Bartolomé de Las Casas

Unlike Christian Wolf’s concept on natural law philosophy, Las Casas based his natural law on theological precepts and morality. But for a proper understanding of the works of Las Casas, it is incumbent to highlight on his background. He was born in 1484 and grew up in Seville, where he witnessed the return of Christopher Columbus in 1493.⁵²⁸

526 Radin, Max, Natural Law and Natural Rights, Yale Law Journal, Vol. 59, No. 2, Jan., 1950, pp. 214-237.

527 Kopytoff & Miers, African Slavery as an Institution of Marginality, 1977, pp. 3-5.

528 Columbus, Christopher, His Life, His Work, His Remains. Vol. 1 New York: GP Putnam’s Sons, 1903-04, p. 459.

His father accompanied Columbus on his second voyage to Americas and in 1498 he returned on a ship loaded with slaves, one of whom he gave to Bartolomé. In 1507, he was ordained a priest at Rome and after studying the canon law for two years, he sailed back to Espanola with Admiral Diego Columbus, who gave him a land in Cibao with a repartimiento (allotment) of Indians. He also witnessed the massacre of 3000 Indians by the Spaniards at Caonao after they had brought food to share with the Christians. ⁵²⁹ In 1514, Las Casas had a change of heart towards slavery and slave trade; he then realized that denying the slaves or the labourers his wages is compared to shedding the blood of a neighbour, and a tyrannical treatment of the natives. Thereafter, he gave up his Indian slaves and began to preach against the robbery and wrongs of the Spaniards, telling his congregation that it was sinful to make Indians serve them. In 1515, he returned to Spain to report to King Fernando of the evils he witnessed and presented his Memorial de remedios to Cardinal Cisneros on how Spaniards and Indians could live together.⁵³⁰ In 1516, he was appointed protector of the Indians and thereafter, led to influence the Jeronymite commissioners to abolish slavery but his efforts were frustrated by the Spaniards, who were benefiting from the slave trade and when he told the Bishop of Burgos that about 7000 Cuban children had died of starvation in 3 months, because their parents had been taken to work in the mines, Fonseca asked how that concerned him or the King.⁵³¹ In 1526, after having experienced the enslavement of Indians and the subsequent inhuman treatments, he wrote various reports to Spain, thereby influencing the government to legislate against slavery.⁵³² The efforts of Las Casas to free the Indians did not go unnoticed because Bernardino de Minaya conveyed his ideas to a conference in Rome in 1536, and subsequently a year later, Pope Paul the III pronounced that American Indians should not be deprived of their liberty or property even if they are outside of the Christian fold; he threatened therefore, those who enslave Indians with excommunication.⁵³³ The contrast between Christian Wolff and Las Casas is that while Wolff advanced philosophy and natural law to entrench and consolidate the rights of man irrespective of colour, race and religious disposition, Las Casas invoked theology and ecclesiastic law ⁵³⁴ to free mankind from bondage.

529 Bakewell, Peter, A History of Latin America, Malden, MA Blackwell, 1997; Konetzke, Richard, La esclavitud de los indios como elemento en la esructuracion social de Hispanoamerica in Kaahle, Günther, Horst, gesammelte Aufsätze, Köln – Wien - Böhlau 1983, pp. 257-293; Mires, Fernando, im Namen des Kreuzes, Der Genozid an den Indianern während der spanischen Eroberung: theologische und politische Diskussionen, Fribourg/ Brig, 1989, pp. 33-200.

530 de Las Casas, Bartolomè and his Utopia, Sevilla: 1552.

531 de Las Casas, Bartolomè, Apologetica Historica, p. 127-129 quoted in Hanke, Lewis, The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America, 1949, p. 126.

532 Sean, Galvin, editor and translator, A Description of the Kingdom of New Spain by Sr. Dn. Pedro Alonso O’Crouley, 1774, John Howell Books 1972, pp. 114-115.

533 compare Sullivan, Francis Patrick, ed., Indian Freedom: The Cause of Bartolome de Las Casas, 1995, p. 354

534 Pope Julius II, Bull Universalis Ecclesiae, 1508.

Christian Wolff was not only concerned and confined himself to a particular race or country but also with mankind, and Las Casas addressed the problems of the Indians. In order to highlight the modus implored by Las Casas to address the misery of the Indians, it is important in this regard to mention his “Remedies for the Existing Evils, with Twenty Reasons (1533)”. But the ninth reason was the most simple and universal, namely that all people in the new world are free.⁵³⁵ From this concept, Las Casas is echoing the universal principle of the aforementioned philosophers like Wolff that man is free from birth and has the fundamental right to determine how to shape his destiny. This therefore, contradicts all norms and justifications for slavery and slave trade. The contribution of Las Casas to the abolition of slavery and slave trade against the Indians yielded further dividend as Charles V in 1542 promulgated new laws to abolish encomiendas systems. Thereafter, Indians were no longer to be enslaved and all existing Indian slaves were to be freed and they were to have the same rights as the Spaniards.⁵³⁶ There were however, many oppositions to the new law, the conquistadors opposed it, which resulted in the assassination of the viceroy in Peru. Clergies and princes also resisted the reform and in 1545 the council of Mexico advocated suspending the new laws and making encomiendas perpetual and thereafter Carlos V abrogated the new laws and encomiendas later that year.

