What were the New Laws of the Indies of 1542?
The New Laws of the Indies
Las Leyes Nuevas
20 November 1542. On 20 November 1542 Charles V signed the Leyes Nuevas, the New Laws 'for the good treatment and preservation of the Indians'.
What happened
On 20 November 1542 Charles V signed the Leyes Nuevas, the New Laws 'for the good treatment and preservation of the Indians'. Pressed by Bartolomé de las Casas and theologians such as Francisco de Vitoria, they forbade the enslavement of Indigenous people, limited the encomienda and ordered that grants should not be inherited but return to the Crown. The settlers were furious: in Peru Gonzalo Pizarro led a revolt and the first viceroy, Blasco Núñez Vela, was killed in 1546; in 1545 the Crown withdrew the clause on inheritance. The encomienda survived, weakened, for generations, but the laws placed Indigenous people under the Crown's direct protection and fed the debate about the justice of the conquest.
Say it
Las Leyes Nuevas prohibieron la esclavitud de los indios.
The New Laws forbade the enslavement of the Indians.
Why it matters
The New Laws set the legal principle that the peoples of the Americas were free subjects of the Crown, a principle broken constantly but never abandoned.
Read about it
Connected
- The demographic collapse of the Americas (1492–1650)
- The demographic collapse of the Americas (1492–1650)
- The Laws of Burgos (1512)
- The Laws of Burgos (1512)
- The Valladolid debate (August 1550–1551)
- The Valladolid debate (August 1550–1551)
- Before: Elcano sails round the world
- After: The Valladolid debate
Sources
- Las congregaciones de Veracruz en la época hispánica (Juan Pablo Salazar Andreu), Iushistoria — Universidad del Salvador (Argentina)
- Bartolomé de las Casas — World History Encyclopedia
- Cronología de Bartolomé de las Casas — Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes
- The Iberian Conquest of the Americas — World History Encyclopedia
- Cronología de Carlos I de España y V de Alemania — Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes