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The significance of Francisco de Vitoria (1483-1546) in the great debate of XVIth century Spain on the morality of colonization is a matter of contention to this day. Some 150 years ago, at the time of the establishment of International Law as an autonomous discipline, Vitoria was rediscovered and magnified. Legal historians praised his defence of American natives’ rights against his own countrymen, and thus presented this unassuming Dominican monk as nothing less as the founding father of International Law. In the following decades, however, literature based on Critical Legal Theories and Third World Approaches to International Law has criticized Vitoria as a hailer of Conquest. This essay argues that both the presentations of Vitoria as a champion of the freedom of the Indians and as a supporter of their submission are inaccurate, and due to a presentist bias in historiography of International Law. The following pages try to read Vitoria’s De Indis taking due account of its historical context, of its author’s affiliation to Thomist philosophy, and of his probable intentions as a theologian and a confessor. The article concludes that the aim of Francisco de Vitoria was to lay out a model for convivence between Indians and Spaniards.
