De infieles asiáticos a gentiles americanos: La transición en la conciencia cristiana a propósito de los habitantes de América

This research seeks to demonstrate that the American Indians only represented a novelty for Europeans when they stopped being considered as infidels from Asia and began to be considered as gentiles. The research will take into account recent contributions that demonstrate America continued to be conceptualized as part of Asia, and later as an island proximate to Asia, well into later decades. Likewise, the History of the Concepts of “infidel” and “gentile” will be explored, tracing their categorization back to medieval Christian Europe. Both contributions will serve to explain how Europeans evangelized and combated the indigenous people as infidels during the first decades of the 16th century, and how, if gentility had been discovered earlier, they would have acted differently.