Bibliographic Essay 571Territory,” in Fassbender and Peters (eds.), Oxford Handbook, 840– 61. For an impor-
tant discussion of the Roman- law backdrop to the New World practices and debates,
see Lauren Benton and Benjamin Straumann, “Acquiring Empire by Law: From Ro-
man Doctrine to Early Modern Eu ro pe an Practice,” 28 Law and History Review 1– 38
(2010). For fascinating accounts of ceremonies of possession, see Arthur S. Keller, Oli-
ver J. Lissitzyn, and Frederick J. Mann, Creation of Rights of Sovereignty through Sym-
bolic Acts 1400– 1800 (Columbia University Press, 1938); and (more recently) Patricia
Seed, Ceremonies of Possession in Eu rope’s Conquest of the New World, 1492– 1640
(Cambridge University Press, 1995). Both of these works provide country- by- country
surveys of state practice. On the dispute between Spain and Portugal over legal title to
the Canary Islands, the principal work is Joseph F. O’Callaghan, “Castile, Portugal,
and the Canary Islands: Claims and Counterclaims, 1344– 1479,” 24 Viator 287– 310
(1993). See also Felipe Fernández- Armesto, Before Columbus: Exploration and Coloni-
sation from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1229– 1492 (Macmillan, 1987), 153– 59,
171– 92, 207– 12.
On the nature of Spanish rights in and to the New World, see generally Anthony
Pagden, Spanish Imperialism and the Po liti cal Imagination (Yale University Press,
1990), 13– 36; David A. Lupher, Romans in a New World: Classical Models in Sixteenth-
Century Spanish America (University of Michigan Press, 2003); J. H. Parry, Th e Span-
ish Th eory of Empire in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 1940);
Muldoon, Popes, Lawyers and Infi dels, 132– 52; and Lindsay G. Robertson, Conquest
by Law: How the Discovery of America Dispossessed Indigenous Peoples of Th eir Lands
(Oxford University Press, 2005). On the institution of the requerimiento, see Seed,
Ceremonies of Possession, 72– 94; and James Muldoon, “John Wyclif and the Rights of
the Infi dels: Th e Requerimiento Re- Examined,” 36 Americas 301– 16 (1980). On the
humanitarian justifi cation for conquests, there is much of interest in Daniel Schwartz,
“Th e Principle of the Defence of the Innocent and the Conquest of America: ‘Save
Th ose Dragged towards Death,’ ” 9 JHIL 263– 91 (2007). On the principle of res nullius
(rendered, somewhat anachronistically, as terra nullius), see David Boucher, “Th e Law
of Nations and the Doctrine of Terra Nullius,” in Olaf Asbach and Peter Schröder
(ed s.), War, the State and International Law in Seventeenth- Century Eu rope, 63– 82
(Ashgate, 2010). For an instructive comparative survey of the various Eu ro pe an em-
pires in the New World, see Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of
Empire in Spain, Britain and France c. 1500– c. 1800 (Yale University Press, 1995).
On the Spanish attitudes toward the Indians, see Lewis Hanke, Th e Spanish Strug-
gle for Justice in the Conquest of America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1949);
Lewis Hanke, Aristotle and the American Indians: A Study in Race Prejudice in the
Modern World (Hollis and Carter, 1959); and Patricia Seed, “ ‘Are Th ese Not Also
Men?’: Th e Indian’s Humanity and Capacity for Spanish Civilization,” 25 J. Latin Am.
Stud. 629– 52 (1993). On the great debate at Valladolid between Las Casas and
Sepúlveda, see Lewis Hanke, All Mankind Is One: A Study of the Disputation between
Bartolomé de las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda in 1550 on the Intellectual and