Spanish Experience in the New World

Bartolome de las Casas, in History of the Indies, presents a history of the Spanish experience in the New World from 1492 to 1520. Las Casas, however, wants to do much more than merely give a factual account of that experience. He more importantly delivers a moral and political critique of the Spanish rule in the Americas, and it is a severe ethical indictment, indeed. The author wants to make the world aware of the inhumanity of the treatment of the native population and of Spanish slaves, and to show the terrible human, political, economic and moral costs of those actions to not merely the New World but also to the nation of Spain.

As Andree Collard writes in his Introduction to the book, "Spain in the sixteenth century had Bartolome de las Casas . . . (1474-1566)" to "denounce these human failings." He "was a man whose obsession to end the Spanish tyranny in the New World evolved into a scathing attack against imperialism. . . . He saw that, on the human level, the discoverer and all who followed after him were selfish and greedy operators." He also pointed out that the inhumane methods of the imperialist are based on a false belief that the conquered, exploited and enslaved native population are somehow inferior or evil, and that such a dehumanizing (for both conquered and conqueror) belief inevitably leads to that maltreatment:

[The Spaniards'] most cherished institution, the encomienda, destroys the humanity of the Indian when it does not destroy his life altogether,

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e. . . . (14). The problem, as las Casas makes abundantly clear, is how man operates once he arrives at the new land. Man forgets that he is but an agent of God, and not God Himself. Where the Spanish went wrong is when they came to believe, based on imperialist illusions, that whatever they did in the new land was acceptable simply because they saw themselves as superior to the people whose land they were "discovering." They lost a clear and moral sense of their position as humble servants of God's purpose, and came to see themselves as free to do whatever they wanted to do in order to accomplish their selfish goals. Las Casas also makes clear that the discoverers and explorers from the Old World had a moral and spiritual obligation to treat the people of the new land as equals under God, an obligation which they miserably failed to fulfill. He believes that the Spanish and others from the Old World took upon themselves a grave responsibility as Christians to carry not only the word of God but also the love and humanity of Christian principles to those people, and, again, the author indicts the Spanish for their failure to fulfill that responsibility. Las Casas not only indicts the Spanish for their moral and other failures, b

Category: History - S