In his book “A Defense for the Just Causes for the War” (1550), Sepulveda justifies encomiendas by arguing that because of the idolatry and sins against nature, the Indians should be subjugated and protected by the superior Spaniards and that they do not have any written laws or even private property. In a swift reaction, Las Casas responded that the Indians were quite rational and even in some respects, superior to the Greeks and Romans. He wrote, “No nation exists, no matter how rude, uncultivated, barbarous, gross, or almost brutal its people may be, which may not be persuaded and brought to a good order and way of life and made domestic, mild, and tractable, provided the method that is proper and natural to men is used; that is, love and gentleness and kindness”.⁵³⁷ Before the death of Las Casas in 1566, he published eight tracts, which were translated in the 16^th -Century into English, Flemish, French, German, and Latin.

535 Compare Author, Veuthey Michel, Source: Foresight – The Journal of Future Studies, Strategic thinking and policy, Vol. 7, Number 1, (21), 2005, pp. 26-46; Pope Paul III: Bull, Sublimis Deus, 1537.

536 de Las Casas, Bartolomè, A Short Account on the Destruction of the Indies, 1542, published in 1552; see also Fanon, Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth, pref. by Jean-Paul Sartre, translated by Constance Farrington, London: Penguin Book 2001; Gines se Sepulveda, Juan, Democrates Alter, Or the Just Causes for War Against the Indians, excerpts The New Laws, 1542; Lopez de Gomera, Fransisco, How the New Laws were received in Peru” Royal Ordinances on

“Pacifications”, 1573.

537 Sullivan, Francis Patrick, ed., Indian Freedom: The Cause of Bartolome de Las Casas,1995, p. 354.

In the prologue, he explained that it would have been a criminal neglect of his duty to remain silent about the enormous loss of life because of the conquests. He summarized the most egregious violations he was describing in his longer history. The native population of Espanola had been reduced from three million to two hundred. Cuba, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and the Bahamas were similarly devastated. On the mainland, Christians had caused the deaths of between 12 and 15 million people by unjust war and brutal slavery in order to get gold and amass private fortunes. Las Casas repeatedly argued that the natives had done nothing wrong to deserve such ill treatment. They had welcomed the Europeans, believing they came from heaven until they realized what their oppressive purposes were.

Only then did some of them take up their inferior weapons to try and defend themselves.

Europeans were ruthless and vowed to slaughter one hundred natives for every Spaniard that was killed.⁵³⁸

Las Casas wrote amongst others, a treatise on imperial sovereignty in which he advanced that the Pope had no coercive authority to force unbelievers to accept Christianity because the so called unbelievers had their own rightful kings and properties, which should be restored by the encomenderos who had robbed them. In his “Thirty Very Juridical Propositions (1548)”, he argued that everything the Spaniards had done in the new world was illegal and unjust. As a result of this and other writings and also his sermons, he became the most hated man in the Spanish empire, so that the council of Mexico City urged Philips II to restrain him and prohibit the printing of his books.⁵³⁹ And in his last will and testament he described his call as:

“To act here at home on behalf of all those people out there in what we call the Indies, the true possessors of those kingdoms, those territories. To act against unimaginable, unspeakable violence and evil and harm they have suffered from our people, contrary to all reason, all justice, so as to restore them to the original liberty they were lawlessly deprived of, and get them free of death by violence, death they still suffer”.⁵⁴⁰

Then in the same will he left behind a disturbing prophecy:

538 Las Casas, Bartolome, A Short Account on the Destruction of the Indies, 1542, published in 1552.

539 Compare de Las Casas, Bartolome, Thirty Very Juridical Propositions, excepts, 1548; Id. “The Laws of Burgos”, 1512;

Id. “Synopsis”, “Prologue”, “Preface” and “Hispaniola”, from A short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, 1542.

540 Sullivan, Francis Patrick, ed., Indian Freedom: The Cause of Bartolome de Las Casas, 1995, p. 354.

“I think that God shall have to pour out his fury and anger on Spain for these damnable, rotten, infamous deeds done so unjustly, so tyrannically, so barbarously to those people, against those people. For the whole of Spain has shared in the blood-soaked riches, some a little, some a lot, but all shared in goods that were ill-gotten, wickedly taken with violence and genocide and all must pay unless Spain does a mighty penance”.⁵⁴¹

5.6 Francisco de Vitoria, Francisco de Suarez and the Principles of