This is a devastating firsthand account of the Spanish conquest, written by a man who saw it unfold. Bartolomé de las Casas, a Dominican friar who arrived in the Americas as a young man, witnessed horrors that would haunt him for the rest of his life, and spend decades documenting them. In this volume, Las Casas returns to the pivotal moment when Columbus arrived back in Spain after his first voyage, bearing gold and captives, a moment that would set the conquest in motion. But this is not triumphalist history. Las Casas meticulously catalogs the system of exploitation that followed: the encomiendas, the forced labor, the killings, the spiritual destruction. He names names. He records testimonies. He demands that someone, somewhere, bear witness to what was done in the name of Spain and Christianity. This is not comfortable reading. It was never meant to be. It is an act of moral witness, one of the first in history to document colonial violence with such precision and fury. Five centuries later, it remains essential.
