This is a short history of the age of exploration and the conquest of the Americas told through the experience of Bartolomé de las Casas, a Dominican friar who fervently defended the American Indians, and the single most important figure of the period after Columbus. Explores the period known as the Encounter, which was characterized by intensive conflict between Europeans and the people of the Americas following Columbus’s voyages Argues that Las Casas, ‘protector of Indians,' was primarily motivated by Scripture in his crusade for justice and equality for American Indians Draws on the 14 volume Complete Works of Las Casas as a window into his mind and actions Encourages students to understand history through the viewpoint of individuals living it

This is a short history of the age of exploration and the conquest of the Americas told through the experience of Bartolomé de las Casas, a Dominican friar who fervently defended the American Indians, and the single most important figure of the period after Columbus. Explores the period known as the Encounter, which was characterized by intensive conflict between Europeans and the people of the Americas following Columbus’s voyages Argues that Las Casas, ‘protector of Indians,' was primarily motivated by Scripture in his crusade for justice and equality for American Indians Draws on the 14 volume Complete Works of Las Casas as a window into his mind and actions Encourages students to understand history through the viewpoint of individuals living it

This study provides a comprehensive critical inquiry of the exploration, conquest, and evangelization of the Americas by Spain from Columbus's first voyage to the death of Las Casas. The author examines the conflicting interpretations of Columbus and presents the narrative of conquest along with that of native resistance, genocide, and the introduction of African slavery. Traboulay also describes and analyzes the struggles, arguments, achievements, and failures of Las Casas and others. By focusing on both Columbus and Las Casas, the author seeks to present a broader perspective of the conquest without diminishing the tragedy that occurred. Contents: Preface; Columbus: The Legend; Columbus: The Enterprise of the Indies; Resistance, Death: Slavery; The Voyages: European Hegemony and World History; The Mission to Christianize; Sixteenth Century Scholasticism: The Influence of Vitoria; Alonso de la Vera Cruz, Colonial Universities, and the Rights of Native Americans; Alonso de Zorita and the Rationality of the Native Americans; Bartolome de Las Casas and the Issues of the Great Debate of 1550-51; Epilogue; Bibliography; Index.

Separating historical reality from myth, this book provides a nuanced, revisionist assessment of the friar's career, writings, and political activities.

The Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas (1485-1566) was a prominent chronicler of the early Spanish conquest of the Americas, a noted protector of the American Indians, and arguably the most significant figure in the early Spanish Empire after Christopher Columbus. Following an epiphany in 1514, Las Casas fought the Spanish control of the Indies for the rest of his life, writing vividly about the brutality of the Spanish conquistadors. Once a settler and exploiter of the American Indians, he became their defender, breaking ground for the modern human rights movement. Las Casas brought his understanding of Christian scripture to the forefront in his defense of the Indians, challenging the premise that the Indians of the New World were any less civilized or capable of practicing Christianity than Europeans. Bartolomé de las Casas: A Biography is the first major English-language and scholarly biography of Las Casas' life in a generation.

The Spanish cleric Bartolomé de Las Casas is a key figure in the history of Spain’s conquest of the Americas. Las Casas condemned the torture and murder of natives by the conquistadores in reports to the Spanish royal court and in tracts such as A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1552). For his unrelenting denunciation of the colonialists’ atrocities, Las Casas has been revered as a noble protector of the Indians and as a pioneering anti-imperialist. He has become a larger-than-life figure invoked by generations of anticolonialists in Europe and Latin America. Separating historical reality from myth, Daniel Castro provides a nuanced, revisionist assessment of the friar’s career, writings, and political activities. Castro argues that Las Casas was very much an imperialist. Intent on converting the Indians to Christianity, the religion of the colonizers, Las Casas simply offered the natives another face of empire: a paternalistic, ecclesiastical imperialism. Castro contends that while the friar was a skilled political manipulator, influential at what was arguably the world’s most powerful sixteenth-century imperial court, his advocacy on behalf of the natives had little impact on their lives. Analyzing Las Casas’s extensive writings, Castro points out that in his many years in the Americas, Las Casas spent very little time among the indigenous people he professed to love, and he made virtually no effort to learn their languages. He saw himself as an emissary from a superior culture with a divine mandate to impose a set of ideas and beliefs on the colonized. He differed from his compatriots primarily in his antipathy to violence as the means for achieving conversion.