Contents
The Development of Anti-Hispanic Sentiment 1558-1660
Introduction
The Black Legend against Spain and the Spaniards created and propagated by the 16th century England propaganda machine through political and religious means.
This ingrained Hispanophobia was later inherited by the United States and other earlier English colonies.Professor William Maltby explains in great detail the origins of England’s Hispanophobia in this well-researched book #Maltby
The Black Legend In England
The Development of anti-Spanish Sentiment
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Hispanophobia origin
William Maltby explains in great detail the origins of England’s Hispanophobia
The Black Legend against Spain and Spaniards created and propagated by 16th Century England’s propaganda machine for political and religious means.
This entrenched Hispanophobia was later inherited by the United States and other former English colonies.#Maltby
Examples Hispanophobia
Spanish Black Legend examples:
Here are examples of how similar actions committed by different peoples are presented to us differently by our Hispanophobic educational system and mass media:
When Spaniards in the 15th Century discovered and explored the New World for opportunities, it is called Spanish greed, avarice, and “lust for gold.”When Anglo-Americans stumbled over each other in the rush for California gold and oil in the late 19th Century, it is called “bold pioneers with Yankee ingenuity driven by the Protestant Work Ethic.”(William Maltby) #MaltbySpanish Black Legend
Slavery and indigenous
The use of slave labor by the Portuguese and Spanish is depicted as “immoral and pure evil”;
however when Englishmen profiteered immensely from the slave trade and Anglo-Americans used slave labor in the cotton fields,it is sugar-coated as “English commercial tenacity” and “the building blocks for our great society.”(William Maltby) Spanish Back Leyend #Maltby
Military abuse
When 16th Century mutinous Spanish soldiers (Tercios Españoles) stationed in the Spanish Netherlands
abused the burghers, it is staged as “Cruel Spanish tyrants and typical of the barbarous Spanish character”and “The Spaniards are only capable of bringing slaughter and blood to their dominions,”however, when 21st Century American soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan humiliate, defile, torture, and murder innocent civilians (16 Afghan civilians murdered in cold blood by Staff Sgt. Robert Bales)it is presented by our “fair and balanced” mass media as “a lone actor not representative of the American people and their values” or “the actions of a few rogue soldiers suffering from Post-Traumatic Syndrome”.Maltby (Spanish Black Leyend) #Maltby
Religious persecution
When Spaniards expelled or punished religious dissidents
during the Inquisition, this came to be known as “Spanish treachery” “bigotry,” “intolerance,” “fanaticism,” “backwardness” and a cause of Spain’s decline.However, when Englishmen, Dutchmen, or Frenchmen did the same thing(notably England in 1290 and France in 1306– had ordered the expulsion of its Jews),it is known as “unifying a nation,” or “safeguarding it against treason or foreign conspiracy.”William Maltby explains in great detail the origins of England’s Hispanophobi
#MaltbyTheodor de Bry was the creator of hundreds of exaggerated images against SpainHundreds of fantastic images were invented and designed to illustrate the books that accompanied the spread of the Spanish Black Legend.Images to impress the reader, financed above all by Gillermo de Orange and his allied with the German Princes.An authentic novel of fear and terror against his enemy Spain, to discredit.
Treatment of Indigenous People
When Anglo-Americans killed Indians, gave them whiskey, blankets laced with small pox, and discarded them on barren “Indian reservations”
it is known as “the cornerstone for building our great nation.”When 15th Century Spaniards fought eye-to-eye with sword and halberd in hand against a much larger Indian force, this was called “Spanish cowardice and lust for blood against the technologically weaker innocent natives,William Maltby explains the origins of England’s Hispanophobia#Maltby
Malice of his enemies
As a legend it arose from real events, and these can not be ignored for the benefit of one side. The Spaniards committed grave injustices, but they were also committed by men of other nations, and a comparative study of national crimes, although it may be revealing, is simply impossible. The faults of Spain were exaggerated by their enemies, and that these enemies have been accused of similar enormities, their purpose is not to make a comparison of the morality of nations or a vindication of Spanish character. Rather, it tries to determine how and why Spain’s reputation fell victim to the sustained malice of its enemies.#Maltby
Origin Italy England
Let us recognize that England is not the only touchstone for the evidence of the Black Legend, but note that the Italians could not be responsible for the anti-Hispanism that flourished there in the XVI-XVII centuries. It is obvious that the origins of such feeling were multiple. Several nations, including Italy and England, reacted unfavorably to certain Spanish activities, and their attitudes strengthened when they heard similar reactions through cultural exchange. Only after the lapse of time did they merge into the universal Black Legend of today, and not yet completely.#Maltby
English texts
