Bartolomé de las Casas
Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-1566), Spanish colonist turned Dominican friar and bishop, chief critic of the treatment of Indigenous peoples in the Spanish Americas.
Category: Figures
- 1484Birth of Bartolomé de las Casas in Seville
Bartolomé de las Casas is born in Seville in 1484 (11 November in the sources I found). Archival research in the 1970s showed that the long-accepted date of 1474 was wrong. He later becomes the leading critic of Spanish colonial abuses.
- 1502Bartolomé de las Casas sails to Hispaniola with Nicolás de Ovando
Las Casas travels with his father in Ovando's 1502 fleet to Hispaniola, where he receives land and enslaved Taíno labourers under the encomienda system he would later condemn. One source gives 1499.
- December 21, 1511Antonio de Montesinos denounces the treatment of the Taíno in a sermon at Santo Domingo
On 21 December 1511 the Dominican friar Antonio de Montesinos tells the colonists of Hispaniola that their abuse of the Taíno is a sin. Bartolomé de las Casas hears it, and it leads to the Laws of Burgos.
- 1513Las Casas serves as chaplain in Velázquez's conquest of Cuba
In 1513 Las Casas accompanies Diego Velázquez and Pánfilo de Narváez's forces in Cuba as chaplain and receives an encomienda near Cienfuegos. He later describes the massacres he saw there.
- c. 1514Las Casas gives up his encomienda and begins to speak out
While preparing a Pentecost sermon in 1514, Las Casas decides the encomienda is unjust and gives up his enslaved labourers. Some accounts date the formal act to 1515.
- c. 1516Las Casas presents the Memorial de Remedios and is named Protector of the Indians
In 1516, in Spain, Las Casas submits a reform plan and is made 'Protector of the Indians' in a Hieronymite commission. His plan proposed importing enslaved Africans; he later called that proposal a grave error.
- 1520 – 1521Las Casas's attempt at a peaceful settlement at Cumaná, Venezuela, fails
Las Casas gets a royal concession in 1520 to found farming settlements without conquest on the Venezuelan coast. The colony is destroyed by local people in his absence in 1521, and Las Casas withdraws to a Dominican house.
- 1522Bartolomé de las Casas enters the Dominican order in Santo Domingo
After the Cumaná failure Las Casas becomes a novice at the Dominican Santa Cruz monastery in Santo Domingo in 1522 and takes his vows in 1523. He spends years in study and writing.
- 1527 – c. 1561Las Casas writes his Historia de las Indias
Las Casas works on his history of the first decades of Spanish colonisation in the Caribbean from 1527 and finishes it around 1559-1561. He restricts its publication for forty years, and it is not printed until 1875.
- 1537 – 1538Las Casas and the Dominicans try peaceful conversion in Tuzulutlán, Guatemala
From 1537 Las Casas and fellow Dominicans enter the unconquered highlands of Tuzulutlán, the 'Land of War', to convert people by preaching and not force. The region is later renamed Verapaz ('True Peace'); he is recalled in 1538.
- 1537Pope Paul III declares in Sublimis Deus that the Indigenous peoples of the Americas are rational beings
In 1537 Paul III issues Sublimis Deus, saying the Indians are fully human, may not be enslaved and should be converted peacefully. Las Casas's writing and Dominican allies helped bring it about.
- 1544Las Casas is consecrated bishop of Chiapas
Las Casas is made bishop of Chiapas in southern Mexico in 1544, after helping shape the New Laws of 1542. His refusal to absolve encomenderos who held enslaved people leads to conflict with colonists.
- August 1550 – April 1551Las Casas debates Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda at Valladolid over the conquest
A council of theologians and jurists hears Las Casas and Sepúlveda argue whether Spain's conquests and the treatment of the Indigenous peoples are just. The result is inconclusive, and both sides claim victory.
- 1552Las Casas's Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias is printed in Seville
Las Casas's short account of Spanish violence against Indigenous peoples, written about 1542, is printed in Seville in 1552. It is widely read and translated, and used in later arguments about Spanish colonisation.
- 1566Death of Bartolomé de las Casas in Madrid
Las Casas dies in Madrid in July 1566, aged 81 (the day is given as 17 or 18 July). He is buried at the Atocha monastery.