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submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by Grumpus_Maximus@thelemmy.club to c/historymemes@piefed.social
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[-] SpruceBringsteen@lemmy.world 25 points 5 days ago

They couldn't have been too mad given the way they continued to plunder the New World after that. Only thing worse than a Spanish ship captain back then was a Jesuit priest.

[-] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 27 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

I think OP is referencing Bartoleme de las Casa, who was rather more of an anomaly than representative of mainstream Spanish society. He's also complicated by the fact that when he first went to the Spanish colonies, he spent over a decade exploiting the ever living shit out of indigenous peoples. (IIRC, he was studying the book of Sirach and became convicted.) As he transitioned into being an abolutionist (one of the first? if not the first,) he suggested using foreign (african) slaves instead, which the spanish adopted as a law

But I'm not sure it's really fair to say Bartoleme represents all (or even most) Spanish at the time.

There may have been others before the 18th century, but I can't find them.

Bart had me going in the first half NGL

[-] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 11 points 5 days ago

to be clear.. it's pretty clear from his writings he had no idea how the african slaves were being, uh, sourced? I don't know what he thought was going on down there, but he did get to a point where he saw slavery of any form as evil.

but yeah. it's a fascinating progression and thing to settle on. "enslaving local people" is somehow more offensive than "enslaving foreign people and shipping them in." I rather imagine he got to know a few of the locals. came to respect them, see them as humans and not something as lesser, but he never had that experience with african people, until, well, maybe he did. if that makes sense.

this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2026
230 points (100.0% liked)

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