Black Legend

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The Black Legend () refers to a style of historical writing that demonization|demonizes the Conquistadores and in particular the Spanish Empire in a politically motivated attempt to morally disqualify Spain and its Spanish people|people , and to incite animosity against Spanish rule. The Black Legend particularly exaggerates the treatment of the indigenous subjects in the territories of the Spanish Empire and non- Catholic s such as Protestants and Jews in its European territories.Gibson, Charles. 1958. "The Colonial Period in Latin American History" pages 13-14 defines the Black legend as "The Accumulated tradition od propaganda and Hispanophobia according to which Spanish imperialism is regarded as cruel, bigoted, exploitative and self-righteous in excess of reality" The term was coined by Julián Juderías in his 1914 book La leyenda negra y la verdad histórica ("The Black Legend and Historical Truth"). This is said to have sparked a tradition of more objective history writing, sometimes openly pro-Spanish, especially within Spain, but also in the Americas. The pro-Spanish tradition which describes the Spanish Empire in a more benevolent manner including the just treatment of its subjects, has sometimes been referred to as the "White legend".Benjamin 1969. pp.703-719">Keen, Benjamin. 1969. The Black Legend Revisited: Assumptions and realities. The Hispanic American Historical Review. volume 49. no. 4. pp.703-719

The writings of Bartolomé de las Casas , particularly his " A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies| Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias " from 1552, has often been described as the first work to contribute to the Black Legend. This work was later reproduced by groups and nations who opposed the Spanish Empire such as the Protestant Walloons , the French Huguenots , groups in Venice , and specially the upcoming powers of England and the Netherlands .Benjamin 1969. pp.703-719"/> For this reason the Black Legend is often described as being politically motivated in the attempt to counter the power of the Spanish Empire. Other examples of the Black Legend are said to be the historical revision of the Inquisition|negative portrayals of the Spanish Inquisition in historiographical and artistic depictions.

The Black Legend and the nature of Spanish colonization of the Americas|Spanish colonization of the Americas, including contributions to civilization in Spain's colonies have also been discussed by Spanish writers, from Luis de Góngora|Góngora 's Soledades until the Generation of '98 . Inside Spain, the Black Legend has also been used by regionalists of Castile (historical region)|non-Castilian regions of Spain as a political weapon against the central government of Spain|government or Spanish nationalism . Some historians have alleged that the White Legend describes Spain's history in a very positive way, and is sometimes associated with nationalistic politics and with Francisco Franco 's dictator ial regime. Deriving from the Spanish example, the term "black legend" is sometimes used in a general way to describe any form of unjustified demonization of a historical person, people or sequence of events.

By the end of the 20th century, history writing turned to a more neutral depiction of the Spanish Empire, which acknowledges the negative aspects of colonization without portraying the Spanish Empire as either more or less evil than other colonial empires. This modern tradition acknowledges that the Spanish Empire was also the first empire to discuss and work towards the ethical treatment of its subjects, even though the ideals were not always put into practice.

Definitions

The creator of the term, Julián Juderías , described it in 1914 in his book La Leyenda Negra Juderías, Julián, La Leyenda Negra (2003; first Edition of 1914) ISBN 84-9718-225-1 as

The second classic work on the topic is Historia de la Leyenda Negra hispanoamericana (1943; History of the Hispanoamerican Black Legend ),Carbia, Rómulo D., Historia de la leyenda negra hispano-americana (2004; first Ed. 1943) ISBN 84-95379-89-9 by Rómulo D. Carbia . While Juderías dealt more with the beginnings of the legend in Europe, the Argentine Carbia concentrated on America. Thus, Carbia gave a broader definition of the concept:

After Juderías and Carbia, many other authors have defined and employed the concept.

