A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~38,100 words · 181 passages
Cite this work
- APABartolome de las Casas. (n.d.). A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/bartolome-de-las-casas/a-brief-account-of-the-destruction-of-the-indies
- MLABartolome de las Casas. "A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/bartolome-de-las-casas/a-brief-account-of-the-destruction-of-the-indies.
- ChicagoBartolome de las Casas. A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/bartolome-de-las-casas/a-brief-account-of-the-destruction-of-the-indies.
What it is about
The denunciation Las Casas wrote in 1542 and published in 1552 of what the Spaniards were doing to the Indians of America.
Context and history
It is a memorial addressed to prince Philip, written by a friar who had himself held an encomienda before changing his life, and it goes island by island and province by province recounting massacres with names, numbers and methods. The numbers are almost certainly exaggerated, and historians have argued about them for centuries; what has never been refuted is the facts. The text had two opposite effects: in Spain it helped get the New Laws passed, and abroad, translated at once into Dutch, English and French with atrocious engravings, it served the monarchy's enemies in building what was later called the black legend. It is worth reading with both of these in mind: it is propaganda and it is testimony, and it stops being neither by being the other.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
"Brevisima relacion de la destruccion de las Indias", by Bartolome de las Casas, originally published in Seville in 1552. 2) The original archaic spelling and punctuation has been retained] POPERY Truly Display'd in its Bloody Colours: Or, a faithful NARRATIVE OF THE Horrid and Unexampled Massacres, Butcheries, and all manner of Cruelties, that Hell and Malice could invent, committed by the Popish _Spanish_ Party on the inhabitants of _West-India_ TOGETHER With the Devastations of several Kingdoms in _America_ by Fire and Sword, for the space of Forty and Two Years, from the time of its first Discovery by them. ----------------------------------------------------------------------_Composed first in_ Spanish _by_ Bartholomew de las Casas, _a Bishop there, and Eye-Witness of most of these Barbarous Cruelties; afterward Translated by him into_ Latin, _then by other hands, into_ High-Dutch, Low-Dutch, French, _and now Taught to Speak Modern English_. ----------------------------------------------------------------------_London,_ Printed for _R. Hewson_ at the _Crown in Cornhil,_ near the _Stocks-Market._ 1689. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------THE ARGUMENT OF THIS NARRATIVE By way of PREFACE TO THE READER.