Las Casas on Columbus: The Third Voyage (review)

Short Notices 283 Parergon 20.1 (2003) to home occupied a greater part of Italian attention. In a period when French armies were regularly invading the peninsular, it would be amazing if they did not. This is a useful volume for scholars but it adds little to our knowledge of the period. Sybil M. Jack Department of History University of Sydney Symcox, Geoffrey, ed., Las Casas on Columbus: The Third Voyage (Repertorium Columbianum XI), Turnhout, Brepols, 2001; cloth; pp. 333; EUR70.00; ISBN 2503511813. In this further volume of the Repertorium Columbianum the text of Bartolomé de Las Casas’ Historia de las Indias is continued from the point at which we left it in Volume VII. It covers Columbus’s exploration in May-August 1498 that resulted in the discovery of Trinidad, the American mainland and his speculations on the possible nearness of the terrestrial paradise. It then omits some sections, which do not relate to Columbus, and moves to the section that covers the period of Columbus’s unsuccessful attempts to govern the colony of Hispaniola. This is the section in which Las Casas’ own commitment to the welfare of the Indians and his condemnation of the Spanish settlers for their greed and cruelty plays the greatest part in the narrative. It is the part in which he struggles with the moral and theological issues of the responsibilities of a single individual for the course of history and the way in which God apparently permits evil while ordaining a mission to extend the boundaries of the Christian faith. Columbus’s failure to protect the Indians, his imposition of tributes and labour services on the natives and his dispatch of captive Indians to Europe to be sold as slaves creates a moral dilemma for Las Casas. In the end his criticism extends beyond the individual to the whole imperial system. The tricky historical question for modern academics is to determine the limits and bias of Las Casas in his use of contemporary writings, especially those of Columbus himself, to which he had access either through the family or as a result of his own extensive collections which are now lost. Sensibly, the editor makes no attempt to enter into such issues in the brief introduction, confining himself to indicating the type of problems that arise. 284 Short Notices Parergon 20.1 (2003) As there has been a recent critical edition of the whole text of Las Casas’ Historia by Isacio Peréz Fernández, which the editors consider the canonical edition, as well as many other editions in modern Spanish, the editors have chosen to remain as faithful as possible to the autograph manuscript in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, with a fairly close translation. There is no sense in which they aim to replace Fernández’s edition, but the objective of a complete collection of Columban material has led to this volume. It maintains the high editorial standards of the series. Sybil M. Jack Department of History University of Sydney ...