From the time of the Crusades to the encroachment of European colonizers in Africa and the “New World” during the 15th Century, the Catholic Church published a series of pronouncements, or “bulls,” codifying the right of Catholic monarchs to invade, subdue, and enslave whatever non-Christian peoples they found on their expeditions of conquest and discovery. These Papal pronouncements, and centuries of subsequent religious, secular, and judicial decrees, form the rationale for occupation, colonization, subjugation, and enslavement known as the Doctrine of Discovery.
Terra Infidelibus
The concept of Terra Infidelibus arose during the 11th Century to justify the appropriation of lands inhabited by non-Christian peoples, particularly Muslims, but including e.g. the people inhabiting what is now Ireland, whose subjugation was sanctified by Pope Adrian IV in the 1155 bull Laudibiliter.
Pope Adrian IV
Dum Diversas
This bull was pronounced in 1452 by Pope Nicholas V to justify the subjugation of Muslim people in Africa and their relegation to perpetual slavery.
Pope Nicholas V
Romanus Pontifex
In 1455 Pope Nicholas V declared in this bull that King Alfonso V of Portugal would have dominion over almost the entirety of Africa, from the Tropic of Cancer to the Cape of Good Hope, with the attendant rights of subjugation and enslavement of its peoples, and to the exclusion of all other Christian monarchs.
Inter caetera
Inter caetera, issued by Pope Alexander VI in 1493, was the first Papal bull specific to the “New World” and was intended to settle the dispute between Spain and Portugal by allotting the dominance and control afforded by the previous bulls on a geographical basis. Portugal was granted dominion over the easternmost portion, while the bulk of the newly discovered continents was given to Spain.
Pope Alexander VI
Subsequent application: the Monroe Doctrine
Though intended to dissuade European colonization, the Monroe Doctrine by default claimed hegemony over both continents of the “New World” by the newly independent United States of America. And though at the time of its articulation by President James Monroe in 1823 the US did not have the military might or economic influence to enforce it, the Monroe Doctrine remained foundational in US foreign policy, especially in regards to the conquest and subjugation of Native peoples in what ultimately became the Plains, Mountain, and Western States.
Subsequent application: Johnson v MacIntosh
In the same year, the Supreme Court heard a land dispute between two European landowners, one of whom had purchased land from a Piankeshaw person, and the other had been awarded land by the federal government. In their unanimous decision, the Court nullified the plaintiff’s purchase, since under the Doctrine of Discovery ownership of the land had been ceded to the European occupiers and therefore was not the Piankeshaws to sell. This further codified the unequivocal right of Europeans to ownership of lands and conversely denying ownership to Native peoples and relegating them to mere occupancy.
Subsequent application: Manifest Destiny
As the settler-colonizers grew in number and in power, the religious basis of the Doctrine of Discovery took on a secular basis as well, expressed in the political ethic of Manifest Destiny. The premise of Manifest Destiny retained the notion that expansion, subjugation, enslavement, and appropriation by European peoples – now citizens of the United States – were sanctified by God, but additionally that the occupiers were morally compelled to impose their inherently superior European culture and Republican system of governance on all other peoples. Westward expansion continued apace, culminating in the acquisition of Alaska in 1867 and the Phillippines, Guam, and American Samoa in 1898.