Council of the Indies

The Council of the Indies, formally the Royal and Supreme Council of the Indies, was the most important administrative organ of the Spanish Empire for the Americas and the other overseas territories Spain governed, including the Spanish East Indies. It was created in 1524 by Charles V on the conciliar model of the Council of Castile, after the conquest of the Aztec Empire showed how much the Americas mattered. At first it travelled with the emperor; Philip II made it an autonomous body with legislative, executive and judicial functions and seated it in Madrid in 1561. In its judicial role it could hear important civil suits appealed from the audiencias of the New World, acting as a court of last resort, and it also supervised the Casa de Contratacion at Seville. It oversaw the codification of colonial legislation in the Laws of the Indies of 1680. The Cortes of Cadiz abolished it in 1812, Ferdinand VII briefly restored it in 1814, and it was definitively abolished in 1834.