Casas, Bartolome de las

Estimate

4,000 - 6,000 USD

bidding is closed

Description

An Account of the First Voyages and Discoveries Made by the Spaniards in America. Containing the Most Exact Relation Hitherto Publish’d, of Their Unparallel’d Cruelties on the Indians, in the Destruction of above Forty Millions of People. London: Printed by J. Darby for D. Brown, J. Harris, and Andr. Bell, 1699
paper, ink, leather

4to (7 1/4 x 4 1/4 in.; 184 x 108 mm). 2 folding engraved plates, one with six compartments, the other with sixteen, depicting the cruelties of the Spanish (after de Bry); conjugate leaves A1.4 and quire S apparently supplied from another copy, tiny rust hole in the 16-panel plate; strong browning and foxing, particularly in first half of text. Contemporary Cambridge-style paneled calf; sympathetically rebacked with modern spine gilt, red lettering piece, raised bands.

Provenance

Wolfgang A. Herz (monogrammed library ticket: Christie's New York, 9 December 2009, lot 274)

Literature

Wing C797; ESTC R21602; Church 780; Field 881; Friede and Keene, "Bartolome de Las Casas in History," American Historical Review, vol. 78, no. 5, p. 1482; Palau 46971; Sabin 11289

Catalogue Note

An important work by the first priest ordained in the New World. Las Casas accompanied Columbus on his third voyage to America in 1498; and his ordination took place in San Domingo in 1510. Las Casas's famous Indian tracts were the earliest reports of Spanish atrocities in the New World and the first to condemn them outright. He devoted fifty years to abrogating the policy of enslaving them. Friede and Keene have called him "the New World's first political activist."

Although written in Spain in 1539, publication was forbidden until 1552. There were three earlier English editions of Las Casas, but this translation, for all intents and purposes, is a separate, new work, much improved over the earlier ones.