This edition copyright 1998 by Ashgate Publishing Limited, and

.
1
1
.
h
f
.
d'.
nrOduct
by David Armitage. For copyrtg t o tn tvtdual articles ref
on
Acknowledgements.
er to the

Contents

Published in the Variorum Expand.ing World Series by

Acknowledgements
Ashgate Publishing Limited
Gower House, Croft Road
Aldershot, Hampshire GU 11 3HR
Great Britain

Ashgate Publishing Company

01d Post Road
Brookfield, Vermont 05036-9704
USA

vii-ix

General Editor's Preface

xi-xiii

Introduction

XV-XXXIII

/mperiwn Romanum: Empire and the Language of Power

J.S. Richardson

ISBN 0-86078-516-5
2

British Library CIP data

Theories of Empire, 1450-1800.
(An Expanding World: The European Impact on World History,
1450-1800: Vol. 20).
1. Imperia1ism- History.
1. Annitage, David.
325. 3' 2' 09

3
4

US Library of Congress CIP data

Theories of Empire, 1450-1800/edited by David Armitage.
p. cm. - (An Expanding World: The European Impact on World
History, 1450-1800: Vol. 20).
lncludes one essay in Spanish. Collection of 15 essays originally
published 1949-1995. lncludes bibliographica1 references.
1. Europe-Territorial expansion. 2. lmperialism-History.
3. Europe-Colonies. 4. Europe-Foreign relations.
1. Annitage, David, 1965- . II. Series.
0210. T45 1998
97-43882
327 . 4-dc21
CIP

8
9

Pnn tcd in G rea t Bnta m by Ga lliard (Printc r>J Ltd, G reat Yarmo uth

AN E~~ING WORLD 20

Empire and Union: Two Concepts of the Early Modem

European Political Order
John Robertson

Il

The Habsburg World Empire and the Revival of Ghibellinism

John M. Headley

45

The European Debate on Universal Monarchy

Franz Bosbach

81

Imperio Particular e Imperio Universal en las Cartas de

Relaci6n de Hemn Corts
Victor Frank/

99

The Seizure of Overseas Territories by the European Powers

John H. Elliott
.
Barb . . The Language of Spanish
Dispossessmg the
anan.
h p
rty Rights of the
Thomism and the Debate over t e rope
American Indians
Anthony Pagden

139

The Ideology of English Colonization: From 1reland to Amenca

Nicholas P. Canny
Sovereignty-Association, 1500-1783 WJ. Eccles

l..,

.J..

159
179
203

10 Frei tas Versus Grotius

C.H. Alexandrowicz

239

.
11 Millenarianism and Emp1re:
Po~~uese. Asian Decline and the
'Crise de Conscience' of the MssJonanes
G.D. Winius

261

-------CONTENTS - - - - - - - - -

vi

of Foreign Policy in the

Power uversus Plenty as Obiectives
J

Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centunes

Jacob Viner

13

Acknowledgements
277

New Wine in Old Skins? American Definitions of Empire and

the Emergence of a New Concept

Norbert Kilian

307

The chapters in this volume are taken from the sources Jisted bel
ti
h" h
h

ow, or w tc
the editor and pubhs ers w~sh. to thank their authors, original publishers or other
copyright holders for permtsston to use their material as follows:

325

Chaptcr 1: J.S. Richardson, '/mperium Romanum: Empire and the Language of

Power' , Journal of ~oman Studies LX~XI (London, 1991), pp. 1-9. Copyright
1991 by The Soctety for the Promotton of Roman Studies, London.

14 Spain and the Breakdown of the Imperial Ethos: The Problem

of Equality

Ttmothy E. Anna

' f5 Aboriginal Property and Western Theory: Recovering a Middle

Ground

James Tully
Index

345
373

Chaptcr 2: John Robertson, 'Empire and Union: Two Concepts of the Early
Modern European Political Order', in ed. John Robertson, A Union for Empire:
Political Thought and the British Union of 1707 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 3-36.
Copyright 1995 by Cambridge University Press.
Chapter 3: John M. Headley, 'The Habsburg World Empire and the Revival of
Ghibellinism', Medieval and Renaissance Studies VII (Chapet Hill, NC, 1978),
pp. 93-127. Copyright 1978 by The University of North Carolina Press. Used
by permission of the publisher.
Chapter 4: Franz Bosbach, 'The European Debate on Universal Monarchy', first
publication. Copyright 1998 by Franz Bosbach.
Chapter 5: Victor Frankl, 'lmperio Particular e Imperio Universal en las Cartas
de Relaci6n de Hemn Corts', Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos CLXV (Madrid,
1963), pp. 443-482. Copyright 1963 by the Instituto de Cuttura Hispnica,
Madrid.
Chapter 6: John H. Elliott, 'The Seizure of Overseas Territories by the European
Powers', in ed. Hans Pohl, The European Discovery of the World and its
Economie Effects on Pre-lndustrial Society, 1500-1800 (Stuttgart, 1990), PP 4361. Copyright 1990 by John H. Elliott.
Chapter 7: Anthony Pagden, 'Dispossessing the Barbarian: The Languag~ of
Spanish Thomism and the Debate over the Property Rights of the A.mencan
lndians', in ed. Anthony Pagden, The lAnguages of Political Theory m b~a;t~
Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 79-98. Copyright 1986 by Cam g
University Press.

viii

- - - - - ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS -

- --

--

Chapter S: Nicholas P. Canny, 'The Ideology of English C~lonization : From

Jreland to America' , William and Mary Qrwrterly (3rd senes) XXX, no. 4
(Williamsburg. VA, 197_3), PP. 575- 598. Copyright . 1973 by The . O~ohundro
.t te of Early Amencan Htstory and Culture. Repnnted by permtsston of the
1nsttu

H'
author and The Omohundro lnstitute of Early Amencan tstory and Culture.
Chapter 9 : W.J . Eccles, ' Sovereignty-Association . 1500- 1783', Canadian
Historical Review LXV, no. 4 (North York, Ontano, 1984), pp. 475- 510.
Copyright 1984 by The University of Toronto Press lncorporated. Reprintcd
by permission of The University of Toronto Press lncorporated.
Chapter 10: C.H. Alexandrowicz, 'Freitas Versus Grotius', British Yearbook of
International ww XXXV (Oxford, 1960), pp. 162- 182. Published 1960 by Oxford
University Press.
Chapter 11 : G.D. Winius, 'Millenarianism and Empire: Portuguese Asian Decline
and the "Crise de Conscience" of the Missionaries', ltinerario Xl (Leiden, 1987),
pp. 37- 51 . Copyright 1987 by ltinerario, c/o Rijks Universiteit Leiden.
Chapter 12: Jacob Viner, 'Power Versus Plenty as Objectives of Foreign Policy
in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries', World Politics 1 (Baltimore, MD,
1949), pp. 1-29. Copyright 1949 by The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Chapter 13: Norbert Kilian, 'New Wine in 01d Skins? American Definitions of
Empire and the Emergence of a New Concept', in ed. Erich Angennann, MarieLuise Frings and Hermann Wellenreuther, New Wine in 0/d Skins: A Comparative
View of Socio-Political Structures and Values A.ffecting the American Revolution
(Stuttgart, 1976), pp. 135-152. Published by Ernst Klett Verlag, Stuttgart.
Copyright 1976 by Norbert Kilian.
Chapter 14: Timothy E. Anna, ' Spain and the Breakdown of the Imperial Ethos:
The Problem of Equality', Hispanie American Historical Review LXII, no. 2
(Dur~am, NC, 1982), pp. 254-272. Copyright
1982 by Duke University Press.
Repnnted with permission.

Cha~ter 15: James Tully, 'Aboriginal Property and Western Theory: Recovering
a Mtddle G~ound' , Social Philosophy and Policy XI (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 153180. Copynght 1994 by Cambridge University Press.

~very .effort has been made to trace ali the copyright holders but if any have

een tnadvertently overlooked the publishers will be

necessary arrangement at the first opportunity.

plea~ed to make the

~------ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS - - - - -

ix

David Armitage thanks those who have contributed essays 1 h'

C h
o t ts volume as weil
. Th
Joyce Chap1tn,
omas o en, Constantin Fasolt Chad L d'
'
h R
Il W od f

'
u mgton, Joan-Pau
Rubis and Jo n usse - o , or thetr help and comments.

.
'15

Introduction
David Annitage

n" eXpansion of Europe

has an intellectual history, just as intellectual history

. .

erseas emp~res o
carnes the traces of European expansion The early modem ov

f
Spaon. Portugal, France, Brnam and Holland bad to be justifiOO, not only to their

compcutors but ais~ to themselves. and thcir effects on the metropolitan nations
a~ weil as the nauve and later colonial populations had to be accounted f

~xplainOO.

ear~;:

understood and
The _territorial and economie expansion of the
modern monarchtes and repubhcs accordingly generatOO an
corpus of
argument_and refl..:uon,_cast wnhin familiar discourses of human nature.-political
organtSaUon, salvauon htStory. economie order and international relations. t Though
much of the resulting material was intentionally taetical some of it auained the

extensiv~

abstraction of theory, and had novel applications beyond its contingent purposes;
at the same time. philosophers shouldered the ideological task of justifying

overseas enterprise, and political theory in particular would thereafter bear the

marks of early-modem Europe's expanding world.

