done, but it were working that way from the start of the... What does independent mean in this context? It means that the appointments of all the bishops and so on are basically done by the crown. In many ways, there were one must. not, of course, make the mistake of saying they're the same, it is pretty much what Henry VIII aim to do with the English church.

At the same time, France and Spain effectively were running national Catholic churches in this period. In that sense, you can't separate the two, it seems to me. No, you're absolutely right. You can't. And of course, then there's the big distinction between the missionary orders and the secular church, the priests who sometimes overlap and sometimes. times don't. So Las Casas is both a secular proof and a missionary. But Lacassas's reputation has more than lingered on. It's held steady and even grown, hasn't it? I would say it's been

revamped in the 20th century, especially by the way that it's used by the theology liberation movement, Gustav Gutierrez, who writes this notable book about Las Casas as the standing in solidarity with the poor and the first defender of the rights of the Amerindians. And it's in the wake of this movement that you then have these human rights centres, in, for example, Chiapas, where Las Casas was the bishop, having it being established in the name of Las Casas. And actually, what's amazing, I thought that the reason you were wanting to talk about

the valid debates on the programme is that there's been a recent resurgence of interest in the debates themselves and Sepulveda versus Las Casas in relation to just war in the wake of 9-11. So you've had a group of mostly legal scholars start to talk about whether Sepulveda and Las Casas's arguments about the extent to which it's just to go to war to impose your beliefs on another culture,

can that be applied to the extent to which it's just to go to war to impose democracy and, say, defend women from the Taliban? There's actually been a real resurgence of interest, people like Dana Brunstetter, or Daniel Bernstetter and Dana Zartner, who have written on that question and actually revamped these arguments and these ideas and said, is there something we can learn here about where the edge of our civilization is.

What's the limits of our tolerance? And also interventionism, the fact that they think that they're saving people from sacrifice or saving people from their crimes against nature effectively. So this kind of long history of interventionism. And it's Enrico Ducel who describes Sepulveda as the father of modern philosophy in that he creates a framework for the subordination of some people over others.

Well, thank you all very much. The producer seems to have disappeared. He's here. Does anyone want to like tea or coffee? Tea, please? Tea, please. Yeah, tea, thank you very much. In our time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotson.

What are you interested in? And I mean, really interested in. Really into box certificates. Pencils. Crenelian mania. So much so that if you see it or hold it or just think about it, then everything stops. One day, it just vanished.

Each week in the boring talks, Join me, James Ward as I introduce a guest speaker to share their own fascination for a very niche subject. But what could it possibly be? From the personal joys of pencils and teletext to the expectant sounds of old computer games loading, every talk is a varied and surprising treat. You know that? Lovely. The Boring Talks.

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