The first English translation of four key texts from the dispute between Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda and Bartolomé de las Casas regarding the justice of Spain's invasion of the Americas, culminating in their famous debate in Valladolid in 1550-51. A detailed introduction on the impacts of Sepúlveda's ideas that continue to be felt today.

Luke Glanville is Associate Professor of International Relations at the Australian National University. His research spans past and present thought and practice regarding international protection against atrocities, refugee exclusion, and colonial conquest, and he has most recently authored Sharing Responsibility: The History and Future of Protection from Atrocities.
David Lupher is Professor of Classics, Emeritus, at the University of Puget Sound. His main area of research is classical receptions in early modern colonial America. He is the author of books including Romans in a New World: Classical Models in Sixteenth-Century Spanish America (2003), as well as a translation of Alberico Gentili's Wars of the Romans (2011).
Maya Feile Tomes is Lorna Close Lecturer in Spanish at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, Bye-Fellow in Modern Languages at Peterhouse, and Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of Classics, Cambridge. She has most recently co-edited Brill's Companion to Classics in the Early Americas (2021). This is her second book.

• Nationalist historians still have the upper hand in the interpretation of this event, almost invariably and misleadingly described as a "debate"... Sepúlveda on the Spanish Invasion of the Americas: Defending empire, debating Las Casas is a long-overdue and thoroughly welcome corrective to this widespread opinion.