Introduction: Francisco de Vitoria and the Origins of the Modern Global Order

Abstract

This Introduction seeks to demonstrate how the various contributions to the volume relate to one another. It seeks, also, to locate them in the context of Francisco de Vitoria’s attempt to create a new supra-national juridical order. This, although it was clearly intended to offer some degree of legitimacy for the Spanish occupation of the Americas, was also conceived as a “law of nations” that, while grounded ultimately upon natural law, would be, in essence, a positive law derived from the presumed consensus of a hypothetical international community.