Theological disputes over whether Amerindians had souls determined their legal justification for enslavement

Evidence

The second “genocide” of the Americas turned on the question of “people without religion,” for Christian dogma of the time paradigmatically rested on a syllogism: Beings without religion are entities bereft of God; beings without a God cannot possess a soul; therefore, beings without religion are entities without soul. Central to the dominant discourse of the first half of the sixteenth century, the question bore the crucial implication that if the Amerindians were without a soul, then enslaving and killing them as animals would be justified. The controversy culminated in 1552, in the Valladolid Trial, whose chief protagonists were Gines Sepúlveda and Las Casas. Accepting the latter’s argument, the Spanish monarchy decided in favor of the position that the Amerindians do have a soul, although they were deemed barbarians in need of Christianization. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 170

Categorization

• XREF: The syllogism on soul-bearing parallels the logic examined in colonial discourse studies of the Americas — connects to Todorov’s Conquest of America treatment of the same Valladolid debate.
• SHARE: Worth sending to a friend working on the legal history of early modern colonialism — the Valladolid Trial as the hinge where theological anthropology authorized chattel slavery.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 170