ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -He wrote many petitions, treatises, and books on the subject of the Spanish conquest of the Americas. His most famous works included the Historia apologética (Apologetic History) and the Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies).

Detailed explanation-2: -To contest the brutality, which decimated an entire population, Las Casas wrote The Devastation of the Indies to convince the Spanish Crown to intervene and call for the peaceful conversion of the native people to the Catholic faith.

Detailed explanation-3: -The Devastation of the Indies is an eyewitness account of the first modern genocide, a story of greed, hypocrisy, and cruelties so grotesque as to rival the worst of our own century. Las Casas writes of men, women, and children burned alive “thirteen at a time in memory of Our Redeemer and his twelve apostles".

Detailed explanation-4: -About the Author Bartolome de las Casas was born in Seville around 1484. At the age of eighteen he left for the New World, where he participated in the conquest of Cuba and witnessed the first full-scale massacre of an Indian community. He became a priest and entered the Dominican order.