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Thomas More’s “Utopia”, Bartolomé de Las Casas’s “Destruction of the Indies”, and Michel de Montaigne’s “Of Cannibals” have the commonality of discussing mysterious territories which have certain conditions in several aspects of life which their present audience is unaware. The three authors describe foreign places with vastly different values and social standards, but they all describe the treatments or relations of the indigenous people by Europeans and outsiders, as well as the natives’ reaction to these treatments. More, Las Casas, and Montaigne reveal their personal views through descriptions of the different groups of indigenous people, and all suggest that their “advanced” societies are not necessarily better than those with different …show more content…
Unlike Las Casas’s idealistic and pacifistic descriptions of the indigenous, Montaigne portrays the natives as flawed, and sometimes violent individuals. He goes on to use these flaws as criticism towards his fellow Europeans. The main topic Montaigne covers and uses to compare Indian and European practices is cannibalism. To a civilized European, cannibalism seems like a brutish, primal, barbaric practice. Montaigne defends the natives by pleading their thought process in eating another human’s flesh. “After [the natives] have long time used and treated their prisoners well… kill him with swords: which done, they roast him and eat him in common… not to nourish themselves with it, but to represent an extreme and inexpiable revenge”(Montagne Paragraph 11). Contrary to the belief that the cannibals are not unable to feed themselves, so must resort to eating human flesh, they do it out of revenge, after killing their victim relatively humanely. Montaigne goes on to compare the practices of Europeans in relation to the cannibals, and in doing so, he shows that the cannibals are no more savage than people who are considered to be more advanced: “[The Portuguese] bury [their prisoners] up to the middle, and against the upper part of the body to shoot arrows, and then being almost dead, to hang them up”(Montaigne Paragraph 12). The way the Portuguese kill their prisoners is much more torturous and dehumanizing than the method of the cannibals. Montaigne then tells the chilling fact that the natives began to follow this method of killing (Montaigne Paragraph 12). Those who are considered to be barbaric by Europeans took the method of revenge because it was “more smartful and cruel than theirs”(Montaigne Paragraph 12). This implies an awful characteristic among the explorers: their method of killing is so barbaric; that the “barbarians” themselves felt inclined to follow their example. By
To begin with, it is imperative to understand the premise and dialog of the book. Walker divides Shaky Colonialism into eight chapters. These chapters detail the inhabitants’ perceptions, struggles, efforts, etc. through the eyes and ideas of Walker. He begins in Chapter One with the explanation of the main points that will be discussed within the book. Chapter Two discusses the people of Lima’s reasons as to why they b...
Anais Nin once said that “we write to taste life twice: in the moment and in retrospection.” In his book, Seven Myths of Spanish Conquest, Matthew Restall tries to change our perception of the past in other to open our eyes to what life was really like during the colonial period. As Restall puts it, the main propose of the book is to “illustrate the degree to which the Conquest was a far more complex and protracted affair” (p.154) than what was supposed in the latters and chronicles left by the conquistadores. Each one of Restall’s chapters examines one of seven myths regarding the mystery behind the conquest. By doing so, Matthew Restall forces us to look back at the Spanish conquest and question
This assignment examines the document entitled “Bartolomé de las Casas, from Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies.” Bartolomé de las Casas, who spent most of his time in the New World protecting the native people that lived there, authored the document in 1542. In this document Bartolome de Las Casas gives a detailed but horrific account of the atrocious behavior of the spaniards against the native people of the indies.He vividly describes the brutality brought on the natives by europeans all in the name of proclaiming and spreading Christianity.This document was originally intended for Charles I of Spain and one
This text was created to bring to light the hardship Natives went through during the Age of Exploration. The populous, who only hear rumors and short stories from all territories west of the Atlantic Ocean, cannot grasp the tough and difficult task that is at hand in the Americas. From these short blurbs of what is said about the west, they make inferences of what it is like, and how it is possible for another land mass to be unknown to many for so long. But for those who do know what is past the Atlantic, know that this Agenda of the King and Queen must be fulfilled and to do so would be to claim land for Spain for it to be settled upon. On top of that is to further collect the riches of the Americas to benefit Spain in the conquest of the Americas.
In a lively account filled that is with personal accounts and the voices of people that were in the past left out of the historical armament, Ronald Takaki proffers us a new perspective of America’s envisioned past. Mr. Takaki confronts and disputes the Anglo-centric historical point of view. This dispute and confrontation is started in the within the seventeenth-century arrival of the colonists from England as witnessed by the Powhatan Indians of Virginia and the Wamapanoag Indians from the Massachusetts area. From there, Mr. Takaki turns our attention to several different cultures and how they had been affected by North America. The English colonists had brought the African people with force to the Atlantic coasts of America. The Irish women that sought to facilitate their need to work in factory settings and maids for our towns. The Chinese who migrated with ideas of a golden mountain and the Japanese who came and labored in the cane fields of Hawaii and on the farms of California. The Jewish people that fled from shtetls of Russia and created new urban communities here. The Latinos who crossed the border had come in search of the mythic and fabulous life El Norte.
