Background
Bartolomé de Las Casas, the son of a merchant, was born citca 1474 in Seville, Spain.
(Book by Bartolome de Las Casas)
Book by Bartolome de Las Casas
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(Bartolome de Las Casas was a Dominican priest--a missiona...)
Bartolome de Las Casas was a Dominican priest--a missionary who fought relentlessly for justice for the Native Americans and even for their status as human beings. He was fearless in standing up to the political and ecclesiastical powers of his time, and a tireless chronicler of events. In Bartolome de las Casas: Great Prophet of the Americas, Paul S. Vickery not only brings these aspects of this extraordinary man to life--but does so against the background of his own two conversion experiences in which he recognized his own hypocrisy as a seeker of wealth and owner of Indian slaves. The author richly describes Bartolome's journey to the New World in search of wealth and prestige--and his outrage upon seeing the cruel treatment of the Native Americans. He soon acquired a reputation as the "Defender of the Indians" as he tirelessly preached, wrote, and lobbied to defend these indigenous people from those who sought to exploit and enslave them. More than a cleric, political activist, or simple chronicler of events, Las Casas became the very conscience of Catholic Spain, a nation grappling with the spiritual mandate to save souls and the human desire to accumulate wealth. His quest for social justice is as relevant for us today as it was in his own time.
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(Bartolomé de Las Casas was the first and fiercest critic ...)
Bartolomé de Las Casas was the first and fiercest critic of Spanish colonialism in the New World. An early traveller to the Americas who sailed on one of Columbus's voyages, Las Casas was so horrified by the wholesale massacre he witnessed that he dedicated his life to protecting the Indian community. He wrote A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies in 1542, a shocking catalogue of mass slaughter, torture and slavery, which showed that the evangelizing vision of Columbus had descended under later conquistadors into genocide. Dedicated to Philip II to alert the Castilian Crown to these atrocities and demand that the Indians be entitled to the basic rights of humankind, this passionate work of documentary vividness outraged Europe and contributed to the idea of the Spanish 'Black Legend' that would last for centuries. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140445625/?tag=2022091-20
Bartolomé de Las Casas, the son of a merchant, was born citca 1474 in Seville, Spain.
Apparently he did not graduate from a university, although he studied Latin and the humanities in Seville.
The facts of his life after 1502 are well known. In that year Las Casas sailed for Española in the expedition of Governor Nicolás de Ovando. In the West Indies he participated in Indian wars, acquired land and slaves, and felt no serious qualms about his actions, although he had been ordained a priest. Not until his fortieth year did Las Casas experience a moral conversion, perhaps the awakening of a dormant sensitivity as a result of the horrors he saw about him.
His early efforts at the Spanish court were largely directed at securing approval for the establishment of model colonies in which Spanish farmers would live and labor side by side with Indians in a peaceful coexistence that would gently lead the natives to Christianity and Christian civilization. The disastrous failure of one such project on the coast of Venezuela (1521) caused Las Casas to retire for 10 years to a monastery and to enter the Dominican order.
He had greater success with an experiment in peaceful conversion of the Indians in the province of Tezulutlán-called by the Spaniards the Land of War-in Guatemala (1537 - 1540). Las Casas appeared to have won a brilliant victory with the promulgation of the New Laws of 1542. These laws banned Indian slavery, prohibited Indian forced labor, and provided for gradual abolition of the encomienda system, which held the Indians living on agricultural lands in serfdom. Faced with revolt by the encomenderos in Peru and the threat of revolt elsewhere, however, the Crown made a partial retreat, repealing the provisions most objectionable to the colonists. It was against this background that Las Casas met Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, defender of the encomienda and of Indian wars, in a famous debate at Valladolid in 1550. Sepúlveda, a disciple of Aristotle, invoked his theory that some men are slaves by nature in order to show that the Indians must be made to serve the Spaniards for their own good as well as for that of their masters. The highest point of Las Casas' argument was an eloquent affirmation of the equality of all races, the essential oneness of mankind.
To the end of a long life Las Casas fought passionately for justice for his beloved Indians. As part of his campaign in their defense, he wrote numerous tracts and books. Historians regard most highly his Historia de las Indias, which is indispensable to every student of the first phase of the Spanish conquest. His Apologética historia de las Indias is an immense accumulation of ethnographic data designed to demonstrate that the Indians fully met the requirements laid down by Aristotle for the good life.
He was the principal organizer and champion of the 16th-century movement in Spain and Spanish America in defense of the Indians. The world generally knows him best for his flaming indictment of Spanish cruelty to the Indians, Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1552), a work based largely on official reports to the Crown and soon translated into the major European languages.
Bartolomé de Las Casas has also come to be seen as an early advocate for a concept of universal human rights. The small town of Lascassas, Tennessee, in the United States has also been named after him.
(Bartolome de Las Casas was a Dominican priest--a missiona...)
(Bartolomé de Las Casas was the first and fiercest critic ...)
(Book by Bartolome de Las Casas)
Bartolomé de las Casas spent 50 years of his life actively fighting slavery and the violent colonial abuse of indigenous peoples, especially by trying to convince the Spanish court to adopt a more humane policy of colonization.
Quotations: "All people of the world are humans and that they had a natural right to liberty "
