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Francisco de Vitoria and the (geo)politics of canonization in Spain/America
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 May 2022
Abstract
While the founder of international law was long considered to be Hugo Grotius, attempts were made in the late 1920s and early 1930s to dethrone him in favour of the Spanish theologian Francisco de Vitoria. This took place as the professionalization of the field of international law was reaching its golden age both in Europe and the Americas. Leading this case were the prominent US jurist James Brown Scott, one of the founders of the American Society of International Law, and the Spanish jurist Camilo Barcia Trelles. But why did they decide to revive Vitoria then, and why would they couch him specifically as the founder of international law? This article focuses on the intellectual history of the canonization of Vitoria in the context of the formation and consolidation of a continental Pan-American ideal and network of American international law in the Americas. Particular attention is paid to the American Institute of International Law, presided by Scott, and the formation of a Spanish Americanist cultural tradition in Spain. The latter deeply influenced Barcia, who developed a profound interest in Latin American questions, notably around the Monroe Doctrine. The article argues that these geopolitical Pan-American and Spanish-Americanist anxieties of re-unifying the Americas and Spain/America strongly influenced the depiction of Vitoria as a new founding father of international law and allowed Scott and Barcia to elevate themselves as Vitoria’s heirs.
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- ORIGINAL ARTICLE
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- © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Foundation of the Leiden Journal of International Law in association with the Grotius Centre for International Law, Leiden University
Footnotes
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A preliminary version of this article was presented at the Workshop ‘The Canon of Great Thinkers in International Legal and Political Thought’, held on 2–3 November 2020 at the University of Helsinki and organized by Paolo Amorosa and Claire Vergerio. I am especially grateful to Paolo Amorosa, Claire Vergerio, and Tomas Wallenius for their comments and suggestions.
References
1 Two important foundational studies are M. Koskenniemi, The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law, 1870-1960 (2001) and A. Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (2005). On US imperialism and the history of international law see B. A. Coates, Legalist Empire: International Law and American Foreign Relations in the Early Twentieth Century (2016); J. P. Scarfi, The Hidden History of International Law in the Americas: Empire and Legal Networks (2017).
2 See P. Amorosa, Rewriting the History of the Law of Nations: How James Brown Scott Made Francisco de Vitoria the Founder of International Law (2019); I. de la Rasilla, In the Shadow of Vitoria. A History of International Law in Spain, 1770-1953 (2017); M. Koskenniemi, ‘Empire and International Law: The Real Spanish Contribution’, (2011) 61 University of Toronto Law Journal 1; E. Keene, Beyond the Anarchical Society: Grotius, Colonialism and Order in World Politics (2002).
3 J. L. Borges, ‘Sobre los clásicos’, in Borges, Otras inquisiciones (1997), at 292.
4 For a critical and flexible approach to geopolitics see K. Dodds, Global Geopolitics: A Critical Introduction (2005).
5 J. P. Scarfi, El imperio de la ley: James Brown Scott y la construcción de un orden jurídico interamericano (2014), 181–207.
6 J. P. Scarfi, ‘Camilo Barcia Trelles on the Meaning of the Monroe Doctrine and the Legacy of Vitoria in the Americas’, (2020) 31 EJIL 1463.
7 See Scarfi, supra note 1; Scarfi, supra note 5.
8 W. LaFeber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860-1898 (1963), 242–83.
9 L. Pérez, Cuba under the Platt Amendment, 1902–1934 (1986).
10 J. Smith, Illusions of Conflict: Anglo-American Diplomacy toward Latin America, 1895-1896 (1979), 205–9.
11 Olney to Bayard, July 20, 1895: Papers relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1895, I, 545–62, quoted in J. Sexton, The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth-Century America (2011), 203.
12 D. Sheinin, ‘Rethinking Pan Americanism: An Introduction’, in D. Sheinin (ed.), Beyond the Ideal: Pan Americanism in Inter-American Affairs (2000), 1, at 1.
13 R. Freeman Smith, ‘Latin America, the United States and the European Powers, 1830–1930’, in L. Bethell (ed.), The Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. 4, c. 1870–1930 (1986), 83; D. Healy, James G. Blaine and Latin America (2001), 252–3.
