The Prince by Machiavelli and A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies by Bartolomé de Las Casas are two distinct books that give accounts of nation-building, power, and the molarity or ruling by giving an insight into what motivates one person to dominate or rule another. The text A Short Destruction of The Indies is aimed at exposing the atrocities committed by the Spanish conquistadors against the native people in the new world and aims at reviewing human rights issues related to power. Machiavelli writes about his view of how power should be gained; he disregards the molarity of exercising the power and instead gives more focus on consolidating it and building a political system. The text by Las Casas is critical of how the Spanish soldiers and conquistadors in the new world were exercising their power by committing atrocities which violated the human rights of the natives, stealing from both the natives and the crown which is treason and forcibly converting natives to Christianity with aggressive means. His critique shows the morality of exercising power through employing just means to consolidate the powers of a nation as it seeks to expand its influence in new territories. In this paper, I will discuss how the idea presented by Machiavelli applied in the Americas and give an analysis on the differences in the manner in which the Spanish crown used power to control the new world and the morality views presented by Machiavelli.
The Spanish crown used brutal force to acquire power and establish the Catholicism values, and this is the basic principle argued by Machiavelli. In the Prince Machiavelli criticizes the traditional view of philosophers that there existed a special relationship between legitimate power and moral goodness; Machiavelli believes that there is no moral basis that can be used to judge the difference between illegitimate and legitimate power and instead power and command are equal and that whoever has power has an automatic right to command. The only concern for a ruler is the accumulation and maintenance of power, he acknowledges that good laws combined with good arms constitute the foundation of a well-organized political system. Las Casas gives a narrative of how the Spanish crown used its power to rule the Americas, they applied brutal force to its subjects, according to the prince such force was necessary as the Spanish sought spread Catholicism, to establish colonies, and acquire wealth to support its regime. Although Las Casas describes the Indians as calm, friendly and welcoming to the Spanish crown, they greatly outnumbered the Spanish soldiers and force was necessary to establish authority in the Americas, the kindness by the natives displayed in when they made contact would not have been extended as the conquest continued and uprising would have been inevitable.
The prince introduces the concept of virtue in which Machiavelli refers to Virtue as the range of personal qualities that a prince is required to have to achieve great things and maintain the state the two markers of power in his view. Machiavelli expects a prince of the highest virtue to behave in a completely evil fashion if the situation allows; the virtue of a prince according to Machiavelli must be that he has to acquire a flexible disposition, i.e. a ruler who is suited for office is the one capable of varying his/her actions between evil and good and back again as circumstances and fortune dictates. In those views, therefore, the prince asserts that politics is warfare on a different level and compares the ruler to the general who needs to possess the strategies and techniques that are appropriate to the circumstances of the day. Therefore, in the text, the prince Machiavelli viewed virtue as a mastery of rules connected to the effective application of power.
The writing of Las Casas is a critique of the morality of the Spanish rule in the Americas which was in line with the Virtue described in in the prince. The text caused an uproar among many Spanish intellectuals who justified the actions and the morality of the actions of the conquistadors as well as the encomienda system; which is a Spanish labor system that rewards conquerors with a particular group of subjects. The Spanish crown’s expeditions in the new world exercised power described by Machiavelli in the prince, however, they are not in line with Machiavelli view on morality which should have provided the moral guidance in the conquest and the Spanish should have known when to limit their use of power in a brutal way.
Machiavelli describes the intelligence of ruling which was not applied by the Spanish crown. “A prince, then, should be very careful that there does not issue from his mouth anything that is not full of the above-mentioned five qualities… would many times have taken from him either his reputation or his throne. (Machiavelli, 178)” The above passage from The Prince is in total disregard of the Spanish rule in the new world as depicted by Las Casas, even though Machiavelli in his book has called for a prince to accumulate power through any means necessary. In the long run, he notes that a nation can only be built if the subjects sustain what has been built by the prince. He argues that a state can only be sustained by the ability of the prince to reconcile the interest of the dissenting voices. In the passage, Machiavelli argues that even if a conflict system is advocated in building a nation, the use of brutal force is only productive when it is instituted only when it is justifiable. According to Las Casas, the activities in the new world could only have aimed at achieving short-term goals and can be questioned if the Spanish crown aimed at establishing permanent governance in the regions, the Spanish crown did not institute the code of civic rules, statutes and new institutions that would help them govern the new world in an orderly manner led by the Indians. Analyzing the activities of the Spanish crown according to the Prince the crown should have created governing institutions, laws and statutes for the Indian people after the initial conquest and let the natives develop a state under the Spanish rule.
The Prince theorizes that a state is created when the subjects cooperate, and they work to maintain the state; according to Machiavelli the state comes first and should one’s primary focus and maintaining the state is the primary responsibility. He further states that a state is formed through military power and therefore a strong military is paramount in the continuity of the state. He believes that people respect power, but when given an opportunity they take advantage of kindness, in his text Machiavelli notes that the prince must lead the military in order to build the state however he must be intelligent and realize when to limit the use of brutal power, and this will enable him to avoid dissident in within the state. He gives an example of Borgia as a prince of had who conquered a state, and sought to gain obedience from after use of excessive authority, he explains that Borgia decided that use of such force was no longer necessary and could lead him to become odious, he had his minister in Cesena placed on the piazza in two pieces with a block of wood and a bloodstained knife alongside him. The atrocity of this act left the people both satisfied and stupefied (MACHIAVELLI part 1.7). Therefore, according to the prince individuals in power must demonstrate knowledge of making the people satisfied by having what they want and, on the hand, must remind the people of the power that operates behind the scenes.
Although the narratives of Las Casas has widely been put into question especially on the number of natives massacred during the Spanish conquest, the Spanish soldiers had stronger armies, their brutal treatment of the natives was nothing admirable not only to the natives but to the individuals who would be sent to the lands to support the Christian and military work because they became resentful of the crown and the activities taking place in the Americas like Las Casas. “They have at little concern for their souls as for their bodies, all the millions that have perished having gone to their deaths with no knowledge of god and without the benefit of the Sacraments. (Las Casas, 567)” The atrocities committed by the Spanish crown made it extremely hard for the natives to convert such that those who survived were no longer willing to convert instead they felt it was better to die than to suffer at the hands of the French. The Spanish crown failed in state building since they did not apply intelligence and realize that their brutal force in the Americas, was more harmful to the crown that it was in helping the Spanish establish colonial rule, establish trade routes and spread Catholicism in the new world.
In conclusion, the text by Machiavelli advocates a deviation from tradition in terms of gaining power, the morality of using power and the building of a nation. The prince advocates for a prince to use brutal force when necessary to gain more power, while at the same time knowing when to back down so that he can allow his subjects to add to his power through following the laws set in the political system established using brutal force. The text by Las Casas creates a narrative of how the Spanish crown colonized the new world. In the text the author describes the natives as friendly and innocent people who were obedient to the crown, however despite this fact, the Spanish soldiers and missionaries treated them inhumanely, and this eventually made it hard for the Spanish to establish peaceful overseas territories and in the end it made it impossible to convert the remaining natives into Christianity because they despised the laws of Jesus. Although the two texts main theme is brutal force as a means of gaining and exercising power as a means of building a nation; they have a different dimension on the morality of using such power on the subjects.
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