What Was the Valladolid Debate?
The Valladolid Debate (1550–1551) was a moral debate in the heyday of the Spanish Empire where the rights and treatment of indigenous people in the Americas were discussed by two opposing sides.
On the one hand, we have the Dominican friar and priest Bartolome de Las Casas, who argued for improving the horrendous treatment of natives and to grant them the same rights as the colonizers.
In his writings, he had put the spotlight on the atrocities which were committed against Native Americans, and he advocated for their humanity and morally equal status to Europeans. Las Casas disputed their injust enslavement throughout his lifetime.
On the other hand, we have a number of learned men and priests, most prominently the humanist scholar Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, who viewed indigenous practices such as cannibalism and human sacrifice as crimes against nature and as evidence of their being less-than-human, which necessitated their conversion to Christianity and their subjection to Spanish overlords. He wanted to use the indigenous as slave labour, and purported that they benefitted from their role in the encomienda system*.
One of the underlying tensions in the debate was the difference in opinion with regard to conversion between the Franciscans and the Dominicans, between whom there had been a long-standing confessional rivalry.
The Franciscans championed mass baptism, which the Dominicans opposed on the grounds that the natives didn’t understand what was going on and that they didn’t do so of free moral conscience, but were rather coerced into doing it. The latter argued for peaceful proselytizing among them without force and to view them as rational beings (the Pope recognized them as such in 1537 in in the papal bull Sublimis Deus)**.
Another interesting facet of the discussion was its discursive practices. Whilst Las Casas primarily argued on theological grounds, Sepúlveda held a rather more secular line in his argumentative style, in particular by invoking Aristotle’s definition of the barbarian and natural slave.
In practice, this debate came to have limited significance for the indigenous people’s rights in the long haul (even though their status and treatment were somewhat improved).
Importantly, it is considered to be one of the earliest cases of European moral debates about the human rights of colonized peoples, colonialism, and international relations, particularly interventionism: is it just to invade another country on the basis of preventing horrible social practices?
In recent years, the Valladolid Debate has resurfaced among legal scholars in particular, who wants to consider the affair in connection to the question of the Taliban and other terrorist groups. Is it justified to intervene in a country to prevent the fundamentalist implementation of sharia law and the suppression of women?
The most important legacy of this moral debate is arguably how it showed that a genuine ethical concern for the colonized natives was present in the Spanish Empire several centuries before such considerations carried any real moral force for later European empires.
It also remains an example of the fact that there were European individuals who were genuinely preoccupied with the rights of non-Europeans in the early modern period, and that past humanity is not as one-sidedly wicked as is often held.
Further reading:
Hernanzed, Bonar Ludwig. “The Las Casas-Sepúlveda Controversy: 1550–1551" (PDF). Ex Post Facto. San Francisco State University. 10: 95–104. Retrieved 30.08.2021
*A early Spanish colonial institution where Christianity and civilization were spread amongst the natives and their protection ensured by the Spaniards in return for tribute. In reality, it was a mechanism for their enslavement and for opportunistic people to shore up power and wealth as landlords.
**Interestingly, the Spanish annexation of the Americas hinged on papal approval, as the pontiff had granted them the lands by divine grace in return for converting the indigenous populace into Christianity.