14 R. Altamira, España y el programa americanista (1917).
15 I. Sepulveda, El sueño de la Madre Patria: Hispanoamericanismo y nacionalismo (2005), 142–51.
16 Scarfi, supra note 1, at 1–58.
17 Ibid., at 19–30.
18 A. Becker Lorca, ‘Alejandro Álvarez Situated: Subaltern Modernities and Modernisms that Subvert’, (2006) 19 LJIL 879; J. L. Esquirol, ‘Alejandro Álvarez’s Latin American Law: A Question of Identity’, (2006) 19 LJIL 931; C. Launder, ‘A Latin American in Paris: Alejandro Álvarez’s Le droit international américain’, (2006) 19 LJIL 957; L. Obregón, ‘Noted for Dissent: The International Life of Alejandro Álvarez’, (2006) 19 LJIL 983; K. Zobel, ‘Judge Alejandro Álvarez at the International Court of Justice (1946–1955): His Theory of a “New International Law” and Judicial Lawmaking’, (2006) 19 LJIL 1017.
19 A. Álvarez, ‘Latin America and International Law’, (1909) 3 AJIL 269; Álvarez, Le droit international américain: son fondement, sa nature (1910), 125–84. See also J. P. Scarfi, ‘In the Name of the Americas: The Pan-American Redefinition of the Monroe Doctrine and the Emerging Language of American International Law in the Western Hemisphere, 1898–1933’, (2016) 40 Diplomatic History 189.
20 On the historical trajectory of the AIIL see Scarfi, supra note 1.
21 J. Brown Scott (ed.), ‘The Classics of International Law’, Editorial Comment, (1909) 3 AJIL 701, at 703.
22 R. Altamira, Cuestiones hispano-americanas (1900). See also Sepulveda, supra note 15.
23 De la Rasilla, supra note 2, at 89–153.
24 C. Barcia Trelles, Significación originaria de la doctrina de Monroe (1916); C. Barcia Trelles, El imperialismo del petróleo y la paz mundial (1925).
25 E. Nys, Les droits des indiens et les publicistes espagnoles (1890); E. Nys, Les origines du droit international (1894); Koskenniemi, supra note 1, at 160; Koskenniemi, supra note 2, at 4.
26 Brown Scott, supra note 21, at 701. E. Nys, ‘Introduction’, in F. de Vitoria, De Indis et de Iure Belli Relectiones (1917).
27 By 1928, Scott reported Barcia’s pioneering initiative of creating the ‘Asociación Francisco de Vitoria’ in Spain in 1926, as well as new scholarship and publications on the work and legacy of Vitoria. See J. Brown Scott, ‘Asociación Francisco de Vitoria’, (1928) 22 AJIL 136.
28 Ibid., at 139.
29 See Scarfi, supra note 5, at 181–207.
30 See Amorosa, supra note 2, at 162.
31 C. Barcia Trelles, ‘Prólogo’, in J. Brown Scott, El origen español del derecho internacional moderno (1928), xviii.
32 Ibid., at vi.
33 C. Barcia Trelles, ‘Francisco de Vitoria et l’École moderne du Droit international’, (1927) 17 Recueil des cours de l’Académie de droit international de La Haye 133; C. Barcia Trelles, Francisco de Vitoria, fundador del derecho internacional moderno (1928).
34 C. Barcia Trelles, ‘La doctrine de Monroe dans son développement historique particulièrement en ce qui concerne les relations interamericaines’, (1930) 32 Recueil des cours de l’Académie de droit international de La Haye 397; C. Barcia Trelles, Doctrina de Monroe y cooperación internacional (1930).
35 J. Brown Scott, El origen español del derecho internacional moderno (1928).
36 See Barcia Trelles, supra note 31, at xx. On Vitoria’s notion of jus perigrinandi see A. Pagden, Spanish Imperialism and the Political Imagination (1990), at 21.
37 See Barcia Trelles, ibid., at xx.
38 Association Internationale Vitoria-Suarez, ‘Statuts appouvé par l´Assemblé Genérale constitutive, tenue a Oslo, le 17 aout 1932,’ (1932), at 1, James Brown Scott Papers, Washington D.C., Lauinger Library, Georgetown University, Box 62, folder 1.
39 On Latin American usages of the School of Salamanca and the Spanish political and legal tradition, particularly Vitoria and Suárez, in the context of the revolutions of independence, see T. Halperin Donghi, Tradición política española e ideología revolucionaria de Mayo (1985), 19–43, 93–120; R. A. Humphreys and J. Lynch (eds.), The Origins of Latin American Revolutions, 1808-1826 (1965), 9–10; E. Williamson, The Penguin History of Latin America (2009), 64–5. For a masterful and concise analysis of the international legal contributions of Vitoria and Suárez see A. Brett, ‘Francisco de Vitoria (1483–1546) and Francisco Suárez (1548–1617)’, in B. Fassbender and A. Peters (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law (2012), 1086.
