Spanish Oppression Research Articles

On the origins of the Netherlands’ States General

ABSTRACT The States General of the Netherlands took the lead in the revolt against the King of Spain, Philip II, in the sixteenth century and it ruled as a sovereign assembly until the end of the eighteenth century. It emerged relatively late, as compared to the French model dating from 1302. It is questionable if there was such a thing as a first meeting in the Netherlands. Current scholarship agrees on the meetings in January to March 1464 in Bruges, Ghent and Lille, summoned by Duke Philip with a very different purpose than the one which came to dominate the discussions. While it is generally assumed that the initiative came from the Duke, after his son had tried to usurp it, this article argues for more gradual processes. First, the meetings of 1464 and 1465 were successful thanks to decades of intense joint meetings between four and six of the core principalities concerning primarily economic purposes. Second, their cohesion facilitated their crucial role during successive dynastic crises from 1477 to 1492, when fundamental principles of constitutional representation were formulated. These would enable the States General to organize the war of liberation from Spanish oppression.

Blackness in the Black Legend: How narratives of race and slavery in the Amistad affair shaped anti-Hispanicism and "American Exceptionalism"

Abstract: This article examines Steven Spielberg's 1997 film Amistad, which depicts a slave rebellion and mutiny on a Cuban slave ship in 1839, as a lens through which to view the origins of the Black Legend. The Black Legend emerged in 1830s in the U.S. to depict Latin American instability as the result of Spanish oppression, violence, cultural inferiority and Catholicism. The narrative served to benefit the ideology of white supremacy and the myth of American (read U.S.) "exceptionalism" by drawing global attention away from the maintenance of slavery in the U.S. and highlighting Spanish and Cuban involvement in the clandestine slave trade in the nineteenth century. The article analyzes a variety of secondary and primary sources that place blackness at the center of the construction of the Black Legend, from contemporary accounts of the Amistad revolt to subsequent references to blackness in histories of U.S.-Latin American relations in the 1830s and 1840s. The article shows how Spielberg inserts Christianity as a force for racial equality and holds up the judicial branch of the U.S. government as a model for Latin America to follow, echoing the inherent contradictions of the Black Legend in the late twentieth century. Ultimately, the article argues that U.S. history must be examined in relation to the history of Latin America, and narratives of blackness in the Atlantic world shaped national mythos and identities in similar ways. Examining the African Diaspora in the Americas, as well as the subsequent national narratives of race and national identities, helps to deconstruct narratives of exceptionalism and reveal political motivations and contradictions in the Black Legend narrative.

Intertextuality in Daniel Kehlmann’s Novel Tyll

Intertextuality in Daniel Kehlmann’s Novel Tyll Marc J. Schweissinger Abstract This article examines intertextuality in the novel Tyll, by Daniel Kehlmann, from 2017. The Name Tyll refers to the old medieval figure Till Eulenspiegel. Eulenspiegel, a real-life character became popular through folk songs of the 15th and 16th centuries in Germany, but Kehlmann creates a historical novel, placing his Tyll in the Thirty Years‟ War (1618–1648), a war tormenting central Europe. Kehlmann employs literary borrowings from the original rough farce and Charles De Coster‟s world-famous version of the 19th century, The Legend of Ulenspiegel and Lamme Goedzak. But while De Coster presented his Till as a freedom fighter for the Protestant Netherlands against Catholic Spanish oppression, Kehlmann pictures an entirely different character. Moreover, in contrast to the rough farce, Kehlmann equips his Tyll with an individual biography. Tyll, suffering from childhood trauma, runs away from home and becomes a travelling artist. Caught up by the whirlwind of the Thirty Years‟ War, unprotected by law, Tyll turns from an able trickster similar to the character from the popular folk song into a fool for the so-called Winter King of Bohemia, Frederick V. Kehlmann creates an intertextual riddle, shifting back and forward in time, deliberately full of flaws and conceptual loopholes. Full Text: PDF DOI: 10.15640/ijll.v7n1a16

Biocultural Consequences of Spanish Contact in the Lambayeque Valley Region of Northern Peru: Internal Enamel Micro‐Defects as Indicators of Early Life Stress

