CASAS Bartolom é de las

£3,950 · Offered by Sokol Books

Second edition of the first Italian translation of Las Casas Brevissima relation a fundamental text in the history of the Spanish conquest, and in establishing the rights of indigenous Indians. Las Casas was the first great historian of the New World and famously argued the humanity of indigenous Americans and African slaves in the Valladolid debate of 1550-1551, against the counter-arguments of Juan Gin és de Sep√∫lveda. While a boy in 1493, he witnessed the return to Seville of Christopher Columbus after his first voyage, and later the same year Las Casas' father Pedro and several of his uncles embarked for the New World as members of Columbus' second expedition. With his father, Las Casas emigrated to the island of Hispaniola in 1502 under Nicol√°s de Ovando, and witnessed the brutalities committed against the Tainos. He played a significant historical role as an eyewitness to one of the most important eras in history as he made an abstract and copy of the diary Christopher Columbus kept of his voyages and incorporated much of Columbus writings, diary and log in his own history. Today, both the Columbus diary as well as the copy have disappeared but Las Casas' abstract survived. His work is a primary source for the early period of Spanish Colonialism. In 1550 he took part in official debates on the status of indigenous peoples and used this opportunity to prepare a series of nine essays that subsequently appeared in Seville in 1552 and 1553. He was keenly aware of the powe

• Binding: Hardcover

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