The Conscience of Colonial Europe: Bartolomé de Las Casas
Vložit
- čas přidán 8. 11. 2021
- In today’s video, we will look at the life of Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas, a Dominican Priest who, during the 1500’s at the time of Spanish conquest in the Americas, has been called the “world’s first Social Justice Warrior”. But his isn’t a cosy story of messianic devotion to a cause held firmly in his breast from the outset. He was, in the beginning, one of the bad guys, up to his elbows in it. But then something happened that would transform him into a relentless champion of human rights at a time when the phrase didn’t even exist; taking part in the legendary Valladolid debate; pushing the Pope to issue a Human Rights Bull on behalf of indigenous people; hustling an audience with Charles V, Habsburg King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor; and then going on to publish what is considered the first anthropology textbook on the Americas. His tireless campaigning would lead to changes in attitudes and law, that provided a foundation for the European enlightenment centuries later. And yet, today in the West, he and compatriots such as Fray Antonio Montesinos largely remains one of the unknown heroes of history, being overshadowed by conquistadors such as Pizarro, Cortez and Columbus.
#lascasas, #socialjusticewarrior, #humanrights, #spanishhero
All footage used in this montage is for educational purposes. It remains the property of its respective creators, and is gratefully acknowledged in the end credits of the full length video. Copyright Disclaimer- under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favour of fair use. Please contact us on info@heroesandlegends.com.au if you have any concerns about its use.
ERRATA / CORRIGENDA:
1. At 9:30 Columbus third trip is narrated as 1489, rather than 1498 - a dyslexic slip of the tongue - apologies!
For a narration-only audio version of this and all our other videos, please visit the Heroes and Legends Documentary Channel Podcast, via Spotify, Itunes or other leading broadcasters, by simply searching for this channel.
If you enjoy my content, leave your suggestions and comments below, and please consider making a donation via PayPal or sign up as a Patreon supporter to help me continue making these unfunded educational videos:
www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted...
/ heroesandlegends
buymeacoffee.com/infoQh
For resources, links to my other videos, merchandise, the latest social media posts and podcast links, please visit my Heroes and Legends Website: www.heroesandlegends.com.au
Hero, a true hero due to the scope & integrity of this man's efforts. We need more truth & action advocates like him. What a worthy production!
Heroes come in many shapes and forms - sometimes conventional, sometimes not. Thanks so much for supporting my channel!
Your content vastly outclasses the amount of attention you receive
Thanks so much for that generous praise, it makes all the hard work worthwhile! - I hope in time, with the support of reviewers like you, the channel will reach its potential.
This was an amazing documentary. Bless Bartolome de Las Casas, he was a hero and a saint. Truely admirable!
Please ensure your comments are civilised and dignified. Filters are in place to block foul or hateful language. Play the ball, not the player, otherwise you may be blocked and have your comment disallowed. As these videos are solo efforts, written and recorded over many long hours, mistakes are quite possible. I appreciate any corrections and will post them in an Erratum in the Description section (e.g. The third trip was in 1498 not 89). Thanks for supporting my channel, and enjoy!
Great content mate, this is rapidly becoming my favorite documentary channel. I like that you showcase less well know historical figures. Keep it up!
Glad you like them! That's partly my aim - to highlight lesser known heroes, but also to take a fresh (and perhaps controversial) look at others. Always with an attempt to be inspired. Thanks so much for your support!
I think it's so important to realize that dark and light can exist simultaneously in any era, country, culture, religion or individual. We often generalize everyone from the age of Exploration as being blood thirsty and racist, or think of missionaries as playing only an oppressive and sadistic role. While of course one shouldn't gloss over the bad, we need to see where exactly the bad existed, and where it didn't. Thanks for showing me some of the light✨️ Las Casas was truly a great figure in a heartbreaking world.
Agreed! Thanks for taking the time to view my content and to share your thoughts!
Spaniard conquistadors were indeed blood thirsty and greedy and violent evil humans. I am glad we are learning a true and accurate history through this You Tube video. “ No more Columbus discovered America fairly tale lies.”
Absolute class work dude. Thank you ❤
Thanks, i really appreciate your support
The story of Las Casas is truly a fine example of the classic question, "What is better, to be born good, or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?" I feel the latter is the case, as he had to actively choose to admit the immoral errors that enriched him, and work for the greater good, rather than simply start from a neutral position. He had to have known from the outset that the vast majority of the people with the power to right the wrongs were the very people perpetuating and profiting from said wrongs, and yet he pursued it anyway. The man was fearless in the face of insurmountable odds and never held his tongue, despite substantial personal risk. Truly a shining example of the best humanity has to offer.
🥰❤❤❤🥰❤❤❤🥰❤❤❤🥰❤❤❤🥰❤❤❤
Excellent and deeply researched documentary !
