Francisco de Vitora was a leading figure in early modern social and legal thought, often credited with founding both “international law” and “just war theory.” Writing in the Catholic natural law tradition, de Vitora engaged the question whether indigenous persons in the America’s could be considered either property of the Spanish crown or else were slaves by nature (as Aristotle described certain persons).

To what extend does Francisco de Vitoria’s selected work a) exhibit a settler colonial mindset in its views of people, property, and Spanish colonialism? And, to what extent does de Vitora’s work challenge settler colonialist thought?