From early-modem theories of empire. ali roads 100 to Rome, and from
Rome to Troy. Ali of the European empires- including those east of the Urals,
2
and in the successor states of European colonies in the Americas - IookOO back
to classical Rome as an inspiration and an aspiration. The Roman Empire bad
founded by Trojan fugitives into a regional
grown from a seulement
power in northem Italy and from thence to mistress of, if not the known world
(since parts of Asia, Africa, Britain and Jreland remainOO heyond its control,
though not its ken), then of the whole world worth knowing. At its greatest
the Roman Empire encompassed the ldediterranean oilwumene definOO by Greek
geographers as the extent of the terrestrial universe and was in thal sense the
first universal empire' Yet, as 1. S. Richardson shows (see chapter 1 below), it
was only in the lime of Julius Caesar and Augustus thal the tenn ;mperiwn carne
the
given to
to carry a territorial dimension' /mperiwn was

su~sedly

exten~

origin~ly

th~

au~ority

~ ~

t Th< ""' ..,..og.poiot for _.,.,.og

bodY of ""'"""' ""' An-Y ......... Lonh
of Ali 1he Worid' /<kologiLr of Enq>i" U. SpaU.. BriJain and Fron c. 1500 c. f8(){) (NON H>Cn.
!995). wlrich supened<S the
cl.,;, suuiY by Richord """""'' fmP'" (Dmbndge. 1961).
'On Troy see Morie T"""' The Lort DernJmo' of h<"'' The Hapsb"' ond '"' My1hoc
/mage of '"' EmP"'" (New H>Cn, (993). togdhef with the ompoO'"' "'"w by R. J. W. Evons.
"The Sun Also Seu' The Ne York R<'kw of Books. 17 Febro"' !994. oP 25-27
'On Rom"' .;,nptions of imped""' sec ,Jso Andr<W lioOoto, Wh" Wos the ..
Romonum..7', Gnece ond Roone. XXVIII ( 1981 ), oP 5)-67. ide'.'.. lnop<"""' """""'"':" Pol""'
!993) and PA srunt 'lAUS Jmptrll . IR hts Romon /m{JtriOI Themts
. .
. (Lo d

earl~r

lmperi~m

and Adm

mutratron

n on.

(Oxford. 1990), pp. 288-323.

xvi

,~

- - - --

INTRODUCTION - -- - - - - -

a magistrale to act on behalf of Rome and its citizens in peace and

at home (domi) or abroad (militi). As Rome grew it came to
war, whether
. h b
'
mean autho .
m t e a stract, detached from any particular holder the fo
h
nty

.
'
rmer1Y ard-and-[
b d
b
oun ary etween tmpenum domt and tmperium militi gradu 11 d ..
ast
R
d d
d
a Y tssolved a d
' n
orne an Ils epen enctes were considered to form a single r, h
Th bel

um t e Imper
0
pomanwn.
e atedness of thts temtorial application should '
.
tum

f h
constram any
.
easy
asstmt atton o t e Roman Empire to the later Euro
th
I
.
..
pean emptres, not least be .
e vemacu ar cognates of tmpenum retained its connotations of political
ca~se
long after the term had again been extended spatially a
h
authonty
expanded world.
cross t e oceans of an

Despite the barbarian invasions, the sack of Rome . 410

of the Western Empire in 476 CE the .d
f h R m
CE, and the end
.

t ea o t e oman Empir; d "d

.
and the Impenal title passed from the C r .
e t not dte,
Salian Franks and the Hohenstaufens on toa~~~rt:n~-~hrough the Ottonian and
the Austrian Habsburgs.4 However th E
,P ms_ Habsburgs and thence to
implied universal authority it bro~gh~ w~r~or ~-~latm to the Empire, and the
Byzantine Emperors claimed th at the Eas~em ttEm t . not go unchallenged.5 The
Rome as at various times did th . p,
ptre was the true successor to
deceased Romane Empire sittinge apac;', ... no other, than the Ghost of the
Hobbes contemptuous w~rds 6 Thcrod~~e- upon the grave thereof'' in Thomas
"'

e tvtston of the Emp

vvestem parts, and the disputes bet

h
tre mto tts Eastern and
increasingly obvious that if c
. ween t e Papacy and the Emperor made it

ompettng powers could J h

'
untversalism with equal right th
.
. c atm t e Roman mantle of
. particularism. The collision betwe'e en _unltversa_hsm had been overcome by
aspirations to hegemonv, would n P~tcu ar clatms to authority and universalist
the tate eighteenth ce~ry and remldam at the heart of theories of e~pi;-un til
ft d 1"

wou not be fully re 1 ed

.
0
e era tst theories in the Earl A .
so v unttl the development
_Particularist daims to supre~e :~~~~ Republic.
Emptre added two funher dimens
f y and a confederal conception of the
sove

tons o the Roman h

. retgnty, and tmperium as rule
.
'" entance - imperium as
of t~perial provinces into barbariano~~~ ~ulttpl~ dominions. The transformation
Emptre had shown that the unitary R g oms tn the latter days of the Western
oman Empire' wh.tc h extended citizenship

INTRODUCTION - - - - - -

xvii

ali of its c~nqhuerehd pke_opldes, had become an imperial federation. a 'Roman

Empire, of whtc ot er tng om~ are dependencies' as Isidore of Seville had
defined it in the seventh cen~ury. The twelfth-century recovery of Roman law
strengthened _both_ these legactes, as sorne jurists stressed the fact thal the Digest
(XIV. 2. 9) tdenttfied the Emperor (and, by extension, his successors, whether
Imperial or Pa~al) _as the Jo~~ of ~Il _the world (dominus mundi), while others
accepted the dtverstty of pohttes wtthtn Europe and argued that each ruler had
the authority of an emperor within his own kingdom (rex in regno suo est

10

imperator).8

The Empire was by then but one among many imperia, and the traditions
of Rome could be appropriated to defend particular sovereignty as readily as to
claim universal authority, within Europe and in its overseas dependencies. The
European overseas empires depended upon the constitutional structures of their
parent states for their own definition, and imperial disputes often reproduced
metropolitan contests. The realisation that early-modem Europe was a,,'Europe
of composite monarchies' has clarified the nature of the connection between carlymodern state-building and contemporary overseas expansion. 9 The classic
nineteenth-century mode! of the nation-state as the necessary unit of political
history obscured the fact thal 'Europe, the initiator of one of the world's major
processes of conques!, colonization and cultural transformation, was also the
product of one' after the fall of the Roman Empire, 10 and thal the European
monarchies were created from diverse territories and peoples, brought together
by dynastie inheritance, conquest or political union. Early-modem Europe
encompassed a variety of political fonns, with a multiplicity of political theories
to explain them. The period between Charles V's accession to the Holy Roman
Empire and the Union between England and Scotland (1519-1707) was pivotai
11
in European political theory, as John Robertson argues (see chapter 2 below~.
ln the context of constitutional innovation within Europe and extemal expans1on
beyond Europe, theorists like Hugo Grotius, Juan de Sol6rzano, Th~mas Ho~bes
and James Harrington formulated novel theories of conquest, mterventton.
7
dea f So
gnty' Engluh Hutoncal
Walter Ullmann 'lbe Development of the Medieval 1 o
verel

Review LXIV (1949), ~p. 1-33; Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Mockm Political Thought,
7 Isidore of Seville Etymologi (c. 622-33), IX. 3. 2, cit. Folz, Concept of Empi": P_

Roben Folz, The Concept of Em . .

Cemury, trans. Sheila Ann 0 ilvi
pire m Western Europe from t
.
Empire under the Hohenstaufe~ _e (London, 1969); Marc Bloch 'Th he Fift~ to the Fourteenth
(London, 1967), pp. 1-43.
. m his Land and Work in Mediev~/ E:roEmplre and the ldea of
s On later theories of the E .
pe, trans. J.E. Anderson
So

mplre and thei

vemgnty: A History of the Public
. r transformation sec H
(Chicago, 1973}, Karl Otmar F "he
Law Literature in the H 1
anns Gross, Empire and
Constantin Fasolt, The Shado:elif ~von Aretin, Das A/te Reich ~~;::man Empire, 1599-1804
"Discursus Novus de lmperato oRt e Emperor: A Study and T~ la l806 (Stuttgan, 1993) and
6Th
~ ornano-Germ . ..
ans twn of H
ornas Hobbes. Leviathan (1651)
amco (fonhcoming).
ermann Conring 's
cd. Richard Tuck (C
.
ambndge, 1991), p. 480.
4

'

:si:"'

2 vols. (Cambridge, 1978), 1, 'The Renaissance' .

.
CXXXVII (1992}, pp.
9
J. H. Elliott, 'A Europe of Composite Monarchies
&
the State in Earl)'
0
48-71; Mark Greengrass, ed., Conquest and Coalescence. The S P g if
Modem Europe (London, 1991).
. . and Cultural Change. 950-10 Robert 8art1ett, The Making of Europe: Conquest. Colomz.auon

:as'

/350 (London, 1993), p. 314.