Philip Wayne Powell, in his book Tree of Hate ,Powell, Philip Wayne, 1971, "Tree of Hate" (first Ed.) ISBN 465-08750-7 also defines the Black Legend:

One recent author, Fernández Álvarez, has defined a Black Legend more broadly:

Elements

Spanish Inquisition

The gross disregard for human lives allegedly characteristic of the Spanish Inquisition has been one of the main elements of the Black Legend since its origin. Protestant authors such as English historian John Foxe , published the '' Foxe's Book of Martyrs|Book of Martyrs in 1554, and the Spanish convert Reginaldo González de Montes , author of Exposición de algunas mañas de la Santa Inquisición Española ( Exposition of some methods of the Holy Spanish Inquisition ) (1567).

Modern studies of the actual documents of the Spanish Inquisition show that it was no more cruel and bloodthirsty than other legal systems of the time.Henry Kamen gives the figure of about 100 executions for heresy of any kind between 1559 and 1566. He compares these figures with those condemned to death in other European countries during the same period, concluding that in similar periods England, under Mary Tudor, executed about twice as many for heresy: in France, three times the number, and ten times as many in the Low Countries. Kamen, Henry (23 November 2000). The Spanish Inquisition: An Historical Revision. Orion Publishing Group. p. 99. ISBN 1-84212 The popular image of moats, chains, and cries from rooms of torture are imagined exaggerations told by Protestant propagandists who had no first hand information, or relied on a few individuals from Spain who had personal religious or political interests to serve by such stories.The convert to Protestantism, Reginaldo González de Montes and Antonio Pérez were two prominent individuals relied upon by Protestant critics of the Inquisition Torture was used, but no worse than in other jurisdictions of the time.Kamen, Henry (23 November 2000). The Spanish Inquisition: An Historical Revision. Orion Publishing Group. p. 49. ISBN 1-84212
Legally, the inquisition only had jurisdiction over Catholics. Thus, from the Inquisition's point of view a person who had been baptized into the Catholic faith but was found to be secretly practicing Jewish or Muslim customs was considered to be a Catholic culpable of heresy - and punishable under the law. Like similar European policies before and after the 15th century, the Alhambra Decree ordered Jews to convert or leave Spain in 1492. In 1502 Muslims were also required to convert or leave. A decree in 1615 expelled the Moriscos . However, things were seen differently from the Jewish and Muslim point of view, where the Inquisition's victims were regarded as martyrs persecuted for the sake of their true faith. For example, modern school textbooks in Israel present in such a light the Inquisition's persecution of Marranos (Crypto-Jews).

Spanish colonization of the Americas

In order to properly understand the so-called Black Legend it is necessary to delve into European history. The “Spanish Inquisition” came into Spain from France but wasn’t made official in Castile until 1477 and 1484 in Aragón. It was to become interpreted as one of the foundations of Spain’s “Black Legend” of “cruelty and depravity” in most European literatures. But it was really more hype than history. Havelock Ellis writes in THE SOUL OF SPAIN: “In an age when torture was recognized as an integral part of judicial procedure almost everywhere, its use by the Inquisition in Spain can call for special comment only if it can be shown that Spanish Inquisitors went beyond their judicial contemporaries in its application. This is the reverse of the fact.” The well known Irving A. Leonard has also written: “To the Inquisition’s eternal credit, it kept records—which is more, apparently than was done in the Tower of London.” Despite the works of knowledgeable investigators like Salvador de Madariaga (THE RISE OF THE SPANISH AMERICAN EMPIRE) or William Thomas Walsh (CHARACTERS OF THE INQUISITION), the “Spanish Inquisition” has been portrayed as “the dark institution of mankind, bent on denying the human spirit…” While doing so, the more nefarious aspects of European history, especially those of England, are either ignored or whitewashed. For example, Henry VII of England (1485–1509) established the “Court of Star Chamber” in order to destroy the power of the English nobles. The Star Chamber “court” didn’t utilize juries but condoned extreme physical tortures in order to extract “confessions.” Henry VII thus strengthened the English Crown at the expense of the nobility.

