FRANCISCO DE VITORIA AND THE COLONIAL ORIGINS OF

HILE HUGO GROTIUS is generally regarded as the principal B ~ forerunner of modern international law, historians of the discipline trace its primitive origins (Kennedy, 1986) to the works of Francisco de Vitoria, a sixteenth-century Spanish theologian and jurist.1 Consequently, it is entirely appropriate that the Carnegie endowment commenced its renowned series of ’Classics of International Law ’ with Vitoria’s two famous lectures, ’De Indis Noviter Inventis ’ and ’De Jure Bellis Hispanorum in Bar-baros’.2 Vitoria’s contributions to the discipline are various, and scholars examining the issue have pointed, among other things, to Grotius’s indebted-ness to the teachings of Vitoria (Scott, 1934) and to Vitoria’s identification of certain fundamental theoretical issues confronting the discipline. Scholars still refer to the enduring significance of Vitoria’s thinking on the law of wa