An answer to /u/mmnaddaf12/

I was just talking with my colleague /u/TenMinuteHistory that it's very difficult to prove a negative in general. But when it comes to Spanish views of African versus American slavery, these are the facts, some from a previous post.

Spanish and Portuguese justification for African slavery was derived from a series of papal bulls: the Dum Diversas of 1452 was promulgated by Pope Nicholas V to authorize Alfonso V of Portugal to conquer Saracens and pagans and consign them to "perpetual servitude." This should be seen as an exemption to a previous bull Sicut Dudum promulgated by Pope Eugene IV in 1435, which forbade enslavement of natives of Canary island who had converted to, or were in the process of being converted to, Christianity. The Dum Diversas was part of Pope Nicholas V's campaign against growing Ottoman strength in the Mediterranean and south eastern Europe. This power was later extended to the Spanish by Pope Alexander VI, in addition to the mandate to instruct inhabitants for conversion to Christianity, through Dudum Siquidem.

In that same era, the Tordesillas Treaty was signed which placed the west coast of Africa under control of the Portuguese while the Spanish were granted controlled most of the Americas. So, in a way, the Spanish did not have control over the coasts of Africa until much later when Portugal was joined in a personal union with Spain under Philip II.

But why were the Spanish interested in pursuing the question of American slavery? The Spanish monarchs tended to take a very idealistic view on slavery of Americans even as they struggled to control their agents.

A very good illustration of this is in how Columbus was treated after he had been found guilty of going against royal orders. Isabella and Ferdinand still sent him on a fourth voyage, even after stripping him of his various titles (admiralty, governorship, etc.) because he was considered the best explorer available to them. All that, after Ferdinand and Isabella explicitly instructed that he "endeavor to win over the natives," and "treat them well, lovingly, and abstain from causing them injury." In his first letter back to the Monarchs, he wrote, ".... so that they would be won over and, moreoever, become Christians inclined toward love ..." In reality he forbade baptism of natives except with his personal permission, in order to maintain an adequate supply of slaves.

Charles V largely followed the same idealistic line, As you know, all this came to a sort of culmination in the Valladolid debate even though changes in policy and practice took a very long time.

Contrary to expectation, the debate wasn't a resounding victory for Las Casas. The ideas were hotly debated in the academic circles and within the church, but there was no general agreement that Las Casas had won. Fortunately, at the same time, at the highest royal circles there was already a shift toward more humane treatment of native Americans. So while Las Casas deserves great credit, so do royals such as Charles V and Philip II.

So, was there no progress over the decades between Las Casas' first publication and the debate of 1550? As time neared Las Casas' debate in Valladolid, there were already many regulations that improved treatment of native Americans. Enslavement under any condition was prohibited in 1530. The law reforms of 1542 strengthened requirements for slave-owners to claim ownership of slaves, the same year as the publication in question, although I do not know which came first. Finally in 1549, it was forbidden to substitute forced labor in place of payment of tribute. All these decrees and reforms came even before the debate in 1550.

Of course, the implementation of the decrees took a long time, given that this was the 1500s and communication/control of the monarchs over their far-flung dominions were very limited. Further, many were pragmatic regulations, seeing that so many native Americans have died that they had to change the system. So clearly, the ever-lasting struggle for control between the crown in Spain versus its agents in the New World played a big part. Therefore, while Las Casas was an important leader, and deserve credit for framing the cause in terms of humanism, his cause strongly benefited from the ongoing struggle for control, which in the end dismantled the encomienda system.

Spain had - by accident rather than design - found itself the pioneer of modern imperial rule over greater subject colonial populations, and to complicate matters its title owed much to papal sanction bringing with it an obligation to rule in something presentable as a Christian manner. The Church's ruling in 1537 that the native population should be exempt from slavery left a quandary: neither citizen nor slave, what were they? Subjects, obviously, but of the Crown or of private interests? Much of it is down to Las Casas's pioneering agitation against what he saw as destructive excesses. It took four centuries for the imperial powers to resolve the issue by drawing a line under the colonial venture.