The influence of Las Casas can be found in a variety of English writings, and the versions of his work have never lacked buyers. As early as 1898, a rather whimsical translation of text as propaganda for the Spanish-American war was printed in New York, but the English-speaking world was already aware of its content since the publication of The Spanish Colonie, or Brief Chronicle of the Acts and Gestes of the Spaniards in the West Indies [Spanish colony, or Brief chronicle of the acts and deeds of the Spaniards in the West Indies] in 1583. #Maltby
Conquest of America
The Spanish Conquest of America has played a decisive role in the development of anti-Hispanism, but that role was reserved, in large part, to a time and place that are outside the limits of this study. For the English of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there were more immediate reasons to feel displeasure for Spain, and the facts of the Spaniards in the New World were of interest basically as ammunition in a propaganda war that was beginning to take place for other reasons. #Maltby
Hispanic Justice
The most powerful accusation of the cruelty and greed of Spain is, at the same time, a monument to his humanitarianism and his sense of justice. But men from other nations, writing in the heat of religious or national partisanship, would not recognize the very important fact that Las Casas himself was Spanish. It should also be noted that, even though the briefest report was printed for the first time in 1551, only in 1583, since the increasing enmity between Spain and England could no longer be disguised, the first edition of the work in English appeared in the London bookstores. #Maltby
English Catholics
English Catholics may not have shared such opinions, but they were rarely in a position to oppose it. For them, publishing was as difficult as it was dangerous. They were already quite busy defending themselves; and there is no evidence that, to begin with, many of them were Hispanophiles. Although sometimes books were published that praised Spanish manners or military tactics, the fact that, at least in England, the portrait of Spanish religion was in the hands of its worst enemies. #Maltby
Protestant intolerance
The vision that the rebels had of Spain retained its appeal because it came to be associated with a modern value system. It has been assumed that flamencos sought religious tolerance and personal freedom, when, strictly speaking, many of them only tried to impose another kind of religious tyranny, while maintaining aristocratic privileges.
They identified the rebellion of the Netherlands with the worship of their own gods, and made their enemies their own enemies. As a result, the role played by Spain in this prolonged and bloody tragedy must take its place among the causes of anti-Hispanism, not only in England, but throughout Western Europe.
Military incompetence
The accusation was sustained by repeating it, and the legend of military incompetence still persists today despite all the evidence against. Outrageous for the Hispanists and deceptive for the enemies of Spain, it was, at least in England, the product of 1588.
Western design
Spain represented for them all those evils that so alarmed the Puritans of Isabella’s reign: cruelty, immorality and religious oppression.
When the government of England fell into the hands of this authoritarian and self-confident man, a rebirth of Elizabethan anti-Hispanism was inevitable.
If the “Western Design” was typical of the devastating effect that the Black Legend was capable of producing, it was also characteristic of those situations in which anti-Hispanism, having helped to cause an incident, could renew itself by nourishing itself on its results. It is obvious that the government’s attempt to justify its policy encouraged a renewal of interest in the hostile enemy, but the resumption of war in all forms after years of relative calm produced a new flood of literature on Spain and its colonies.
National identity
The British were aware of their national identity -what doubt Cabe, and writers like Raleigh, Thomas Scott and Sir Richard Hawkins were pleased to compare the virtues of England with the vices of his perfidious enemy. The frequent insistence on the supposed Jewish or Moorish origin of the Spaniards indicates that an element of racial antagonism must have intervened.
Unverified facts
In England, anti-Spanish sentiment was caused by a good number of men who wrote more or less independently and who took their examples, however imprecise, from historical records. This feeling only became a “Black Legend” when later authors accepted his allegations as proven facts.
Spanish Empire
One importance is impossible to exaggerate, that England was just one of the many nations whose experiences with Spain had been unpleasant. No great empire, whatever its policy, can stop incurring the wrath of its neighbors; and the vast range of Spanish activities, not only against England but in the Low Countries, France and Italy, left Spain particularly exposed to hostile criticism. At least in three other countries they had developed their own Black Legends, not unlike the English.
Cultural ties
In spite of all their differences, England’s cultural links with France and the Netherlands have always been narrow, and their separate currents of anti-Hispanism inevitably tended to reinforce each other. It was in this way that the legend of Spanish barbarism could grow, until it became part of the intellectual baggage of Western man. Although a product of history, it was not based on any fact. Although manifestly unfair, it continues to color our vision of an entire culture. In these moments, anti-Hispanism can well be supplanted by anti-Americanism.
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