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Show 3 between the Crown, local government, and the Indians during the colonial period. When the Spanish King published and distributed the New Laws of 1542-1543 to improve the position of the Indians, there was a revolt in Peru and a threat of revolt in New Spain (Mexico). The King did not fully appreciate how strongly the Conquistadors felt about the relationships they had established with the Indians. The kings of Spain and Portugal had based their claims to the Americas on the Papal Bulls of the fifteenth century, as well as discovery. The kings of England and France refused to recognize the Papal pronouncements, and based their claims entirely on discovery, to be followed by actual possession. To secure possession after the discovery, the kings of England granted charters to corporations or individuals who went to designated sections along the Atlantic Coast of North America, at their own expense, where they proceeded to actually occupy land areas by arrangement with the indigenous peoples they encountered there. Understanding the rights of the Indians as true owners, as has been explained in another lecture referring to Francisco de Vitoria, Hugo Grotius, and Emmerich Vattel as authorities in international law, it is not difficult to see why the kings of England and France gave so little in the way of instructions to those who received charters and left it to their subjects to develop relationships with the Indians and to make arrangements concerning the actual transfer of possession of the soil. |