Many thanks! It means so much to read your generous comments!
Learned something totally new and inspiring. Thank you.
Glad it resonated with you!
Great video. Your voice is clear and the way you go back and forth is excellent to understand the life in those days. Things were hard for De las Casas and his conversion and compromise admirable, he never quit! Human Rights is a subject difficult even today !!! we never learn of History.... As humans we are excellent animals!
I've adored Bartolome for years, and never met a SINGLE person who even knew him. This is sooo reassuring! The only modern counterpart might be Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The quality of the narrative, clearly researched and beautifully sequenced, left me so happy and more optimistic that Bartolome is finally getting recognition for his moral heroism. I never saw the movie whose clips are used here. I hope I can find it.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Excelent video! Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, all his efforts to protect native people and his writings should be made public. He was a great man. I do not know how come some people nowadays can still think that all he said was not true . He fought for real issues. 🙏🏼
Thanks for this bit of history. I lived in a small town in Guatemala named after him in the early 1980’s.
Thank you highlighting de las Costas. I only knew about his book before I watched this and there was so much more to him.
And I completely agree that he is one of those lesser known historical figures that we should know about.
Las Casas, not Las Costas!
I only wish my Dominican brothers ans Sisters would actually read there own history... We shouldn't be called Dominican Republic if that was the case, we shoulda been called Republic De Las Casas! Cause The Catholic Church as a whole is detestable in history but this man in his capacity was a Hero...
Thank for posting this. I love the videography. Is there a movie I can watch that expands or goes into the story?
I list all my film sources in the credit section, but even a google search on Las Casas or the Valladolid debate will give you lots to explore. Thanks for watching!
Thank you .
Welcome 😊
Could somebody please name the show or movie from which many of those authentic looking scenes were taken for illustration purposes?
I was wondering the same! Then I noticed at the end, the credits explain that it was a montage, not just one film. There are seven film titles you can read there, and it looks to me like they are all Spanish-language productions. I myself don't mind subtitles, but it's pretty dispiriting to realize that apparently no American, British or Australian producer has considered this story worth a screen production.
Thanks!
Thanks for your generous support!
I'm currently reading a biography of de Las Casas, by Paul Vickery
Talk about a great man way before his time 👏👏👏
Indeed! Thanks for watching!
can i ask where did you get some of your sources?
A good source to begin is project Gutenberg ebook you can download, called Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings. By Francis Augustus MacNutt. 2007. You can find it on Gutenberg.org
Thanks for the knowledge bro
No worries, thanks so much for supporting my channel!
do the battle of thermopalae and marathon as well as one solely on joesph banks and mutiny on bounty
So many heroes, so little time! Thanks for your suggestions, and for your support of my channel!
what movies are these clips from?
Please see end credits
What movie is this from
Please see end credits for a list of film sources
I thought I heard he is also responsable for the beginning of african slave trade…
Yes, I understand that Casas believed that Indians did have a soul, whereas Blacks did not.
Here I think strangely Machiavelli might be of some help in what is a hero. We recon a hero by actions they do that we happen to like. There may or may not be anything objectively good or anything like justice but what we recon it. So then a hero is a man of skill or craft to achieve an end that enough people agree with.
A saint or sinner can have those skills to achieve an end. Las Casas is reconned a hero because he was able to get some help for the Indians. But only a hero because we dislike slavery but there is no reason to assume that for all time slavery will be disliked. It is possible that there could be a rise of slavery again in the future and Las Casas then reconned a fool.
I feel it is important to mention he did instead recommend the use of Africans for slavery...
Only briefly, and then very publicly and broadly denouncing that too
Thanks so much for your videos and work in making avalible details of history in an generally unbiased way. I found your channel in search of answers to the big questions: why we think the way we do? What harmful traditional attitudes, ways of thinking are we still labouring under? Why are our leaders still making war, when most ordinary people want peace? Your perspectives on history in realtion to the present are truly useful to understanding how we got here as as species, and more importantly, what still needs to be changed if we want leave primitive barbarisim behind forever, to evolve into more informed, and ultimatly a kinder, gentler and less distructive civilization, in harmony with nature and with ourselves.
Those are questions that many of us continually ask ourselves, and to which we all form our own opinions depending on our experiences and exposures. I try to generally be sympathetic to my subjects - mostly from the point of view of understanding their own psychosocial background, but also that of the society they lived in and from an anthropological understanding more generally. Some people have reacted aggressively to my attempts at challenging the simplistic narrative of "good guy vs bad guy"; but I think such dichotomies are rather infantile and serve a political rather than truly scholarly agenda. I like to think about how Shakespeare would portray these individuals. He clearly understood that personalities and the situations they found themselves in were much more complex than the two dimensional caricatures that we often like to portray them as. Its one reason I go down so many rabbit holes when telling these stories. Its also becoming more apparent as I continue producing these videos that people increasingly appear to share the same vices and virtues wherever you study them, which goes against the narrative of victim-perpetrator.