8 rain of 1707 in its European

See also John Robertson, 'Union, State and Empire: Th_
e . "ji
/689 10 /81 5 (London.
Setting' . in Lawrence Stone, ed., An Imperial State at War: Brrtalll rom
1994), pp. 224-57.
11

X\'111

INTRODUCTION

soYereignty and international relation with their eyes upon activity

weil as on domestic political developments.'2
overseas as
The union of diverse territories was the norm within E
. d
.
urope and th
. 1.
theoreuca ts ue ratse
. ' pro d e
.
. by compostte monarchy and con"ed
' eratton
precedents for deahng wtth overseas dominion . Empire co Id be h
. Vt ed
.
1
. S ,
.
u
t e equtvaJ
' ent
of un10n. at east tn olorzano s conception of the s . h
h'
.h .
pant s Monarch ,
.
re 1attons tp wtt tt provinces abroad. It could also be a f
.
Ys
f
orm of umon as
VI d l'
James
an s vtston o Bntam as a united monarchy of E 1 d
'
tn
in. which neither kingdom would be subordinate 10 the other ng
an
~nd
Scotland
as a umtary
.
wuh~ut dependent provinces. 13 However, union could also be th .
e_mptre
empt_re. a when the United Provinces confederated defens ~ .ctlt~m_at~ve to
Spant h Monarchy.'J or the Swiss Cantons founded th . . Ir tve y agamst the
Holy Roman Empire. Sol6rzano was a belated a ol . et~ a .ance to counter the
Spani h Monarchy settled into irretrievable d Pl . o~ts; or tmperial unity as the
ubjects shared his dream of a British e .
~c me, ew of James VI and I's
insisted on Grotius' arguments in favou mp;reh o_ equal_s; and the Dutch ruthlessly
United Provinces master of new non t r ~ t . e,tr em~tre of the seas to make the

emtona spectes of
Th
.
.
..
0 f these pohtlcal forms and of the
r . al
emptre.
e dtverstty
reminder that there w~s no . 1 pEo lite theories which underlay them is a

'
.
smg e uropean the
f
'. . , common tdeological project of 'im rial . ' .
ory o emptre and hence no
The headship of the Hot R pe tsm ~n post-Reformation Europe.
.
y oman Emptre re . ed h
.
mam t e most prestigious
attnbute of secular kingship
1
Imperial dignity descended up~~ ~~r ~ st~e~nth-cent~ry Europe.15 When the
Europe's most extensive body of
ar es
m 1519, tt was united de facto to
.
overseas posse
emptre the world had ever k
sstons to create the most far-tlung
had never burst the bounds :~:~; ~~~ter even than the Roman Empire, which
the Atlantic.'6 Charles's tw
1
ars of Hercules to extend westward into
o rea ms nevertheless remained legally distinct. The

12on whom sec also H dl

Grotius and hue
.
e ey Bull, Benedict Kin sb
World 0 d .,. matlonal Relations (Oxford 1990) J
g ury and Adam Roberts, cds. Hugo
,.,
er:
,
he
J
t'ifi
.
'
Sol6rzan .
us 1cat1on for Conquest in th ames Muldoon, T,he Amertcas
in tire Spanish
XXIV (I~St)oel M2akolm, 'Hobbes, Sandys, and ~hSeVv~nt~e~th Cenrury (Philadelphia, 1994) (on
pp. 97-321 o d
e lrgm1a Company' .,., H .
1
of Emp1re' The H'
. av1 Armitage, 'The Cr
.
lfle tstorical Jouma
13 C '
rstorrca/ Journal XXXV
)
omwclhan Protectorate and the Languages
0992
1542- 170;.mp;re ~avid Armitage, 'Making the E' pp. 531-55 (on Harrington).
rast "' Pre
CL
mp1re Briti h s
.
lntellectual Origins of th:e~ . V (May 1997) pp. 34-{;3; ide~ , cotland ~ the_~!lantic Wo~ld,
Thought and the ..
~nen Venture', in John R be
The Scott1sh Vtslon of Emp1rc:
ruts11 Umon .r 17
O rtson ed A U
14 Compare 8Marti
o, 07 (Cambridge 1995) '
mon for Empire: Political
(Cambridge 1992) Bn van Gelderen The D 0 t . '/
pp. 97-118.
'
; en
'
' Illea Th
1
Representation of the N jamWin Schmidt, 'Innocence Aboug Il of the Dutclr Revoit 1555-1590
IS c
ew orld
road Th 0
'
. ompare Gaston Zelle ,' c. 1570-1670' (Ph 0 dis
_c utch Imagination and the
1mpenl~le en France Revue Hr: ~s Rois de France.Can.d'dsertatron, Harvard University, 1994).
Ram n Menendcz
'
. Essar. sur l'Idologie
.
Pid 1stor1qu
El e CLX XIJJ (1934) p1 ats I'EmPire.
a1 /dea Imperial de C , p. 27 3-31 1' 497-543.
arlos V (Buenos A'Ires, 1941 ); Franccs A.

INTRODUcriON - - - - - -

xix

istence of the Holy Roman Empire- debarred the Spanish Monarch f

~x
.h E .
d
.
y rom
becoming the Spams
mptre an desptte the messianic expectations aroused b
the
of
who
Charles's universal monarchy
not necessanly take tt to mclude hts lands m the New World. Chief among the
Habsburg imperial panegyrists was Charles's own Chancellor, Mercurino Gattinara,
who expected his master to revive Dante's vision in the Monarchia of a panEuropean (and by that definition. universal) empire centred upon Italy. 'the garden
of the Empire' . 17 As John Headley argues (see chapter 3 below). Gattinara's neoGhibelline. apocalyptic and Erasmian vision of empire 'remain[ed] firmly focused
on Europe, and appears quite unaffected by the American experience and Castile's
presence in the New World' .18 Gattinara's contemporary, the Navarrese jurist
Michael de Ulcurrunus, shared this indifference to the New World and concentrated,
tike Gattinara. on the threats to Christendom, from Lutheranism and the Turk, rather
than on Spain's new opportunities in the Americas. 19 Similarly, the messianic hopes
pinned on the retum from the dead of the Portuguese King Sebastian irnagined an
empire in the Iberian peninsula and North Africa and deliberately overlooked
Portugal's dominions in South America and Asia in favour of reviving the heroic
20
greatness tost at the battle of EJ-Ksar-el-Kebir in 1578. Even the first generations
of Protestant theorists - including Luther and Calvin - remained indifferen to the
native peoples of the New World as they worked out their novel theories of
21
.
.
salvation history and cburch govemment.
The union of the Spanish Monarchy and the Holy Roman Emptre m the
f H bb
sai dti..:PI
person of Charles V nevertheless raised the spectdr~ 0 ad ha ts uderg ufnS:~~Jle ..,_ M.
monarchy in Europe, fuelled by the bullion of the In tes an t e ra o

discove~ Ame~ca, ~ven thos~

h~led

di~

TL- 1
al Thtme in tht' Sixteenth
Yates 'Charles V and the !dea of the Empne' , rn her Mtra. ne mpen
Cenr~ry
(London, 1975), pp. 1-28; Earl Rosenthal. 'Plus Ultra, Non Plus Ultra, andthe CoXIuXmXnl~
.
.r h w. b rg and Courtauld Institutes
Devrce of the Emperor Charles V' , Jo11ma1 o, 1 e ar u
(1971 }, pp. 204-28.
.
. C 1 T Davis, Dante
17 Dante, Monan:hifl (c. 1320), ed. Prue Shaw (Cambodge, 1995), har es

and the /dea of Rome (Oxford, 1957).

h 1
1 Configurations of
1
18 See also John M. Headley, 'Gatti_nara, Erasmus and
e = ::aidtm. 'Rhetoric and
980
Humanrsm', An:hiv fr Reformationsgeschtchte L~XI 0
>: pp. 0 f G8ttinara' , in Maljorie
Reality: Mcssianic, Humanist, and Civilian Themes 10 the l~penal Ethods 1992) PP 241-70.
R
.

Per1od (Oxfor

eeves, ed., Prophetie Rome tn the Htgh RtrUJ_ISSanct . . . Mundf': An Early Sixteenth-Century
19 Diana Perry "'Catlwlicum Opus Jmpenale RtgllrttniS

1981) PP 227-52.
' . d ""rois Rois (Paris, 1992):
Restatement of Empire' History of Political Thought 11 (
20
'
,
.
La Gl use Balai11t es "
Lucette Valensi, Fables de la Mematre:
one . , in Jean Aubin, ed., /..t' Dicouvtrte,
compare Luis Filipe F.R. Thomaz, 'L: Ide lmperial_e Man~m; et 28 Mai !988 (Paris, 1990). PP
Le Portugal et L'Europe: Actes du Colloque Pans, lts '
Non-Christian Religions and
35-103.
21
and the Refonners on

George Huntston Williams, 'Erasmus
Id E. Seigel, eds., Action and ConvJCIIOII
1 70
~alus Extra Ecclesiam', in Theodore K. Rabb and J;;oHarbison (Princeton, 1969), PP 3 9-
m Ear/y Modem Europe: Essays in Mtmory of E.

