From Italy to the Indies: A Voyage of Common Law

The adoption of the European notion of “derecho común” led some 20th century historians to explain the phenomenon of the American legal experience as unitary, and organically constructed and centred, just as happened in the respublica cristiana. Many historians seduced by the cult of the systematic approach forgot that the term “system” was still unknown within the legal context of the 16th century which preferred others terms such as methodus, ars, ordo, ratio. But the systemic school allowed the transfer of legal concepts from the scientifically rigorous German pandectism of the second half of the 19th century, to the “Indias” casuistic environment of the 16th century. This allowed Indian historians the possibility to apply interpretive forms from which it was possible to imagine indian law without Indians or India, and a legal history of conquest without conquest and without conquered.