And it all came from a few scraps of bronze : an alternate Spanish colonization

[Hecatee]

I've been reading Niall Ferguson's excellent book Civilization, in which he attempts to define six elements that help explain the dominance of the Western world between the 15th and 20th centuries. One of his arguments is the role of the rule of law in the various civilizations, the author using the colonization of both northern and southern America as an example of how two different cultures lead to very different results, with the English led colonization giving much more place to legal treatement than what developped in the south with the great aciendas where the owners had most powers over who lived on their lands.

So I began thinking about how to play with this variable to give birth to a much more prosperous southern America and a different Spanish history, and I thought about a foothnote of my Ancient Latin Epigraphy course.

OTL a collection of tablets establishing the basic laws for a new colony were found in 1981 near Sevilla, Spain. Written on bronze, they provide us with exceptional details on how a roman colony was organized.

Now my POD is a much earlier discovery of this legislation, as early as the reign of Charles V of Spain, and more precisely in 1518. This discovery is brought to the attention of a local priest, a dominican who sends word of it and a transcription to his superiors. Among those staying in Sevilla at the time is a man fighting for the right of the indigenous : Bartholomeos de las Casas.

Seizing upon the discovery, he offers a scheme to the king for the creation of an ideal colony based upon a precise charter that will limit what everyone can and can't do in the Indies, drawing ideas and precedents from the Roman law.

Thanks to the more persuasive nature of his arguments, Bartholomeo wins earlier the right to establish his colony as well as more means to start it. He also obtains that every future charter established by the Crown will use the same rules or a version of them made better by the experience of Las Casas.

So, do think it could lead to something ?

 

['Ezana]

This is a very intriguing idea, and I think it has a lot of potential. Could you provide more detail about the content of the bronze tablets? I only found a brief passage about them on Encyclopedia Britannica.

 

[TFSmith121]

de las Casas is a much-underused figure;

de las Casas is a much-underused figure; obviously, his history was written for a purpose, but it certainly lays out a much more "humane" conquest and colonization that historically...

Best,

 

[Just a Rube]

The Spanish actually did have all sorts of laws designed to limit the powers of the hacienda-owners and protect the indigenous peoples from exploitation.

The problem is that it was one thing for the king to issue such laws, it was another for him to enforce them. In addition to active rebellions (most notably one by Gonzalo Pizarro that took over most of Peru and killed a viceroy before being defeated), there was widespread passive resistance: "I obey, but I do not comply." For that matter, the same thing happened in the British colonies when the British government tried to enforce their will on the colonists.

 

[Hecatee]

'Eazana : the academic article that published the tablets : https://www.academia.edu/2188042/The_lex_Irnitana_a_new_copy_of_the_Flavian_municipal_law

Just a Rube : I agree with you, not everything will be alright. But the POD is rather early in the conquest, Cortez will launch in november 1518, Pizarro in 1521, and OTL De Las Casas could not get back to the islands before 1520/1521. Of course he won't have a complete success as early as he thought, but this small nudge in the timeline may be enough to steer Latin America toward another kind of future...

TFSmith121 : Indeed. It's one of those names that rank high in the mythology of colonization but which I'm not sure I've ever seen on AH.com before as a POD

--

The Lex Irnitana had been found in march and brought to the attention of De Las Casas as early as may, as we know from records of a letter he wrote to the king in mid-june. Only two months later came the king's grant of authorizations and money for the scheme.

As a former owner of a vast tract of land on the island of Cuba, De Las Casas knew well what was required to start a new colony in the new lands. His friend Pedro de Cordoba had pointed him toward a tract of land in what would become modern day Venezuela, at a place called Cumana.

The land around the settlement was granted to the scheme, as were various rights including that of exploiting pearls and underground ressources. Two ships and twenty soldiers were also to be provided by the crown, but the rest of the expedition would have to be financed by De Las Casas and his associates.

Thanks to the generous terms of the royal grant, various marchands agreed to join in the expedition, providing money, various equipements and about a hundred and fifthy settlers, two third of which were penniless peasants and the rest being either marchands or their representatives.

The organization of the expedition went rather fast, as by mid-september the ships left the port of Sevilla, arriving in late october to the island of Puerto Rico where he did complete his stockpiles before leaving mid-december toward the dominican convent of Cumana, which he reached on the eve of Christmas 1518 : the following day would be officialy called the foundation date of the new settlement.

 

[martin76]

Bartolome de las Casas wrote his "History of the Indies" but was not divulged in Europe (In fact, It was not printed til 1875). Instead it had a great success his other book "The Devastation of the Indies", a not historical value book because no accuracy is intended to argue that the Spaniards did in America nothing but destroy, rob and kill millions of innocent indians...; that book, with some brief excerpts from other writings, is the only foundation of the world famous author; this book, printed with these other fragments by the author in 1552, was from 1578 until the late eighteenth century translated into Latin, Dutch, French, German, English, Italian, more 50 editions, to serve both anti-Spanish propaganda by the Dutch rebels and his english allies.

So, I didn´t pay much attention to that book.

 

[Xenophonte]

Westernness

An approach to intellectual background of European:
In the Roman period the Jus Gentium was applied to the interaction with those people (or were not citizens) not governed by Roman law but its full development and culmination was in the Middle Ages and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
The Jus Gentium was the law, almost positive of the (European) international community, its main axiom pacta sunt servanda and was covering relations between states (wars, truces, treaties, 'envoys noblemen' on mission or diplomats, etc).
For the scholastics to those concerned about the law in general and the Nature Law particularly the precepts of Jus Gentium were considered part of the Nature Law and valid for the International community.

