The Black Legend (Spanish: La leyenda negra) refers to a style of historical writing that demonizes the Conquistadores and in particular the Spanish Empire in a politically motivated attempt to morally disqualify Spain and its 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-Catholics such as Protestants and Jews in its European territories.[1][2] 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".[3]
The writings of Bartolomé de las Casas, particularly his "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.[3] 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 negative portrayals of the Spanish Inquisition in historiographical and artistic depictions.
The Black Legend and the nature of Spanish colonization of the Americas, including contributions to civilization in Spain's colonies have also been discussed by Spanish writers, from Góngora's Soledades until the Generation of '98. Inside Spain, the Black Legend has also been used by regionalists of non-Castilian regions of Spain as a political weapon against the central 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 dictatorial 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 twentieth 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.[4]
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The creator of the term, Julián Juderías, described it in 1914 in his book La Leyenda Negra[5] as
the environment created by the fantastic stories about our homeland that have seen the light of publicity in all countries, the grotesque descriptions that have always been made of the character of Spaniards as individuals and collectively, the denial or at least the systematic ignorance of all that is favorable and beautiful in the various manifestations of culture and art, the accusations that in every era have been flung against Spain.[6]—Julián Juderías, La Leyenda Negra
The second classic work on the topic is Historia de la Leyenda Negra hispanoamericana (1943; History of the Hispanoamerican Black Legend),[7] 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:
The legend finds its most usual expression, that is, its typical form, in judgments about cruelty, superstition, and political tyranny. They have preferred to see cruelty in the proceedings that were undertaken to implant the Faith in America or defend it in Flanders; superstition, in the supposed opposition by Spain to all spiritual progress and any intellectual activity; and tyranny, in the restrictions that drowned the free lives of Spaniards born in the New World and to which it seemed that they were enslaved indefinitely.[8]—Rómulo D. Carbia, Historia de la leyenda negra hispano-americana (2004)
After Juderías and Carbia, many other authors have defined and employed the concept.
Philip Wayne Powell, in his book Tree of Hate,[9] also defines the Black Legend:
An image of Spain circulated through late sixteenth-century Europe, borne by means of political and religious propaganda that blackened the characters of Spaniards and their ruler to such an extent that Spain became the symbol of all forces of repression, brutality, religious and political intolerance, and intellectual and artistic backwardness for the next four centuries. Spaniards … have termed this process and the image that resulted from it as ‘The Black Legend,’ la leyenda negra"—Philip Wayne Powell, Tree of Hate (1985),
One recent author, Fernández Álvarez, has defined a Black Legend more broadly:
"the careful distortion of the history of a nation, perpetrated by its enemies, in order to better fight it. And a distortion as monstrous as possible, with the goal of achieving a specific aim: the moral disqualification of the nation, whose supremacy must be fought in every way possible.[10]—Alfredo Alvar, La Leyenda Negra (1997:5)
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 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.[11] 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.[12] Torture was used, but no worse than in other jurisdictions of the time.[13] Legally, the inquisition only had jurisdiction over Catholics. Thus, from the Inquistion'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 fifteenth 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 Inquistion's persecution of Marranos (Crypto-Jews).
The European colonization of the Americas disrupted the civilization of indigenous peoples of the Americas and used African slaves for their plantations in the New world. The Spanish conquered vast areas of North, Central and South America, and like other European powers, were involved in the Atlantic slave trade. However, certain differences in the objectives and motivations of the Spanish Crown in America, as opposed to other European monarchies, are often omitted in historical texts. Such omissions are said to be part of the Black Legend which demonized Spanish colonial activity in the New World.
One of Spain's primary endeavours of colonial expansion was to convert people to Christianity. Kings such as Philip II dedicated large resources to sending missionaries and building churches in America and the Philippines. The Black Legend is said to ignore Spain's missionary efforts, or else to depict the conversion of native peoples under Spanish rule in a brutal and violent manner. Such exaggerations are contrasted by Spanish directives aimed at recognising the rights of natives. One of these early directives was Queen Isabella I's Last Will that solemnly ordered the colonial authorities treat American natives with respect and dignity. Although such policies were sometimes not enforced, the recognition of native rights put Spain at the historical vanguard of modern natural and international law. The legitimacy of imperialism was also questioned in the works of Spanish scholars themselves, such as the School of Salamanca and the accounts of Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas. Las Casas' recapitulation of the conquistadors' excesses was widely distributed, but was criticized by those who thought the author had grossly exaggerated.[14] Las Casas could have started what eventually became the "Black Legend", creating a stereotypical image of both Spaniards and Indians.[15] Scholars now believe that, among the various contributing factors, epidemic disease was the overwhelming cause of the population decline of the Native Americans because of their lack of immunity to new diseases brought from Europe.[16] In this regard, Spain sent to its American domains, as early as 1803, the Balmis expedition, a humanitarian expedition to distribute the smallpox vaccine.