AbstractThe present study utilises dental histological methods to analyse enamel micro‐defects as indicators of early life stress in indigenous Muchik individuals interred at two sites: La Capilla Santa María Magdalena de Eten (CSMME) (n = 15) and La Capilla del Niño Serranito (CNS) (n = 15), both located in the Lambayeque Valley region of northern Peru. Individuals interred at CNS date to the Early Colonial Period (AD 1533–1610), and individuals interred at CSMME date to the Middle/Late Colonial Period (AD 1625–1760), thus permitting comparison of childhood stress events between the Early and Middle/Late Colonial Periods. Results reveal a high prevalence of Wilson bands at both sites, although a lower prevalence at the CSMME was observed in comparison with the CNS. This indicates that, over time, Muchik individuals in this town may have been able to acclimate to life under Spanish oppression. Stress chronologies suggest that early life stress possibly resulted from inadequate and less than desirable food and/or water available for supplemental feeding during early infancy, especially around the ages of 4 and 5 months. Furthermore, results show that individuals with enamel defects in the form of Wilson bands at both the CNS and CSMME had an earlier mean age‐at‐death (9.6 and 4.05 years, respectively) in comparison with those without observed Wilson bands (19.75 and 8.8 years, respectively). These results underscore the importance of not only regional and temporal studies of the biological consequences of Spanish contact in the Americas but also of investigating the relationship between early life stress and adult health and longevity in archaeological populations. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

San Martín: Argentine Soldier, American Hero

At first glance one might perceive this work by the distinguished historian John Lynch as a mere biography. However, this is not case. Once you begin to read you find a highly nuanced study that sheds serious new light on both the life and times of one of the greatest figures of the Latin American wars of independence, José de San Martín. Lynch brings to life the inner man and his psyche as it influenced his actions, which had a decided impact upon the course of Latin American history. Lynch purposely leads us to contemplate the question, without explicitly stating it, of what would have been the historical evolution of Latin American and South America if there had been no San Martín. In this regard this book will be pondered for a long time to come.For more than two decades before deciding to return to his native Argentina, San Martín was a loyal soldier and servant of the Spanish monarchy, despite his American birth. Yet beneath the surface, the future Liberator was always contemplating his American origins and also what he saw as the foundering of the Spanish Empire. He eventually came to the view, displayed by his actions and written words, that the yoke of Spanish rule within Latin America (and especially South America) must end if he and his native land were to reach their destiny. For San Martín the end of Spanish rule was not just the end of Spanish oppression but the fulfillment of a destiny, independence, so that all of the Latin American nations could seek out their destined economic and political futures. As Lynch demonstrates, the reforms (if we choose to use this word) that occurred during the latter stages of the colonial period unleashed a desire for freedom (particularly in the realm of trade and economics). San Martín fervently subscribed to what was becoming the liberal doctrine of classical economics — Latin Americans needed to be in control of their economic and financial destiny. San Martín made the excuse of needing to attend to his family’s financial affairs to gain the requisite authority to leave his military position and made his way back to his beloved homeland of Argentina, in the midst of the revolutionary turmoil of the era. During this period and thereafter he continuously clamored for British aide for the cause of Latin American independence, yet the interests of Great Britain did not coincide with the interests of Latin America, as Lynch so successfully demonstrates here and in his previous overviews of the independence movements in Spanish America.San Martín eventually gained the governorship of Cuyo, from whence he fashioned an army that began in January 1817 to move out to seize Chile, and which accomplished a great feat in military historical annals by traversing the mighty Andes. His forces marched into the capital of Santiago on February 12, 1817. However, royalist forces continued to contest the Liberator’s forces until their truly decisive defeat on the plains of Maipo on April 3, 1818. San Martín’s victory made him a true icon in the struggle for Latin American independence. Yet for him and others, the true jewel that needed to be conquered was that of the viceroyalty of Peru; a vanguard of royalist hegemony within South America. With aid from many in Argentina and elsewhere, San Martín put together an elaborate force destined to conquer Peru, although his English counterpart Thomas Cochrane questioned the strategies employed to take possession of Peru and end Spanish sway over the land. San Martín believed that the right path to acquiring Peru was by gaining the hearts of the populace, not a direct invasion and bloody conquest as advocated by Cochrane. The Liberator decided upon a course of negotiation with the Peruvian viceroy, yet when no real compromise could be found, he sought a solution on the field of battle in early August 1821. San Martín’s forces entered Lima on July 28, whereupon he declared Peruvian independence from Spain.Much of Peru remained in royalist hands until Simón Bolívar and Antonio José de Sucre finally drove out the final vestiges of Spanish rule by January 1826. Lynch clearly shows, despite his detractors, that without San Martín, South American independence (especially in Peru) would have been a much more formidable task and perhaps impossible. It was indeed San Martín’s fortitude that allowed for the maturation of the Latin American wars of independence. This work should be on the shelf of any historian. It tells the tale of one of the enduring icons in Latin American and, by extension, world history.

ASIA, MIDDLE EAST, LATIN AMERICA, AND AFRICA Indians, Merchants, and Markets: A Reinterpretation of the Repartimiento and Spanish-Indian Economic Relations in Colonial Oaxaca, 1750–1821. By Jeremy Baskes. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. Pp. 305. $60.00.

Modern historians emphasize that Indians in colonial Mexico were victims of Spanish oppression, but not merely victims. The native peoples turned the institutions and culture of the conquerors to their own needs, and in so doing they mitigated the burdens of colonialism. Economic historians have been slow to take up the challenge of understanding these adaptations, in part because the history is alien and its sources difficult, and in part because the assumptions of neoclassical economics ill-describe a world that was scarcely modern, if modern at all. But if any work has risen to the challenge, it is this one.

