COLONIZATION. — The history of modern colonization begins with the discovery of lands beyond the ocean, which prompted Portuguese and Spanish explorers to set out in search of them. One of the principal motives behind their adventurous enterprises, alongside the extension of national dominion, was the desire to spread the faith. Thus, the rulers of the two main colonizing peoples of the 16th century, as well as the navigators themselves, could not separate political and economic motives from the religious one, and so a crusading spirit infused the entire perilous work of exploration, of which Christopher Columbus remains a perpetual symbol: as soon as he landed on the new soil, he unfurled both the banner of the Cross and the flag of Castile.
Owing to this spiritual attitude, in keeping with the religious sensibilities of the time, colonization aimed at the expansion of Christian civilization, for which the rulers themselves encouraged the dispatch of missionaries to the new lands, eager and enthusiastic to dedicate themselves to the education of the indigenous peoples. Thanks to this royal interest, numerous bands of missionaries, subsidized by public funds, streamed out from Europe. Alongside the conquistadors, Augustinians, Franciscans, Dominicans, and Jesuits set sail for every corner of the vast colonial empires that were taking shape. At the express request of King John III of Portugal, Francis Xavier set out for the Indies, and in his footsteps followed the many missionaries of the new religious order to which he belonged. Spain pursued the same policy in America. To the first Dominicans and Franciscans, who arrived shortly after the discovery, Augustinians were added, and all began the conversion of the barbarous tribes.
In these directives of Spanish and Portuguese colonial policy, not everything was pure idealism; yet it remains true that colonization was not then conceived merely as a work of exploitation but as a sacred mission of civilization. The instructions given by Isabella to Christopher Columbus on the occasion of his second voyage highlight this meaning, for they enjoin the admiral to consider as his first and principal task the conversion of the indigenous peoples to Christianity, regardless of whether the treasury might thereby be burdened. The Church did not fail to encourage and confirm this political direction. The concessions granted by the popes to Portugal and Spain were directed toward this end. Two acts of Alexander VI document this action. In 1497, he granted the Portuguese crown exclusive rights over the colonies of West Africa and a series of privileges, with the restrictive clause of the subjugation of the indigenous peoples. A similar concession made to Spain in 1493, in three consecutive acts, enjoined Ferdinand, in the bull of May 3, “to send to the mainland and the islands in question men of probity, God-fearing, capable, and able to instruct the inhabitants of those regions in the Catholic faith and in good morals.”
Certainly, abuses were not lacking in Spanish and Portuguese colonization, against which the missionaries raised their voices. Yet this does not negate the fact that the directives of the courts were sound and humane, as evidenced by Spanish colonial legislation. One cannot fail to recognize, when reading the collection of laws, that the indigenous person was never despised; no racial hatred separated him from the dominators, nor was any ordinance enacted to prevent his marriage with whites; only from Madrid was insistence placed on regulating unions contracted with women of color through legitimate marriage. Owing to this broad colonial policy, a mixed population arose in New Spain, which became the cradle of the modern nations of Latin America and of their culture.
As a term of contrast, one may cite the piecemeal legislation of Virginia in North America. The General Assembly of this state in 1660 granted whites the power to capture indigenous people and sell them into slavery as compensation for any damages they might have caused; in 1663, it established the principle of collective responsibility for an entire village if a white man was killed in the vicinity; in 1665, it deprived the Indians of the right to elect their own chiefs; in 1676, it decreed that every captured Indian fell into perpetual slavery; in 1692, it prohibited any marriage between whites and people of color, while in another article of the code it deprived mulattos and Indians of the right to own property.
The ultimate effect of this colonial policy, devoid of any sense of humanity, was the extermination of the indigenous populations, against whom a merciless war was waged. In North America, no new nations arose from the fusion of indigenous and immigrant populations; instead, the white race expanded, extinguishing the life around II. The abuses of the colonizers were thus no less grave in North America; yet while there they received legal sanction, in the south they remained almost always illegal and were in part corrected through the work of missionaries and the intervention of the Church.
The history of missions in South America is closely intertwined with the history of colonization. The deplorable and often barbarous condition of the indigenous peoples, reduced to slavery, was combated by the missionaries with a boldness that still commands the admiration of historians today. In Brazil, where legislation was less consistent, Fathers Manuel da Nóbrega and José de Anchieta labored and fought for the cause of the Indians, figures still remembered in the annals of Brazilian history.
