Written by a Spanish historian and Dominican friar, this book gives a firsthand account of the Spanish conquest of the Americas and the treatment of indigenous peoples. A powerful and controversial work that still resonates today.
Bartolomé de Las Casas Book order
November 11, 1474 – July 17, 1566
Bartolomé de las Casas was a 16th-century Spanish historian and social reformer who became the first resident Bishop of Chiapas and the first officially appointed "Protector of the Indians." His extensive writings chronicle the early decades of colonization in the West Indies, focusing particularly on the atrocities committed against indigenous peoples. After an initial advocacy for African slaves, which he later retracted to condemn all forms of bondage, he dedicated fifty years to actively combating violent colonial abuses of native populations. He strove to convince the Spanish court to adopt a more humane colonization policy, resulting in several improvements to the legal status of natives and an increased colonial focus on the ethics of conquest. Las Casas is often regarded as one of the earliest advocates for universal human rights.
- 2023
- 2011
Relates the native Central American tale of how the gift of chocolate came to be shared by the gods with humans.
- 2003
An Account, Much Abbreviated, of the Destruction of the Indies
- 192 pages
- 7 hours of reading
Fifty years after the arrival of Columbus, at the height of Spain's conquest of the West Indies, Spanish bishop and colonist Bartolomé de las Casas dedicated his Brevísima Relación de la Destruición de las Indias to Philip II of Spain. An impassioned plea on behalf of the native peoples of the West Indies, the Brevísima Relación catalogues in horrific detail atrocities it attributes to the king's colonists in the New World. The result is a withering indictment of the conquerors that has cast a 500-year shadow over the subsequent history of that world and the European colonisation of it. Andrew Hurley's daring new translation dramatically foreshortens that 500 years by reversing the usual priority of a translation; rather than bring the Brevísima Relación to the reader, it brings the reader to the Brevísima Relación -- not as it is, but as it might have been, had it been originally written in English. The translator thus allows himself no words or devices unavailable in English by 1560, and in so doing reveals the prophetic voice, urgency and clarity of the work, qualities often obscured in modern translations. An Introduction by Franklin Knight, notes, a map, and a judicious set of Related Readings offer further aids to a fresh appreciation of this foundational historical and literary work of the New World and European engagement with it.
- 1992
One of the major sources for the study on the interraction between whites and American Indians during the sixteenth century. -- Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association
- 1992
A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies
- 192 pages
- 7 hours of reading
A catalogue of mass slaughter, torture and slavery, which showed that the evangelizing vision of Columbus had descended under later conquistadors into genocide. It demands that the Indians be entitled to the basic rights of humankind.
