Discovery doctrine vested sovereignty only in Europeans and made the discovered passive objects

Evidence

It is this sovereign assertion which, more than anything else, distinguishes occidental title and makes manifest the racial basis of the doctrine of discovery. Bluntly, the discoverers were the kind of people who had sovereignty and title, and the discovered were the kind of people who had neither. Not only did the discoverers acquire “absolute” and “exclusive” title to the land, not only did discovery thence give them “the exclusive right… to appropriate the lands occupied by the Indians,” they also “asserted the ultimate dominion to be in themselves” (p. 574). Unlike Vitoria’s involving natural law which recognized something like sovereignty vested in them, the Indians were now utterly subordinate to a sovereign power and were “excluded… from intercourse with any European potentate than the first discoverer” (p. 573). The doctrine of discovery becomes one in which the discovered are no longer actors but merely acted upon. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 232 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Discovery vested absolute title in Europeans subject only to Indian occupancy — Supreme Court of the United States (Marshall Court, 1823), Johnson & Graham’s Lessee v. M’Intosh,…, 259; Discovery doctrine gave colonizers exclusive land title and conquest rights solely by discovery — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 227; Discovery doctrine reduced Indigenous nations to selling only to the discovering government — Robert J. Miller, Review of Buying America from the…, 16 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Discovery doctrine reduced Native peoples from actors to subjects acted upon #corroborates (0.92) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 232