Foreigners and absentees barred from the encomiendas: the rule that a province's rewards belong to the people who live in it
A royal cédula of 1549 shut foreigners out of the encomiendas of the Indies, and the doctrine built on it went further: not even Spaniards could receive one unless they were present and resident in the province, and in a contested succession a resident beat an absentee of higher degree or older age. The crown's own jurist reports that the rule was broken constantly, that the viceroys said so to the king, and that the king acknowledged the harm and promised restraint.
Why this wins its question: Search for foreigners in the Spanish Indies and what wins is a sentence about Spain sealing off its empire, usually offered as evidence of mercantilist closure, with no document behind it. This object goes to the chapter that actually carried the rule and prints what it says: the cédula of Valladolid of 22 February 1549; the reason, that the encomiendas were rewards owed to the vassals who helped discover, conquer and settle, and charges for the defence of the province; a law of the Partidas cited for it; France held up as the model of exclusion, with the droit d'aubaine named and weighed for import into the Indies; the rule extended to absent Spaniards, so that a resident beat an absentee of higher degree in a succession; and then, in the same pages, the crown jurist's admission that the Indies were in fact peopled "por la mayor parte" by foreigners of every nation, that the best encomiendas were going to them under letters of naturalisation and compositions, that two viceroys of Peru told the king so, and that the king agreed and carried on. It also prints the amnesty of 1546 for the followers of the Peruvian rebellions, and the author's own objection to it.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The exclusion is stated as a finding of positive law, with a document and a date. In libro III, capítulo VI of Juan de Solórzano Pereira's Política Indiana, §33 reports "prohibidos de ser encomendados en estas Encomiendas de las Indias sin dispensacion particular, à todos los Estrangeros de ellas, y de los Reynos de Castilla, y Leon, como expressamente lo advierte, y dispone una Cedula Real dada en Valladolid à 22. de Febrero de 1549", a point he says Antonio de León Pinelo also touched. The exclusion is not only of non-Spaniards: it reaches anyone foreign to the Indies and to the crowns of Castile and León.
The ground offered is the one on which the whole institution was defended, and it is worth quoting because it explains why the encomienda was not simply a revenue grant. Foreigners are excluded, §33 continues, because these fiefs or encomiendas "son premios propios de los Vassallos de nuestra Corona, que las ayudaron à descubrir, conquistar, y poblar"; and §34 adds that since they are also ordered to the defence of those provinces, this is much better and more securely obtained by entrusting it "à Vassallos propios, que à estraños". The reward is tied to a duty, and the duty to residence.
A law of the Partidas is cited for the principle, in Castilian old enough to date itself. The people, §34 quotes, "Es tenudo el Pueblo, à semejante de esto, de obrar por amor en la tierra, donde son naturales, ennobreciendola, è acrecentandola faciendo linage en ella, que la puebla." The argument being made about American provinces is a medieval Castilian argument about attachment to the land one is native to, applied to a settler population that was not native to it.
The comparative argument at §35 is the one modern readers will least expect, because it makes France the model of exclusion rather than Spain. It has always been held just, Solórzano writes, that the rewards of each province be distributed among its natives, "y nos dan buena leccion de ello en Francia, y en otras partes, donde no solo excluyen de sus Oficios, y Beneficios à los estraños; pero ni aun de los bienes, que en ellas adquieren, por muchos años que las ayan habitado, les dexan libre disposicion en su muerte, tomandolos para el Fisco, como vacantes; sino es que ayan ganado Cartas, que llaman de Naturaleza".
He then names that French institution, wonders aloud whether it should have been imported into the Indies, and in doing so records a fact about the Indies that cuts against the picture of a closed empire. "Al qual derecho llaman Albinage", §36 begins - the droit d'aubaine - "y no sé si huviera sido, ò será conveniente, que se introduxera en las Indias, las quales por nuestro gran descuido pueblan, y desfrutan por la mayor parte gentes estrañas de todas Naciones, y entre ellas (lo que es de mayor sentimiento) de las rebeldes à Dios, y à su Rey, de suerte, que podemos llorar con Jeremias, que su herencia, grossedad, y riqueza se ha passado à los Estrangeros." The complaint is xenophobic in form and is evidence against its own premise: on the crown jurist's own account the Indies were populated and exploited in large part by people of every nation.