Bartolomé de Las Casas was born in 1484 AD in Seville and died in 1566 in Madrid. In the ending of the 15th century and the beginning of 16th, he came to America and become a “protector of Indian”. In 1542, most based on his effort, Spain has passed the New Law, which prohibit slaving Indians (Foner, p. 7). In 1552, he published the book A Short Account of the Destruction of The Indies.
Another way the author supports his thesis are his descriptions of the reactions made by the Europeans who arrived at the immense and powerful society that already existed in the Americas. A distinct example is portrayed when describing the Spaniards arrival in Tenochtitlan: “Tenochtitlan dazzled its invaders-it was bigger than Paris, Europe’s greatest metropolis. The Spaniards gawped like yokels at the wide streets, ornately carved buildings, and markets bright with goods from hundreds
In A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, Bartolomé de Las Casas vividly describes the brutality wrought on the natives in the Americas by the Europeans primarily for the purpose of proclaiming and spreading the Christian faith. Las Casas originally intended this account to reach the royal administration of Spain; however, it soon found its way into the hands of many international readers, especially after translation. Bartolomé de Las Casas illustrates an extremely graphic and grim reality to his readers using literary methods such as characterization, imagery, amplification, authorial intrusion and the invocation of providence while trying to appeal to the sympathies of his audience about such atrocities.
Mann’s biggest point, I believe, is that the Indian settlements he studied were much more civilized than grade school textbooks make them out to be. For instance, in the introduction, ‘Holmberg’s Mistake,’ Mann tells his readers about how Holmberg misinformed the world about the Sirionó being a tribe without history or common sense when they were, in fact, a highly populated tribe that flourished before diseases wiped them out.
In the first section, Monroy describes the Indian and the Iberian cultures and illustrates the role each played during missionization, as the Indians adapted ?to the demands of Iberian imperialism.?(5) He stresses the differen...
de Las Casas, Bartolomé. The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account. Translation, Briffault, Herma, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London © 1992.
Danticat begins her essay with a tragic and bitter tone. She tells of the first people who were murdered when the Spaniards came to Haiti including Queen Anacaona, an Arawak Indian who ruled over the western part of the island. With bitterness she states, “Anacaona was one of their first victims. She was raped and killed and her village pillaged” (137).
From Spain's early arrival in the Caribbean through their establishment of the Spanish empire indigenous people were exploited through cheap, slave like labor. One of the most incredible subjects raised by the documents presented in Colonial Spanish America is the topic of Labor Systems that were imposed on the indigenous people. Spain tried to excuse this exploitation by claiming to save these indigenous people by teaching them the ways of Christ but many of the Articles in Colonial Spanish America, Struggle & Survival, and The Limits of Racial Domination prove otherwise. Through letters, personal stories, and other documents these books present accounts that tell about the labor system used in this area. They tell of the Spanish labor systems such as the encomiendos and later rapartamientos and how these operations were run.
Edgar Allen Poe’s tale of murder and revenge, “The Cask of Amontillado”, offers a unique perspective into the mind of a deranged murderer. The effectiveness of the story is largely due to its first person point of view, which allows the reader a deeper involvement into the thoughts and motivations of the protagonist, Montresor. The first person narration results in an unbalanced viewpoint on the central conflict of the story, man versus man, because the reader knows very little about the thoughts of the antagonist, Fortunato. The setting of “The Cask of Amontillado”, in the dark catacombs of Montresor’s wine cellar, contributes to the story’s theme that some people will go to great lengths to fanatically defend their honor.
During the era of maritime exploration and the discovery of the Americas, assumptions were made of the land likening it to not only a paradise, but one that was overrun with cannibalistic natives. These suppositions led to a desire to explore the lands and conquer the savages that posed a threat to man and civilization itself. The consequences of this mass colonization and dehumanization of the natives paved the way for literary pieces that pose as critiques of the era when viewed through a post-colonial lens. When looked at through a post-colonial perspective, a few common themes prevail amongst compared texts. Focusing on the theme of the journey, what it means, and what is at stake, Garcilaso de la Vega’s “The Story of Pedro Serrano” and Juan José Saer’s The Witness both touch on all these themes with great severity, dissecting the purpose of the journey and what it means to be a civilized man.