Part of
Key Cultural Texts in TranslationEdited by Kirsten Malmkjær, Adriana Şerban and Fransiska Louwagie
[Benjamins Translation Library 140] 2018
► pp. 37–52
Edited by Kirsten Malmkjær, Adriana Şerban and Fransiska Louwagie
[Benjamins Translation Library 140] 2018
► pp. 37–52
Chapter 3Bartolomé de Las Casas’ Breve Relación de la Destrucción de Las Indias (Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies) (1552) in translation
The politics of linguistic and cultural appropriation
Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1542), written by a Spanish Dominican friar, was among the most controversial texts of the sixteenth century. It aimed to expose atrocities committed by Spanish conquistadors against the native population of the New World and prompt a review of the abuse of human rights. Spain’s Protestant enemies adapted it in translation into the so-called “Black Legend” of Spain as a colonial power, through which future generations would view Spain for centuries. A close reading of English, French and Dutch editions demonstrates how it was further misappropriated by Protestant powers to validate their own, similar, ambitions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as inverse images of those of their common enemy, Catholic Spain.
Keywords: Las Casas, Indies, conquest, colonisation, Black Legend, textual appropriation, political mediation, anti-Catholicism
Article outline
- 1. Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1552)
- 2. The Spanish Colonie (1583)
- 3. Le miroir de la tyrannie Espagnole perpetrée aux Indes Occidentales (1620)
- 4. The Tears of the Indians (1656)
- 5.Conclusion
-
References
References
Primary text
Las Casas, Bartolomé
1552 Brevísima relación de la destruccion de las Indias, colegida por el Obispo fray Bartolome de las Casas/o Casaus de la orden de Sacto Domingo. Año 1552. Seville: Sebastián Trugillo
Online editions
http://www.ciudadseva.com/textos/otros/brevisi.htm
http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra/brevsima-relacin-de-la-destruccin-de-las-indias-0/
Translations
French (1579)
Las Casas, Bartolomé
1579 La destruction des Indes de Bartolomé de Las Casas (1552). Traduction de Jacques de Miggrode. Paris: Editions Chandeigne 2013.
English (1583)
Las Casas, Bartolomé
1583 The Spanish Colonie or Brief Chronicle of the Acts and gests of the Spaniardes on the West Indies, called the newe World … written in the Castilian tongue by the reverend Bishop Bartholomew de las Casas, Friar of the order of S.Dominicke. And nowe first translated into English by M.M.S, attributed to James Aliggrodo. London: William Brome.
Online edition [URL]
French and Dutch (1620)
Las Casas, Bartolomé
1620 Le miroir de la cruelle et horrible tyrannie Espagnole perpetrée au Pays Bas, par le tyran Duc de Albe, et aultres cómandeuers de par le Roy Philipppe de deuxieme. On a adjoinct la deuxième partie de les tyrannies commises aux Indes Occidentales par les Espagnoles. Le miroir de la tyrannie Espagnole perpetrée aux Indes Occidentales. On verra icy la cruaté plus que inhumaine, comise par les Espagnols, aussi la description de ces terres, peuples et leur nature. Mise en lumière para un Eveque Bartholome de las Casas, de l’Ordre de S. Dominic. Translated by Jean Everhardts Johannes Cloppenburg. Amsterdam: Jan Ever’tss Cloppenburg.
Online editions
http://www.wdl.org/en/item/515/
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k117329c
English (1656)
Las Casas, Bartolomé
1656 The Tears of the Indians: Being an Historical and True Account of the Cruel Massacres and Slaughters of Above Twenty Millions of Innocent People, Committed by the Spaniards in the Islands of Hispaniola, Cuba, Jamaica & other places of the West-Indies, to the Total Destruction of Those Countries. [W]ritten in Spanish by Casaus, an eye-witness of those things; and made English by J.P. (John Phillips). London: J.C. for Nath Brook, at the Angel in Cornhil.
Online edition [URL]
English (1992)
Las Casas Bartolomé
Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies Translated by Nigel Griffin with introduction by Anthony Pagden Harmondsworth Penguin 
Online edition: [URL]
Secondary sources
Elliott, John Huxtable
1989 ‘The discovery of America and the discovery of man’. In Spain and its World, 1500–1700. New Haven and London: Yale.
Gibson, Charles
1971 The Black Legend. Anti-Spanish attitudes in the Old World and the New. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Gravatt, Patricia
2007 ‘Re-reading Theodore de Bry’s Black Legend’. In Rereading the Black Legend, edited by Margaret R. Greer, Malter D. Mingolo and Maureen Quilligan, 225–243. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
Hanke, Lewis
1994 All Mankind is One. A Study of the Disputation Between Bartolomé De Las Casas and Juan Ginés De Sepúlveda in 1550 on the Religious and Intellectual Capacity of the American Indians. Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 1994
Hart, Johnathan
2013 Textual Imitation: Making and Seeing in Literature, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Juderías, Julián
1992 La Leyenda Negra. Estudios acerca del concepto de España en el extranjero. Madrid: Ediciones Atlas.
Las Casas, Bartolomé
1971 History of the Indies, Harper and Row: University of Texas.
Pagden, Anthony
1982 The fall of natural man. The American Indian and the origins of comparative ethnology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shaskan Bumas, E
2000 ‘Protestant uses of Las Casas’ Brevísima relación in Europe and the American Colonies’. Early American Literature 35 (2): 107–136.
Sauer, Elizabeth
2006 ‘Toleration and Translation: The case of Las Casas, Phillips and Milton’. Philological Quarterly 85 (3–4): 271–292.
Valdeón, Roberto, A.
2012 ‘
Tears of the Indies and the Power of Translation: John Phillips’ version of Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias
’. Bulletin of Spanish Studies 59 (6): 839–858.
Wansink, H.
Ed. 1969 The Apologie of William of Orange. Leiden: Brill.