The same battle was waged by other noble figures in the Spanish possessions against the encomienda system, which had degenerated into veiled slavery; among these, the most notable are the Dominicans Antonio de Montesinos and Bartolomé de las Casas.
The Church supported the work of these pioneers with its intervention. In 1537, Paul III issued the celebrated bull *Veritas ipsa*, in which, after recognizing the Indians as true men, he forbade that they be deprived of their freedom, the enjoyment of their goods, or reduced to slavery. Later, in 1741, Benedict XIV, reaffirming what Paul III and Urban VIII had already decreed, imposed latae sententiae excommunication on all who deprived the Indians of their freedom, including not only those who directly took part in actions aimed at despoiling them of their goods and reducing them to slavery, but even those who indirectly contributed to maintaining and fostering such practices.
Conceptions changed in the 18th century, during which the European powers vied with one another in the conquest of overseas lands defined as *nullius*, to extend their influence, increase national prestige, strengthen strategic positions, and above all to secure new sources of raw materials for their burgeoning industries and markets for their manufactured goods. In conformity with the selfish spirit that inspired these motives, colonization was pursued on the principle of the maximum exploitation of the soil’s riches and the market, to the exclusive benefit of the colonizing power and with little regard for the indigenous populations, who were often subjected to harsh servitude, treated as mere commodities. This mercantile mentality persisted almost until our own day, though movements of ideas did arise to promote a more humane conception.
These movements in the 19th century led to the abolition of slavery and induced the powers to accept, with the General Act of Berlin in 1885, somewhat higher principles. In it, with respect to the colonization of Central Africa, the powers concerned undertook to direct their efforts toward increasing the material and moral well-being of the native populations and to establish the most favorable conditions for the development of trade and civilization. These provisions were later confirmed by the General Act of Brussels in 1890 and at St-Germain in September 1909, with some modifications. Nevertheless, with the conventions mentioned, the nations did not go beyond a common declaration of humanitarian intent, to whose implementation they individually committed themselves, without creating any supervisory body to oversee the fulfillment of the obligations assumed.
Only with the League of Nations did the colonial regime of the territories taken from the defeated powers in the First World War become firmly based on the primacy of the well-being of the backward populations, and colonization was again understood as a sacred mission of civilization. To implement this new program, the Mandate system was created under the Covenant of the League of Nations, which introduced into international law the new legal figure of a tutelary regime, later taken up by the United Nations Charter after the Second World War under the name of trusteeship. In this latter convention, however, the concept that colonization is a civilizing mission entrusted to the more advanced nations has been accepted by all colonial powers as a principle to be applied not only to territories placed under trusteeship but also to colonies subject to their sovereignty, and this marks a significant advance over the League Covenant.
The ideas, however, which finally penetrated international law after such a long and slow evolution, go back to the distant tradition of Catholic thought. Already in Spanish legislation, the figure of the Indian as a ward to be placed under tutelage emerges. The concept that colonization is a civilizing mission is prefigured in the writings of Las Casas in favor of the indigenous peoples. He maintains that the original inhabitants of the Indies were free men before the conquest and remained such after II. They are subjects of the King of Spain insofar as they are willing to recognize him as such, and it is only on this act of voluntary submission that his right to govern them is based, not on any inherent right arising from his power. Colonization is thus not arbitrary conquest but the voluntary submission of backward populations to a more advanced sovereignty so that it may provide for their civil and religious education. These principles, barely sketched by Las Casas, received systematic theoretical treatment from the lucid mind of Francisco de Vitoria, with whom the proper doctrinal cycle begins.
The general problem raised by colonization involves two questions: the first concerns the legitimacy of occupation, the second the ethical-legal norms that should govern relations between colonizer and colonized people. Catholic doctrine has focused primarily on the first, more difficult question. The first to address it systematically was Vitoria in his famous *Relectiones de Indis recenter inventis*. The soul of his system is the principle of equality among states, which have the same fundamental rights, immediately followed by that of interdependence, since peoples need one another's cooperation to live and progress, and thus there exists a universal society of nations willed by nature.
This community is governed by special laws, which derive partly from nature, partly from consent and conventions, and all have as their common principle justice. Having established these general principles, Vitoria proceeds to discuss the question of colonial expansion, which he does not absolutely condemn but admits if supported by a just cause, reducing the particular problem to the more general one of the justice of war. Consequently, he rejects many of the titles, at the time advanced by court apologists, as unsupported by justice: neither the Emperor's dominion over the whole world, nor the pretext of the Pope's universal right, nor the spread of the faith, nor barbarous customs, nor discovery can validly justify the occupation of colonies.
