A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies
Or, a faithful NARRATIVE OF THE Horrid and Unexampled Massacres, Butcheries, and all manner of Cruelties, that Hell and Malice could invent, committed by the Popish Spanish Party on the inhabitants of West-India, TOGETHER With the Devastations of several Kingdoms in America by Fire and Sword, for the space of Forty and Two Years, from the time of its first Discovery by them.
A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies is the report that the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas addressed to the future Philip II of Spain, printed at Seville in 1552. Island by island and province by province, from Hispaniola and Cuba to Mexico, Guatemala, Peru and New Granada, he describes the enslavement, massacres and depopulation he had witnessed or gathered from witnesses over four decades, and he argues that the conquest as practiced is a crime against the king's subjects and against God. The text here is the English translation of 1689, with its polemical title page and spelling preserved. It is a short book and one of the earliest sustained indictments of colonial violence. It is available to read online in your browser on Vinteuil, with the opening pages free.
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What kind of book is A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies?
A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies by Bartolomé de las Casas is filed under "Classics" in the Vinteuil library.
