ABSTRACT
A people’s right to self-determination, as codified into law by Imperial Rome, has long been recognized in the Western philosophical tradition. However, this right to self-determination, known in Latin as jus gentium (the laws of peoples), arises precisely within the context of imperial expansion. This chapter opens with the use of the “defense of innocents” trope by US military campaigns as an exception to local sovereignty, itself a legal convention developed in the sixteenth century by Spanish legislation and jurisprudence. It explores this and other exceptions to local sovereignty that gained support among theologians and jurists such as Francisco de Vitoria and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda. Finally, it presents the rebuttals to their arguments made by Bartolomé de Las Casas in De unico vocationis modo omnium gentium ad veram religionem and the Historia de las Indias. Ultimately, these works offer a counter-narrative to Iberian imperialism in the service of Las Casas’s advocacy for Indigenous peoples around the globe.
