Just wars of accumulation: the Salamanca School, race and colonial capitalism

Abstract

This paper explores the links between international law, race and colonial capitalism through the Spanish and Portuguese Conquests of the Americas. Turning to the early modern philosophers of the School of Salamanca, Bohrer argues that economic theories of emergent capitalism are deeply intertwined with the racial theories of colonial conquest. Moreover, through a close reading of these texts, and in particular of the texts of Francisco de Vitoria, this paper argues that the conceptions of international trade, commerce and travel at the heart of liberal notions of international law are themselves suffused with the logics of racism, colonisation, and capitalist accumulation.