The Legal Mechanics of Spanish Conquest: War and Peace in Early Colonial Peru

Abstract

Whereas Anuschka Tischer’s chapter focusses on the early modern war discourse in Europe, Arnulf Becker Lorca in this chapter examines the legal mechanics of conquest in early colonial Peru. Conventional and postcolonial legal histories focus on the recognition of the indio as free subject, a reaction to the excesses of conquistadores that marked the beginning of the legal regulation of conquest. In contrast, this chapter shows that conquest from the beginning was a regulated enterprise. The law offered a mechanics of conquest. But this law was not only for the Spanish, but also for natives, including Inca elites to manoeuvre. Where conventional histories see in the law a promise of peace between Spaniards and natives, postcolonial histories (presented by Mallavarapu and Chimni in this volume) see a justification of war. In this chapter, we will see a continuum between war and peace with plenty of room for Spanish violence, with some room for Inca resistance, and with a potential, although limited, space for coexistence between the two.