Echoes of Human Rights in the Works of Bartolomé de las Casas
Bartolomé de las Casas (1484–1566) was a Dominican friar whose writings and advocacy reshaped early modern debates about colonialism, justice, and the nature of humans and rights. Having first arrived in the Americas in 1502 as a settler and encomendero, De las Casas later emerged as one of the most forceful critics of Spanish imperial violence and one of the earliest European defenders of Indigenous rights. His chronicles and petitions to the Spanish crown articulated a radical claim for universal human dignity that anticipated later discourses on human rights.
“All the World is Human” examines De las Casas’s intellectual and moral transformation, the historical contexts that shaped his thought, and the continuing resonance of his work in contemporary conversations and practice of human rights and global justice.
