In 1550, Ferdinand and Isabella’s grandson, King Charles V, summoned
two prominent scholars to the country’s main university at Valladolid for a far-reaching debate about his foreign policy. The bloodshed in the Americas worried the king. Was it right to continue expanding Spain’s empire at such a cost in human lives?
On one side of the debate at Valladolid was a Dominican monk named
Bartolomé de las Casas. As a child in 1493, las Casas had attended the
victory parade in Seville that greeted Christopher Columbus after his
discovery of the Americas. In 1502, las Casas moved to America with
several relatives, part of the initial wave of Spanish settlement. In the New
World, las Casas was appalled by the cruelty of the Spanish conquistadors that he witnessed firsthand. In front of the king, las Casas pleaded for a more humane Spanish policy in the Americas.
On the other side of the debate was Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda (1490–1573), a humanist scholar who believed that the Spanish had a duty to
“Christianize” the American Indians by whatever means necessary. To
Sepúlveda, native tribes like the Aztecs were barbarians who practiced
human sacrifice and cannibalism. Not only did the Spanish have a right to
subjugate the natives, Sepúlveda said they had a positive obligation to
spread Western civilization. “The perfect should command and rule over the imperfect,” he wrote in 1547, citing Aristotle to defend what he called the “just war” against the Indians.
Within two generations, the Spanish had destroyed the great Aztec and Inca empires. The king was sympathetic to the pleadings of las Casas, but it was too late. For better or worse, the European colonization of the Americas was under way.
Spain in the New World
The Godfather’e mafya engeli
Mafya ise bu filmin çekilmesini istemediğini açıkça belli ediyordu. Los Angeles polisi yapımcı Al Ruddy takip edildiğini söyledi. Ruddy yardımcısı Bettye McCartt'la arabaları değiştirdi. McCartt bir gece evi önünde silah sesleri duyduğunu söyledi. Ruddy'nin değiş tokuş ettikleri arabası kurşunlanmış, "filmi bırak” diye bir not yazılmıştı. Paramount'un kardeş şirket Gulf&Western bomba ihbarı yüzünden iki kez tahliye edildi.
Sayfa 130 - Vadi Yayınları
Today will be better than yesterday.
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That
A “Viking” was an “entrepreneurial” king on the warpath, on the vík. He was in search of tribute and prestige.
"Better for you to bestride steed, draw sword, fell a host. Your brothers have fine halls and better lands than you. You should go vík-ing. Let men feel your blade."
From Hadrian’s Wall to the Atlantic coast of Morocco and the Horn of Africa, the idea of Rome had shrunk to ever smaller dimensions. Rome and its history were no longer central to the imagination of the inhabitants of the former periphery of the empire. A sense of the Roman past was replaced by a different past – the past of the Old Testament. This past was brought close through the Holy Scriptures. It described, vividly and appositely, the turbulent warrior kingdom of ancient Israel. It was a past better suited to the stormy present than were memories of imperial Rome.
In the polytheist world of the cities, the proud temples depended on wealthy donors, who might, at any moment, go bankrupt – as happened to many pagan shrines in the course of the crisis of the third century. In a period of financial recession, the Christian communities, with their habits of regular giving by small persons, were better equipped to weather the storm of political insecurity and inflation than were the grandees who supported polytheist worship.
Today will be better than yesterday.
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That
