English Imperialism

The publication in 1848 of The Communist Manifesto came at a time when industrialization was reaching its peak, and signs of the cost to the working class blatant; the Revolutions of 1848 were just getting under way. Marx and Engels shared the belief that "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles" and this notion formed a central part of the manifesto they crafted together. They believed that industrialization was simply a new form of struggle among the classes - the price paid by the lower class still high.

A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies is an account written in 1542 by the Spanish Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-1566). He chronicles the first decades of the colonization of the West Indies, exposing the atrocities committed against the indigenous people. Dedicated to Prince Philip II of Spain to alert him of these atrocities, the work reveals mass slaughter, torture and slavery, showing that the evangelizing vision of Columbus had descended into genocide.