Defoe and the Black Legend: The Spanish Stereotype in "A New Voyage round the World"

Abstract

On 23 July 1711, Daniel Defoe wrote a letter to his employer/savior Rob­ ert Harley in which he outlined a “Proposall for Seizing, Possessing, and forming an English Collony on The kingdome of Chili in the South Part of America” (Healey 346). In this letter, Defoe asserts that Chile is particularly suited for an English colony because it is well-adapted for “Commerce, Planting, and Inhabiting” (Healey 346). Defoe’s missive systematically sets forth the benefits of such a proposal, such as the establishment of an excellent market for English wool, while simultaneously refuting possible objections to the plan, such as the resis­ tance of the Spaniards. He maintains that the native Chileans would cooperate with the English if it secured their deliverance from the “Cruell and Tyrannic Temper of the Said spaniards” (Healey 347). Defoe’s scheme is remarkably thor­ ough, even if it failed to win Harley’s approval. Seemingly undaunted by lack of governmental support, Defoe tenaciously held fast to his idea, and we meet it again thirteen years later in his 1724 travel fiction, A New Voyage Round the World. In this text, Defoe enlarges upon his scheme in an effort to convince his English read­ ership that South America is ideal for an English colony. The few critics who have written on A New Voyage agree that Defoe fully in­ tended for this project to come to fruition. Jane Jack, for example, labels A New Voyage Defoe’s roman a these “designed to enlist the sympathy of its readers for a serious scheme of colonization and commerce” (75). Much more recently, Robert Markley ascribed the novel’s purpose to “firing the imagination of his English read­ ers to explore and exploit the lands that the novel describes” (159). This travel fiction, then, moves beyond the mere entertainment or educational purpose its contemporaries boasted (Richetti 60-61), and positions itself as thinly-disguised colonial propaganda. In order for this propaganda to succeed, however, Defoe must illustrate to his English readers that the Coasta Deserta region, extending from Buenos Aires to