LAS CASAS Bartolomé. La Découverte des Indes Occidentales, par les Espagnols

La Découverte des Indes Occidentales, par les Espagnols. Écrite par Dom Balthazar de Las-Casas, Evêque de Chiapa. Dédié à Monseigneur le Comte de Toulouse.

A Paris chez André Pralard. 1697.

12mo (170 x 100 mm). Contemporary 17th-century binding. Dark brown speckled calf, spine with five raised bands, gilt-tooled compartments featuring a bird motif in the center. Gilt title label on red morocco. Gilt roll on the edges of the boards. Sprinkled edges. [1] blank leaf, [1] leaf Frontispiece, [1] leaf title, [4] leaves Dedication-Foreword-Privileges, 382 pp., [1] leaf Table of Contents.

Precious first edition of the translation by the Abbé de Bellegarde.

Las Casas—a major historical figure and celebrated defender of the Native American cause—is a childhood memory for 20th-century school children, notably through "The Valladolid Debate (1550)." Taught in schools and dramatized on television, this famous debate between Bartolomé de las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda highlighted the moral character of the Spaniards, recalling the horrors they committed since Christopher Columbus's arrival in the 15th century, the colonists' disregard for Charles V's New Laws regarding the enslavement of Native Americans and their natural freedom, and most symbolically: the status of their humanity.

La Découverte des Indes Occidentales is an adaptation of six of the nine treatises from the famous Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias, originally published in Seville in 1552. While it denounces the massacres and defends the native populations, it is also a political text. Las Casas had to navigate treacherous waters, as he denounced gold-hungry compatriots who were nonetheless acting in the name of the Spanish Crown.

He denounces the massacres and also defends the Native Americans, describing them as gentle, good beings, somewhat naive children devoid of any malice and fit to discover the Christian religion. This can be seen as a sincere analysis, but also as a way to protect them by declaring that they would make perfect Christians.

However, this book also served as a propaganda tool for late 17th-century France; it is no coincidence that the first translation of Las Casas arrived nearly 150 years later in this specific format. Through clever rhetoric, the foreword states, "in some places, things that appeared too cruel and might have distressed delicate persons have been softened," implying, "it was even worse than the horrors described."

The year 1697 was a watershed year for Europe. It marked the end of the War of the League of Augsburg, which pitted France against a massive coalition that included Spain. In September 1697, the Treaty of Ryswick was signed. Under this treaty, Spain officially recognized France's possession of the western part of the island of Hispaniola, which would become Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti). Las Casas's text describes precisely the destruction of the indigenous populations by the Spaniards... in Hispaniola.

This book is the perfect demonstration that bibliophilia provides a multi-dimensional vision of history. It embodies what our era perceives of Las Casas and the Spanish conquest, it embodies the political and ideological struggle of Las Casas, and it also represents a propaganda tool for France at the end of the 17th century.

Condition: A few traces of soiling and oxidation on the pastedown, on three internal pages, and on the final leaf. Ex-libris signature on the title page. Very good condition overall; magnificent contemporary binding, very well restored at the corners and spine caps.