The Valladolid Debate: When Europeans argued about whether indigenous peoples were human

The Valladolid Debate was an official hearing, sponsored by King Charles V, that unfolded in two separate sessions held in 1550 and 1551.

The exact dates remain uncertain, though the initial round likely occurred in the latter part of 1550.

During these hearings, leading Spanish intellectuals evaluated the legal and ethical basis for Spanish domination in the Americas.

The monarch, disturbed by conflicting reports regarding colonial conduct, expressed deep concern and called for reflection on the empire's moral responsibilities.

He demanded clarity from his most trusted advisers, and he instructed the Council of the Indies to assess whether Spain's colonial actions conformed to Christian doctrine along with principles of natural law and considerations of imperial justice. 

The debate occurred behind closed doors and excluded all indigenous voices. Only a small audience of royal officials, clergy, and jurists attended the sessions, and they listened to the arguments presented in Latin over several weeks.

At the centre of this extraordinary debate stood two men, Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, a respected scholar of Aristotelian philosophy, and Bartolomé de las Casas, a Dominican friar with decades of missionary experience in the New World.

Both participants had already circulated written works expressing their respective views, and their reputations ensured that the debate attracted great attention within elite Spanish circles.

The points under consideration extended beyond theology and touched upon issues related to conversion, political power, legal authority, and the ethics of war. 

The Spanish Crown, uncertain whether conquest could continue without violating moral principles, insisted that the discussion focus on key questions: whether indigenous societies possessed reason, whether their customs and institutions had validity, and whether their conversion to Christianity justified armed intervention.

The outcome would determine how Spain justified its rule in the New World and also how future empires across Europe would frame their own colonial projects. 

In the years following Columbus’s initial voyage in 1492, Spanish forces dismantled indigenous empires, seized land, and imposed systems of forced labour on large numbers of Indigenous people, with estimates in the hundreds of thousands, though the demographic collapse due to disease and exploitation affected millions more.

Hernán Cortés overthrew the Aztec Empire in 1521, and Francisco Pizarro defeated the Inca Empire by 1533, actions that resulted in vast transfers of wealth to Spain, along with widespread destruction across the Americas.

Spanish colonists introduced the encomienda system, through which native communities were given to Spanish landholders, who claimed the right to extract labour in exchange for nominal protection and Christian instruction.

The system was often justified by the reading of the Requerimiento, a royal decree issued in 1513 that declared Spain's divine right to rule and demanded immediate submission from native communities, often under coercive or absurd conditions that rendered the declaration meaningless. 

By the 1510s, Antonio de Montesinos, a Dominican friar stationed in Hispaniola, delivered a sermon in 1511 that condemned the colonists’ treatment of indigenous peoples and questioned whether Spanish Christians could enslave others without sin.

His message influenced Bartolomé de las Casas, who had previously received an encomienda but later renounced it and entered the Dominican order.

Over the following decades, Las Casas travelled throughout the Caribbean and Central America, documenting colonial violence and calling for reform.

He published numerous accounts, including the influential A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, in which he described Spanish atrocities in graphic detail.

"The Christians with their horses and swords and pikes began to carry out massacres and strange cruelties against them," he wrote. 

In 1542, as reformers such as Las Casas and other Dominicans called for change, and King Charles V passed the New Laws of the Indies on 20 November, which prohibited the enslavement of indigenous peoples and ordered gradual reforms to the encomienda system.

These laws also banned the inheritance of encomiendas, limiting the power of colonial landholders. C

olonial leaders bitterly opposed the legislation, claiming that it undermined their authority and placed economic burdens on the empire.

In response, Sepúlveda composed Democrates Secundus, an essay arguing that indigenous societies were so inferior that Spanish rule, including military conquest, was both necessary and just.

His arguments prompted further outcry, which led the Crown to organise a formal hearing to settle the dispute. 

Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda defended Spanish conquest by appealing to natural law and classical philosophy, particularly the writings of Aristotle.

He cited Aristotle’s notion of “natural slaves” in Politics when he argued that some human groups lacked the ability to govern themselves and needed external rule to achieve order and rational living.

In his interpretation, the indigenous peoples of the Americas, due to their customs and religious practices, exhibited signs of intellectual and moral deficiency that placed them in this category.

He drew attention to rituals involving human sacrifice, idol worship, and alleged cannibalism, and he insisted that these practices went against basic moral rules. 

