Colonial Cruelty: The Expression and Perpetuation of Violence in Theodor de Bry’s America

Abstract

The images accompanying the Girolamo Benzoni account of Spanish colonization in the New World are characterized as some of the most violent of Theodor de Bry’s collection, America. Revisiting these depictions with an explicit focus on violence reveals the different ways in which violent acts are either justified or condemned in colonial discourse and power structures. The purpose of this discussion is twofold: first, to examine how violence is defined and represented in this early modern visual context; and second, to explore how the De Bry illustrations advance an equally violent colonial discourse. A juxtaposition of expressions of both indigenous and Spanish violence from parts four through six of De Bry’s America highlights the argumentative substratum of the images – mainly that European acts of aggression are justified actions of colonial control, while indigenous aggression is unbridled brutality, thus consequentially promoting colonial efforts that directly affect that very America in focus.