The Americas in the Spanish World Order: The Justification for Conquest in the Seventeenth Century by James Muldoon (review)

BOOK REVIEWS109 ropean account of the pirate state of Saley in Morocco,* and Thomas Hussey, founder and first president of Maynooth college. Two others later stirred up the fires of controversy: Richard Smith, the future bishop of Chalcedon, and Thomas White, alias Blacklow, a close friend of the Jansenist Arnaud, whose books were also condemned in Rome. There is a long appendix of rare documents on various phases of die college's troubled history. This is a slender volume, sed multum in parvo. AlbertJ. Loomie, SJ. Fordham University The Americas in the Spanish World Order: TheJustificationfor Conquest in the Seventeenth Century. By James Muldoon. (PhUadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1994. Pp. xii, 239. $32.95.) This book is a careful summary and analysis ofJuan de Solórzano Pereira's defense of Spain's title to the New World in his De IndiarumJure (16291639 ), better known by scholars in its Spanish version, Política indiana ( 1647). The work has long been regarded as an audioritative commentary on and digest of the Laws of die Indies. Muldoon's study concentrates on the second book of the first volume ofDe Indiarumfure, dealing with die legitimacy of the Spanish conquest of America and assessing the ten basic arguments defenders of the conquest had offered in the past to justify it. Muldoon observes that the format ofdie work is that of a medieval legal treatise, "posing questions, arranging arguments pro and con, citing audiorities, and, finaUy, drawing conclusions in the manner of medieval scholastic philosophers and lawyers." Having surveyed die arguments in me literature on the debate, Solórzano rejected nine of the commonly stated Spanish titles to the New World, accepting only the tendí title, grounding Spanish possession of the Americas on Pope Alexander VI's grant. "His intention," says Muldoon, "was to justify continued Spanish possession of the Americas and to provide a basis for opposing any attempts by other European rulers, Catiiolics or Protestants, to acquire territory in the New World widiout papal or Spanish permission." Muldoon notes, in diis connection, diat die event that prompted die writing of Solórzano's book was the publication of Hugo Grotius's famous Mare liberum (1609), which denied the legitimacy of Spain's and Portugal's claims to die newly discovered lands on die basis of the papal grant. Muldoon observes in passing that diere are significant differences between die Latin and Spanish versions of Solórzano's work, reflecting a fairly common tendency of Spanish authors of the time to delete from vernacular texts material that crown or church might regard as subversive or offensive. In So- *See Martin Murphy (ed.), "A Relation of theJourney from St. Omer to Seville, 1622, by Thomas Atkins," Camden Miscellany XXXII (Camden Fifth Series, Royal Historical Society [London, 1994]), pp. 191-281. 110BOOK REVIEWS lórzano's case this may be more significant than Muldoon recognizes, and makes a comparison of his treatment of the dispute over Spain's titles to the New World in the two texts wortiiwhUe. Thus in die De Indiarum Jure, Bartolomé de Las Casas's positions on diese matters, as summarized by Muldoon , are stated quite fairly and objectively, witiiout animus, and Muldoon notes that Solórzano generaUy accepts Las Casas's views. But in die Política indiana. Solórzano endorses Sepúlveda's argument that the natural inferiority of the Indians required their subjection to Spanish tutelage, supports his view diat the bestial customs of the Indians provided a just cause for war against diem, and rejects Las Casas's claims that Spanish tyranny had destroyed a multitude of Indians, attributing their decline to dieir own vices and God's punishing hand. The difference between Solórzano's treatment of diese issues in the Latin text, meant for a small learned audience, and the Spanish text, meant for a much broader readership, suggests the decisive change in Spanish politics and die Spanish climate of opinion since the great Las Casas-Sepúlveda debate of 1550. The time was past when Spanish kings, fearing die rise of a powerful colonial seigneurial class, could support Las Casas's attack on the encomenderos and permit publication of tracts diat proclaimed tiieir crimes to...