An Idea That Proved Costly to Millions of Black Africans
In his bid to help New World natives, Las Casas advanced an argument that backfired disastrously, and proved horrifically costly to upon millions of Old World Africans. He called for the enslavement of Africans instead of Native Americans. He reasoned that Africans were fitter and more resistant to the Old World diseases that decimated Native Americans. Las Casas’ argument introduced the then-revolutionary idea of slavery based on race, rather than the ancient and medieval slavery based on war and conquest.
Until then, ancient Greeks, Romans, and their medieval European successors, had justified slavery based on the right of conquest. It was a race-neutral justification: those defeated in war and conquered could be enslaved. Caveats were sometimes carved out, such as the Spanish government’s prohibition of the enslavement of fellow Catholics. Conquered Muslims, Protestants, and pagans could be enslaved, regardless of their race, but not defeated Catholics. Nor could conquered non-Catholics who agreed to convert to Catholicism be enslaved. As seen below, the results of the concept introduced by Las Casas were catastrophically costly for millions.