This study, which draws on the author’s 1993 law school thesis, seeks to clarify the juridical nature of Spain’s American territories. While these areas are usually considered as “colonies” by the same standard as French and English possession, the author here supports the theory—already presented by Ricardo Levene—that these would be more properly defined as “kingdoms”—political units linked by a personal connection to the sovereign and associated with the crown of Castile.
The author believes that the lack of representative institutions like the Cortes does not mean that the American provinces should not be considered kingdoms. This is, in fact, the consequence of the evolution of the category of kingdom beyond the Atlantic. In the peninsula, the concept came to take on the meaning of a sociopolitical entity able to generate its own law, both traditional (fueros) and positive (Cortes), and in which different powers and jurisdictions could...
