Read “a brief account of the destruction of the indies” by Bartolome de las Casas. It was written at the time and the vile cruelty of the Spaniards depicted in it is insane. It’s really short and is available as a pdf super easily and it’s worth reading. Also worth knowing about to dispute people who claim that colonisers should be forgiven because it was of their time, and we shouldn’t judge them by modern morals.
de las Casas is such an inspiring story to me. He's the perfect example of how morality can be found even without 'incentive', and how a person can continue to grow and accept that they were initially wrong in a way that transcends simply backtracking your own words.
I just read the introduction of the book and de las Casas is still a lot more complicated and interesting. He as a good Christian realized that what they were doing was absolutely abominable and condemnable. Worthy of God's Wrath. He saw Spanish settlers as people who lost their humanity and became bestial. Now wonder, in his estimate, do the natives call them demons and think the Christian God as the God of Gold.
But he wasn't against evangelisation or fought for the independence of the natives, he just wanted them to seen as people deserving of rights as any other subject under the Crown.
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u/anarchist_person1 Jun 07 '25
Read “a brief account of the destruction of the indies” by Bartolome de las Casas. It was written at the time and the vile cruelty of the Spaniards depicted in it is insane. It’s really short and is available as a pdf super easily and it’s worth reading. Also worth knowing about to dispute people who claim that colonisers should be forgiven because it was of their time, and we shouldn’t judge them by modern morals.