The politics of publication: Bartolomé de las Casas's 'the devastation of the Indies'

• Main Author: Rolena Adorno
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: BRILL 1993-07-01
• Series: NWIG
• Subjects: Caribbean; Latin America; Spain; Conquest; colonial history; social history; book review
• Online Access: http://www.kitlv-journals.nl/index.php/nwig/article/view/3305

[First paragraph]
 The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account. BARTOLOMÉ DE LAS CASAS. Translated by Herma Briffault. Introduction by Bill M. Donovan. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. 138 pp. (Paper US$ 11.95)
 
 The 1992 Johns Hopkins University Press publication of Bartolom? de las Casas's The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account has been, I am told, a commercial success. Regrettably, it is a scholarly failure. The translation - a reprint of a 1974 version - is so inaccurate that it barely deserves to go by the name, and the introductory essay that accompanies it repeats the old clich?s and familiar misunderstandings that one commonly reads about Las Casas's life and work. The shortcomings of both the translation and the introduction could have been overcome by a deeper engagement with Las Casas's works and greater attention to basic information about sixteenth-century Spanish history.