The year of 1492 is known in Spanish history as the “Great Year.” In 1492 Spain finally conquered Granada, the last remaining Muslim section of Spain, thus becoming the first European area to unify into one nation. (Contrast this with the situation in Italy or in Germany, neither of which unified into one nation until 1870.) The first Spanish grammar of was published in 1492, the first of any European language. Then there was the discovery of the Americas by Columbus in 1492, changing the course of world history for all time. Hispanic people, Spanish and Portuguese, were now heirs to become explorers and conquerors in the New World. The Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand and Isabel encouraged their Christian citizens to go to the Americas in the name of the Crown. This history of exploration and conquest has few parallels in the world. Because of precious mineral discoveries, Spain became rich through New World gold and silver. Unlike later expeditions from most other countries, the missionary went alongside the conquistador because the Monarchs considered it their duty to introduce Christianity to the people of the Americas.

In 1520 a priest named Martin Luther published some pamphlets that urged German kings to denounce the religious leadership of the Pope in Rome. Among other things, Luther maintained that Scripture alone was supreme in matters of religion, not the Pope. Among other things, he demanded the right to marry (though a married priesthood wasn’t supported in Scripture.) Luther was excommunicated in 1521 but German kings followed his lead and expropriated rich Church properties for themselves.
The Church of England came into existence because Henry VIII (1509–1547; described by Charles Dickens as “a most intolerable ruffian and a blot of blood and grease on the history of England”) wanted a divorce from his wife, Catherine of Aragón, so he could marry lady-in-waiting “dark-eyed Anne Boleyn.” The Pope wouldn't allow it. So Henry sent Catherine packing, married Anne Boleyn and lived with her until he had her beheaded for “treason,” and created the Church of England to show that Roman authority wasn’t necessary. Following the example from Germany, Henry appropriated Church lands for the English Crown, thus further enriching himself. Henry VIII bludgeoned his new church into the English people, executing some 70,000 individuals, political prisoners and those who objected to his new Church of England. He used the Court of Star Chamber to mask his activities and the Tower of London became a killing field. (In one instance a bishop in France criticized Henry’s new church. Henry learned the bishop’s mother was in England so he had her brought to the Tower of London and beheaded.)

The Roman Catholic world, with Spain in the role of “Defender of the Faith,” believed German Lutherans and English Anglicans to be heretics. The “heretics” believed they were “reformed” and therefore superior to “superstitious” Catholics. Wars were fought to obtain political ends as well as because of religious belief. Spain was especially targeted by England and the German states because it was the most powerful country to remain Roman Catholic.

16th century

Exaggerated and lurid accounts of the Roman Catholic Inquisition in Spain were, in the 16th century (a time of great Protestant Reformation|Protestant-Catholic strife ) and still today, principal sources for the anti-Spanish Black Legend. The Inquisition had existed in many European countries before it came to Spain. The first Inquisition was established in France during the 12th century. It had existed in the Kingdom of Aragon for some two centuries but not in Castile until the year 1480 when the Catholic Monarchs, Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon , requested its establishment throughout Spain with the converso and Dominican friar, Tomás de Torquemada , as its first Inquisitor General. Inquisitions were institutions of religious supervision which most European countries had at some time in history. It was standard for European monarchies of the time to impose a state religion through such institutions. Modern concepts such as freedom of religion did not exist until the 19th century. The omission of these facts including the historical context of inquisitions, is considered to be part of the Black Legend propaganda.

