ABSTRACT
The origin of the relationship between the metropolis and its colonies garners more attention from a historiographic perspective. Traditionally, it has been believed, and some continue to maintain, that the different ways the Spanish and the English colonized the “New World” produced a profound difference in relations between colonizer and colony in the North as opposed to the South. Especially during the reigns of Carlos V and Philip II, the complex situation between Castile and Aragon as well as with the rest of the Spanish kingdoms on the peninsula was full of political, legal, and theological subtleties. Spain saw itself as a political grouping of many kingdoms which were all bound together under the law of the Crown and not as a political state. The experience of the French colonies was quite different first, in terms of the role played by the metropolis and the monarchy, and second, because French society notoriously lacked interest in the colonial project.
