CASAS, Bartolom é de las

by Bartolom é de las Casas

£5,650 · Offered by Sokol Books

A most interesting sammelband of Americana, with four works on the conquest of the New World, in the Italian translation with the original Spanish. Crucial are the prefaces and letters to the reader by Marco Gimanni printer of all four and translator of three which shed light on the understanding of the Spanish conquests. Bartolom é de las Casas (1484-1566) was among the most influential figures in the definition of juridical and social principles for the Spanish colonisation of the Americas. One of the earliest settlers, he freed his native slaves in 1515, later defending their rights in front of the Emperor Charles V. In the 1520s, he joined the Dominican order and acted as a missionary for several years. He was the first to be appointed to the office of Protector of the Indios , responsible for the well-being of the natives in the colonies. Istoria first appeared, in the original Castilian of 1552 and the Italian translation by Giacomo Castellani, in 1626. The work is a harsh catalogue of the evils enacted by the Spaniards, divided chronologically by region. Las Casas portrayed a war of civilisations, inverting the traditional stance, in which the barbarian Spaniards were the perpetrators of cruelties against the gentle, sophisticated natives, with the Spanish government presented as a tyranny who should consider how its crown conquered what is called the New World . In the preface, Gimanni calls it the most tragic and most horrible history, which by human eyes, in the gre

• Binding: Hardcover

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