Conclusion

Summary

Much of the conceptual and historical repository for international legal thought emerging out of seventeenth-century humanist lawyers and natural philosophers was gleaned from early modern Spanish sources based on the encounter with the New World. That initial contact, incursion, and subjugation of native peoples through Christopher Columbus, Hernán Cortés, Francisco Pizarro, and many other so-called travelers, along with their indigenous allies, would culminate legally and politically for the imperial conscience at the Valladolid junta. If Westphalia, even in a demythologized sense, represents a crucial ideological turning point for the dominant story of modern international relations, it is a story that cannot ignore the historical significance of Valladolid in the development of the idea and practice of world order.