He admits the title of voluntary submission, for *volenti non fit iniuria*, yet in the case of the Indians he does not consider it sufficient because the requirements for a true contract of subjection are lacking due to the immaturity of one of the parties. Colonial expansion can only be based on certain universal rights, such as those of free transit, trade, and exchange, possessed by all peoples, and whose violation by backward peoples may give rise to a just cause for their subjugation by force, after peaceful means have been exhausted. He also admits as a legitimate title the protection of innocent persons, since natural law entrusts their aid to their neighbors. He remains doubtful, however, regarding the title of civilization, for which he anticipates modern times by proposing for the attainment of this goal a tutelary regime whose terms are noted to revive in the mandate system.
The doctrine of Fathers Francisco Suárez and Taparelli differs little from that of Vitoria; it merely shows itself more resolute in rejecting the title of civilization, arguing that individual and social progress cannot be imposed by force, since it is not a legal duty whose transgression can harm others.
The theory remained on the positions described until a few years ago, when in France and Belgium in particular an attempt was made to detach colonial expansion from the general doctrine of just war. To this end, new titles were proposed. Starting from the principle, already upheld by Vitoria, that the goods of the earth were originally given to humanity so that it might use them to achieve the purposes of life and advance in progress, it was concluded that peoples are not true owners of their territories but merely administrators on behalf of humanity. If, therefore, their resources remain unproductive in the hands of a people, they may justly be deprived of them by a more advanced people so that their exploitation may contribute to the general welfare.
Two new titles were based on this argument: the economic necessity of highly industrialized nations in need of raw materials and commercial outlets, and expropriation for reasons of public utility. Against these it has been objected that the principle according to which peoples are merely administrators of their goods is erroneous. Peoples, like individuals, are true owners, although subject to the laws governing the use of property, since the original community of goods on which the argument rests was merely negative and not positive, and the way established by nature for earthly goods to serve humanity consists in the division of property through the act of occupation, which binds such goods to the physical or moral person, generating a true right.
It has also been proposed to revive the title of civilization, based solely on a supposed mandate which the colonizing nation would receive from the society of nations to educate the backward people. Tradition, as mentioned above, is opposed to this title. It rests on a double misunderstanding: it imagines a non-existent mandate, since the society of nations, as an inorganic society, possesses neither personality nor organs to exercise powers; it leaves to the subjective judgment of the advanced nation the opportunity for occupation for purposes of civilization; it forgets that its own improvement is not a legal duty whose observance can be enforced by force.
More recently, appeal has been made to vital necessity. From the fact of the existence of sparsely populated territories rich in unused resources and the simultaneous existence of overpopulated nations with poor soil incapable of supporting their demographic surplus, supported by courtiers but not by justice—neither the dominion of the Emperor over the whole world, nor the alleged universal right of the Pope, nor the spread of the faith, nor barbarous customs, nor discovery—
relying on the principle that this condition can give rise to a serious case of necessity, to which nature links the right to occupy another's property within the limits of the same necessity from which the right proceeds, it has been concluded that an overpopulated nation may legitimately expand into colonial territories with sparse populations and abundant unused resources.
Nor is this argument accepted by all. The Code of International Morality rejects it, holding that emigration is the most suitable means to relieve demographic pressure and resolve the case of necessity. On the other hand, however, it has been observed that emigration is not a severe means of damage to the nation forced to adopt it, since it takes away the best elements, impoverishing it of valid and capable forces, and does not then solve the problem. It is clear, in fact, that a prolific people will always be tormented by demographic pressure, despite the safety valve of emigration. Finally, no natural law compels it to act as a human nursery, scattering its children throughout the world and forcing them to renounce the heritage of their language and culture.
Catholic doctrine therefore remains uncertain on these latest theoretical developments, while it is unanimous in maintaining that, once the occupation of colonial territories has occurred, colonization must above all provide for the well-being of the subject populations. It is the duty of the colonizing state to administer the colonies in such a way as to harmonize its own advantage with the material and cultural interests of the indigenous populations, toward which it must fulfill all the functions of public authority, which provides for the common good of the country placed under its control. Once occupation has occurred, in other words, the moral and juridical laws of proper government come into force, which in the colonial sphere are no different from those existing within the colonizing power itself. - See pl. I.