![]() The 16th century Florentine Codex depicts the indigenous population of Mexico, succumbing to smallpox during the conquest era. For instance, he originally advocated the use of African slaves instead of indigenous Americans because Spaniards considered them to be hardier than natives. Las Casas himself changed his rhetoric over time as he and his argument matured. The government was not the only ambivalent actor. The Spanish government in return treated Las Casas' pleas with ambivalence, in part because indigenous enslavement was so profitable. Though his petitions began in May of 1515, they would continue until his death in 1566 as he cajoled, shamed, and begged the Spanish crown to end its practices of violent invasion and enslavement. However, after Las Casas' participation in the violent and destructive Spanish invasion of Cuba in 1513, he began to view European interference in native affairs as illegal and amoral. Las Casas arrived in Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic) in 1502, and soon became a land and slave owner, joining military expeditions against the native peoples and becoming a priest in 1510. The Spanish committed numerous atrocities against the indigenous people of the Americas upon first contact. In addition, there existed the legal idea, modeled on Muslim laws regarding captured peoples, which allowed non-Catholics to convert instead of becoming slaves.ĭespite these legal caveats, Spanish conquerors enslaved large groups of the newly encountered indigenous peoples in the Americas, working many of them to death. This category included Lutherans, Muslim Turks, Orthodox Slavs, non-Catholic Africans, and native peoples of the New World. Theologians and philosophers in the School of Salamanca, including the incredibly influential Luis de Vitoria, father of modern international law, restricted this only to include captives of war who were not Catholic. Spanish law of the time considered all captives of war as potential slaves, yet there were some provisos. In sixteenth-century Spain, slavery was a widely accepted practice, although increasingly questioned. Through his actions and writings, Las Casas became an important figure in the development of ideas of what we would now call human rights. He elaborated his views on slavery and the rights of indigenous peoples in numerous tracts including the extremely popular Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, which was published during his lifetime (c. Las Casas ( above) rose to become one of the most influential thinkers of his day. ![]() Bartolomé de las Casas, sickened by the exploitation and physical degradation of the indigenous peoples in the Spanish colonies of the Caribbean, gave up his extensive land holdings and slaves and traveled to his homeland in Spain in 1515 to petition the Spanish Crown to stop the abuses that European colonists were inflicting upon the natives of the New World. This year marks the 500-year anniversary of the pricking of one man's conscience. ![]()
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