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Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias
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A 1542 report to the crown, for C2
A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias
Bartolomé de las Casas, 1552
Bartolomé de las Casas’s complete text, as printed in Seville in 1552, not an adaptation. In the catalog it is C2: about 30,400 words and 47 words per sentence on average. It is a report, not fiction: a friar’s account to Prince Philip of what the conquest did to the indigenous peoples, in 22 sections from the Argumento and the Prólogo to the New Kingdom of Granada.
- C2
- 30 443 words
- 5-8 hours
Will this text hold?
C1
Earlier
At B2 sentences of 47 words with 16th-century forms such as mesmo, dellos and e for y will make you stop every few lines; start with the section on Cuba, where sentences are shortest, at about 33 words.
C1C2
This text
You can manage it at C2: translate single words and the longest sentences whole, and read one section at a time. The Argumento and the Prólogo, at 63 and 69 words per sentence, are the slowest pages; after them the sentences settle at 40 to 55 words.
Check this passageThe average sentence has 47 words: above Don Quijote de la Mancha (43), just past Ariel (46) and just under the Novelas ejemplares (49), the other C2 books of the catalog, and well above the 38 words that mark C2. Only one word in eleven has 9 letters or more (9.2%), so the vocabulary is plainer than the sentences. The difficulty is even: the Argumento and the Prólogo average 63 and 69 words per sentence, 16 of the 20 sections after them keep to 40 to 55, the section on Cuba is lightest at about 33, and the three shortest sections (120 to 135 words, two sentences each) come out at 60 to 68. The sentences are long chains of clauses joined by e and y, with 16th-century forms such as mesmo and dellos. Hence C2. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 30 443
- words
- 47
- words in an average sentence
- 5-8
- hours of reading
- 1552
- Sebastián Trujillo
Sebastián Trujillo, 1552. Ciudad Seva
What it is about, without the ending
In 1542 the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas, who had spent decades in the Caribbean and the Americas, wrote this report for Prince Philip, the future Philip II, so that the crown would stop the conquests; it was printed in Seville ten years later. After a short Argumento and a Prólogo to the prince, the book goes region by region: Hispaniola, Cuba, Tierra Firme, Nicaragua, New Spain, Guatemala, Yucatán, Venezuela, the Río de la Plata, Peru, the New Kingdom of Granada. In each the author sets out what Spanish colonists and captains did to the indigenous population: war, forced labour, enslavement and the depopulation that followed, drawing on what he saw himself and on testimony given before the Council of the Indies. It is a polemical text written to persuade, historians still discuss its figures, and some passages describe violence directly. How Las Casas closes his appeal, and what he says about the New Laws, is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias
De la costa de las Perlas y de Paria y la isla de la Trinidad
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Choose an underlined word.
Negations in a row
Las Casas draws the portrait of a whole people by what they lack: sin rencillas, no rijosos, sin odios. Read the string of sin and no as one list and translate only the rare words; e for y and complisión for complexión are old spellings, not new vocabulary.
Contracted forms such as dél
The 16th-century text fuses de with a pronoun: dél means de él. When a form looks unfamiliar, split it into de plus the pronoun and the clause about the lord of the village opens up. The same page writes e where modern Spanish has y.
Chapters
- ·Argumento del presente epítome
- ·Prólogo
- ·Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias
- ·De la isla Española
- ·De los reinos que había en la isla Española
- ·De las dos islas de Sant Juan y Jamaica
- ·De la isla de Cuba
- ·De la Tierra Firme
- ·De la provincia de Nicaragua
- ·De la Nueva España
- ·De la provincia e reino de Guatimala
- ·De la Nueva España y Pánuco y Jalisco
- ·Del reino de Yucatán
- ·De la provincia de Sancta Marta
- ·De la provincia de Cartagena
- ·De la costa de las Perlas y de Paria y la isla de la Trinidad
- ·Del río Yuyapari
- ·Del reino de Venezuela
- ·De las provincias de la Tierra Firme por la parte que se llama la Florida
- ·Del río de la Plata
- ·De los grandes reinos y grandes provincias del Perú
- ·Del Nuevo Reino de Granada
Translation while you read
The book stays free on every plan. Reader, €1 a month, removes the daily limit on words and sentences.
Reader
€1 a month
The opening sentence of the Argumento runs to 82 words (“parece haber añublado y puesto silencio y bastantes a poner olvido a todas cuantas por hazañosas que fuesen en los siglos pasados se vieron y oyeron en el mundo”): translating the whole sentence in Reader shows how its clauses hang together.
ReaderIf this book is not the one
All books at this levelBefore you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not a learner’s abridgement: Bartolomé de las Casas’s complete text, written in 1542 and printed in Seville in 1552, with his Argumento and the Prólogo to Prince Philip. The reader follows the 1552 edition printed by Sebastián Trujillo, in the transcription published on Ciudad Seva, with the spelling partly modernized.
Is there an audiobook?
The book has no audiobook on MovaReader: here it is read on screen. The translation appears when you tap a word, and you will need it most for 16th-century words such as refrigerio, complisión or añublado.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps most in the Argumento, whose opening sentence has 82 words, and in the Prólogo, which averages 69 words per sentence. Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
The whole book takes about 5-8 hours: the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker’s. The 22 sections run from about 120 to 4,100 words, so the longest, such as New Spain or the New Kingdom of Granada, are best read in two sittings.
Where does the text get easier?
It stays even from the first page to the last. After the Argumento and the Prólogo (63 and 69 words per sentence), 16 of the 20 sections average 40 to 55 words, and the section on Cuba is lightest, at about 33. The general introduction before the first region is a good place to get used to the long sentences.
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes. Once you sign in, the reader keeps your last place and the words you opened, so you can come back to the book where you left off. Any of the 22 sections also opens from the contents on this page, for example the Prólogo or the section on Peru.