Historian Philip Wayne Powell in his book Tree of Hate: Propaganda and Prejudices Affecting United States Relations with the Hispanic World, argued that Spain's official concern and educational efforts toward the American Indians were not equaled by any other European colonizing power:
"Spain's three centuries of tutelage and official concern for the welfare of the American Indian is a record not equaled by other Europeans in overseas government of peoples of lesser, or what were considered lesser, cultures. For all the mistakes, for all the failures, for all the crimes committed, and even allowing for the Crown's motives of practicality and self-service - in its overall performance Spain, in relation to the American Indian, need offer no apology to any other people or nation".[17]
Sverker Arnoldsson[18] argues that anti-Spanish sentiment originated in Italy as a result of the personal, economic, political and cultural relations between the Italian and Spanish peoples. From the thirteenth century, the Crown of Aragon dominated Naples and Sicily, laying the foundations for a widespread resentment of Aragonese dominance. The reputation of the Aragonese pope, Alexander VI Borgia, assumed an almost mythical villainy.
In his book Tree of Hate, Philip Wayne Powell describes how the Black Legend developed in different European countries, such as Germany, France, Holland and England. This development is put down to the reaction against Spanish supremacy in Europe and the New World, which was influenced by the emergence of Protestantism - and even by the rise of Nordicism - in an effort to counter the power of the Spanish-dominated southern part of the continent.
Powell further argued that the Black Legend sprang originally from Spanish Jews, which later joined with a German version "crystallized during the Schmalkaldic War"; after that point, "Jewish words and actions against Spain became a feature of the later Dutch-English-American Black Legend."[19] Powell went on to argue that "Jewish emotion, when aroused by the historical memory of Spanish Inquisition and expulsion, exaggerates and distorts, and certainly gives little shrift to the Spanish side of the story.".[20] According to Powell, given the position of Jews and conversos as "tax collectors; notable ostentation by wealthy Jews; blasphemy and ridicule of Christian practices . . . " and a list of other purported provocations by Jews, "[t]he Inquisition that Isabella established in Castile in 1480, for all the criticism - including papal strictures - against it, was an obvious necessity and solution, though reluctantly undertaken." "The near success of Jewish conspiracy and rebellion against Inquisition establishment, both in Castile and Aragon, bears eloquent testimony to the need for such a step."[21]
Exaggerated and lurid accounts of the Roman Catholic Inquisition in Spain were, in the sixteenth century (a time of great Protestant-Catholic strife) and still today, principal sources for the anti-Spanish Black Legend.[22] The Inquisition had existed in many European countries before it came to Spain. The first Inquisition was established in France during the twelfth 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 nineteenth 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 Englishman John Foxe, author of the Book of Martyrs (1554), and the Spaniard 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 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 Casas compares the indigenous Arawaks 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."[23] The work of Las 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 Casas's accounts of widespread slaughter are not widely disputed.
The Duke of Alba's actions in the 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 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, 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 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.[24][25] This sack of Mechelen was the first of the Spanish Furies;[26][27][28][29] several events remembered by that name occurred in the four or five years to come.[30] 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.[25][31] In July 1573, after 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.[25] During the three days long infamous "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'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 las 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 times between 1578 and 1648, more than all other European countries combined.[32] 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.[33]" 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. 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.[34]
Other critics of Spain included Antonio Pérez, the fallen secretary of King Philip. Pérez fled to England, where he published attacks upon the 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 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 nineteenth 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 Boriken. Some of these laws are still in the codes but are not enforced at all.
In the nineteenth 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, Gypsies, ignorance, machismo, matadores, Moors, 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 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.[35]
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'." [36]
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.[37]