Bartolomé de las Casas
Bartolomé de las Casas spent fifty years arguing that the indigenous peoples of the Americas were being destroyed unlawfully. Born in Seville around 1484, he sailed to Hispaniola in 1502 and was granted an encomienda — a holding of land with indigenous labourers attached — and participated in the conquest of Cuba as a chaplain. In 1514, preparing a sermon on a text from Ecclesiasticus about offerings made from the goods of the poor, he concluded that everything he and his countrymen were doing was unjust. He gave up his encomienda and began a campaign that lasted the rest of his life. He crossed to Spain repeatedly to petition the crown, joined the Dominicans in 1522, and drafted the New Laws of 1542, which prohibited indigenous slavery and were largely reversed under colonial pressure. He was appointed Bishop of Chiapas in 1544 and refused absolution to encomenderos who would not free their labourers, which made him unable to remain. His Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, published in 1552, catalogues massacres, mutilation and enslavement in unsparing detail, and was translated across Protestant Europe as propaganda against Spain. In 1550-51 he debated Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda before a royal commission at Valladolid, arguing against the claim that the indigenous were natural slaves in the Aristotelian sense and that conquest was therefore lawful. He proposed in his earlier years importing African slaves to relieve indigenous labour, and later retracted it explicitly, writing that he had been ignorant and that the same injustice applied. He died in Madrid in 1566.
- Lived: 1474 CE – 1566 CE
- Nationality: Spanish
- Roles: friar, historian, reformer, bishop
