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The writings of a sixteenth-century advocate who challenged empire in defense of Indigenous peoples.

With the exception of Christopher Columbus, Bartolomé de las Casas is arguably the most notable figure of the Encounter Age. He is remembered principally as the creator of the Black Legend, as well as the protector of American Indians. He was one of the pioneers of the human rights movement, and a Christian activist who invoked law and Biblical scripture to challenge European colonialism in the great age of the Encounter. He was also one of the first and most thorough chroniclers of the conquest, and a biographer who saved the diary of Columbus’s first voyage for posterity by transcribing it in his History of the Indies before the diary was lost.

Bartolomé de las Casas and the Defense of Amerindian Rights: A Brief History with Documents provides the most wide-ranging and concise anthology of Las Casas’s writings, in translation, ever made available. It contains not only excerpts from his most well-known texts, but also his largely unavailable writings on political philosophy and law, and addresses the underappreciated aspects of his thought. Fifteen of the twenty-six documents are entirely new translations of Las Casas’s writings, a number of them appearing in English for the first time.

This volume focuses on his historical, political, and legal writings that address the deeply conflicted and violent sixteenth-century encounter between Europeans and indigenous peoples of the Americas. It also presents Las Casas as a more comprehensive and systematic philosophical and legal thinker than he is typically given credit for. The introduction by Lawrence A. Clayton and David M. Lantigua places these writings into a synthetic whole, tracing his advocacy for indigenous peoples throughout his career. By considering Las Casas’s ideas, actions, and even regrets in tandem, readers will understand the historical dynamics of Spanish imperialism more acutely within the social-political context of the times.
 

Unearthed truths, buried lives: Belvoir reveals the pain, resilience, and reckoning found beneath the soil of a Maryland plantation.

Near Annapolis, Maryland, a former tobacco plantation dating to the 1730s holds centuries of untold history. In Belvoir: An Archaeology of Maryland Slavery, Julie M. Schablitsky leads readers on an archaeological narrative to unearth the lives and stories still buried there.The book begins with an introduction to the estate’s history, detailing its ownership by prominent families such as the Rosses, Scotts, Worthingtons, and Welshes. Schablitsky highlights the landscape of the estate, including the unique thirty-two-square-foot stone quarter built for enslaved people.

With sensitivity and scientific rigor, Schablitsky shifts focus to the enslaved people who lived and labored at Belvoir for more than eighty years. Through detailed excavation of the stone quarter and analysis of everyday artifacts—buttons, tobacco pipes, food remains, ceramics—she reconstructs the daily life, acts of resistance, and the cultural endurance of a community forced to navigate brutality.

Yet what makes Belvoir especially vital is its ethical compass. Schablitsky centers the voices of descendants, allowing their questions, memories, and presence to shape the narrative. The result is a groundbreaking archaeological case study and a blueprint for restorative justice at sites of enslavement. Scholars, archaeologists, and general readers alike will find Belvoir a deeply human, profoundly necessary book, one that confronts the past with clarity, care, and the hope of reconciliation.

'Fantastic … the most important book on Black British history’ - Akala

Black People in the British Empire is a challenge to the official version of British history. It tells the story of Britain's exploitation and oppression of its subject peoples in its colonies, and in particular the people of Africa, Asia and Australasia

Peter Fryer reveals how the ideology of racism was used as justification for acquiring and expanding the Empire; how the British Industrial Revolution developed out of profits from the slave trade; and how the colonies were deliberately de-industrialised to create a market for British manufacturers.

In describing the frequency and the scale of revolts by subject peoples against slavery and foreign domination - and the brutality used in crushing them - Peter Fryer exposes the true history of colonialism, and restores to Black people their central role in Britain's past.

Blacks under Spanish rule in Florida lived in a more complex and international world that linked the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe with a powerful and diverse Indian hinterland. Jane Landers’s pioneering study of people of the African diaspora under Spain’s colonial rule rewrites Florida history and enriches our understanding of the powerful links between race relations and cultural custom. 

As Landers shows, Spanish Florida was a sanctuary to Blacks fleeing enslavement on plantations. Castilian law, meanwhile, offered many avenues out of slavery. In St. Augustine and elsewhere, society accepted European-African unions, with families developing community connections through marriage, concubinage, and godparents. Assisted by Spanish traditions and ever-present geopolitical threats, people of African descent leveraged linguistic, military, diplomatic, and artisanal skills into citizenship and property rights. Landers details how Blacks became homesteaders, property owners, and entrepreneurs, and in the process enjoyed greater legal and social protection than in the two hundred years of Anglo history that followed.

Brave black women have played important roles in American history. Before the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, black women bore the bonds of slavery with courage and strength. Since Emancipation, black women have supported schools, churches, and civic organizations, entered many professions, and helped to build strong communities. This book dramatizes their impressive story and celebrates their achievements.

Writing especially for students in grades four through eight, Ruthe Winegarten and Sharon Kahn trace the history of black women from slavery until today. Their story includes many heroines, from Emily Morgan, "the Yellow Rose of Texas," to pioneer aviator Bessie Coleman, astronaut Mae Jemison, opera singer Barbara Conrad, actresses Phylicia Rashad and Debbie Allen, and Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, whose life story forms the final chapter.

In addition to these famous black women, the book also profiles teachers, businesswomen, civil rights leaders, community activists, doctors, nurses, athletes, musicians, artists, and political leaders. Adapted from the award-winning Black Texas Women: 150 Years of Trial and Triumph, it will be fascinating reading for children and their parents and grandparents, teachers, and librarians.

Has the world economy shaped and defined Brazil’s economic and political history and, if so, to what extent? Is Brazil’s past to be explained principally by its insertion in a single world capitalist system? The authors of the three essays in this volume reflect critically on these questions along with the following: Should the determining factors be understood as sociological-cultural (as in a heritage of patrimonial rule) or were they based on material reality? What was the connection between the presence of slavery in the Americas and the emergence of capitalism in Europe? What accounts for Brazil’s centuries-long reliance on exports and the slow development of its industry?

The chapters in this book draw contrasting judgments on virtually every major issue in Brazilian history because they begin from divergent premises. In arguing their cause, noted scholars John R. Hall, Fernando A. Novais, and Luís Carlos Soares provide a formidable intellectual point and counterpoint whose theoretical assumptions bear heavily on all social scientists engaged in exploring colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, dependency, and relative international poverty.

Brazil and the World System provides provocative insights not only about Brazil but also about the nature of colonialism in general and its relationship to the rise of capitalism in Europe. It should appeal to Latin Americanists of all disciplinary persuasions as well as to general readers curious about great patterns of change in history. Stuart Schwartz, director of the Center for Early Modern History at the University of Minnesota, says, “ . . . an excellent collection . . . North American scholarship will find these essays an eye-opener.