INDIES
Bartolomé de Las Casas was a Dominican missionary on Cuba in 1514, the first priest ordained in the Indies. He had a grant of land to help him do Godâs work, with a hundred local Caribs attached to the land as serfs. Within three years, this gentle and decent man was horrified to see how the Caribs sickened and died when they were forced to work, and how they were slaughtered by the Spanish colonists when they revolted. It would be better, he told the Court in Spain, to bring in Africans who were inured to such labour. He believed the choice to be the lesser of two evils, but he thought the lesser evil to be hardly an evil at all, for the African slaves in Spain seemed happy enough, and they were clearly better able to carry out hard work in the mines. In any case, the mines would soon be worked out, and the slaves could then be freed to a life of agriculture.
Instead, the trade grew ever larger, and African slaves soon began to outnumber their white masters. In 1530 there were 3000 slaves on San Domingo, and just 327 Spaniards. By 1547, de Las Casas was Bishop of Chiapa in Mexico, but he resigned his bishopric to return to Spain to campaign against the slave tradeâthe lesser evil he himself had suggested for the benefit of the Caribs and their peaceful neighbours, the Arawaks. It took three and a half centuries, five normal full spans of three-score years and ten, to abolish what he thought he could end as quickly as he had started. That same five life spans would be some 35 working lives of the African slaves, who never lived as long as free men, because slavery was cruel and brutal in the extreme.
At one stage, de Las Casas had great hopes that the King would listen to what he had to say, but early in 1555 that chance slipped away as Charles V began to fear for his own soul. He abdicated the throne and devoted the rest of his life to prayer in a little house next to the monastery of Yste, seeking salvation through prayer rather than by doing good deeds. If the king had struck against slavery then, perhaps half of all those who would eventually be hauled across the seas and worked to death might have been spared. Bartolomé de Las Casas gave the rest of his days to the fight, but he never again got close to winning.
His countrymen were not necessarily cruel to slaves per se . Like the English and most other nationalities at the time, they were just cruel to other humans in their power, making no particular discrimination between free men and slaves. It was normal to treat other human beings badly. People were still being burnt at the stake, and public executions, hangings, drawings and quarterings were a common enough ending for many a free man, and even a few women. Horrible things were done to the slaves, but mostly because they outnumbered the whites, and needed to be terrorised to remind them they had no rights. After all, no rational man would beat, murder or maim a slave, any more than he would beat a cart horse beyond what was needed to make it work, for slaves and horses were property, and both cost money to replace.
And slaves were not all that profitable at the best of timesâ Adam Smith knew that when he wrote The Wealth of Nations and, according to him, so did the ancients:
The experience of all ages and nations, I believe, demonstrates that the work done by slaves, though it appears to cost only their maintenance, is in the end the dearest of any. A person who can acquire no property, can have no other interest but to eat as much, and to labour as little as possible. Whatever work he does beyond what is sufficient to purchase his own maintenance can be squeezed out of him by violence only, and not by any interest of his own. In ancient Italy, how much the cultivation of corn degenerated, how unprofitable it became to the master when it fell under the management of slaves, is remarked by both Pliny and Columella.
Sadly, not all slave owners in the Americas were entirely rational.
Bartolomé de Las Casas was a Dominican missionary on Cuba in 1514, the first priest ordained in the Indies. He had a grant of land to help him do Godâs work, with a hundred local Caribs attached to the land as serfs. Within three years, this gentle and decent man was horrified to see how the Caribs sickened and died when they were forced to work, and how they were slaughtered by the Spanish colonists when they revolted. It would be better, he told the Court in Spain, to bring in Africans who were inured to such labour. He believed the choice to be the lesser of two evils, but he thought the lesser evil to be hardly an evil at all, for the African slaves in Spain seemed happy enough, and they were clearly better able to carry out hard work in the mines. In any case, the mines would soon be worked out, and the slaves could then be freed to a life of agriculture.
Instead, the trade grew ever larger, and African slaves soon began to outnumber their white masters. In 1530 there were 3000 slaves on San Domingo, and just 327 Spaniards. By 1547, de Las Casas was Bishop of Chiapa in Mexico, but he resigned his bishopric to return to Spain to campaign against the slave tradeâthe lesser evil he himself had suggested for the benefit of the Caribs and their peaceful neighbours, the Arawaks. It took three and a half centuries, five normal full spans of three-score years and ten, to abolish what he thought he could end as quickly as he had started. That same five life spans would be some 35 working lives of the African slaves, who never lived as long as free men, because slavery was cruel and brutal in the extreme.
At one stage, de Las Casas had great hopes that the King would listen to what he had to say, but early in 1555 that chance slipped away as Charles V began to fear for his own soul. He abdicated the throne and devoted the rest of his life to prayer in a little house next to the monastery of Yste, seeking salvation through prayer rather than by doing good deeds. If the king had struck against slavery then, perhaps half of all those who would eventually be hauled across the seas and worked to death might have been spared. Bartolomé de Las Casas gave the rest of his days to the fight, but he never again got close to winning.
His countrymen were not necessarily cruel to slaves per se . Like the English and most other nationalities at the time, they were just cruel to other humans in their power, making no particular discrimination between free men and slaves. It was normal to treat other human beings badly. People were still being burnt at the stake, and public executions, hangings, drawings and quarterings were a common enough ending for many a free man, and even a few women. Horrible things were done to the slaves, but mostly because they outnumbered the whites, and needed to be terrorised to remind them they had no rights. After all, no rational man would beat, murder or maim a slave, any more than he would beat a cart horse beyond what was needed to make it work, for slaves and horses were property, and both cost money to replace.
And slaves were not all that profitable at the best of timesâ Adam Smith knew that when he wrote The Wealth of Nations and, according to him, so did the ancients:
The experience of all ages and nations, I believe, demonstrates that the work done by slaves, though it appears to cost only their maintenance, is in the end the dearest of any. A person who can acquire no property, can have no other interest but to eat as much, and to labour as little as possible. Whatever work he does beyond what is sufficient to purchase his own maintenance can be squeezed out of him by violence only, and not by any interest of his own. In ancient Italy, how much the cultivation of corn degenerated, how unprofitable it became to the master when it fell under the management of slaves, is remarked by both Pliny and Columella.
Sadly, not all slave owners in the Americas were entirely rational.
Similar Books
