Abolition and Slavery History: Arthur Helps The Conquerors of the New World 1848 First Edition on Spanish Colonialism and Enslavement

Arthur Helps

First Edition

Helps, Arthur. The Conquerors Of The New World And Their Bondsmen, 1848 examines the origins of African enslavement in the West Indies and Spanish America through archival research conducted in Madrid and offers a mid-nineteenth-century British critique of Iberian colonial violence. Drawing upon Spanish records, including unpublished materials consulted at the Historical Academy of Madrid, Helps reconstructs the conquest of Hispaniola, the dispossession and forced labor of Indigenous Caribbean populations, and the expansion of African slavery within imperial plantation systems. Issued during a period of sustained debate over slavery and colonial governance in the British Atlantic world, the volume situates Spanish and Portuguese imperial practices within broader histories of coercion, extraction, and racial hierarchy in the early modern Americas.

Helps, Arthur. The Conquerors Of The New World And Their Bondsmen, Being A Narrative Of The Principal Events Which Led To Negro Slavery In The West Indies And America. London: William Pickering, 1848. First edition. Volume I of II. 264 pages. 8vo. Rebound in later brown cloth boards.

The work narrates the establishment of Spanish rule in Hispaniola, the subjugation of Indigenous peoples through encomienda labor systems, and the subsequent reliance on African captives as coerced labor in Caribbean and American colonies. Helps details Indigenous uprisings and critiques the moral and administrative foundations of conquest, linking the development of transatlantic slavery to early colonial governance. Light general wear consistent with rebinding; text clean and stable. Overall very good condition. Substantive early English-language study connecting Iberian expansion, Indigenous dispossession, and the institutionalization of Atlantic slavery.

Item #17885

Price: $1,250.00