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Lawrence A. Clayton , Bartolomé de Las Casas and the Conquest of the Americas (Oxford : Wiley-Blackwell , 2011), pp. xv+188, £15.99, pb.
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The story of the conquest and early colonisation of the New World continues to attract the interest of scholars and students. The contacts between peoples that before the late fifteenth century did not know about each other's existence launched a phase of broad and deep transformations on a global scale. In Bartolomé de Las Casas and the Conquest of the Americas, Lawrence Clayton studies this eventful and complex period through the life of one of its central characters. A native of Seville in Spain, Bartolomé de Las Casas lived most of his life in the Caribbean and in Mexico as a friar of the Dominican order. In this position, he was immersed in the political struggles and debates of his time about the legitimacy of the Spanish conquest and the status of the indigenous population of...