Some of the strongest and earliest support for the Legend came from two Protestants: the England|Englishman John Foxe , author of the '' Foxe's Book of Martyrs|Book of Martyrs (1554), and the Spaniard Antonio del Corro|Reginaldo González de Montes , author of the Exposición de algunas mañas de la Santa Inquisición Española ( Exposition of some vices of the Spanish Inquisition'', 1567). Another early source from which the Black Legend drew support was Girolamo Benzoni 's Historia nuovo ( New History ), first published in Venice in 1565.
The origin of the Black Legend can also be traced to published self-criticism from within Spain itself. As early as 1511, some Spaniards criticized the legitimacy of the Spanish colonization of the Americas . In 1552, the Dominican Order|Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas published his famous Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias ( A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies ), an account of the abuses that accompanied the colonization of New Spain, and especially the island of Hispaniola (now home to the Dominican Republic and Haiti ). In the section regarding Hispaniola, Las& nbsp;Casas compares the indigenous Arawak peoples|Arawak s to tame ewes and writes that when he arrived in 1508, "there were 60,000 people living on this island, including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it." The work of Las& nbsp;Casas was first cited in English with the 1583 publication The Spanish Colonie, or Brief Chronicle of the Actes and Gestes of the Spaniards in the West Indies , at a time when England and Spain were preparing for war in the Netherlands. Despite arguments about the actual population size, Las& nbsp;Casas's accounts of widespread slaughter are not widely disputed.

The Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva|Duke of Alba 's actions in the United Provinces (Low Countries)|United Provinces contributed to the Black Legend. Sent in August 1567 to stamp out heresy and political unrest in a part of Europe where printing presses were a constant source of heterodox opinion, one of Alba's first acts was to gain control of the book industry. In a single year, several printers were banished and at least one was executed. Book sellers and printers were raided in the search for ban (law)|banned books, many more of which were added to the Index Librorum Prohibitorum .

On 2 October 1572, despite the city of Mechelen 's surrender and welcoming him by the singing of psalms, Fadrique Álvarez de Toledo, 4th Duke of Alba|Fadrique Álvarez de Toledo , son of the Governor of the Netherlands, and commander of the Duke's troops, allowed his men a three days long massacre, rape and pillage of the archbishopric city, sparing neither Protestants nor Catholics. Alba reported to Philip II of Spain|his King that "not a nail was left in the wall" . A year later, magistrates still attempted to retrieve precious church belongings that Spanish soldiers had sold in other cities.name=SF-M_1>name=SF-M_2>
This sack of Mechelen was the first of the Spanish Fury|Spanish Furies ;name=SF-UiE-Me1>name=SF-UiE-Me2>name=SF-UiE-Ma1>
several events remembered by that name occurred in the four or five years to come.name=SF-MNZHA_1>
In November and December of the same year, with permission by the Duke, Fadrique had the entire populations killed of Zutphen , bloodily, and of Naarden , locked and burnt in their church.name=SF-M_2 />name=SF-N_1>
In July 1573, after Siege of Haarlem|half a year of siege , the city of Haarlem surrendered. Then the garrison's men (except for the German soldiers) were drowned or got their throat cut by the duke's troops, and eminent citizens were executed.name=SF-M_2 />
During the three days long infamous " Sack of Antwerp|Spanish Fury " of 1576, Spanish troops attacked and pillaged Antwerp. The soldiers rampaged through the city, killing and looting; they demanded money from citizens and burned the homes of those who refused to (or could not) pay. Christophe Plantin 's printing establishment was threatened with destruction three times but was saved each time when a ransom was paid. Antwerp was economically devastated by the attack, and Plantin Press|Plantin's business suffered. Such facts similar to German rampages in the sack of Rome (1527) were enlarged upon to enhance the Black Legend.

The rebels in the Dutch Revolt contributed intentionally to the Black Legend in their propaganda efforts against the Spanish Crown. The depredations against the Indians that De& nbsp;las& nbsp;Casas had described, were compared to the depredations of Alba and his successors in the Netherlands. They reprinted translated editions of the Brevissima relacion no less than 33& nbsp;times between 1578 and 1648, more than all other European countries combined.Schmidt, p. 97 However, these reprints were only grist for an indigenous propaganda mill that was already going full blast. For instance, the Articles and Resolutions of the Spanish Inquisition to Invade and Impede the Netherlands imputed a conspiracy to the Holy Office to starve the Dutch population, and exterminate its leading nobles, "as the Spanish had done in the Indies.Schmidt, p 112 "
Philips of Marnix, lord of Sint-Aldegonde|Marnix of Sint-Aldegonde , a prominent propagandist for the cause of the rebels, regularly used references to alleged intentions on the part of Spain to "colonize" the Netherlands, for instance in his 1578 address to the German Diet (assembly)|Diet .
The Dutch pamphleteers could have constructed their portrait of the Tyrannies et cruautez des Espagnols without recourse to the Indies. However, they connected their projection of their own predicament (potential enslavement by Spain) with their perception of the predicament of the Indians.Schmidt, pp. 97, 110

