Publisher's Synopsis
This book is one of the most significant contributions in the areas of human rights and the liberty of individuals that have been written in the long Western philosophical and theological tradition. Las Casas was one of the very first advocates for Indians in the Americas in the shocking half century after the arrival of the first Europeans following Columbus. That period of conquest was a time of brutal subjugation and domination of the Indians by the Spaniards. Based on the principal events of the conquest of the Americas by the Spanish in the 15th and 16th centuries, the book takes up the side of the Indians in the epic struggle to bring the Americas under the dominion of European explorers, discoverers, conquerors, and settlers. While it is principally directed at the Spaniards, it transcends nationalities, for the Portuguese, English, Dutch, and French competitors for empire in the Americas committed some of the very same atrocities that Las Casas lists in his extraordinary book.
