Bart had me going in the first half NGL
Comment on Even Omelanda' is disgusted
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 1 day agoI 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.
MalikMuaddibSoong@startrek.website 1 day ago
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 1 day 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.
PugJesus@piefed.social 22 hours ago
The thing is, it’s not that the monarchs hated slavery or exploitation - it was that Columbus’s slavery and exploitation were too horrific even for the Spanish monarchy et co to stomach.
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
But they kinda did. After they brought him back for trial… they just let them go, and there was a fourth voyage a couple years later.
Eventually he just retired in Spain and while they didn’t give him the full amount of wealth he was owed…. That wasn’t out of moral outrage.
PugJesus@piefed.social 17 hours ago
They literally sent inspectors to the Americas to investigate the rumors of Columbus’s misrule, and upon finding it, Columbus was stripped of his position as governor and it was given to someone else despite the governorship being one of the key agreements over his original discovery.
His fourth voyage included no promises of governorship, and was supposed to be purely exploratory. It ended up a failure and garnering Columbus nothing.
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
oh. They fired him?
They didn’t even take the loot he stole. he was jailed for a bit during trial. and then he was let out. With no charges, keeping his share of the loot… and letting him go on a fourth voyage at all is kinda a tacit approval of his methods.
He’s like the killer cop they just fire and let go back to work in another agency. Or that asshole manager they send in to get get store/plant/whatever under budget and move on out when things are under control.
not exactly a ringing condemnation of assholery.