A 1598 propaganda engraving by Theodor de Bry depicting a Spaniard feeding Indian children to his dogs. De Bry's works are characteristic of the anti-Spanish propaganda that originated as a result of the Eighty Years' War.

A black legend is a historiographical phenomenon in which a sustained trend in historical writing of biased reporting and introduction of fabricated, exaggerated and/or decontextualized facts is directed against particular persons, nations or institutions with the intention of creating a distorted and uniquely inhuman image of them while hiding their positive contributions to history. The term was first used by French writer Arthur Lévy in his 1893 work Napoléon Intime, in contrast to the expression "Golden Legend" that had been in circulation around Europe since the publication of a book of that name during the Middle Ages.

Black legends have been perpetrated against many nations and cultures, usually as a result of propaganda and xenophobia. For example, the "Spanish Black Legend" (Spanish: La leyenda negra española) is the theory that anti-Spanish political propaganda, whether about Spain, the Spanish Empire or Hispanic America, was sometimes "absorbed and converted into broadly held stereotypes" that assumed that Spain was "uniquely evil".[1]

Origins

The term was first used by Arthur Lévy in 1893:

However, if we study the life of the emperor properly, we will soon get rid of the legends, both the golden legend, and the legend that we may call the Napoleonic black legend. This is the truth: Napoleon was not a God, nor was he a monster

— Arthur Lévy, Napoleon Intime

Historian Manuel Fernández Álvarez defined a black legend as:

... cuidadosa distorsión de la historia de un pueblo, realizada por sus enemigos, para mejor combatirle. Y una distorsión lo más monstruosa posible, a fin de lograr el objetivo marcado: la descalificación moral de ese pueblo, cuya supremacía hay que combatir por todos los medios sine die.

... 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.

— as cited in Alfredo Alvar's book, La Leyenda Negra (1997:5)

According to historian Elvira Roca Barea, the formation of a black legend and its assimilation by the nation that suffers it is a phenomenon observed in all multicultural empires, not just in the Spanish Empire. The black legend of empires would be the result of the following combined factors:[2]

  1. The combined propaganda attacks and efforts of most smaller powers of the time, as well as defeated rivals.
  2. The propaganda created by the many rival power factions within the empire itself against each other as part of their struggle to win more power.
  3. The self-criticism of the intellectual elite, which tends to be larger in larger empires.
  4. The need of the new powers consolidated during the empire's life or after its dissolution to justify their new prevalence and the new order.

The said black legend tends to fade once the next great power is established or once enough time has gone by.

Common elements of black legends

The defining feature of a black legend is that it has been fabricated and propagated intentionally. Black legends also tend to portray their subjects with the following elements:[2]

  • Permanent decadence. The subject is shown to be in a constant state of decadence, corruption, or immorality.
  • Degenerated or polluted version of something else. The subject is portrayed as an inferior descendant or variant of another civilization, nation, religion, race or people. The latter represents the true, pure, and noble form of whatever the subject should have been. It may be something that reflects well on the Black Legend's creators by comparison.
  • Accidentality of merit. If the subject's merits cannot be fully erased or hidden, they are minimized by being portrayed as mere luck, opportunism, or exceptions to the rule.
  • Obligatory moral actions. Any noble actions done by the subject are portrayed as being out of self-interest or necessity, rather than genuine morality.
  • Natural moral inferiority and irredeemable character. There is no hope for the subject to improve, because their defects have been present from the start and innate to their character, and they lack the moral fortitude to overcome them.

Narrations of black legends tend to include strong pathos, combined with a narrative that is easy to follow and emotionally loaded, created by:

  • Detailed, gruesome and morbid descriptions of torture and violence, often portrayed as lacking any practical purpose beyond sadistic pleasure.
  • Sexual elements, such as extreme sexual depravity, repression or a combination of both.
  • Ignorance, as a lack of both intellectual refinement and cultural sophistication.
  • Greed and materialism, as well as the willingness to violate taboos, defile the sacred, and forsake morality in pursuit of greed.
  • A unifying theme, usually greed, cruelty, sadism or bigotry, that the subject consistently portrays throughout the legend's stories, even if individual instances of "proof" for it may vary or contradict one another.
  • Simplicity of elements, often repeating the same anecdotes with minor variations. Any motivating desires provided in the legend are explicitly stated, unambiguously immoral, and do not evolve over time.