Your questions about why we seem to have a perpetual tendency to conduct war can be looked at on many levels, from the philosophical to the purely biological, and I'm not sure there will ever be a utopian solution - short of manipulating our genetic makeup or drugging our food and water (Brave New World by Huxley) and I'm not sure that will end well either. In the meantime, I hope my content at least gives my viewers pause to think.
Thanks so much for supporting my channel!
How did las Casas help lay the foundations of the Enlightenment? Is there a taceable intellectual thread from him to later Enlightment philosophers?
Las Casas was strongly influenced- through his Dominican mentors and his Salamanca university education by the theology of St Thomas Aquinas. These very introspective works focussing particularly on rationality in turn led to the humanist philosophical trends that were instrumental in the formation of enlightenment ideas
@@heroesandlegends So de la Casas was influenced by the first shoots of Enlightenment rather than an influence on the later Enlightenment?
@@markaxworthy2508 I suppose that's one way of looking at it, or we could also say he was himself one those shoots of the late renaissance who, by his pressure on the crown; publications that were used by protestants in their own developing theology; as well as effect on papal bulls and Spanish intellectual movement helped push ideas down that road. He seems rather obscure to us to take seriously and he was certainly no Descartes in terms of the complexity of his writing, but his arguments were so simple and compelling that I think (and this is just my own view) that the implications of his relentless campaign opened quite a few eyes- the effect being at the very least, an acceleration of the timeline. Again that's just my perception, but I'd love to know your take on it.
My understanding is that Las Casas eventually deemed the Indians to have souls, but Blacks did not, inviting the ubiquitous enslavement of Blacks in the New World. His apology for this "error in judgment" was published some 300 years later.
De Las Casas was transformed by God. ❤ He became a better man.
Thanks God we had the Ottoman Empire in the M.E,The Balkans that protected us from thies Katolics human burners.
You've got a point there, mate.
Fun fact. It was the Muslims who closed down the spice trade to Europe in 1453 that caused the Europeans to discover the New World by looking for another way to the East. But better yet, you should read the history of Islam and what they did when they murdered their way through India. You might also note the continuing occupation and subjugation by Arabs in the Middle East to this present day. 1400 years of subjugation and occupation by Arabs and Islam. Won't even mention the barbarous Islamic slave trade in Africa who sold the Europeans slaves.
9:30 Third trip in 1489???? In 14 hundred and 92, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. That was his first trip.
Yes, that was trip number one
i can't watch this anymore, the dates are all wrong and God knows what else.
I've just realised in my dyslexia that I narrated 1489 instead of 1498 and its taken this long for my eyes to register it properly. Apologies, and I've noted it in the Erratum in the description section
I've just realised in my dyslexia that I narrated 1489 instead of 1498 and its taken this long for my eyes to register it properly. Apologies, and I've noted it in the Erratum in the description section
His 1489 voyage just brought him to Hispaniola.
This video is interesting. It’s interesting to see the point of view of a European, and the heroism painted on Las Casas. Maybe it’s not Europe but the view of the Catholic Church. Whatever it is our point of view is much different. Our ancestors fought for our freedom. Our freedom was not given by a man who had a change of heart. Our freedom was earned. Our hero is Enriquillo. Las Casas was our hostage negotiator. We honor the true liberator on the 27th of October. I’m posting to show all who reads don’t believe everything you see and hear. History needs to be told by the people by whom it is written of not by who wrote it.
Thankyou for your perspective. Another hero to investigate! Thanks!
On the subject of freedom / liberation from oppression: this is a human phenomenon as old as mankind and crosses all cultural and chronological timelines. Conquest and integration; conquest and extermination; conquest and ethnic cleansing; conquest and liberation: all situations that are determined by many factors both of the winner and loser. My own grandmother witnessed oppression and slavery in the Balkans and had the tattoos to prove it; though these days we only perceive the crime through the eyes of indigenous non-European people. Liberty is a precious commodity. I hope we all have the good sense to cherish it when we have it, and to work to secure it for others who are unable to attain it by themselves.
@@heroesandlegendsah interesting! I’ve been binging the docs on your channel so this is a cool factoid. I know there are a lot of Yugoslavs in Australia. My great grandparents also immigrated to California from Yugoslavia ~1945. Slavs know that Europeans don’t think all Europeans were civilized :)
I’m just about to start this doc, but I have been reading about Las Casas since I was in middle school and I have a very low opinion of him and his “reformation”. From my memory, he ended up being a slightly moderating influence in his later years, but he was unquestionably a key cog in the subjugation of native peoples and never truly saw their humanity. He was paternalistic to the core and believed that stripping the natives of their culture and traditional way of life was good for them. He may have fought native mistreatment by wealthy landowners, but primarily because he wanted the church to have the main role in subjugating natives. I see him as a zealot rather than a “human rights activist” as I believe he has been whitewashed to be.