- -- - - - - INTRODUCTION - - -- - - -- -

xx

The language of universal monarchy _provid_ed its oppo~e~ts _ wit~ ~ ~ounter-theory

of the Empire. not as the apocalypttc veh1cle of Chnsttamty. JOmmg the whole
world under 'one hepherd with one flock' in a reign of perpetuai peace, but
rather as European hegemony for the Habsburgs. Franz Bosbach shows that this
conception of universal monarchy drew upon cartier theories of the succession
to the Roman Empire, the universal imperium of the Emperor, and the evangelicat
destiny of the Empire (see chapter 4 below). However, after the elevation of
Charles V it became a means of understanding international politics as the
competition between Habsburg and Bourbon aspirations to political hegemony
through to the age of Louis XIV (and indeed beyond); 22 it would also later
provide a language to criticise the putative monopolies threatened by France,
Holland or England over international trade. 23 Apprehensions that one European
power was aiming at universal monarcfiy could be used to inspire others to ally
against the potential aggressor, so that what began as an analytical theory of
empire ultimately became a justification for defensive aggression within Europe.24
This transformation of the language of universal monarchy indicates a major stage
in the passage from a providentialist theory"of empire, whose roots lay in the
Christianisation of the Roman Empire under Constantine25 to the ~conomic
interpretation of hegemony that underpins modern theories of imperialism.
However, though universal monarchy proved to be a useful tool for understanding
European politics, its horizons barely encompassed the Americas or Asia, except
insofar as the profits of the Indics were held to have strengthened the European
states in their contests for hegemony.
The major exception to the Eurocentricity of universal monarchist discourse
was the imperial vision of Hemn Corts, as eccentric as it was original. Corts
promised Charles V that he could 'ser monarca del mundo' and recreate the
Empire as a truly universal monarchy, spanning the European continent, traversing
the Atlantic, and stretching from New Spain over the Pacifie decades before Philip
2

~ See ~Iso Franz Bosbach, Mo~~archia U11iversa/is: Ein politischer uitbegrijf der frhen

Ne~z~ll (Go_tungen, 1986): Rodolfo De Mattei. 'Il Mito della Monarchia Universale nel Pensiero
Pohuco ltahano del Seicento', Rivista di Studi Politici fnternaonali XXXII ( 1965) pp. 531- 50;
John . Roberts. on, umversa
1 Monarchy and the Liberties of Europe: David Hume's Critique
'
of an
Enghsh
Whtg
Doctrine'

10 N. h0 1 Ph"
Ea 1 M d
c as tlhpson and Quentin Skinner, eds., Political Discouru '"
. .
r y o em Bntam (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 349-73.
23

c A pOn thePeconom1~ redefimuon

of umversal monarchy in the age of mercantilism, see Steven
meus. rotes1a1111sm and Patriot . /th0 l .
.
1650-1688 (Cambridge l9%) idem , ISm.
_ oges and the Malcing of English Foreign Poire)\
ed ~ u1110 11 fi "'- :
'
' The Enghsh Debate over Universal Monarchy' in Robertson.
.. , l 4
or unplrr!, pp. 37-62.
Compare E.V. Gulick Euro e 's Cio
1
Sheehan The Ba'-,, n '
~
sslcal Balanct of Powu (New York 1955) Michae
KUJC
e
o,
rower
Hrsto
and
T~

25
On which see for exam~le AveZ C
ory (~~do~, 1996).
.
Developmellt of Christiall v
ameron, ChriSIIamty and~~ Rhetoric of Emptre: The
Commo11w~alth: CoiiSeque~~ees
~Berkeley, 1991 ) and Garth Fowden. Empire 10
~ISm m Late lltiquity (Princeton, 1993).

:;c;;:::,;

--------------INTRODUCTION------------

xxi

Il would acquire ~ Hispano-Portuguese empire on which the sun never set.26

Corts achieved h1~ premat~re ~d nove~ theory of empire by drawing on the
rticularist conceptton enshnned m the Stete Partidas, the thirteenth-<:entury legal
~~de of Alfonso x_. which he applied to the dominions of the Mexica 'emperor'
Moctezuma, as Vtctor Frank! shows (see chapter 5 below)_27 In his Second
Relation from Mexico ( 1519), Corts promised Charles V that he 'might cali
!him)self emperor of this kingdom with no Jess glory than that of Germany which.
by the Grace of God, Your Majesty already possesses' .28 This implied the
existence of multiple empires for Charles's glory, one acquired by election from
the German princes, the other by donation from his new vassal, Moctezuma. or
by his faithful servant_ Corts's con~u~st: Conq~est implied t~e def~t _of a _worthy
enemy; donation imphed a secular JUndJcal basts for Charles s domtmons m New
s ain distinct from the papal grant of new territories in the Antilles and Tierra
F;rme to the Castilian crown in 1493. Like Gattinara ~ac~ ~n Europe, ~orts
imagined a neo-Ghibelline empire for Charles V, though _hts vtston was predtcat~
on a new empire in the Americas, beyond the authonty of the Papacy, whtle
Gattinara's remained bounded by the Mediterranean.
.. .
Ali of the European powers faced Corts's dilemma of legtttmatmg a novel
1 traditional Almost ali
necessan Y

h.
Position with intellectual resources that were

1
d claimed that t etr
. th
of them adopted sorne form of Corts s so utton, an
. .
fact precedented. Desptte e
unparalleled assertions of domtmon were, tn

.
d ed. 1
.
d h l
vity of classtcal an rn teva
continuity of the Western Emptre an t e onge
t es from
1 E
seizure of overseas tem on
..
languages of empire , ' the large-sca e .uropean
and distinctive phase in the ,
the sixteenth century on_wards con~tttuted a, ne~J H Elli~tt's essay emphasises
continent's relationship wtth the outsJdCI wo~Id as~ed~nts for Christian relations
(see chapter 6 below). There were theorettcal P E
in the thirteenth century,
with infidels, dating back to the Mongol ~~t todit~:~nderlying the papal bulis
and these were kept current in the canomsttc tra d . and the Azores, and the
of donation of 1493.29 The settlements 00 Ma etra ffered some practical
0
conquest of the Canaries in the fifteenth century,
1565-1590: Structures and
. . Asian Presence.
26 See also John M. Headl~y, :spatn
s. LXXV (1995). pp. 623-46-.
he Royal
Aspirations' Hispanie American HIStoncal Rev~ew f H mn Cortb'. TTUIISacnons of t menos
27 Compare J.H. Elliott, 'The Mental World o
Pagden. "'Con ti~lo Y co~o~:uest of
Historical Society XVII (1967), pp. 41-58. and ~ est~d posee": Rethinktng th:,. lnttlltctuol
m~rito que el de Alemania, que Vuestra _sacra aJ in /berian and /bero-Am~nc

. , .
. . if Empn Essays
JYJ~lttco , tn his The Uncertamlles o
v edn. )llew Haven.
H1story (Aidershot, 1994), ch. XUI.
.
and trans-Anthony Pagdell (re .
28 Hemn Corts, utters from Menco. ed.
Non-Christian World.

tho:

1986), p. 48.
1250-1550

els The Church cuuJtlle

Muldoon, Popes, Lawyers. an 1nfid

(Philadelphia, 1979).

29 James

1.
,r

... ,

XXII

'.

- ------------INTRODUCTION------------

INTRODUCTION - -- -- - - -

conques! with econo .

Precedents,JO though these did not combine territorial
. .
f 1
mc
h
be
enterprise in the manner that would
c aractenst1c o ater European seizu
of overseas territories. Competition for land and trade among the Europe re
powers, and the shattering of Christendom by the Reformation, necessitated an
3
more demanding justification for conques! than the supposedly universal author't
of the Church by which the world had been carved into Spanish and Portugue' y
spheres of influence in the 1490s. Accordingly, the righi of exclusive possessi~e
came to override the earlier claims of first discovery, so that states needed bot~
to ~ttle. 'plant' or colonise overseas territory and, crucially, to provide ideoiogical
justifications for their settlements against the daims both of the native peoples
and those of their European competitors.31
The papal attribution of sovereignty (imperium) in the Americas did not carry
with it a right of property (dominium) , and therein lay a challenge for the Catholic
powers, as Anthony Pagden shows (see chapter 7 below). The newly-discovered
lands could not be appropriated on the grounds thal they were unoccupied, since
they patently had a resident population; arguments for the next three hundred
years therefore tumed as much upon justifications for dispossessing the native
peoples as they did upon asserting positive rights of ownership against other
European states.32 The Spanish Dominicans were the first to construct such
arguments, though in the process of justifying the Castilian crown 's particular
dominio~ in the Americas, they undermined the daims of both the Papacy and
the ~mptre to uni~~rsal jurisdiction. Instead, as Francisco de Vitoria argued, the
Spantsh could leglltmately claim the rights of travel, commerce and preaching
the gos~l to the 'barbarians', with only the last enforceable by anns if denied.JJ
Ev~n thts left the Castilian crown with no righi of dominium in the New World,
a nght that could only be restored to the Spanish by a theorist Iike Juan Gines

30
Felipe Femmdez-Armest
. d
' Tht cQ/UJry Islands Aftu tht! Conqui!St (Oxford, 1982); Peter
Russell 'Jntl uencJa
e1 0 escubrim' 1 d C .
Derecho d 1 H b
en e ananas sobre el Debate Medieval Acerca de los
s e om re Pagano y de 1 E ad p
.
dt HistofJ CQ/UJria XXXVI (
os st os aganos: La Documenlaci6n Portuguesa', RevlSta
31
1978), pp. 9-32.
L.C. Green and Olive p o k
T,L
1989) Patricia Seed C
. c ason, ne Law of Nations and the New World (Edmonton.

e~momes of Pos
E

92
1650 (Cambridge 1995). 1 h T
. sesston "' urope s Conquest of the New World, 14 1uncek 'En l'15h Cl

o
n

Le al
and Constitutional Thou ht' Ph
. ' .g
.rum~ 10 North America: A Study m ~
Territorial Claims in Northg A( : 0 dssertauon, Umversuy of Chicago 1970) idem 'Enghsh
menca
' Terrae' lncogmtte
VIl
(1975). pp. 7-22; Kent MeNe"
! C under El'zabelh and lhe Early Stuarts',
3
~ Generally, see J.H. ~~rryo"';;n Law_Aborigillal 1itle (Oxford, 1989).
(Cambndge, 1940); Silvio Za al :.,L e S~afllsh Theory of Empire in the Sixteenth Cenrury
C"11y, 1953); Lewis Hanke Tf-v "a, 1 ~
. Po/meal Ph11osophy of the Conquest of America (Mexlco
1965) .
' ne -'Pafllsh Strugglt! fior j,USflct!

