Bartolome de las Casas

Bartolome de las Casas was a Spanish Dominican friar, historian and former colonist in the Americas who became the most prominent early European critic of the treatment of Indigenous peoples under Spanish colonial rule. Having originally participated in the colonial encomienda system as a young settler in the Caribbean, he underwent a change of conviction and dedicated much of the rest of his life to documenting and denouncing the abuse, forced labor and violence inflicted on Indigenous Americans, most famously in his 1552 tract "A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies," a graphic indictment that circulated widely across Europe. His advocacy at the Spanish court contributed to the New Laws of 1542, which sought to curb the worst abuses of the encomienda system, though enforcement in the colonies remained weak and inconsistent, and he later served as Bishop of Chiapas in southern Mexico, where he continued to campaign for Indigenous rights. Las Casas also engaged in a formal public debate in 1550 with the scholar Juan Gines de Sepulveda over the justice of Spanish treatment of Indigenous peoples, a debate regarded as an early landmark in European discussion of human rights and colonial ethics. He died in 1566, and his writings remain a primary historical source on the human costs of early Spanish colonization in the Americas.