We are going through one of those periods when the forces of darkness can mount campaigns to deny the Holocaust, when antisemitism is openly shouted outloud across social media, and slavery is again practicised.
Not that Holocaust deniers, anti-Semites and slavery ever went away, it’s just that for a while they appeared to go underground.
Which brings me to the In Our Times programme on Radio 4, which is broadcast today, and features the The Valladolid Debate
It is a subject I was unaware of, so I am greatly interested in what I will learn, and the implications for today.
“Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the debate in Valladolid, Spain in 1550, over Spanish rights to enslave the native peoples in the newly conquered lands. Bartolomé de Las Casas, the Bishop of Chiapas, Mexico, was trying to end the encomienda system in which those who now owned the land could also take the people in forced labour.
Juan Gines Sepulveda, a philosopher, argued for the colonists' property rights over people, asserting that some native Americans were 'natural slaves' as defined by Aristotle.
Valladolid became seen as the first open attempt by European colonists to discuss the ethics of slavery, and Las Casas became known as 'Saviour of the Indians' and an advocate for human rights, although for some time he argued that African slaves be imported to do the work in place of the native people, before repenting.
With Caroline Dodds Pennock, John Edwards, and Julia McClure
Producer: Simon Tillotson**
Picture; Portrait of Bartolomé de Las Casas, c.1484 – 1566, General Archive of the Indies Blue pencil.svg wikidata:Q477051
Source/Photographer Informations source : National Geographic & Álvaro Huerga, Bartolomé de Las Casas: Vie et œuvres
*Abraham Lincoln, Letter to Albert G. Hodges, 1864, full letter from Abraham Lincoln Online http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/hodges.htm
**The Valladolid Debate, In Our Time, Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000fgmw
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| Bartolomé de Las Casas |
Which brings me to the In Our Times programme on Radio 4, which is broadcast today, and features the The Valladolid Debate
It is a subject I was unaware of, so I am greatly interested in what I will learn, and the implications for today.
“Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the debate in Valladolid, Spain in 1550, over Spanish rights to enslave the native peoples in the newly conquered lands. Bartolomé de Las Casas, the Bishop of Chiapas, Mexico, was trying to end the encomienda system in which those who now owned the land could also take the people in forced labour.
Juan Gines Sepulveda, a philosopher, argued for the colonists' property rights over people, asserting that some native Americans were 'natural slaves' as defined by Aristotle.
Valladolid became seen as the first open attempt by European colonists to discuss the ethics of slavery, and Las Casas became known as 'Saviour of the Indians' and an advocate for human rights, although for some time he argued that African slaves be imported to do the work in place of the native people, before repenting.
With Caroline Dodds Pennock, John Edwards, and Julia McClure
Producer: Simon Tillotson**
Picture; Portrait of Bartolomé de Las Casas, c.1484 – 1566, General Archive of the Indies Blue pencil.svg wikidata:Q477051
Source/Photographer Informations source : National Geographic & Álvaro Huerga, Bartolomé de Las Casas: Vie et œuvres
*Abraham Lincoln, Letter to Albert G. Hodges, 1864, full letter from Abraham Lincoln Online http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/hodges.htm
**The Valladolid Debate, In Our Time, Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000fgmw
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