Francisco de Vitória e o Direito dos Índios no Século XVI

Abstract

The present work, following a chronological order, begins with an exposition of the reasons that led to the phenomenon of great navigations and its main exponents, flowing into the great discovery, which is not simply a new geography, but a new humanity , neither larger nor smaller, but completely unknown. To analyze the first contacts between Europeans and Native Americans, official accounts by Pero Vaz de Caminha and Cristóvão Colombo were used, as well as historiographical materials that help to understand the reality of the Amerindians and not those endorsed by Eurocentrism. The focus of the study, however, are the legal instruments that regulated the relationship between European and Native American man, and the happy contributions of Francisco de Vitória, who turned the laws that once based colonizing desires into true embryos of human rights.