Sepúlveda argued that war against such peoples was lawful if it served to protect innocent victims, punish grave offences, and prevent continued disorder.

He described Spanish military intervention as a civilising mission, designed to replace savagery with justice and superstition with true religion.

According to his view, the Spanish had a duty to conquer the Americas in order to elevate the natives to a higher moral and spiritual condition. 

He extended this logic to the area of Christian evangelisation. In his view, forced conversion was not ideal but remained allowed if it followed just war.

He argued that indigenous people, having no knowledge of Christian doctrine and lacking proper thinking skills, could not accept the Gospel freely unless their leaders had first been subdued.

He maintained that the salvation of their souls was more important than the cost of war.

His belief that the ends justified the means allowed him to defend violent conquest as a moral good, allowed by both reason and divine law. 

Bartolomé de las Casas challenged Sepúlveda’s views on every point and argued that the indigenous peoples of the Americas were fully rational, fully human, and capable of governing their own affairs.

His extensive experience in the New World provided evidence that native societies possessed detailed political systems, laws, agricultural methods, and religious beliefs.

He argued that their cultural practices, though unfamiliar to Europeans, demonstrated organisation and reason, which proved their ability to govern themselves. 

Las Casas rejected the use of force in religious matters. He maintained that true conversion required understanding, reflection, and personal choice.

Any force, he claimed, produced empty ritual rather than genuine faith. He argued that the atrocities committed by Spanish soldiers did far more to discredit Christianity than any indigenous custom ever could.

He accused the Spanish of acting in ways that resembled barbarism, and he described in detail the massacres and enslavement that led to widespread destruction carried out in the name of conquest. 

He also challenged Sepúlveda’s use of Aristotle, pointing out that ancient philosophers had lived before the revelation of Christian truth and could not provide final moral authority.

He appealed to the teachings of Christ, especially the commandment to love one’s neighbour, and to the peaceful example of the apostles.

According to Las Casas, no law, either human or divine, could justify the slaughter of innocents or the destruction of entire communities under the excuse of spiritual salvation. 

His arguments offered a different approach of Spanish engagement with the Americas.

He proposed a model based on peaceful persuasion supported by education and respect for indigenous institutions.

He believed that the Spanish should act as guests rather than conquerors, and that Christianity would spread through compassion rather than through war.

In later years, however, Las Casas expressed regret over one of his earlier suggestions: he had once suggested the use of African slaves as a substitute for indigenous labour, a position he eventually renounced. 

The Valladolid Debate did not produce a clear or immediate winner. The judges chosen by the Council of the Indies declined to issue a final ruling, and the Crown avoided any official declaration that might alienate powerful colonial interests.

Although the debate ended without a formal judgement, the short-term outcome appeared to favour Las Casas.

The Spanish government allowed his works to be published and continued to endorse the New Laws, at least in principle.

Sepúlveda, in contrast, was not granted permission to publish Democrates Secundus within Spain, though it was printed in Rome in 1550 and circulated in manuscript form within scholarly circles.

This censorship implied that royal authorities disapproved of his justification for conquest, at least on theological grounds.

Nevertheless, many colonial officials and settlers continued to act according to Sepúlveda’s reasoning, and they ignored Las Casas’ call for restraint and continued to rely on armed force and coercive labour systems in their dealings with indigenous communities.

Although the Crown occasionally reiterated its support for the humane treatment of native peoples, it did little to enforce its own edicts.

In practice, the arguments of Las Casas shaped rhetoric, while the actions of Sepúlveda’s supporters shaped reality.

The Valladolid Debate became one of the first recorded instances in European history when imperial expansion was placed on trial before a panel of religious and legal authorities.

It introduced moral doubt into the project of colonisation and forced Spanish officials to grapple with the ethical consequences of their actions in the Americas.

Las Casas’ insistence on the humanity and rationality of indigenous peoples contributed to a shift in how some Europeans conceived of universal rights, as his writings influenced later jurists, missionaries, and philosophers engaged in early discussions of international law.

The idea that all people possessed inherent dignity, regardless of race or religion, began to gain traction, even if it remained far from universal practice.

Sepúlveda’s reasoning, although officially suppressed at the time, foreshadowed the racial ideologies that European powers would use to justify conquest in later centuries.

His belief that cultural differences indicated natural inferiority would appear in various forms across later imperial ventures in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific.