First European Colonization Wave - Rule in The Colonies: The Leyes de Burgos and The Code Noir

Rule in The Colonies: The Leyes De Burgos and The Code Noir

The January 27, 1512 Leyes de Burgos codified the government of the indigenous people of the New World, since the common law of Spain wasn't applied in these recently discovered territories. The scope of the laws were originally restricted to the island of Hispaniola, but were later extended to Puerto Rico and Jamaica. They authorized and legalized the colonial practice of creating encomiendas, where Indians were grouped together to work under colonial masters, limiting the size of these establishments to a minimum of 40 and a maximum of 150 people. The document finally prohibited the use of any form of punishment by the encomenderos, reserving it for officials established in each town for the implementation of the laws. It also ordered that the Indians be catechesized, outlawed bigamy, and required that the huts and cabins of the Indians be built together with those of the Spanish. It respected, in some ways, the traditional authorities, granting chiefs exemptions from ordinary jobs and granting them various Indians as servants. The poor fulfilment of the laws in many cases lead to inummerable protests and claims. In fact, the laws were so often poorly applied that they were seen as simply a legalization of the previous poor situation. This would create momentum for reform, carried out through the Leyes Nuevas ("New Laws") in 1542. Ten years later, Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas would publish A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, in the midst of the Valladolid Controversy, a debate about the existence or not of souls in Amerindians bodies. Las Casas, bishop of Chiapas, was opposed to Sepúlveda, who claimed Amerindians were "natural slaves"...

In the French empire, slave trade and other colonial rules were regulated by Louis XIV's 1689 Code Noir.