.
n
m tht! Conquest of America (BosiO '
33 F
.
rancJsco de Vitoria 'On 1h
.
Lawrance' ed5 "'
'
Ylforia: Politica/
we Amencan JndJans ( 1539), in Anthony Pagden and JeremY
ntmgs (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 231-92.

xxiii

de Sepulveda, who argued t~at civil peoples should exercise dominium as weil
. perium 0 ver the barbanans.
as unThe Spanish de bate over 'd'tspossessmg
.
,,
the barbarian' had the signal effect
of diverting the_ argument ove~ ~roperty ~o natural law, and hence 10 the
objectively iden~tfiable ~h~ractensttcs of nall:e peoples.34 If th~ criteria for the
ability 10 exerc1se do'!'~mum were such tnuts as type o~ soctal organisation,
arriage customs, rehgwus observance and, at base, rat10nality, ethnographie
mbservation became the necessary foundation for political claims. This
;thnographic tum was not unique to the Spanish. Nicholas Canny argues that
the English began their anthropological engagement with the Gaelic inhabitants
f Ireland in the 1560s, just as the Spanish debate was dying down after the
~eath of Bartolom de las Casas, the man who had done most to keep it alive
(see chapter 8 below).35 The English in Ireland followed a theoretical path
milar to that traversed by the Spanish between 1493 and 1551, except thal
:~eir trajectory had begun with the Anglo-Norman invasions of the t~elfth
century. The papal bull Laudabiliter ( 1155) had empowered Henry li to mvade
Ireland 36 which was thereafter held by right of conquest, as Edmund Spenser
remark~d in 1596: 'ali is the conqueror's, as 1\Jlly to Bru~us ~aith' .3' After the
English Reformation had made any claim from papal donation moperable, He~ry
VIII was proclaimed 'King of Ireland' by the Irish Parliament, there~y addmg
a second crown to the imperial crown of England. When the Enghsh uln~ehr

1 dependent ns
Elizabeth 1 wanted to reassert control over the mcreasm_g Y '".
. .1 .
quence tf not m substance, to
lordships they executed a move strnt ar m conse
h
'N

r Many
of t ese ew
that made by the Spanish Dominicans a generatto~ ear ter.
barb . derived
d f an tmage of the
anan
English' came to Ireland already possesse 0
d A t and as a result
0
from reading Spanish ethnographers such as Jos e . ~ .s ad, because pagan
.
.
.
h
sed as unctvt tse

brutahsed a nattve populauon t ey recogm

E . h s the bearers of a
and the ng1ts a
.
.
barb
These tratts marked the Insh as
art~s .
Id . t"fy dispossession in
civilising mission to them. ~at catego~satton co~ ~us~ish cultural mission
lreland as readily as it could m_ New Sp~n, tho~~ e ebe~ween conquerors and
would encompass such expedtents as mterma g

. ~" Jndian and the Origins of

u
. The Amertc....
Anlhony Pagden, The Fa/1 of Natura1 ,.an.
Comparative Ethnology (2nd edn., Cambridge, 1986>
European Expansion'. in T. ~mond
. . 3S Compare D.B. QuiM, 'lreland and Sixteenth ee;'~j2; Nicholas P. Canny, The ElztJbtthan
W1lhams, ed., Historica/ StuJies 1 (London, 1958> ~~76 (Hassocks. 1976).
f the
Conquest of /re/and: A Pattern Establishtd. 1565. Laudobiliter and the Co~uest ~
36 James Muldoon 'Spiritual Conquests Compared- eds ,. Jure Veritas: Studes 111 anon
Amencas'

Steven B.' Bowman 31\d BI

1
. 174-86.
,m
. a~_~c he .E Cody.
wick (Oxford.
1
Law in Memory of Schnfer Williams (Cmcmnau. 199 )i!~ (1596), ed. R.L. Ren
37 Edmund Spenser, A ~ew of the P~sent Statt of
1970), p. 9.
34

TNTRODUCTION

xxiv

conquered that would rarely be countenanced in subsequent British col .

would rely increasingly on ~ntal
enterprises.3 8 Later, the English in Ireland
. .
egal
19
rather than cultural arguments for d onmuum .The New English
settlers in Ireland were
.
.
. concemed to prove that nattve
rights of soveretg~ty had .passed to the Enghsh Crown by right of conquest or
by an act of the lnsh Parhament. There was therefore no question that the G . 1.
had once heId dommiUm;

the 1ate stxteenth

Insh
the argument m
century ae
w tc
who held it then, and where imperium lay. By contrast, the Spanish had tak as
for granted that the Mexica and the Inka had possessed imperium; their argumeen
was instead ov~r rights of d?minium . s.imilarly, the French and the Dutcn~
generally recogmsed the soveretgnty of nattve peoples as, on occasion, would the
Engli ~ in .North America.40 Such recognitions of sovereignty are not only of
theoreucal Importance, as W. 1. Eccles shows (see chapter 9 below), because the
transfer of sovereignty from first nations to Euro-American settlers made betwee
the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries underJjes the sovereign claims of curren~
successor states such as Canada.4
. . The French in the 1520s were the first European nation to challenge the papal
d1v1S1on of the world between the Portuguese and the Spanish, as Francis 1 had
demanded to see the provision in Adam's will that had bequeathed half the world
to ~pai~. 42 The Jack. of papal donation apart, the French initially proceeded in
the1r clam~s to sov.eret~ty along tines laid down by the Spaniards, by making Jandgrants wh1ch camed wtth them a duty to evangelise the lndians. However since
French activities in North America tended to concentrate Jess on c~lonial
seulement t.han on concentrated missions and dispersed economie activities such
as fur-trappt~g, the~ became more dependent on co-operative relations with native
peoples, and mcreasmgly respectful of their sovereign daims. 1be French were more
keen to enter into treaty-relations with the First Nations than most other European
powers.' and they f~und more willing partners in the diplomatically-sophisticated
Iroquots confederatton. Dominion over lndian lands which had been negotiated
by the French passed to the British under the terms of the Treaty of Paris ( 1763)
Britain and s A
.
h s J hn pam m mmca: Colonists and Colonized (Reading, 1994).
r o Davlts and tL C
. ,.
(Cambridge, 1985).
'IC
onques/ of lrtland: A Study in ugal lmpena um
38
J.H. Elliott.
39 Hans Pawr

ISC

40

Dorothy V. Jones, License for E . .

. .
.
mpre. Colonwlum by Treaty in Early America (Chtcago.

41

1990).

INTRODUCfiON - - - - - -

-------~

ompare Roben A. Williams Jr T.

.
.
Ducourses of Conques/ (N v rk ' 'lu! Ammcan lndwn in Western Legal Thought: The
42 On
ew O , 1990).
the French experience see
.
French Canada in the Seventeenth Centuals? S~g~und Diamond, 'An Experiment in Feudalism:
pp. 3-34; Brian S1attery, 'French C1aim .ry. Wtllwm and Mary Quarter/y 3rd ser., XVJII (1961).
XLIV (1978), pp. 139-69 01' p ~ m Nonh America, 1500-59' Canadian Historical RevieW
French Colonialism in ~~Am~:;c . (DE.dckason, TM Myth of the S~vage and the Beginnings of
as
monton, 1984).

xxv

ee was transmitted to their successor govemments in the Canad

nd then
.
F'
. ,
.
tan
on Thts has meant that trst Nattons clatms to property in their lands
federau
.
.
vereignty over them aga10st the Canadtan govemment must be adjudicated
andsoding to both fact andl aw. El
od
. of both dominium and
ar y-rn em theones
accor
.
.
.
.
.
are therefore stt11 at 1ssue 10 contemporary tn'bunais in Canada, as they

rmperu1111

.
the United States, Austraha
and New Zealand.
rematn 10
.

