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The Man Who Sold the World?: The Enduring Role of Pope Alexander VI’s Inter caetera in Spanish Colonization

2023; RELX Group (Netherlands); Linguagem: Inglês

10.2139/ssrn.4319067

1556-5068

Matthew Cavedon,

Historical Studies in Latin America

In 1493, shortly after Christopher Columbus returned from his first voyage to the Indies, Pope Alexander VI issued a bull, Inter caetera. It authorized centuries of brutal imperial conquest throughout the world, according to many Indigenous activists and scholarly critics. It was a historically insignificant “remnant,” according to the Holy See and some Catholic apologists. In reality, the bull played a complicated part in history. It had virtually no role in English and American colonial endeavors. However, Alexander may have actually meant it as the strong mandate for dominance that it is accused of being. At the very least, Inter caetera was a central part of the Spanish Empire’s intellectual self-justification for hundreds of years. It retained prominence even as Spanish scholars working within the natural-law tradition proposed alternative theories. Was Alexander the man who sold Spain the world? For many imperialists, and many colonial subjects, the answer was yes.