Vitoria’s defense of Indian sovereignty simultaneously legitimated imperial conquest

Evidence

The ambivalence of Vitoria could hardly be more pronounced. He is almost invariably received as the benign humanist who erected a basic defence of Indian sovereignty and title to their lands and fathered international law. Yet in doing both these things he provided a consummate legitimation for one of the more spectacularly rapacious of imperial acquisitions. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 221

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the vault’s treatment of liberal humanism as itself a racializing/rationalizing discourse (Omi & Winant’s racial formation as operating through putatively humane frames).
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 221