By and large, the~e was o~e procedure for A~n~a, another fo~ India (alia
. !tdia alia Amencana ratw est), as the Dutch JUnst Hugo Grotms observed
erum
' 43 The legal positiOn
. 10
. the East Ind1es
. was rad1cally
.
.
dtfferent
from that
.
1609
~n h w est Indies since India had been known to (and had traded with) the
.
10 t e
and had been partiy conquered by Alexander, so that n_21 clatms of fWt
Romans

and Indonesta
had 1egal

ould be made The peoples of the subcontment

dtscovery c

.
as ancient in many cases as those of the European nattons, and were
.
tradttiOOS
. under mtematton

al Jaw.44
overeign partners in treaty-makmg
al and S
~as~
. f .
d
The rocess by which these peoples were excluded fro~ the famtly o natto~s
( thep late eighteenth century is beyond the scope of thts volume, though t.hetr
10

h t European dealmgs
earlier inclusion should caution agamst any
assumptton
thomogeneous
a
d'tscourse

'th'n
a
with Asian peop1es were conducted, at aU tlmes, Wl 1
f th East
of 'Orientalism' .) Grotius deoied Portuguese so~erei~nty over any ::f~r f:Wom
Indies by according the local rulers fu)l soveretgn ;g~~!; ~: ::hts to travel and
0
of the seas (ma_re .liberum) ~n the Vitorian ~ ';; ~ing this last claim, Grotius
trade were adm1sstble ac~ordmg t.o natura1 la e. that freedom of navigation was a
was also probably drawmg on hts knowl~g h
hout the East Indies, as
0
principle of Indian law and a pracuce \~ ~f
Grotius's arguments for 1
Alexandrowicz plausibly suggests (see c~apter d f owthe''freedom of the seas
the'l sovereignty of the East Indian'' pnnces an . or f empire since the Spanish
.
d'lspute over. theonesh o drew responses to Mare
provoked the most w1de-rangmg
r a dtsputeodt An
a1
// s
debates of over ha1f a century ear t~r:
Abridgement of A eaLiberum from jurists in Scotland {Wt1ham Welw ~ (c 1618]), Portugal (Jus~o
Laws (1613]), England (John Selden,. Mare. ~=um Asiarico [1625]) and Spam
Seraphim de Freitas, De Justo lmperw Lustt ]) 45 The origins and aftennath of
9
(Juan de Sol6rzano, De lndiarum Jure [162

8 Ir. of lnttmatioMI Affairs

.
. , The Jndion Ytar oo
43 C.H. A1exandrowicz, 'GrotiUS and lnda '
.
of the Low of
Ill (1954), pp. 357-67.
. . A Introduction to the Hutory
44 See more generally C.H. A1exandrowc: C nturies) (Oxford. 1967>
. Bijdragt rot dt
Nations in tlu East Jndies (/6th, /7th and 181 Sen el Muller. Mort ClausutnEt~ (Amsterdam.
45
d'
t see amu
nb .. ~
For other treatments of ths 15Pu e
der/and in de ~vtnllt 911 ). ch. 9; w.s.M.
G~schiedtnis du Rivaliteit van Engtland e~ Nt { the Sea (EdtnbUrgh.1~ Grotius Socitry Xl
1872); Thomas Wemyss Fulton, TM Sovertrg~o um', rronsactioiiS of c bridge. 1993), PP
Knight, 'Seraphin de freitas: Critic of Mart G;verrunent. 1572-165/ ( am
(1926), pp. 1-9; Richard lclt, Philosophy and
169-79, 212-14.

INTRODUCTION - -

XXVI

------

the debate between Grotius and his critics suggest the need to follow tw
relatively undeveloped avenues for research: into other Dutch imperial ideologies~
and into non-European contributions to western theories of empire.47
Claims to dommion over land and sea provided the ideological foundation
for the early-modem European overseas empires, though on that basis were erect~
competing millenarian and mercantilist theories of imperial destiny and P~se.
The Spanish, Portuguese, French and English had ali grounded their clairns to
expansion on the duty to evangelise, through the papal bulls and royal charters, so
that each of the sixteenth-century empires could claim to have a religious mission.
It was not inevitable that such evangelical purpose should be translated into a
miUenarian conception of imperial destiny, though the biblical typology of the Four
Empires prophesied in the Book of Daniel certainly gave sanction to the
identification of any one of these empires as the vehicle for the millennium.48 The
history of specifically Protestant theories of empire - in England, Scotland, the
United Provinces, France and Sweden - remains largely unwritten, though scattered
treatments exist that would allow a comparative study to be undertaken.49
Both Protestant and Catholic Refonnations cast the territorial and economie
rivalry between Catholic and Protestant powers in tenns of the apocalyptic battles
46

See C.R. Boxer, The Dutch Seabom e Empire 1600-1800 (London, 1965), chs. 4, 8; P.J.
Drooglever, 'The Nerherlands Colonial Empire: Hislorical Ourline and Sorne Legal Aspecls', in
H.F. van
47 Panhuys, ed.. lntemauona/ LAw in the Netherlands 1 (1 978), pp. 103- 65.
For one slrikmg example of lhe lauer see Richard H. Grove, Grun lmperialism: Colonial
Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600-1860 (Cambridge,
1995); on a more conlroversial case see Donald A. Grinde, Jr., and Bruce E. Johansen, E.xemplar
of Ubtm y: Nalive America and the Evo/ulion of Democracy (Los Angeles, 1991) and ' Forum:
The
"IroquOis Influence" Thesis- Con and Pro', William and Mary Quarter/y , 3rd ser., Lill (1 996),
pp. 587-636.
48

INTRODUCTION - - - - - - xxvii
. h'1 tory. The lberian empires carried with them the memory of the
of salvauon0 f ~ peninsula as an enterprise which had combined the imperative
true religion, the necessity of treating alien
as
of advancmg
d the economie benefits of plunder. Behmd that parttcular
converts, an

f h
sade
d
.
also lay the Cathohc European legacy o t e cru
s an
slaves or
. 1 expenence
..
d b
. . al
.
histonca long-tenn support for conquest legtumate
y sptntu necessuy.h
.
the Papacy s .
ld explain failure as readtly as success, and thoug
Apocalyptic htst~ry cofu
'tre especially in Spain and Portugal, celebrated

theones o emp
h
millenanan
.
th ntury in the seventeenth century they seem to ave
the stxteen ce

'Il
t
expanston ~~
the rce tion of decline.50 George WmJUs essay t ustra ~s
been more mdeb~ed to
t' pl and economie competition couId be cast m
the way in whtch ge~-po J tca . .
'es in the Portuguese Padroado of the
. thts case as rmsstOnan
.
. .
millenarian tenns, m
d ta d the successful incursions into thetr temt~nes
East Indies struggled to un ers n 11 below).st The reactions of Ardizone Spmola
by the heretical Dutch (see chapter .
of the ways in which one form
1
and Femao de Queyroz offer a t~;ng ::::at~on of the East lndian spice-trade
of European activity - the strugg e ~
th battle for conversion of the infidel
Could be theorised in tenns of anot er - e
Du~" competition in the East
od of Portu_guese- ~~
.
before the Last Days. The epts e
h' l'Oil"es of them~ perceptiOns ~ng
Indies also indicates the need for more JS tered each other in the expandmg
.
bec se they encoun
the European emptres,
au
onial 'Other' .

world almost as often as the! met the~~~ or theory by which contem.porane~

If millenarianism provtded one
J
and competitive, enterpnse: th~
understood Euro~an expansio~ ~:a:~~';"a's a body o.f su~sedly !d~~~fi~s~
mercantilism provtded another. ~
. of modem htstonans, an 'th ho

the
mventton
w 52
and coherent doctnne ts
t'l system' came from Adam. Smt(1776)
. . of the
.
systematic exposttton
. .' mercan
. t e k IV of The Wea1th o,' Natwns
sought to undennine its pnnctples 10 Boo

reconques~ t~:

~oples v~sals,

'7-

Werner Goez. Translatio lmperii (Tbingen, 1958); Adriano Prosperi, ' New Heaven and

~ew Eanh: Prophccy ~ Propa~anda al the lime of the Discovery and Conques! of the Americas',
~h:ee~es, cd., P~phetlc Rome m the High Renaissance Period, pp. 279-303; John Leddy Phelan,
Mllenmal Kmgdom of the Franciscans in the New World (2nd edn., Berkeley, 1970); J.A.
Dc J?ng, As the Waters Cover the Sea: Mil/ennia/ Expectations in the Rise of Anglo -American
M
ISSI~~s 1640-1810 (Kampen, 1970).

D~vd

Mas 1F9o8r5)example,
S. Lovejoy, Re/igious Enthusiasm in the New World (Cambridge.
ch. 1; Av1hu Zakai L'-1
--' K ' d
.
.

1
M. s.,
. (Camb d ' ""'99e .a,.., tng om: HIS/ory and Apoca/vpse
tn the Puntan
rgrauon to Amenca
J.
1 2
Origms of Anglo-British lm ~ ge, . . ), Roger A. Mason, 'The Scouish Reformation and rhe
and the Un10 11 0 , 1603
pe alsm n Mason, ed., Scots and Britons: Scollish Political Thought
(Cambndge 1994)

d
1
. '. . . pp. 161- 86; Anhur Williamson, 'Scots, lnd1ans an
Empire: The Sconish p0l' .
46-83; Simon Schama r~c~~ CJvJhzatron, 1519-1609', Past and Present CL (Feb. 1996), PP
GoUlen Age (london ' 1987) h arrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the

c 2 Frank Le

~~1 la Contro~erse Colonial~

' en
F: '
stnngant, Huguenot et le Sauvage: L'Amenq~e
990); Michael Robens, The. Swedi:n~e, a~ Temps ~s Guerres de Religion ( 1555-1589) (Pans.
'herman,
Over th 8 1 . mpenal Expenence 1560-1718 (Cambridge, 1979); Susanna
e a trc (fonhcoming).

