Romanus Pontifex extends Portuguese claims over African trade

The bull Dum Diversas granted Portugal a claimed religious and political warrant to conquer territories ruled by non-Christians and reduce people to perpetual servitude. It helped give a Christian...

The treaty drew a line dividing rival Iberian claims to lands outside Europe. It did not create African or Indigenous consent, yet its imperial framework helped structure later conquest, plantation...

Charles V granted Lorenzo de Gorrevod a license for the direct shipment of 4,000 enslaved Africans from Africa to Spanish America. The license reveals how the Crown converted human beings into a...

Sublimis Deus declared Indigenous peoples rational and capable of Christian faith and condemned their enslavement. Its protection was limited and repeatedly undermined by colonial practice, and it did...

The New Laws sought to curb abuses against Indigenous peoples and restrict hereditary encomiendas, while also addressing Indigenous enslavement. Colonial elites resisted and enforcement was uneven....

The Crown granted Reynel a contract to supply enslaved Africans to Spanish America. The asiento system made trafficking a regulated imperial monopoly, with African captives treated as taxable cargo...