When the ‘New World’ was discovered by Columbus, conflict between an advanced civilisation and a pagan, primitive culture was guaranteed.  Millions of Ameri-Indians over 4 centuries were killed by Whites, through war, enslavement, and mostly disease.  Some 10 million are thought to have perished in about 400 years.  The fiction that the Ameri-Indians were peace-loving environmentalists developing an advanced stone-base civilisation is now accepted within education and the anti-White, anti-Western paper mills called ‘journals’ and ‘academic writings’.  It is ridiculous. 

In any given year during the 15^th century the Aztecs in Mexico and the Incas in Peru would sacrifice 150.000 humans to their pagan nature gods, including celestial worship (Venus, the Moon, the Sun), and fertility cults.  This entails over 1 million people per decade were murdered to spill their blood to appease the fantasy-spirits of the natural and celestial world, and to guarantee rain, harvests, victories in war, or the continued aggrandizement of the pagan priestly elite.  Over a century there could have been more than 5-10 million murdered by the Aztecs and Incas. 

This atavistic savagery does not include those who were killed during the endless wars between tribes and states; nor those who died in slavery.  The Mayan and other ‘civilisations’ were famously destroyed through eco-devastation as trees were cut down to produce lime and whitewash for the grand temples and pyramids.  The collapse of the eco-system ensured the self-immolation of the Mayan empire in the 10^th century.

When the Spanish began the subjugation of the Ameri-Indians, we can see that as early as 1511 in sermons and letters by de Montesinos in Haiti and others, laments on the brutal treatment of the natives.  Spanish policy was condemned for its barbaric attitude towards the natives, its violence, enslavement and disregard of property rights and natural law rights of the native people.  Out of Christian conscience was born international law.  There is no evidence that native Ameri-Indians spent any time reflecting on such rights and ideals.  Their culture was perfectly at ease with the barbarism of human sacrifice and slavery. 

Through these efforts the Spanish Church produced the Laws of Burgos (1512) and of Valladolid (1513) which governed how Spanish officials were to interact with the ‘natives’.  These legal codes were premised on natural law and property law and rights.  De Vitoria and other jurists used St. Thomas Acquinas’ system of natural law rights to argue that the native Ameri-Indians had a God-given right to their land, their bodies and their families.  De Vitoria argued that ‘just war’ did not exist because some Ameri-Indians rejected the gospel or that they lacked ‘reason’ or civilisation.  Their inherent natural law rights negated those arguments. 

Las Casas shared Vitoria’s position on native natural law rights, and that the natives should be dealt with kindly, with patience and that the Spanish abandon the Aristotelian-Greek-Roman concept of slavery as being part of the natural order.  God given natural law rights made slavery an illegal and immoral practice.  By 1550 many Spanish theologians had developed a code of international law and concepts designed to protect the rights of any people or group including the Ameri-Indians.  International law would build on these foundations and find detailed expression in the 17th century through Christians such as Grotius and many others.

The main point is that during the 16^th century Christian Spaniards viewed their civilisation’s activities in the ‘new world’ and found many of them to be without merit, wanting and un-Christian.  Ideas on reform, changes to legal texts and codes and binding instruments of agreement and principles, issued by the Spanish state as well as the Vatican were pursued and created.  No other culture or civilisation has ever done this namely analysed itself, its actions and their outcomes and decided that a great change was mandatory.