Ros~Cross

.< .
til t l Am biente
'd d MtsluiiiCa
On
Co/6n y su Mtnta l' a ,
y and Oiscovery:
~o Sec especially A1am Mllhou, Pa l'1ne Moffit Walts. PropheCH. t rica/ Review XC

- l ( "ali
1 1983); . u f the 1ndJes
. ... "merican JS 0
Francu canwa
Espano
"' ad0 l'd
. .
bu5 5 "Enterpnse o

the Spiritual Origins of Co1um

. .
W rld' specal ISSUe,
(1985), pp. 73-102.
.
' anism in the Luso-BraZJhan ire:oThe. Cross and the
~~ Compare ' Messianism and Mllen~ CR Boxer. 'Failh and Em~ ogniuu VIII (1976).
1991
Luso-Brazilian Review XXVlll, no.. 1 (
El: h;~nth Centuries' TtrrtUi
nO~BalJilOre. 1978).
C

F1fteenth- lb
1g rian ExpatiSIOII,
t-440rown in Portuguese Ex.panston,
tilism (2 vo1s t..ondon,

pp. 73-89;
idem, The Church Militant and i~ly Eli f . Hecks~(t:,:. 1965); D.C. Col~;':j
~2 From a vast historiography see espec
and ColonltS
-iJisrrJ: The Shap ~
.
Pol'lltca
1 EconomY
Merc..
The).Passions
1955); Donald Winch, C~~tcal
);
Lan Magnusso~rt 0 . Hirschmlll
Terence
1969
7
ed., Revisions in Mercanllltsm
and more generall~. A~urnph (Princeton. 19:rord
88);
an Economie Language (London, 199 )
' 'talism btfon lU
/662- 1776 (0
' 19
1 Argumenu for Capnet of Poli/ICO
. 1 EcOIJOf'IY
and the llllerests: Pollllca
b 'd"", 1990).
H
S (Cam n outchinson, Before Adam S'"''th The
. . Emerge
Modern PoltiiC
John Dunn, ed., The Economie Limtts 10
N

(Londc:;'.

