Stevens, Scott Manning. "The Doctrine of Discovery." Throughlines. www.throughlines.org/suite-content/the-doctrine-of-discovery. [Date accessed].
The Doctrine of Discovery
A brief history of how the Doctrine of Discovery became legal precedent for the seizure of Native lands across the world.
The Doctrine of Discovery is one of the oldest and continuously cited legal precedents in the Western Hemisphere. First issued as a series of papal bulls to settle disputes between two Iberian Catholic colonial powers, Spain and Portugal, the doctrine rippled across colonial law for centuries. This doctrine offered the patina of legal legitimacy from the Catholic Church to all colonial projects across both Africa and the Americas. Colonial conquest became inextricably linked to the expansion of Christianity across the world. Equating Christianity with civilization meant that peoples indigenous to a place that did not practice Christianity were not recognized as civilized and had no right to title over their lands.
Further learning
Recommended
The false conflation of indigeneity and race
It is imperative that, while teaching about indigeneity in our classrooms, we dissect how the term came to be and how it is often conflated with race. Using texts by Richard Hakluyt and Sir Thomas Browne help to demonstrate the conflation to students.