Other critics of Spain included Antonio Pérez , the fallen secretary of King Philip II of Spain|Philip . Pérez fled to England, where he published attacks upon the Habsburg#Kings of Spain of the House of Habsburg|Spanish monarchy under the title Relaciones (1594). Philip, at the time also king of Portugal, was accused of cruelty for his hanging on yardarms of supporters of the rival contender for the throne of Portugal, on the Azores islands, following the Battle of Ponta Delgada .

These books were extensively used by the Dutch during their Dutch Independence War|fight for independence from Spain, and taken up by the English to justify their piracy and wars against the Spanish. Foxe's book was among Sir Francis Drake 's favourites; Drake himself is regarded by the Spaniards as a cruel and bloodthirsty pirate. The two northern nations were not only emerging as Spain's rivals for worldwide colonialism, but were also strongholds of Protestantism while Spain was the most powerful Roman Catholic country of the period. All of this contributed to the evolution of the Black Legend. Nevertheless, Inquisition laws were in Puerto Rico until the late 19th century. The prohibition of building synagogues or mosque was part of the Catholic struggle for power and control of the Islands that compose today Puerto Rico, being the main island Puerto Rico|Boriken . Some of these laws are still in the codes but are not enforced at all.

Romantic travelers

In the 19th century, many writers, such as Washington Irving , Prosper Mérimée , George Sand , and Théophile Gautier , invented a mythical Andalusia . In their writings, Spain is converted into the Orient of the Western World ( Africa begins in the Pyrenees ), an exotic country full of brigands , economic underdevelopment, Romani people in Spain|Gypsies , ignorance , machismo , matador es, Moors , passion (emotion)|passion , political chaos, poverty and fanatical religiosity.
In classical music, Georges Bizet with Carmen (1875) and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov with Capriccio espagnol (1887) contributed to this theme.

In 1842 George Borrow 's The Bible in Spain|Bible in Spain was published in England and sold well. It was part-travelogue and partly the story of his attempt to translate and teach the New Testament in Spanish. At the time the Bible used in Spain was in Latin and he found that most Spaniards knew little about its contents.

The Spanish Civil War

The many reports of atrocities in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939, published with great prominence in the world media, had the effect of causing a revival and reinforcing of "The Black Legend". While many foreign observers tended to take sides and emphasize the atrocities committed by one Spanish faction while glossing over or offering apologies for those of the other, there were also those who tended to lump together all the atrocities reportedly committed in Spain and attribute them all to the inherent cruelty of "Spanish character" or "Spanish culture" - regardless of the political affiliation of the Spaniards involved in each specific case.

Historian Tom Buchanan notes that in parts of the British public at the time, "Cruelty and violence were thought to be 'old Spanish customs' — due in equal parts to the legacy of the Inquisition and the bull-ring. Consul-General King of Barcelona believed that the "atrocities" in Spain were proof that 'the Spaniards are - for the most part - still a race of blood-thirsty savages, with a thin veneer in times of peace'." Tom Buchanan, "The impact of the Spanish Civil War on Britain: war, loss and memory", 2007, p. 5

White Legend

The term "White Legend" refers to the attempts to debunk many of the distorted or exaggerated versions of Spanish history and describe Spain's history in a more positive light, occasionally in response to the propaganda of the Black Legend. In spite of being actively promoted by members from every side of the political spectrum, these efforts are often seen outside Spain as being associated with the dictatorial regime of Francisco Franco , which associated itself with the imperial past that was depicted in thoroughly positive terms.

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