Las Casas insisted that Augustine of Hippo’s gloss on the biblical text ‘Compel them to come in’ (see p. 304) was simply wrong: Jesus had not intended conversion to his ‘joyful tidings’ to be a matter of ‘arms and bombardments’ but of ‘reason and human persuasion’.6 His writings about Spanish barbarity in America were so angry and eloquent that ironically they became part of the general Protestant stereotype of Spaniards as a naturally cruel race. At one stage he suggested a fateful remedy for the exploitation of native labour: African slaves should be imported to replace natives on
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