Laws of the Indies

Laws of the Indies, the entire body of law promulgated by the Spanish crown during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries for the government of its kingdoms (colonies) outside Europe, chiefly in the Americas; more specifically, a series of collections of decrees (cedulas) compiled and published by royal authorization, culminating in the Recopilación de las leyes de los reinos de Indias (1680). From the beginning of the colonization of the Americas, Castilian law constituted the basic private law in the colonies, but, because special conditions prevailed there, the Spanish crown legislated specifically for the Indies (America), in the area of public law. Thus, an important aspect of such legislation was the adaptation of Castilian administrative and judicial institutions to the governmental needs of the New World. The Laws of Burgos issued on Dec. 27, 1512, by Ferdinand II, the Catholic, regulated relations between Spaniards and the conquered Indians, particularly to ensure the spiritual and material welfare of the latter, who were often severely treated. The New Laws of the Indies (1542) of Charles I, which sought to correct the inadequacies of the previous code, met with armed resistance from the American colonists and were reissued in a weaker version in 1552. In the same year a commercial code was promulgated for the Casa de Contratación (Board of Trade). In 1563 the powers and procedures of the colonial audiencias (courts) were defined. The Ordinances Concerning Discoveries, issued in 1573, forbade unauthorized operations against independent Indian peoples.

Attempts at general codification in the 16th century proved inadequate. In 1624 work was begun on the code, which finally emerged as the Recopilación. The undertaking was supervised by two noted jurists: Rodrigo de Aguiar y Acuña and, later, Juan Solórzano Pereira. Before its eventual promulgation in 1681, it was further edited and abbreviated by Fernando Jiménez Paniagua. It contains 6,377 laws in nine books of uneven length, subdivided into 218 títulos, or chapters. In brief, the contents of the books are: (1) church government and education; (2) the Council of the Indies and the audiencias; (3) political and military administration—viceroys and captains general; (4) discoveries, colonization, and municipal government; (5) provincial government and lower courts; (6) Indians; (7) penal law; (8) public finance; and (9) navigation and commerce. Subsequent new legislation, especially that issued in the later 18th century under Charles III (1759–88) concerning commerce and administration, made the Recopilación obsolete. Recodification was begun in 1805 but never finished; instead, the last two editions printed in the 19th century (three were printed in the 18th century) contained only supplementary sections of revised legislation. In this form the code was applied to the remnants of Spain’s old colonial empire (Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines) until their loss in 1898.

The Recopilación has been criticized for its many inconsistencies, periodic inexactness in phrasing, and excessive attention to trivial and ceremonial matters and to commercial regulations, which were virtually unenforcible, and for depriving colonials of a responsible role in government and commerce. Yet it was the most comprehensive law code ever instituted for a colonial empire and set forth humane (if often ignored) principles for treatment of Indians.