Editing Slave codes (section)

==Spanish slave codes==
In practice, the slave codes of the [[Spanish colonization of the Americas|Spanish colonies]] were local laws, similar to those in other regions. There was an overarching legal code, [[Siete Partidas|Las Siete Partidas]], which granted many specific rights to the slaves in these regions, but there is little record of it actually being used to benefit the slaves in the Americas. Las Siete Partidas was compiled in the thirteenth century, long before the colonization of the new world, and its treatment of slavery was based on the [[Slavery in ancient Rome|Roman tradition]]. [[Frank Tannenbaum]], an influential sociologist who wrote on the treatment of slaves in the Americas, treated the laws in Las Siete Partidas as an accurate reflection of treatment, but later scholarship has moved away from this viewpoint, arguing that the official laws in Las Siete Partidas did not reflect practices in the colonies.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Díaz|first=María Elena|date=2004|title=Beyond Tannenbaum|journal=Law and History Review|volume=22|issue=2|pages=371–376|doi=10.2307/4141650|jstor=4141650|s2cid=232394988}}</ref>

An attempt to unify the Spanish slave codes, the Codigo Negro, was cancelled without ever going into effect because it was unpopular with the slave-owners in the Americas.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Many thousands gone : the first two centuries of slavery in North America|author=Berlin, Ira|others=Rogers D. Spotswood Collection.|year=1998|isbn=978-0674810921|location=Cambridge, Massachusetts|pages=[https://archive.org/details/manythousandsgon00berl/page/221 221]|oclc=38966102|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/manythousandsgon00berl/page/221}}</ref>

The [[Laws of the Indies]] were an ongoing body of laws, modified throughout the history of the Spanish colonies, that incorporated many slave laws in the later versions.<ref name="ingersoll 1995, 53-54">Ingersoll 1995, pp. 53-54</ref>