A Concise History of the United States of America (2012)

18 A Concise History of the United States of America
figure 1.2. Bartolomé deLasCasas’Short Account of the Destruction of the
Indies (1542, 1552).
was ahead of his time. Yet his solution – which he later regretted – to the
barbarities he had both witnessed and participated in before concluding
that America’s indigenous peoples deserved to be recognized, and treated,
as equals was simply to replace one subject of exploitation with another –
to replace native with African slaves.
The English at Home, and Abroad
Spanish cruelty toward natives in the early stages of European settlement
in the Americas, although highlighted in the work of Las Casas, was not
especially or unusually harsh within the context of the period. Those
nations that sought to challenge Spanish dominance in the Americas,
and particularly England, had little reason to feel superior to the Spanish,
given that neither at home or abroad did they hold the moral high ground
when it came to fulfilling their expansionist ambitions. Unfortunately for
the indigenous natives in the Americas, late-sixteenth-century England’s
approach to the whole issue of expansion, colonization, and conquest
was driven by a close-knit group of Protestant West Country aristocratic
adventurers such as Walter Ralegh, his half-brother Sir Humphrey Gilbert,
and his cousin Richard Grenville. Their views on English expansion
could best be described as aggressive and their approach to other cultures
intolerant. It was informed by what these men already knew – or thought
they knew – about the Americas and about Spanish colonization efforts