Download or read book An Account, Much Abbreviated, of the Destruction of the Indies written by Bartolomé De Las Casas and published by Hackett Publishing. This book was released on 2003-09-15 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fifty years after the arrival of Columbus, at the height of Spain's conquest of the West Indies, Spanish bishop and colonist Bartolomé de Las Casas dedicated his Brevísima Relación de la Destruición de las Indias to Philip II of Spain. An impassioned plea on behalf of the native peoples of the West Indies, the Brevísima Relación catalogues in horrific detail atrocities it attributes to the king’s colonists in the New World. The result is a withering indictment of the conquerors that has cast a 500-year shadow over the subsequent history of that world and the European colonization of it.