Las Casas on Columbus: Background and the Second and Fourth Voyages

Bartolome de Las Casas is certainly the most controversial figure in the long and troubled history of Spain's overseas empire. The fierce 'defender and apostle to the Indians', as he become known, Las Casas dedicated most of his adults life to describing the atrocities which the Spaniards had perpetrated against the indigenous inhabitants of the Americans. He was also, however, the man who perhaps did most to chronicle the life of the 'discover' of America, Christopher Columbus. For Las Casas, Columbus was the key figure in Las Casas's own prolonged conception of the Spanish presence in America and his interpretation of what had taken place there since 1492. This volume of the Repertorium Columbianum presents Las Casas's accounts, drawn mainly from the Historia de las Indias, of the events which preceded Columbus's first voyage and which occurred during his second and fourth voyages.