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Pros And Cons Of The Spanish Conquistadors

1279 Words6 Pages

The new world offered so many new possibilities, its raw materials and richness in new resources was a wonderful picture that was getting painted to the Spanish conquistadors. The one taint on that great future was the matter of the Indigenous people that inhabited the lands. What to do with them? Are we required to respect their property and freedom? The Spanish attempted to justify taking everything from these natives, by saying these Indians had it coming they are godless and refuse to convert. “War against these barbarians can be justified not only on the basis of their paganism but even more so because of their abominable licentiousness, their prodigious sacrifice of human victims, the extreme harm that they inflicted on innocent persons, …show more content…

Each document gives us a different and fresh point of view that is completely unlike that the other. One can be in defense of the Indians and the other can be justifying slavery or war. “Thanks to their virtues and the practical wisdom of their laws, the latter can destroy barbarism and educate these [inferior] people to a more humane and virtuous life. And if the latter reject such rule, it can be imposed upon them by force of arms. Such a war will be just according to natural law.” (Juan Ginés). It is nice to see the different point of views, some can be almost baffling to read that people in this time actually thought of that. While some of the documents, restore your faith in humanity for a little bit. For example Bartolomé de las Casas' plays devil’s advocate in the document “Excerpt from In Defense of the Indians”, he writes about the Romans and how they perceived the Spanish as barbaric and asks his readers were they justified in fighting our ancestors? “Do you think that the Romans, once they had subjugated the wild and barbaric peoples of Spain, could with secure right divide all of you among themselves, handing over so many head of both males and females as allotments to individuals?” .”(Bartolomé de las Casas'). Were we wrong in fighting them? He turns the tables and gives a good examples, making the reader decide for themselves on what is really barbaric, is it something that is just different than our

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