Reading Las Casas: A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies

Columbus landed in the New World in 1492. By the 1520s—barely thirty years later—the Spanish had established significant colonies across the Caribbean and devastated entire indigenous populations. I knew the conquest was fast, but I hadn&rsquo;t fully grasped just how fast. Within less than a century, European powers had conquered the continent. Bartolomé de las Casas&rsquo;s writings are some of…