The Middle Ages and medieval Christianity, which are traditionally her most identifiable "moments" in the dialectic of the Westernness.
While in the old view the institutional order of the polis is an expression of the Physis in its capacity cosmos, natural, rational, fair, goodness and beauty nature which men through the logos must understand to respect in order to avoid the chaos (irrational, unfair, bad and without order), and the vision of medieval Christianity.

Christian institutional order relates in the plan of the Creator legitimate form, which establishes him as city of God that Christians through faith must trust and respect to avoid the city Devil; men at the beginning of the modern age, they feel 'obliged' to have intellectually Human nature and God (through the Church), to justify and legitimize the institutional structure of societies.


'' ... The modern affirmation of humanity as subject essentially involves the dimension of morality; the inevitable mediation of institutions in this process refers to the sphere of ethical life .... ''
The ethics are summarized objectifications socially produced and institutionalized in habits, customs, standards, codes, laws, according to which the social and political life of the people is oriented ... ''


. '' .. Morality would stay not reduced to mere subjectivity but would have its own dynamic, this is an act that goes beyond the mere receipt and adequacy of bound forms of ethical life force...''

 

[Xenophonte]

Fray Bartolomé de las Casas

Until the discovery of America and its indigenous peoples, the other, those outside the Christian community were or Islamic enemy or the ubiquitous and vigorous Jewish community, their continued existence and relationships with them, forced Christian thinkers to place them in a frame legal, which was the Ius Gentium.

This was the theory, of course in practice ... varied according to the different countries and governments.

In this intellectual background there arose the work of Fray Las Casas.
He was a great jurist theologian in this monumental History of the Indies, totaling 1655 pages in three volumes, evidence excellent gifts as a writer and historian qualities.


Fray Bartolomé de las Casas emphasized the spiritual nature of the bulls of Alexander VI, who were holding titles to preach the Gospel to the Indians and not to subjugate them, crashed naturally with the conquerors and the most eminent doctors of the Church.


His Works and actions caused great commotion and disputes between proponents and opponents to the point that the Spanish Crown, probably urged by his advisers and / or confessors, was felt bound to order the realization of a debate to determine the possibility planted by Father Las Casas, that Native Americans could have a Soul, could be Humans !!!


http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/nd/ark:/59851/bmct4447


The argument of his opponents led by Juan Sepulveda Ginez (a famous classical humanist) ,invoking to Aristotle basically rested on the right given to human beings by God to govern their non-human lower (an argument that sounds familiar, is not it ...!!!).


The Father's Las Casas, counterargument in his rebuttal, to establishing the Humanity of the American Indians, and he inadvertently laid the legal groundwork moral, philosophical and against the servitude of a Human by other humans.


Using biblical and philosophical arguments of the Thomistic logic (St. Thomas Aquino) and others taken from the Jus Gentium to argue not only belonging to humanity but their status as non-Christians and uncivilized not justify their enslavement and the conditions for their families were then subjected to his capture and it's duty of the Spanish, the Christianization of them and a decent treatment than Human congeners as they were.


After the Debate, Royal orders were issued, establishing for the indigenous condition of subjects of the new '' Kingdoms of Indies '' legally for the Spanish Crown not were colonies, it what were, using the Medieval terminology, conquered kingdoms and ruling for the Crown and its inhabitants live, would under Royal protection and subject to their authority.

One consequence of this was the permanent condition of minority established for Indigenous under the Spanish colonial system.
Another consequence was the beginning of large-scale trafficking of African eslavers, at the suggestion of the same las Casas, considering them more suitable for the hard work than the Indigenous.

Finally in defense of contemporary Las Casas and the same were men of their time with virtues and defects owned them sociocultural background in which they lived. Upon which they should be judged not apply modern ethical or moral standards.

In the event, both sides claimed to have won,but the arguments for and against colonisation and slavery reverberated through the next 200 years.

In defense of contemporary the impact that the discovery of America and its inhabitants, on the collective conscience of the Christian intelligentsia (at least Spanish) and through her, in the Spanish rulers was only comparable to that which would have a situation of a 'First Contact' with
an Alien civilization would have one today.

The Great Debate of Valladolid some Links :

http://nativeamericannetroots.net/diary/1014


http://ebooks.cambridge.org/chapter.jsf?bid=CBO9781139047401&cid=CBO9781139047401A005

 

[LHB]

I've been reading Niall Ferguson's excellent book Civilization, in which he attempts to define six elements that help explain the dominance of the Western world between the 15th and 20th centuries. One of his arguments is the role of the rule of law in the various civilizations, the author using the colonization of both northern and southern America as an example of how two different cultures lead to very different results, with the English led colonization giving much more place to legal treatement than what developped in the south with the great aciendas where the owners had most powers over who lived on their lands.

That's got some serious shades of the Black Legend and ignores the whole issue of the British colonies operating under rule of law was because the government in London largely left the colonies in North America to their own devices. After all the main sources of money were the sugar islands of the Caribbean and the EITC's trade network, not the thirteen colonies. In those colonies the situation was little different than it was in Spain where similar exploitative regimes were used to extract as much mineral wealth out of the New World as possible. It also ignores that British colonialism in Africa in the 19th century was just as bad, in some places worse, than what Spain did in the Americas.

As long as there are resources to be had Spanish colonialism is going to proceed much like it did OTL. There's simply no way to avoid that without massive geological PoDs that are outside the scope of this forum or some kind of TL where the Americas are never colonized in the first place.