Entdeckung und Verdeckung des anderen. Zum 500-Jahr-Gedenken der europäischen Ankunft in Amerika

WenigeJahre vor der ersten Indienfahrt des Christoph Kolumbus verfaste der italienische Humanist Giovanni Pico della Mirandola seine beruhmte Rede uber die Wurde des Menschen (oratio de dignitate hominis), in der er das aus dem Geist der Renaissance geborene neuzeitliche Verstandnis der menschlichen Freiheit entwickelte. Der Mensch als Mas aller Dinge, vom hochsten Baumeister in die Mitte der Welt gestellt: (...) English The forthcoming ceremonies for the 'Quinta Centenario', for the five hundred year anniversary of the so-called discovery of Latin America are being discussed passionately and controversially. At the centre of the discussions is the argument about the painful experience concerning the violent clashes between the European and the indigenous cultures. Up until now the European point of view was marked by a Straightforward Euro-centricity which did not want to take seriously the foreignness and the inherent rights of other peoples and cultures. Essentially the essay deals in historical sequence with the images of the Indian from a European point of view. Columbus described the Indians as a heavenly creature whereas a little later Vespucci created the image of a cruel cannibal. Las Casas emphasized a new perspective in the sixteenth century which plays an important roJe in present day Latin-American theology: the Indians as the victims of Spanish oppression. The pictorial chronicle 'Nueva Cor6nica y Buen Gobierno' which was written about 1600 by the Peruvian Guaman Poma shows on the other hand the image which the Indian had of hirnself. This image had no chance to produce an historical impact in Europe. Finally five criteria are given for the necessary rediscovery of the otherness of the others in regard to the 'Quinta Centenario': change of perspective, rediscovery, self-identity, participation and communication.

Some Thoughts on Puerto Rican “Loyalism” in the Nineteenth Century

Throughout the nineteenth century, Puerto Rico remained a more or less loyal Spanish colony when nearby sister colonies were in revolt, but the literature about Puerto Rico's aloofness from Spanish American revolutionary movements leaves a number of unanswered questions. Whatever divisions there may have been within Pierto Rico in the days of Simon Bolivar are reflected in subsequent historical writings. If contemporaries could not agree on the wisest course of action, neither has any generation of twentieth century historians been in full accord as to what should have happened, or even as to what did happen, in nineteenth century Puerto Rico. Did rebellions of 1835, 1838, 1868, and 1897 indicate a valiant population suffering from brutal Spanish oppression, or did the repeated failures signify lack of support? Were Puerto Ricans as militant as other Spanish Americans, and if not, what is the explanation? Were Puerto Ricans loyal sons of Spain, or wise pragmatists, or victims of Spanish oppression, or cowards? Successive generations have endeavoured to answer these questions. Those who have written have done so from an awareness that Puerto Ricans helped Spanish forces to crush an uprising in Santo Domingo (1861-1865), that Cuba had longer and bloodier anti-Spanish rebellions (1868-1878, 1895-1898) than Puerto Rico, that in 1897 Queen Mother Maria Cristina bestowed upon Puerto Rico the title of Spain's ever faithful island, 1 and that in 1898, Puerto Ricans showed little resistance and considerable enthusiasm as Yankee invaders brought Spanish rule to an end 2 . Writers have also known that Puerto Ricans have continued to reject independence from their subsequent Mother Country, the United States, even in the second half of the twentieth century when nationalist sentiments were sweeping the world. Despite

The Cause of the Philippine Revolution

EARLY HISTORIANS of the Philippine insurrection' against Spain in 1896 attributed the uprising to the tyranny of the Spanish colonial government. American writers in particular did so, and for two reasons. First, they based their works mostly on the writings and propaganda leaflets of the Philippine revolutionaries who, as one might expect, were extremely anti-Spanish. Second, these fitted well with the supposed reason for American intervention. The United States purportedly came to help the Filipinos fight against the despotic colonialism of Spain. These writers were not conscious or zealous apologists. Such respectable historians as W. Cameron Forbes and Joseph Ralston Hayden merely accepted Spanish oppression as a fact without feeling compelled to furnish any proofs. The knightserrant who came forward to defend the Spanish rule in the Philippines did not make matters any better. In their reaction they were just as selective in handling historical facts and just as one-sided. Philippine historians, almost without exception, would admit that there was an atmosphere of relative progress in the islands in the nineteenth century.2 Many reforms were effected. Judging from the country's conditions alone, it would be impossible to understand the political upheaval of 1896. This was still an insurrection, but it was the most widespread since the very beginnings of Spanish rule. In fact, after the initial defeat and with the help of the United States, it became a fully developed revolution.