Another Face of Empire: Bartolomé de Las Casas, Indigenous Rights, and Ecclesiastical Imperialism (review)

Daniel Castro’s book belongs to the growing body of literature reevaluating Bartolomé de Las Casas’s contributions to Spanish evangelization of America. For most of the twentieth century, writers critical of the conquest in other respects nonetheless embraced the introduction of Catholicism as constructive. Criticisms of the military conquest and labor regimes that brutalized the natives usually considered that Catholicism, for all its flaws, benefited indigenous people. Contemporary advocates of better treatment for native peoples have often identified Las Casas as a heroic advocate of Spanish colonization’s most positive attribute.

Not all of Las Casas’s writings have been viewed so favorably. By criticizing the conquest forcefully, Las Casas inadvertently provided powerful political ammunition for Spain’s enemies. As they were preparing to launch their own imperial adventure, Tudor English writers embraced Las Casas’s attacks on the Spanish military enterprise. Castro reminds us, however, that the term Black Legend, now often used to characterize this position, actually originated far more recently. It first appeared in response to the propaganda war the Hearst newspapers waged against Spain prior to the Spanish-American War—citing Spanish torture, rape, and concentration camps established in Cuba. Following Spain’s defeat in the 1898 war, Julian Juderías and others saw the politically motivated depiction of Spanish brutality as forming part of an historical pattern. In this respect, the coining of the term Black Legend forms part of the broader early-twentieth-century valorization of Hispanic traditions, thus forming company with José Rodó’s rereading of Shakespeare’s The Tempest and the poetry of Ruben Darío.

Castro notes that Las Casas’s political fortunes waxed and waned in the contentious environment of the Spanish court, although he achieved political victories that few others obtained. Initially, Cardinal-regent Francisco Ximénez de Cisneros sympathized with Las Casas’s recommendations for ecclesiastical oversight of the administration of the island of Hispaniola, although he ultimately embraced a plan that fell short of Las Casas’s goals. In 1521, Las Casas was instrumental in obtaining royal support for a utopian Spanish settlement on the coast of Venezuela. Despite its inevitable failure, Las Casas successfully lobbied for a similar expedition fourteen years later. In this venture, a single town in present-day Nicaragua converted peacefully to Christianity. However, Las Casas spent less time developing methods for nonviolent conversion than he did attacking local slave-raiding Spaniards. Once again, he scored a temporary political victory when the king imposed a temporary ban on these raids. Upon his return to Spain, Las Casas continued his campaigns for peaceful proselytization. In 1542, for the second time, he succeeded in winning over Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who then issued the most controversial rules of his reign, the New Laws, which ordered the immediate freeing of indigenous slaves and the extinction of the encomienda upon the death of its original recipient. The New Laws proved politically disastrous, and Charles was forced to modify their terms by near-outright rebellion in the Americas. Undeterred, Las Casas returned to America as the bishop of Chiapas, where he succeeded principally in making bitter enemies of the local leadership over the course of the next two years and was returned to Spain.

Between 1547 and 1550, he devoted himself to attacking the work of a political adversary, Juan Ginés Sepúlveda, successfully preventing the publication of his rival’s book. (His famous months-long debate at Valladolid formed part of this campaign.) Although halting royal approval for Sepúlveda’s publication, Las Casas proceeded to publish nine of his treatises in 1552 without official authorization. Las Casas escaped immediate consequences for his action. Fourteen years later, when copies of these treatises were seized, Las Casas once again emerged unscathed. He devoted the remainder of his life to composing additional treatises in a similarly critical...