Examples

The Spanish Black Legend

Factors that would set the Spanish Black Legend apart from others might include its abnormal permeation and outreach across nations, its racialized component, and its abnormal persistence through time. The causes of this have been suggested as:

  1. The overlap of the period of splendour of the Spanish Empire with the introduction of the printing press in England and Germany, which allowed the propaganda of such colonial and religious rivals to spread faster and wider than ever before and persist in time long after the disappearance of the empire. There is a belief that the Spanish, once known for their savagery, became successful in Catholic conversions because the natives found the idols similar to their own religion.[3]
  2. Permanence after the dissolution of the empire due to religious factors.
  3. The dismantling and substitution of the Spanish intellectual class by another more favorable to former rival France following the War of the Spanish Succession, which established the French narrative in the country.
  4. The unique characteristics of the colonial wars of the early contemporary period and the need of new colonial powers to legitimize claims in now independent Spanish colonies, as well as the unique and new characteristics of the British Empire that succeeded it.[4]

The hypothesis of a Spanish Black Legend assimilating anti-Hispanic propaganda from the 16th and 17th centuries has a high level of acceptance among specialists, but the extent of its reach and the data it affected, and what may have actually occurred instead, is still debated, especially regarding the Spanish colonization of the Americas, where few written sources have been proven reliable. Historians are now exploring genetic as well as new scientific and statistical investigative techniques.[5][6]

There is also debate regarding whether the Spanish Black Legend is still in effect today. While some authors like Powell believe that the Black Legend continues to influence modern-day policies and international relationships, other authors, like Henry Kamen, believe it has been left behind. Some have attributed many of the problems between the Episcopal Church and the Latin community to the Black Legend.[7]

The Russian Black Legend

See caption
"A well-known comic map of 1877 has Russia as an octopus. The other countries of Europe are drawn as human characters." Quote from the book of Mark Smith "The Russia Anxiety: And How History Can Resolve It"

Russian Black Legend contains all the common elements of black legends. It has a long tradition dating back to the early 19th century. Forgeries such as The Will of Peter the Great includes black legends about both individual periods in the history of Russia and its individual characters, such as Peter the Great, Catherine II, Joseph Stalin[8] and others.

I discuss the 'black legend' of Russian history on which the Anxiety is based, the absolute catogiries that Western observers have often used to evaluate Russia, without much reflection on Russian conditions or even awareness of their

This black legend of Russia's damaged destiny has been a risk to world peace in the past and it might be again, as we'll see in the next chapter.

2. The Destiny Problem Does History's 'Black Legend' Set Russia Up To Fail?

— Mark Smith, The Russia Anxiety: And How History Can Resolve

There is an argument to be made about Russia suffering from a black legend of its own:[9] the self-criticism of the intellectual elite - which tends to be larger in larger empires ("Imperiophobia and black legends. Rome, Russia, United States and the Spanish Empire")[2] - in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. Especially intensified after the dismantling and substitution of the Russian intellectual class by another more favorable to former rival USA following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the '90s of the 20th century, which established the American narrative in Russia.

The Russian Black Legend is still in effect today. Part of anti-Russian sentiment.[10]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Maltby, William B (1996). "The Black Legend". Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1 \: 346–348.
  2. 1 2 3 Barea, Roca; Elvira, María (2016), Imperiofobia y leyenda negra. Roma, Rusia, Estados Unidos y el Imperio español [Imperiophobia and black legends. Rome, Russia, United States and the Spanish Empire] (in Spanish), Madrid: Siruela, ISBN 978-84-16854233
  3. ↑ Murry, G. "Tears of the Indians" or Superficial Conversion?: José de Acosta, the Black Legend, and Spanish Evangelization in the New World. The Catholic Historical Review. pp. 29–51.
  4. ↑ Marías, Julián (2006; primera edición 1985). España Inteligible. Razón Histórica de las Españas. Alianza Editorial. ISBN 84-206-7725-6.
  5. ↑ Maltby, W. S. (1971). The Black Legend in England. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
  6. ↑ John L. Robinson, «The anti-hispanic bias in British historiography», Hispania Sacra, 1992, XLIV
  7. ↑ Guzmán, Roland (2019). Dismantling the Discourses of the "Black Legend" as They Still Function in The Episcopal Church: A Case against Latinx Ministries as a Program of the Church. Anglican Theological Review. pp. 603–624.
  8. ↑ Losurdo, Domenico (2020). Stalin - The History and critique of a black legend (PDF).
  9. ↑ Smith, Mark B. (2019). "The Russia Anxiety: And How History Can Resolve It". Penguin Books Limited. ISBN 9780241312803.
  10. ↑ Roca Barea, María Elvira (2016). "La rusofobia antes y ahora" (in Spanish). Siruela. ISBN 9788416854783.

