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Spanish Medieval Institutions in Overseas Administration: The Prevalence of Medieval Concepts*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Carlos E. Castañeda
Carlos E. Castañeda*
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Austin, Texas
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Extract

Land ho!” rang out in the stillness of that fateful dawn in October, 1492, when a New World was discovered. After months of suspense the approaches to a land whose existence was unknown had been reached. It was not India, nor fabled Cipango and Cathay. It was, as Columbus said after his third voyage, Otro Mundo, another world, risen out of the unknown to confound an astonished world, where an era was closing and a new one opening. It lay athwart the route to the desired goal, a vast land mass, peopled by many men of varying cultures, who emerged in their seemingly guileless nakedness to confuse the theologians and learned men of the Renaissance.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , October 1954 , pp. 115 - 129
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1954

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Footnotes

*

Paper read at the Sixty-Eighth Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, December 29, 1953.

References

1 Hill, Roscoe R., “The Office of Adelantado,” Political Science Quarterly, XXVIII (1914), 646–668 Google Scholar; Simpson, Leslie B., The Encomienda in New Spain; the Beginning of Spanish Mexico (Berkeley, 1950)Google Scholar; Castañeda, Carlos E., “The Corregidor in Spanish Colonial Administration,” Hispanic American Historical Review, IX (1929), 446–470 Google Scholar, to mention only a few. For synthetic analysis of the other colonial institutions and suggested bibliography, see Haring, C. H., The Spanish Empire in America (New York, 1947).Google Scholar

2 Cited in Obregón, T. Esquivel, Apuntes Para la Historia del Derecho en México, I (Mexico, 1937), 401–402.Google Scholar

3 Ayala, Francisco Javier de, Ideas Políticas de Juan de Solórzano (Seville, 1946), pp. 328–329 Google Scholar; Robledo, Antonio Gómez, Política de Vitoria (Mexico, 1940), pp. 80–85 Google Scholar; Zavala, Silvio, New Viewpoints on the Spanish Colonization of America (Philadelphia, 1943), pp. 17–28.Google Scholar

4 Anglería, Pedro Martír de, De Orbe Novo, trans. Joaquín Torres Asencio (Madrid, 1892), década II, libro VIII.Google Scholar

5 T. Esquivel Obregón, op. cit., I, 399–401.

6 Navarrete, Martín Fernández de, Colección de los Viages y Descubrimientos, que hicieron por Mar los Españoles desde Fines del Siglo XV (Madrid, 1825), II, 66, 182–185, 203–206, 235ff., 255ff., 322ff.; Ill, 344ff.Google Scholar See also Colección de Documentos Inéditos, Relativos al Descubrimiento, Conquista y Organización de las Antiguas Posesiones Españolas de América y Oceania, Sacados de los Archivos del Reino, y muy especialmente del de Indias (Madrid, 1869), XII, 213–215; XXXI, 13–25.

7 Cited in Esquivel Obregón, op. cit., I, 139.

8 The great Spanish historian, Rafael Altamira y Crevea, in one of his last studies emphasizes this aspect. See his Estudios sobre las Fuentes de Conocimiento de la Historia del Derecho Indiano (Mexico, 1949).

9 As quoted in T. Esquivel Obregón, op. cit., I, 401.

10 Las Casas and his school. See his Del Unico Modo de Atraer á Todos los Pueblos a la Verdadera Religión (Mexico, 1942).

11 As quoted in T. Esquivel Obregón, op. cit., I, 425.

12 Palacios, Vicente Riva (ed.), México através de los Siglos (Barcelona, 1886–1889), II, 348.Google Scholar

13 Instrucciones que los Vireyes de Nueva España dejaron á sus Sucesores, Añadense algunas que los mismos trajeron de la Corte y Otros Documentos Semejantes a las Instrucciones (Mexico, 1873), I, 49.

14 Ibid., I, 57–58.

15 Ibid., I, 105.

16 Ibid., I, 408–409.

17 Obregón, T. Esquivel, Influencia de España y de los Estados Unidos sobre México (Madrid, 1918), p. 270.Google Scholar