The enforcement record is admitted in the next paragraph, and the admission is unusually direct. Since that remedy comes too late, §37 argues, it is at least fitting to press the rule that encomiendas not be given to foreigners, "porque es grande la relaxacion, y dissolucion, que en esto ha havido, y ay, dandoles las mejores con varios titulos, y pretextos, y queriendolos ya hacer, y llamar naturales, por estar casados, y domiciliados en aquella tierra, ò compuestos por la estrangeria, ò por las Cartas, que pretenden haver sacado de naturaleza". Marriage, domicile, payment of a composition for foreign status, and letters of naturalisation were all being used to get round the bar, and the best encomiendas were going to people who used them.
The treatise's own answer to naturalisation is restrictive, and it is illustrated with a named case that shows the crown taking the same line against its own viceroy. Even where such letters are genuine, §38 argues, they will rarely have been granted with dispensation to hold offices and benefices, and much less these encomiendas, "que tan debidas son à los naturales". Solórzano then reports "una notable Cedula, en que fue reprehendido el Virrey del Perú Marqués de Cañete, porque havia dado una buena Encomienda en aquél Reyno al General Miguél Angel Philipon, aunque havia hecho en él considerables servicios", the reason given being that such a reward would better and more justly have gone to the natives of the kingdom who had conquered or settled it, or to their children or descendants, as the most deserving.
The rule that gives this subject its wider interest is at §39, because it excludes Spaniards too. Not only may encomiendas not be given to foreigners, "pero ni aun à Españoles naturales de estos, ò aquellos Reynos, que no estuvieren presentes, y residentes en la misma Provincia, donde se ha de proveer la Encomienda, al tiempo de su vacante". The operative category is residence, not origin: a Castilian in Madrid is as excluded as a Genoese.
The same paragraph carries the sharpest consequence of that rule and the admission that it too was being broken. Even in the succession to encomiendas already granted, §39 records, absentees are not admitted, and those who are in the province when the succession opens "les ganan la vez [...] aunque sean de edad, grado, ò sexo inferior", by cédulas of 1536 and 1552. A resident of lower degree, younger age or - in the text's own ordering - inferior sex took precedence over an absent heir with the better claim. Solórzano introduces the whole rule by saying that it "aora está relaxado, por las muchas, que como he dicho, se dan à personas de España".
The best-documented failure of the rule is in §40, and it is documented by the crown answering its own viceroys. Solórzano says he holds cédulas of 22 December 1612 and 28 March 1620 addressed to the viceroys of Peru, the Marqués de Montesclaros and the Príncipe de Esquilache, from which it appears that they had consulted His Majesty about the harm arising from giving so many and so rich encomiendas to persons of Spain who neither resided nor intended to reside in those provinces, and that the reply was that His Majesty and his Royal Council of the Indies recognised the same and would take particular care not to exceed in this in future. What follows is the treatise's verdict on such promises: "aunque todo lo vencen las ocasiones, que se van ofreciendo, y las apretadas instancias, y diligencias de los que piden, y pretenden, à que muchas veces no pueden negarse los Principes, por mas que lo deseen, y procuren, como en sus leyes lo están claramente confessando."
One further exclusion in the same run is a political one, and its lifting is the most attractive thing on the page. At §41 old cédulas barred from the honour and profit of encomiendas those who in the disturbances of Peru had shown themselves notorious followers of the men who caused them, and their descendants; "pero esto lo templó luego la Real benignidad, y clemencia del señor Emperador Carlos Quinto de gloriosa memoria por Provision del año de 1546", judging it of greater service and more conducive to the quiet of those provinces that the matter be passed over and that even the guilty be allowed any excuse, in the hope that they would thereafter be found faithful and obliged, "libres de la nota de semejante exclusion, como ha sucedido". An inheritable political disqualification was created and then deliberately abandoned within a few years of the civil wars it arose from.
The author's own view of that amnesty is on the same page and is not generous, which is why this entry states it rather than ending on the clemency. At §42, in strict law "bien se vé la justificacion de ella: pues siendo estas Encomiendas premio de beneméritos, y en defensa del Reyno, no se debian, ni podian dar à los que huviessen excedido en su daño, como ni se pueden dar Feudos nuevos à los Vandidos, y delinquentes, y aun los antiguos se pierden, y quitan por tales causas". The jurist thought the exclusion legally right; the emperor's decision to drop it was a political judgement against him.
What this passage is and is not should be stated plainly. It is a chapter of doctrine in the standard manual of colonial government, printed with dates and document references, in which the crown's own minister sets out a residence-based rule for the distribution of the principal reward in the Indies and then reports that it was constantly evaded, that the viceroys complained, and that the king acknowledged the harm, promised restraint and went on. It is not a record of practice: no cédula named here was opened in its own printing, no register of grants to foreigners or to absentees was consulted for this entry, and the proportion of encomiendas actually held by non-residents at any date is not established by anything read here.