Bartolomé de las Casas
For Las Casas, the conquest was a crime against the Indigenous peoples of America, who are fully human with the same rights as anyone.
Placement
Colonist turned Dominican friar: denounced the destruction of the Indies and, in the Valladolid debate of 1550–51, defended the full humanity and rights of the Indigenous peoples against Sepúlveda.
Key ideas
- Rights of the Indigenous peoples
- Valladolid debate
- Critique of conquest
Influence
Influenced by 1
Thomas Aquinas
influenced by
Las Casas argued with Aquinas’ natural law that unbelievers hold legitimate dominion and may be won to faith only by peaceful persuasion (De unico vocationis modo, c. 1537). B. de las Casas, De unico vocationis modo (c. 1537); Apologia (c. 1552); Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II–II
Evidence: AI draft
Thomas Aquinas › c. 1225–1274
Influenced 5
Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala
influenced
As Rolena Adorno has argued, Guaman Poma followed, without naming it, Las Casas’s Treatise of the Twelve Doubts in defending Indigenous land titles (Nueva corónica, c. 1615). F. Guaman Poma de Ayala, El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno (c. 1615); R. Adorno, Guaman Poma: Writing and Resistance in Colonial Peru (1986; 2nd ed. 2000)
Evidence: AI draft
Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala › c. 1535–1616
Gustavo Gutiérrez
influenced
Gutiérrez saw in Las Casas a forerunner of liberation theology who found Christ in the oppressed Indigenous peoples (En busca de los pobres de Jesucristo, 1992). G. Gutiérrez, En busca de los pobres de Jesucristo: El pensamiento de Bartolomé de Las Casas (1992)
Evidence: AI draft
Gustavo Gutiérrez › 1928–2024
Sylvia Wynter
influenced
In a two-part essay on New Seville, the first Spanish settlement in Jamaica, and the conversion experience of Las Casas (1984), Wynter took his break with the encomienda as a turning point in the debate over who counts as fully human; she returned to his dispute with Sepúlveda in later essays (1995, 2003). S. Wynter, “New Seville and the Conversion Experience of Bartolomé de Las Casas”, Jamaica Journal 17:2 (1984), 25–32, and 17:3 (1984), 46–55; “1492: A New World View” (1995)
Evidence: AI draft
Sylvia Wynter › b. 1928
Enrique Dussel
influenced
Dussel read Las Casas as the first critic of modernity, who argued from the standpoint of the Indigenous victims of conquest (1492: El encubrimiento del otro, 1992). E. Dussel, 1492: El encubrimiento del otro (1992); Política de la liberación: Historia mundial y crítica (2007)
Evidence: AI draft
Enrique Dussel › 1934–2023
Tzvetan Todorov
influenced
In The Conquest of America (1982) Todorov made Las Casas a central figure of his inquiry into how the Spaniards perceived the other: from a love that projects Christian values onto the Indians to the late Las Casas, who held that their sacrifices made sense within their own religion. T. Todorov, La conquête de l’Amérique. La question de l’autre (1982)
Evidence: AI draft
Tzvetan Todorov › 1939–2017
Criticism
Criticized by 1
Inca Garcilaso de la Vega
criticised by disputed
Garcilaso’s General History of Peru (1617) rejects Las Casas’s arguments for the New Laws of 1542; how far the work opposes Las Casas’s ideas overall is disputed. Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Historia general del Perú (1617); M. Serna Arnaiz, “El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega: La ‘Ley natural’ frente a las ‘Leyes nuevas’”, Mercurio Peruano 527–528 (2014–15), 89–111
Evidence: AI draft
Inca Garcilaso de la Vega › 1539–1616
Criticizes 1
Aristotle influenced by
influenced by
At Valladolid (1550–51) Las Casas turned Aristotle against Sepúlveda, distinguishing kinds of barbarians to show that the Indigenous peoples were not natural slaves (Apologia, c. 1552). B. de las Casas, Apologia (c. 1552), trans. S. Poole, In Defense of the Indians (1974); L. Hanke, Aristotle and the American Indians (1959)
Evidence: AI draft
criticised
Against Sepúlveda at Valladolid (1550–51) Las Casas denied that Aristotle’s natural slavery applied to the peoples of America, who were fully capable of reason; in an earlier dispute he had bidden Aristotle farewell in the name of Christian charity. B. de Las Casas, Apologia (c. 1552); Historia de las Indias, book III (on the dispute of 1519); L. Hanke, Aristotle and the American Indians (1959)
Evidence: AI draft
Aristotle › 384–322 BCE
Works
An indictment written for the Spanish crown: the conquest as a record of massacres, enslavement and plunder.
Position
Las Casas argued that the peoples of the Americas were rational human beings with legitimate rulers and property; war and forced labour against them were unjust, and Christianity could be spread only by peaceful persuasion. He helped bring about the New Laws of 1542. In the Valladolid debate of 1550–51, drawing on Thomist natural law, he rejected Sepúlveda’s use of Aristotle’s doctrine of natural slavery. To spare the Indigenous people he had at first proposed bringing enslaved Africans to the Indies – advice he later bitterly regretted, judging their enslavement just as unjust. His polemics fed the “Black Legend”; Gutiérrez and Dussel saw him as a forerunner of liberation thought.
Life & context
Bartolomé de las Casas was born in Seville in 1484. In 1502 he went to Hispaniola, where he held Indigenous labourers under the encomienda system and was later ordained a priest. In 1514, after the conquest of Cuba, he gave up his encomienda and began to campaign for the Indigenous peoples. He became a Dominican in 1522, was bishop of Chiapas from 1544 and died in Madrid in 1566.
Further main works
- The Only Way (De unico vocationis modo, 1530s)
- In Defence of the Indians (Apologia, c. 1550)
- History of the Indies (Historia de las Indias, begun 1527, published 1875–76)
Appears in
- Journey ‘Latin America and the Indigenous Americas’ · Stop 1 of 13
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