40 Association Internationale Vitoria-Suarez, supra note 38, at 8.
41 A. Sánchez de Bustamante, ‘Review of James Brown Scott, The Spanish Origin of International. Francisco de Vitoria and his Law of Nations’, (1934) 34 Columbia Law Review 1165.
42 C. Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum (2003), 118.
43 See Barcia Trelles, supra note 31, at xxiii.
44 P. Lacoue-Labarthe and J. L. Nancy, The Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism (1988), 10–11. On the Romantic approach to international law see S. Neff, ‘A Short History of International Law’, in M. D. Evans (ed.), International Law (2003), 31.
45 C. Barcia Trelles, ‘Francisco de Vitoria et l’École moderne du Droit international’, (1927) 17 Recueil des cours de l’Académie de droit international de La Haye 133, at 115.
46 Ibid., at 117.
47 Ibid., at 142.
48 C. Barcia Trelles, Doctrina de Monroe y cooperación internacional (1931), at 699.
49 Ibid., at 160.
50 See Barcia Trelles, supra note 45, at 129.
51 Ibid., at 331.
52 J. Brown Scott, The Spanish Origins of International Law: Francisco de Vitoria and his Law of Nations (1934), at 140.
53 Ibid., at 142.
54 Ibid., at 275.
55 Ibid., at 280.
56 Ibid., at 280.
57 Ibid., at 282.
58 Ibid., at 288.
59 See Scarfi, supra note 5.
60 J. Brown Scott, Conferencias del presidente del Instituto Americano de Derecho Internacional (1938).
61 Ibid., at 145–78.
62 Ibid., at 99, 145.
63 See Vitoria, Political Writings, ed. A. Pagden and J. Lawrance (1991), at 40. See also Scott, supra note 52, at 22.
64 On these redefinitions of the Monroe Doctrine see Scarfi, supra note 19; J. P. Scarfi, ‘Denaturalizing the Monroe Doctrine: The rise of Latin American legal anti-imperialism in the face of the modern US and hemispheric redefinition of the Monroe Doctrine’, (2020) 33 LJIL 541.
65 For an excellent contextual analysis of Vitoria’s scepticism with Spanish sovereignty and the limits of its property rights over the American indians see A. Pagden, Spanish Imperialism and the Political Imagination (1990), 13–36.
66 See Sexton, supra note 11, at 47–84.
67 See W. A. Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (2009), 18–57; Sexton, ibid., at 5–8.
68 See Barcia Trelles, supra note 48, at 13, 24.
69 Ibid., at 23.
70 Ibid., at 37–8.
71 See Scarfi, supra note 64; J. P. Scarfi, ‘Mexican Revolutionary Constituencies and the Latin American Critique of US Intervention’, in A. Orford et al. (eds.), Revolutions in International Law: The Legacies of 1917 (2021), 218.
72 A. Álvarez, La diplomacia de Chile durante la emancipación y la sociedad international americana (1910), at 66–7, cited in J. Brown Scott, The American Institute of International Law: Its Declaration of Rights and Duties of Nations (1916), at 42.
73 A. Álvarez, The Monroe Doctrine: Its importance in the international life of the states of the New World (1924).
74 J. Brown Scott, ‘Preface’, in A. Álvarez, The Monroe Doctrine: Its importance in the international life of the states of the New World (1924), at vi.
75 J. Hepp, ‘James Brown Scott and the Rise of Public International Law’, (2008) 7 Journal of Gilded Age and Progressive Era 151, at 175.
76 J. Brown Scott, ‘The Discovery of America and its Influence on International Law; The Fourth Hundredth Anniversary of Francisco de Vitoria’s Disquisitions “De Indis” of 1532’, address delivered at Catholic University, 25 February 1929, James Brown Scott Papers, Washington DC, Lauinger Library, Georgetown University, box 62, folder 10, 1, at 3.
77 ‘Decree of the President of Cuba Establishing a Palace of the American Institute of International Law at La Habana’, Gaceta Oficial, March 1929, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Year Book for 1929 (1929), at 197–8.
78 J. Brown Scott, ‘The Seventh International Conference of American States’, (1934) 28 AJIL 219, at 229–30. This resolution was fulfilled 30 years later in October 1963.