ABSTRACT
The Spanish conquest of the Americas in the early sixteenth century and the ruthless exploitation of Native Americans by Spanish settlers led to a moral crisis within the Spanish Church. The sixteenth-century Dominican friar and missionary Bartolomé de las Casas (1484–1566) was one of the most prominent critics of 179the excesses of Spanish colonialism who tirelessly lobbied the Spanish Crown to intervene. His work “A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies” (Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias) appeared in Seville in 1552.