We’ll see if I feel differently after your doc!
Yes, Casas is obviously famous and viewed mostly positively, but I am wondering to what extent his personal piety and help was shared by the Catholic authorities who still had to maintain political relations with the rulers. Plus, seems very convenient for the Catholic church (and other religious groups in their respective parts of the world) to have special people like Casas. Essentially helping the Catholic organization benefit from crimes done by the worst people who were sent there first, and being able to contrast themselves to the first wave of criminals. Kind of washing their hands off them. This is not to suggest Catholics did not authentically share Cases and other humanitarian perspective, but its all similar to a sort of parallel social authority that serves as a back up for the government and military vertical authority. They are still allies at home.
An interesting subject. The elephant in the room here are the massive disease deaths suffered by the Amerindians from accidentally introduced Old World diseases, which are only mentioned here latterly in passing. They went ahead of the Spanish and may eventually have reduced the population by 90%. This paved the way for conquest and made exploiting the labour of the dying survivors a diminishing return. As a result, in his lifetime, de las Casas was only tinkering at the edge of democide.
Yes, it's hard to know whether it was intentional or unwitting- esp in the 1500's when so little was known about epidemic disease transmission. The Dominicans were latecomers, and I doubt that the Franciscans would have wanted to poison their own flock. The conquistadors needed the slave labour so even here it's doubtful they were intentionally spreading smallpox. In my next video I willl be highlighting the intentional infection of indigenous people, as a strategy for control which is truly evil. Stay tuned!
@@heroesandlegends It was clearly unwitting. Old World diseases went ahead of the Spanish into areas they initially didn't know existed. The Inca Empire had been weakened by them before Pizarro arrived. The same was true in North America. The Cahokia mound culture/civilization had been so effectively been destroyed that when Europeans initially arrived in the Mississippi valley, they didn't even know it had ever existed. Likewise down the Amazon. When Orrellana went down the Amazon he reported large Amerindian populations. When the next European went down it was almost deserted.
@@heroesandlegends With regard to your future work, could you do something specific on Keith Windschuttle's "Fabrication of Aboriginal History"? It created a stir when the first volume came out.
@Mark Axworthy with regard to Keith Windschuttle- I haven't read any of his books, but I do know he is considered a controversial figure down here. Generally speaking, my aims on this channel are to draw some inspiration from figures of history (that may or may not themselves be controversial- as you and I have already discussed), by reviewing their lives in a way and in a context that some people haven't considered. When it comes to Aboriginal history, we have few reliable (honest) sources and a whole lot of unreliable fluff (including the admission of lore as evidence). Teasing out the one from the other has been the bane of researchers for a long time- particularly as it has become a hot topic with the recent slamming of Bruce Pascoe's Dark Emu by academics calling out a PC agenda on its promotion that ignores the evidence in favour of feel good pseudoscholarship. I'll try to walk the straight and narrow on that, so as not to make my work a "puff piece" as some cheeky commentators have suggested 😉
@@markaxworthy2508 an unfortunate tragedy indeed. We all become poorer for the loss of a civilisation and its people.
Typical hubris of kings and bureaucrats .
Excellent
Thankyou!
I hope that the modern descendants of the native people of Americas who were abused by the Spanish and the Portuguese can take some comfort knowing that today those countries are not very prosperous compared to other European powers and are actually known more for their moral decay rather than for their achievement.
I'm pretty comfy being alive on my "not-quite shithole", which is waay better than the fate of most natives on the US and Canada
Spain is awesome. Quality of life and highest life expectancy. Come and be disappointed about your ignorant comment 😂
You can't say that to the native americans in english colonies because they're all dead, right? 😂🤡
Don't like spaniards
Willy bobo
The Portuguese, Dutch, French, Belgians, Germans, English & Russians weren't any better when colonizing Americas, Africa, & Asia!
@@fedevida1951
Please check the definition(s) of "racism" and the term "crying wolf" to see if either applies and, if so, to what degree(s).
@@fedevida1951
Nothing to be sorry for. "Don't like" is not "racist" anymore than "hitting" someone is "murder", that's all I was trying to say. 🙂
I'm sure you like the British more 😂 c**t
This is sad. Naive genuine goodness in the presence of opportunistic barbaric intellect
Thanks!
Thanks so much for supporting my channel!
@@heroesandlegends please keep up the good work!