    Further reading

    • Ardolino, Frank. Apocalypse and Armada in Kyd's Spanish Tragedy (Kirksville, Missouri: Sixteenth Century Studies, 1995).
    • Arnoldsson, Sverker. "La Leyenda Negra: Estudios Sobre Sus Orígines," Göteborgs Universitets Årsskrift, 66:3, 1960
    • Díaz, María Elena (2004). "Beyond Tannenbaum". Law and History Review. 22 (2): 371–376. doi:10.2307/4141650. JSTOR 4141650. S2CID 232394988.
    • Edelmayer, Friedrich (2011). "The "Leyenda Negra" and the Circulation of Anti-Catholic and Anti-Spanish Prejudices". European History Online.
    • Español Bouché, Luis, "Leyendas Negras: Vida y Obra de Julian Juderías", Junta de Castilla y Leon, 2007.
    • Gibson, Charles. The Black Legend: Anti-Spanish Attitudes in the Old World and the New. 1971.
    • Gledhill, John (1996). "Review: From "Others" to Actors: New Perspectives on Popular Political Cultures and National State Formation in Latin America". American Anthropologist. New Series. 98 (3): 630–633. doi:10.1525/aa.1996.98.3.02a00210.
    • Griffin, Eric. "Ethos to Ethnos: Hispanizing 'the Spaniard' in the Old World and the New," The New Centennial Review, 2:1, 2002.
    • Hadfield, Andrew. "Late Elizabethan Protestantism, Colonialism and the Fear of the Apocalypse," Reformation, 3, 1998.
    • Hanke, Lewis. The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America. 1949.
    • Hanke, Lewis. Bartolomé de Las Casas: Bookman, Scholar and Propagandist. 1952.
    • Hauben, Paul J. (1977). "White Legend against Black: Nationalism and Enlightenment in a Spanish Context". The Americas. 34 (1): 1–19. doi:10.2307/980809. JSTOR 980809. S2CID 96485994.
    • Hillgarth, J. N. (1985). "Spanish Historiography and Iberian Reality". History and Theory. 24 (1): 23–43. doi:10.2307/2504941. JSTOR 2504941.
    • Kamen, Henry. Empire: How Spain Became a World Power, 1492-1763. New York: HarperCollins. 2003. ISBN 0-06-093264-3
    • Keen, Benjamin. "The Black Legend Revisited: Assumptions and Realities", Hispanic American Historical Review 49, no. 4 (November 1969): 703–19.
    • Keen, Benjamin. "The White Legend Revisited: A Reply to Professor Hanke's 'Modest Proposal,'" Hispanic American Historical Review 51, no. 2 (May 1971): 336–55.
    • LaRosa, Michael (1992–1993). "Religion in a Changing Latin America: A Review". Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs. 34 (4): 245–255. doi:10.2307/165811. JSTOR 165811.
    • Lock, Julian. "'How Many Tercios Has the Pope?' The Spanish War and the Sublimation of Elizabethan Anti-Popery," History, 81, 1996.
    • Maltby, William S., The Black Legend in England. Duke University Press, Durham, 1971, ISBN 0-8223-0250-0.
    • Maura, Juan Francisco. "La hispanofobia a través de algunos textos de la conquista de América: de la propaganda política a la frivolidad académica". Bulletin of Spanish Studies 83. 2 (2006): 213–240.
    • Maura, Juan Francisco. "Cobardía, crueldad y oportunismo español: algunas consideraciones sobre la 'verdadera' historia de la conquista de la Nueva España". Lemir (Revista de literatura medieval y del Renacimiento) 7 (2003): 1–29.
    • Mignolo, W. D. (2007). "What does the Black Legend Have to do with Race?" Rereading the Black Legend: The Discourses of Religious and Racial Difference in the Renaissance Empires, 312–24.
    • Powell, Philip Wayne, Tree of Hate: Propaganda and Prejudices Affecting United States Relations with the Hispanic World. Basic Books, New York, 1971, ISBN 0-465-08750-7.
    • Rabasa, José (1993). "Aesthetics of Colonial Violence: The Massacre of Acoma in Gaspar de Villagrá's "Historia de la Nueva México"". College Literature. 20 (3): 96–114.
    • Sanchez, M.G., Anti-Spanish Sentiment in English Literary and Political Writing, 1553–1603 (Phd Diss; University of Leeds, 2004)
    • Schmidt, Benjamin, Innocence Abroad. The Dutch Imagination and the New World, 1570–1670, Cambridge U.P. 2001, ISBN 978-0-521-02455-6
    • Vigil, Ralph H. (1994). "Review: Inequality and Ideology in Borderlands Historiography". Latin American Research Review. 29 (1): 155–171. doi:10.1017/S002387910003538X.
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