xxviii - -- - - - -- -

INTRODUCTION - - - - - -

INTRODUCTION - -- - - - - -

Smith's target was the British Atlantic empire, 53 though the_tenn later ~ound as
h currency as a description of the theory and practlce of non-tmperial
states. such as cameralist
and hence had no
connection with European overseas expanston. However, the emphasts on the
division of world trade which is central to most definitions of mercantilism has
made it a peculiarly useful tool for understanding the economie competition
between the early-modern empires, not !east because it was in the context of that
competition that the foundations of mercantilism as a doctrine were laid. As
Viner's classic discussion showed, mercantilism linked what might be called the
interior and the exterior of state policy. and combined a thcory of state power
with recommendations about how it was to be achieved: primarily by comering
a larger share of the supposedly inflexible sum of international commerce, thereby
making plenty the parent of power (see chapter 12 below). Mercantilist theory
was therefore a peculiarly appropriate descriptive theory of imperial antagonism,
though whether it provided the theoretical impetus behind such antagonism is
more debatable. Henceforward, European expansion would be understood primarily
in economie terms, as theories of imperium gave way to recognisably modem
doctrines of imperialism.54

~~~opean

Pru~sia,

~ecessary

The colonial independence movements in the Americas in the late eighteenth

and e~l~ nineteenth centuries made possible those modem theories of imperialism
by bnngmg t~ ~ end the classic early-modern empires of Britain and Spain. The
first. decolomsat10n mov~ments in the western hemisphere helped to redefine
emptre not sole!~ negattv~ly,_ by _allowing commerce rather than conquest to
bec~me the dommatmg pnnctple m the remaining European empires, but also
~~st~vely, as ~~w political forms arose on the ruins of old imperial structures.55
. . o~rt ~than s~ow~ (see chapter 13 below), in the two decades after 1776,
mstttut10nal mnovat 10n 10 the
A
.
br
new mencan repubhc generated new federalist,
rAeplu cdan, Hprovi_dential and progressive theories to stabilise and analyse what
exan er amtlton proudly c Il d '
. .
a e an emptre m many respects the most

SJ E.A. Benians. 'Adam Smith's p .

f
pp. 249-83; C.R. Fay. 'Adam smth
A IOject 0 Empire', Cambridge Historical Journall (1925),
1
Quanuly Journal of Economies XLVI':~~j and the Doctrinal Defeat of the Mercantilist System',
3 34
Pohcy: The Amencan Colonies' in hrs AS
- >. PP-. 304--)6; Andrew S. Skinner, ' Mercantilisl
(Oxfo~~ 1979), pp. 184--207.
)'stem of Socral Science: Papus Relating to Adom Smith
Agarn from a h
.
1
.r
uge hlerature see ~
;;:::: um. trans. P.S. Falla (Chicago, 19 or example, Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Theories of
0
55 of Ernprre: Theories of lmper:~a
1um
. fi) and Bernard Semmel, The Libual Ideal and tht
On the B h
rom Adam s h
(Cambn"d
nus Empire see David Annta
mrt to Lenin (Baltimore, 1993).
1 ge The Id 1
ge, 1999) Er
rt
NarioR-1 Id . tga H. Gould T,L. n . '
eo ogrcal Origins of the British Empr
- entr~ 1714-J]
" rersrstenct 0, E .
d
Raj (Tht N
'
.
83 (Chape( Hill ~ rth
. J mprre: British Political Culture an
tw Cambndge History of /IIJia. Il~- co) mmg); !Jlomas R. Metcalf, Ideologies of tht
4

(Cambndge, 1994 ).

xxix

. h world' _56 It would be interesting because doubly remarkable:

t 1ng 10 t e
b.
1
f
interes
E
re for Liberty', corn mmg two va ues - reedom and extent an
mpt
d
be

"bi

first, as
bl"1 an tradition bad hel to
mcompatt e, and second as a pohty
which the re~u d ~these United States' into a single federal structure after 1787.S'7
which combtn~
historians have, like the Founding Fathers, wished rather to
h Amencan
between the Amencan

Repubi.tc
'[houg
rather than the contmutty
e the rupture
& d
1
"f

. . h Empire that empire had been ,e era m practtce, 1 not m

emphasts
First
Bntts

58
h
and t e
b
vided the structure for the newly umted states.
nd there Y pro

h
f

theory. a
. .
between metropolitan and colomal t eones o emptre
The colhsto~
. B .t.sh America 59 As Timothy E. Anna suggests, the
. d ebelhon m n 1

. .

bo
prectpttate . r .
d
e movements arose from stmtlar dtsagreements a ut
Latin Amencan mdepen e_nch
. and led in their tum to the redefinition of
.
0 f the Spants emptre,
the purposes .
h nd republicanism (see chapter 14 below). Spantshtheories of emptre, monarc yha_ 1"dentity through history, reaching back to the
American criollos define~ t et~ . c and the native nobility for their identity.
Spanish conquests for thetr legtttma y
t
ther than members of a federation
.
. d
bec me separate sta es ra
.
The Spantsh kmg oms
ad
distinct viceroyalties integrated into the Spamsh
because they had bee_n rule as .
e had conspicuously not been treated as
Monarchy, not colome~ of Spam. ~ty and the declaration by the Cortes of the
equals by the metropohtan governme '
. .
f both hemispheres form a
.
'indisputab\e concept that the S panish dommtons
.
f o. came too tate to restram
1
1
.
1
t'
n
and
a
smg
e
amt
y
.
.
single monarchy, a smg e na 10
d
l"ke the colonists of Bnttsh
the rebellions of criollos already p_osse~s.e :e~:re they revolted.60 8oth the
America, of their own independent tdenttttes

56 James

Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay.

Th Ftderalist Paptrs (1788). ed. Isaac

t

Kramnick (Harmondsworth, 1987), p. 87

nd tht ldta of Rtpublican Govt~:~
7
5 Sec also Gerald Stourzh, Alexander Haml1ton aand ht Probltms of Frudom (Co ora .
(Stanford, 1970); J.G.A. Pocock, The P~litics of Exttnt Re ~blicanism', in Gisela Bock. Qu~~~~
Springs, 1988); Judith Shklar, 'Montesqut~u and the New ublfcanism (Cambridge, 1991 >. PP in an
Skinner and Maurizio Viroli. eds., Mach1avelll an~ Re~odtm World: Tht Law of Natrons
79; Peter S. Onuf and Nicholas Onuf, Federal Unron,
.
t Exttndtd
Age of Revolutions 1776-1814 (Madison, 1993).
. . na/ Dtvtlopmtnl rn til J . ''The
1
58 Jack P. Greene,

.
Periphmes
and Ctn1e r Constrtu
_ IO88 (Athens. Ga.. 1986) ,...,m.
17
7
Politits of tht British Empirt and the United States. _l60_ VI (1985). pp. 4-ll.
Cambridge.
Imperial
RtvoiJAliorr <r:e~ ~iscourst and
59 Roots of American Federalism' ~h~s Conslll~:rican
1
Bernard Bailyn, The 1deological OngiiiS of ~b ty. ]66(}-1832: Polmc:ff rent accounts
Mas_s., 1992) _a nd J.C.D. Clark, Th~ LangJUJgt ;~bri~;e: !993) offer shatPIY
e
.
Social Dynanucs in the AngloAmencan World (
. . . Suulits rn
0
f h
.
. / 1 aginaJlOII.
t at60collision and its nature.
.
. lism and rht Polrtrca mw Haven. 1990). chs.
See also Anthony Pagden, SpaniSh 1mptna Th
1513-1830 (Ne .
_J ritt Uberal
European and SpanishAmerican Social and p,0 /"(
tory.
pPrnots onu
1 al
re . h Monarchy. Crtolt
.. s: RtfltctioiiS on
4 ; David Brading The First America: The Spanu
/magined
Pioneers'.
Statr, 1492-1867 (ambridge, 1991); Benedict Anders;~ J991}. ch. 4, creoe
lhe Origin and Spread of Nationalism (rev. edn. Lon '

C(JIIIIIUIII'":

xxx

INTRODUCTION - - - -- - - - INTRODUCTION - - - - - - -

British King-in-Parliament and the Spanish Monarchy had hoped that declarations
of equality. the tics that bound coloni sts to metropolitans, and the economie
benefits of mercantilism would be sufficient to hold their Atlantic empires
together. However, each foundered on what Anna calls 'the inherent ideological
contradiction of empire, th at the modem empires did not distribute the benefits
of citizenship equally as Rome had. and thal proclamations of good will from
the metropolis rang hollow in the Americas. when North American colonies were
treated like viceroyalties and Spanish-American viceroyalties were treated like
colonies. 6 1
The imperial roots of the American federation and the viceregal infrastructure
of the Latin American republics are reminders that the theoretical legacy of the
carly-modem empires still shapes contemporary political concems. Yet, as Richard
Thck and James Thlly (among others) have stressed, political theory also carries
freight from the period of European expansion of which contemporary theorists
62
need to be aware. Almost ali of the major carly-modem political theorists had
sorne stake in the ideological justification of European rights to property, dominion
or freedom of trade in the wider world: for example, Grotius argued on behaJf
of the Dutch East India Company; Hobbes held shares in the Virginia Company;
and Locke co-wrote the Fundamental Constitutions for his patron, Shaftesbury's
Carolina plantation, owned shares in the Royal African Company, and elaborated
an agriculturalist theory of property that would be used to justify European
d.ispossession of native lands weil into the eighteenth century.63 Tully argues that,
smce a central problem for western politicaJ theory between Grotius and Kant
was pre~isely the ideologicaJ justification of European property, the underlying
assumpt1ons of European traditions of political thought - whether liberal,
communitarian or nationalist - can hardly provide impartial adjudication in
contemporary land-disputes between First Nations and the govemments of the
European empires' successor-states (see chapter 15 below). The imperial origins
of contemporary theories of property, rights, liberty and sovereignty must be
61
Compare J.H. Elliot, 'Empire and State in British and Spanish America' in Serge Gruzinsi
and Nathan Wachtel, eds..
Nouvt!au Monlh-Mandt!S No~tvt!aux: L 'ExpirienCt! Amiricaine (Paris,
1996). pp. 365-82.
62
Richard Tuck, Sorry Comjortt!rs: Politica/ Theory and the International Ortler from Grotius
' R'
.
to Kant (Oxford fonhcomi ) id
ng em,
ghts and Plurahsm' ' in James Thlly' ed., Philoso'PhY in
an Age of Plura/i Th Ph'[
70 James TIl ;m.
e
'.oso~hy of Charles Taylor in Question (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 159 63 0 ulocy, trangt! Mul~rplrcrty: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity (Cambridge, 1995).
n
ke see espec1ally James Thil 'R d '

and
Aboriginal La d R ' h .
.
y,
e 1scovenng Amenca: The Two Trt!atises
(Cambridge 1~ ) g t~j/n hJs An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Conlt!xts
Barbara Ameil, John Locke and America: The Defence of
English
Original Appropriation lnd ~d compare ~ornas Flanagan, 'The Agricultural Argument and
Scit!nct! XXII (1989), ~p. ~~ . s and PohtJcal Philosophy'. Canadian Journal of Political

Col~nia/is;,. ~6xford-?~W~nd

xxxi

d 1'scovered before the inequities of European expansion be successfully overcome,

hile the history of lhat expansion cannot justly be written without discriminating
particularity of each nation's imperial
while also
-European contribution to the formatiOn of western pohllcal theory. Th1s
me attempts to map sorne of the ways in which the expanding world affected
vho u litical imaginations of European theorists. However, it also shows that there
t e po
.
.
. h'
f h .
,
h work still to be donc to prov1de a full y comparative 1story o t eones
ts mue
.
. .
1 h
. 1
of empire from imperium to 1mpenahsm, and thereby to revea t e 1mpena
features on the face of modem political theory.

;e

i~eology

~~knowledging t~e

no~

Bibliography

c . H ., An Introduction to the History of the lAw of Nations in

Alexandrow1cz,
.
the East Jndies (!6th, /7th and /8th Centuries) <?xford, 1?67).

0 av1'd , -r'he
Arm1tage,
' Jdeological Origins of the Brlltsh Emptre (Cambndge,
1999)
1 . ['
Ameil, B~bara, John Locke and America: The Defence of Eng/ish Co onta tsm
(Oxford, 1996).
..
Le' b
iff d fi "hen
Bosbach, Franz, Monarchia Universalis: Ein poltttscher tt egrt
er ru
5)
Neuzeit (Gottingen, 1986).
B
C R The Dutch Seabome Empire, /600-/800 (London, 196 .

:J.::. ~:~~~;z,s;~::~:.~"':a~"ih!4:::.~~! ~r:.:!~~ ~~:~; Pa,,.,

5

and
1991
the Liberal State, 1492-/867 (Cambndge,
).
Brunt p A Roman Imperial Themes (Oxford, 1990).
Grotius and
Bull, H~dle;, Benedict Kingsbury and Adam Roberts, eds., Hugo

d the Beginnings of French

International Relations (Oxford, 19~0).
Dickason, Olive P., The Myth of the avage an
Colonialism in the Americas (Edmonton, 1984).
Doyle, Michael W., Empires (lth~ca, 1?86). 1 nsamiento espafwl y de otros
Elordny, Eleuterio, La /dea del tmperto en e pe
pueblos (Madrid, 1944).
'1\,
, Transactions of the Royal
Finley M 1 'Colonies - An Attempt at a .,po1ogy,
' . .,
.
167-88
Historical Soctety XXVI ( 1976),

E rope from the Ftifth to the

.t E
in 111
nestem u
Folz, Robert, The Concept o, mp~re Ann
ilvie (London, 1969).
0
. F~urt~en.th Century, tr~s. Sh:~aMunda: giA nascita dell'antro_po.logia come
Ghozz1, Gmhano, Adamo e tl Nuo
. b 'bliche alle teorie rawalt (Florence,
ideo/ogia coloniale: dalle genea1ogte 1

1976).
.. 1bin en 1958).
Goez, Werner, Translatio lmpent (
g '

xxxii

- - - - - - - INTRODUCTION - - - - - - - - INTRODUcnON - - - - - - - xxxiii

. p Dickason The Law of Nations and the New World

Green L. C. and 0 1tve .
,
h
(Edmonton, 1989)
.
Hanke, Lewis, The Spanish Struggle for Justice in t e onquest of America

(Boston, 1965).
h Q
fi
1
h Empire and World: T, e uest or mversa Onier.
Headley, John M Ch ure
'
1520-1640 (Aidershot, 1997).
.
,
'Imperial History and Post-Colontal Theory , Journal of Imperia[
Kennedy, Dane,
345-63
and Commonwealth History XXIV (1996), pp.
.
Knorr, KIaus E., Br'.t1'sh Colonial Theories 1570-1850 (Toronto, 1944).
Koebner, Richard, Empire (Cambridge, 1961).
.
Kupperman, Karen Ordahl, ed., America in European Conscwusness, 1493-1750
(Chapet Hill, 1995).
,
, .
ant , Frank Le Huguenot et le Sauvage: L Amertque
et la controveru
Lest nng
. .
.
coloniale, en France, au temps des Guerres de Relzgwn (/ 555-1589) (Pans,
1990).
Magnusson, Lars, Mercantilism: The Shaping of an Economie Language (London,
1994).
Pidal, Ram6n Menendez, El /dea Imperial de Carlos V (Buenos Aires, 1941),
Muldoon, James, Popes, Lawyers, and lnfidels: The Church and the Non-Christian
World, 1250-1550 (Philadelphia, 1979).
-, The Americas in the Spanish World Ordtr: The Justification for Conquest in
the Seventeenth Century (Philadelphia, 1994).
Pagden, Anthony, The Faff of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins
of Comparative Ethnology (2nd edn., Cambridge, 1986).
-, Spanish lmperialism and the Political Imagination (New Haven, 1991 ).
- , The Uncertainties of Empire: Essays in /berian and Ibero-American
lntellectual History (Aidershot, 1994).
-, Lords of Aff the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France
c. 1500- c. 1800 (New Haven, 1995).
Parry, 1. H., The Spanish Theory of Empire in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge,
1940).
Pocock, J.G.A., The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the
Atlan~i~ Republican Tradition (Princeton, 1975).
Seed, Patncta, Ceremonies of Possession in Europe 's Conquest of the New World.
. 1492-1650 (Cambridge, 1995).
Sktnner, Q.uentin, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought (2 vols.;
Carnbndge, 1978).
Tanner Mari Th Las
M hic
e, e
t Descendnnt of -neas: The Hapsburgs and the yt
1'
ma~e of the Emperor (New Haven, 1993)
Thck, Rtchard Sorry c ,_
1 ortler
fro G '.
Otn.Jorters: Political Theory and the Internationa
m rottus to Kant (Oxford, forthcoming).

Tully, James, Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity

(Cambridge, 1995).
Williams, Jr., Robert A., The American lndian in Western Legal Thought: The
Discourses of Conquest (New York, 1990).
de Witte, Charles-Martial, Les Bulles pontificales et l'expansion Portugaise au
XVe sicle (Louvain, 1958).
Yates, Frances A., Astra: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London,
1975)
Zavala, Silvio, The Political Philosophy of the Conquest of America (Mexico City,
1953).