The Black Legend Revisited: Assumptions and Realities

Abstract

T HE TERM BLACK LEGEND has long existed in the lexicon of Latin American history. Despite its wide acceptance and use, however, it rests on premises whose validity has never been seriously questioned. This essay attempts to test these premises, to clarify the meanings attached to the phrase, and to determine its historical accuracy. If the essence of the Black Legend is defamatory criticism of Spain and the Spaniards, then the Legend has a history much older than the term itself. Sverker Arnoldsson' has shown that from the fourteenth century an unfavorable opinion of Spaniards prevailed among Italians as a result of the personal, economic, political, and cultural relations between the two peoples; and that the nationalist and religious struggles of the sixteenth century provoked similar attitudes toward Spain in Germany and the Netherlands. Arnoldsson makes no systematic effort to determine how much the Spaniards deserved this unfavorable opinion, but he concedes that the Spanish soldiery in Germany and the Netherlands did behave with cruelty, rapacity, and licentiousness. In 1552-1553 Bartolome de las Casas published in Seville nine treatises severely critical of the Spanish Conquest in America, including the famous Very Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies. Royal fear of a colonial feudalism, more dangerous to the Crown than the shattered power of Indian kings and states, helps to explain the remarkable tolerance which allowed publication of this expos6. But while the Emperor Charles could allow a domestic debate on Spain's Indian policies in the full sight and hearing of Europe, such a debate became unthinkable under his successor, Philip II. From his accession to the throne (1556), the dominant motive of Philip's Indian policy was to augment the royal revenues in order to overcome the Crown's desperate financial crisis. Simultaneously