Review of Timothy Bowers Vasko, Making All the World America: Native Information and the Doctrine of Discovery (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2026)

Abstract

Steven T. Newcomb reviews Timothy Bowers Vasko's Making All the World America: Native Information and the Doctrine of Discovery (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2026). Vasko argues that the Doctrine of Discovery worked not through the suppression of Indigenous peoples but through European recognition of Indigenous rights and sovereignty, incorporating Native peoples as religious, political, and property-owning subjects. Newcomb finds this reading inaccurate and incomplete. Applying his "domination translator," he shows that Vasko's key terms—dominium, dominion, sovereignty, empire, incorporation—all resolve into the Christian European claim of a right of domination over non-Christian nations. The review faults Vasko for omitting an etymology of dominium, for passing over the explicit language of domination in the papal bulls of 1452, 1455, and 1493, and for misstating the Vatican's March 2023 statement as a repudiation of those bulls. Newcomb concludes that "discovery" is not the issue; the continuing claim of a right of domination is.