The devastation of the Indies : a brief account
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The devastation of the Indies : a brief account
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992
Johns Hopkins Paperbacks ed
- : pbk. : alk. paper
- Other Title
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Brevísima relacioń de la destrucción de las Indias
- Uniform Title
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Brevísima relacioń de la destrucción de las Indias
Available at 8 libraries
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  Tochigi
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  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
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  Nagano
  Gifu
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  Hiroshima
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  Tokushima
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  Fukuoka
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  Miyazaki
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Library, Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization遡
pbk. : alk. paper||325.3||C66||30029664
Note
Translation of: Brevísima relacioń de la destruccioń de las Indias
Originally published: New York : Seabury Press, 1974
Includes bibliographical references
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Five hundred years after Columbus's first voyage to the New World, the debate over the European impact on Native American civilization has grown more heated than ever. Among the first-and most insistent-voices raised in that debate was that of a Spanish priest, Bartolome de Las Casas, acquintance of Cortes and Pizarro and shipmate of Velasquez on the voyage to conquer Cuba. In 1552, after forty years of witnessing-and opposing-countless acts of brutality in the new Spanish colonies, Las Casas returned to Seville, where he published a book that caused a storm of controversy that persists to the present day.
The Devastation of the Indies is an eyewitness account of the first modern genocid, a story of greed, hypocrisy, and cruelties so grotesque as to rival the worst of our own century. Las Casas writes of men, women and children burned alive "thirteen at a time in memoery of Our Redeemer and his twelve apostles." He describes butcher shops that sold human flesh for dog food ("Give me a quarter of that rascal there," one customer says, "until I can kill some more of my own"). Slave ship captains navigate "without need if compass or charts," following instead the trail of floating corpes tossed overboard by the ship before them. Native kings are promised peace, then slaughted. Whole families hang themselves in despair. Once-fertile islands are turned to desert, the wealth of nations plundered, millions killed outright, whole peoples annihilated.
In an introduction, historian Bill M. Donovan provides a brief biography of Las Casas and reviews the controversy his work produced among Europeans, whose indignation-and denials-lasted centuries. But the book itself is short. "Were I to describe all this," writes Las Casas of the four decades of suffering he witnessed, "no amount of time and paper could emcimpass this task."
Table of Contents
Introduction
The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account
Note On The Translation Of The Brevissima Relacion
Notes
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