Reparation in the Colony

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

This course will examine 16th-century legislative and grassroots efforts to force Spanish conquistadores and encomenderos to make restitution to Indigenous individuals and communities for the illegitimate theft of their lives, land, and labor. We will read laws and policy proposals, lawsuits, wills, complaints to the Crown, missionary manuals, and treatises on distributive justice in order to understand how these efforts arose and why they ultimately failed. In their final projects, students will trace connections between this 16th-century movement and contemporary legislative and grassroots movements for reparations for Black and Indigenous people across the Americas.