“No other European state,” in the words of historian Patricia Seed, “created a fully ritualized protocol for declaring war against indigenous peoples.” Other European powers found the Spanish Requirement odd, if not barbaric; British, French, and Dutch officials criticized and mocked it as a recognition of and concession to Islam, their collective enemy. It was, as we have seen, a direct descendant of a culture that had dominated Spain for centuries, and it was thoroughly alien to the rest of Europe, where Islam had never ruled.
