The Valladolid debate (1550-1551)

Formal disputation convoked by the Spanish crown at Valladolid in 1550-51, in which Bartolomé de las Casas confronted Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda over the justice of the conquests and the rational capacity of the American Indians — while new conquests stood officially suspended. Hanke's scholarship presents it as the first great public controversy over the rights of colonized peoples.