Bartolomé de las Casas

The story of Columbus is one that is often stretched, pulled and molded to the author’s will to show how they personally feel about Columbus; I am no exception to this rule. I believe that Columbus was a terrible individual for the crimes he committed against the native people of the Caribbean, those including the torturing of these people and the erasure of a whole culture/the mass genocide of these people. In Howard Zinn’s reading we actually learned how terrible Columbus, his men and his…

From the time period of 1450 to 1800, both Russia and the Spanish had been striving to expand their empires to gain a better role in the global economy. For Russia, this expansion was limited to the Eurasian landmass while the Spanish looked to the Atlantic and set up colonies in the New World. Both of these empires broke free from their foreign rulers. Despite different branches of Christianity, within both of these empires' religions played key roles in terms of expansion. The Russians wanted…

Christopher Columbus should most definitely be judged by today’s standards, and the idea of continuing the celebration of this absurd holiday should not be up for discussion. In a passage from Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies, Bartolome de Las Casas wrote: “Their reason for killing and destroying such an infinite number of souls is that the Christians have an ultimate aim, which is to acquire…

Columbus and Cortes: Heroes or Villains Christopher Columbus, Hernán Cortes, and their counterparts are often seen as the adventurous conquistador that discovered the Americas. Many of the textbooks that children read in school go as far as painting Columbus and Cortes as heroes. In the United States, hundreds of cities are named after Christopher Columbus and the second Monday of October is nationally recognized as Columbus Day. However, when one takes the time to truly study what happened…

“to provide ample remedy for the evils” because they are “capable of understanding [and]desire exceedling to receive it” (Doc 7). The pope has a strong attitude to the righteousness and necessity the missionaries serve unlike Las Casas (are the motives of the Pope and Las Casas different?) but similar to that of Queen Isabella of Spain. In dying letter of 1504 Isabella asks that her family remain in the intentions of “to convert the peoples to our holy Catholic faith” (Doc 4). This is…

main attitudes towards the treatment and conquest of the New World. On one side was Bartolome de Las Casas who argued for the rights of the Natives and on the other was Juan Gines de Sepulveda who argued for the further conquest and slavery of the Natives. Juan Gines de Sepulveda - A Spanish theologian and philosopher, he was tasked by Charles V to argue against Casas’ assertions. He was practically the foil of Casa because he argued that the Spanish conquest and treatment of the Natives was…

rivers. Ferdinand and Isabel King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile were both import rulers during the Renaissance. They both improved their country in several ways, including establish justice and regulates trades. Bartolomé de las Casas Bartolomé de las Casas is the 16th century Spanish historian and social reformer. He spent 50 years of his life actively fighting slavery and the violent colonial…

In David J. Weber’s The Spanish Frontier in North America, the predominant structural force that occurred within the overview, was colonization. Within colonization, we get sub-structural forces such as economics, diseases, etc. Due to Christopher Columbus’s arrival in 1492, Hernan Cortez along with the Spanish, came to the Americas to colonize the land in 1519. The Spain had an impact on the lives, institutions, and environments of the native peoples of North America, as well as on the lives…

the Spaniards as children are to adults stated by Juan Gines de Sepaeulveda (Document 5). He defends the Spanish treatment of the natives by saying that it is perfectly okay for the Spanish to show they dominance over these lesser in virtue Amerindians. Other the other hand, the Spaniards were told to stop treating the natives so terribly so that they can learn instead to be like the Spaniards and proper Christians as Bartolome de las Casas says from A Brief Account of the Devastation of the…

on the island with these women? With 1,200 more soldiers at his disposal, rape and pillaging became rampant as well as tolerated by Columbus. The thing that really scares me, and makes me very uncomfortable is what Columbus's close friend Michele de Cuneo who wrote the first disturbing account of a relation between himself and a Native female gift given to him by Columbus. “While I was in the boat I captured a very beautiful Carib woman, whom the said Lord Admiral gave to me, and with…