Description
Fifty years after the arrival of Columbus, at the height of Spain's conquest of the West Indies, Spanish bishop and colonist Bartolomé de Las Casas dedicated his Brevísima Relación de la Destruición de las Indias to Philip II of Spain. An impassioned plea on behalf of the native peoples of the West Indies, the Brevísima Relación catalogues in horrific detail atrocities it attributes to the king’s colonists in the New World. The result is a withering indictment of the conquerors that has cast a 500-year shadow over the subsequent history of that world and the European colonization of it.
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Franciscan friar Bartolomé de las Casas witnessed the terrible depredations visited by Spanish colonialism upon the lands and the indigenous people of the Americas and denounced them in no uncertain terms in this text, considered by many to be one of the most important challenges to hegemonic narratives of colonial "civilization" in the Americas. Translator Hurley (English, U. of Puerto Rico) has attempted to preserve the original flavor of the work by allowing himself no words not available in English in 1560 and selecting the more "biblical" sounding words when faced with a choice. This edition also contains an introduction by Knight (history, Johns Hopkins U.) presenting the historical background to the text. Annotation (c) Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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