SOURCE: Zavala, Silvio. “The American Utopia of the Sixteenth Century.” The Huntington Library Quarterly 10, no. 4 (August 1947): 337-47.

In the following essay, Zavala argues that Thomas More's Utopia served as an early model for the relatively humanistic treatment of Indians in Mexico in the sixteenth century by the Spanish jurist and bishop Vasco de Quiroga.

The subject to be discussed here draws attention to the Europe of the Renaissance. Instead of dwelling upon the enthusiasm felt by the Renaissance man for the literary and artistic values of the ancient world, we shall stress the attitudes which he adopted when he incorporated them into his own life. For it is obvious that it was not possible out of so distant and diverse an environment to achieve a complete restoration of the classical world. Thus a return to antiquity was translated into an expression of the intimate needs of the new...