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The of this article is . Please see discussion on the . The Black Legend (in Spanish , '''''leyenda negra''''') is the disparaging Depiction of Spain and Spaniard s as bloodthirsty and cruel, intolerant, greedy and fanatical. Clearly evident in works by early Protestant historians describing the period of dominant Spanish Imperialism , many also see influences of the black legend in the villains and storylines of modern fiction and film. The term was coined by Julián Juderías in his 1914 book ''La leyenda negra y la verdad histórica'' (''The Black Legend and Historical Truth''). Main topics Expulsion of the Jews and Muslims The Expulsion Of The Jews in 1492 has often been quoted as an example of the Spaniards' religious intolerance. However, Many Other Expulsions took place in Europe during the Middle Ages. Though the expulsion from Spain of at least 200,000 Jews was by far the largest and most significant, this was due to the fact that Spain had the largest Jewish community. A Brief Chronology of anti-semitism (accessed 23 Jan 2006), which in turn cites ''Anti-Semitism'' (1974) Keter Publishing House, Jerusalem ISBN 0-7065-1327-4. The Spanish Inquisition and religious intolerance, Catholic Spain See also: Inquisition and Spanish Inquisition . The , who published the ''Book of Martyrs'' in 1554 , and the Spaniard Reginaldo González De Montes , author of ''Exposición de algunas mañas de la Santa Inquisición Española'' (''Exposition of some methods of the Spanish Inquisition'') ( 1567 ). The legend depicts the Spanish Inquisition as cruel and bloodthirsty. The image of moats, chains, cries and rooms of torture is inseparably attached to it. Thousands of Jews, Muslims, Protestants and anyone who had fallen from favour would then have been cruelly tortured and finally murdered in the dungeons of a Catholic institution by Dominican Friars . Nevertheless, the historical context shows that the Inquisition already existed in many European countries before it was established in Spain in 1480 . It appeared in 1184 , and torture was first used in 1252 . That was a usual method in the medieval legal system, but its application was much more violent in the secular justice {Link without Title} . In fact, all the methods of torture resulting in bloodshed, mutilation or death were forbidden, and a doctor must be present. In contrast to most Witch-hunts and other medieval processes, the accused had the right to a lawyer and a trial. However, like in many medieval -and non-medieval- institutions, rules were not always followed to the letter, and it has come to public knowledge that the Pope was obliged to reproach the inquisitors several times for being "excessively zealous". European Colonization Of The Americas Origin From the ish and Islam ic influence upon Spanish culture; this motivated the view of the Spaniards as a people of inferior race and doubtful orthodoxy." The classic sources Exaggerated and lurid accounts of the Roman Catholic Inquisition in Spain were, in the 16th Century and still today, principal sources for the anti-Spanish Black Legend. The Inquisition had existed in many European countries before it came to Spain. It had existed in the Kingdom of Aragon for some two centuries but not in Castile until the year 1480 when the Catholic Monarchs, Isabel I Of Castile and Ferdinand II Of Aragon , approved its establishment throughout Spain with the Converso and Dominican friar, Tomás De Torquemada , as its first Inquisitor General, primarily to investigate and punish Judaizing '' Conversos '', Jews who had converted to Roman Catholic ism but had continued practising their religion in secret. Some of the strongest and earliest support for the Legend came from two Protestants: the Englishman John Foxe , author of the '' Book Of Martyrs '' (1554), and the Spaniard Reginaldo González De Montes , author of the '' Exposición De Algunas Mañas De La Santa Inquisición Española '' (''Exposition of some vices of the Spanish Inquisition'', 1567). Another early source from which the Black Legend drew support was Girolamo Benzoni 's ''Historia nuovo'' (''New History''), first published in Venice in 1565. Even today major support for the Black Legend comes from the misuse by Spain's enemies of published self-criticism generated from within Spain itself. As early as 1511 , some Spaniards criticized the legitimacy of the Spanish Colonization Of The Americas . Then in 1552 , the Dominican friar Bartolomé De Las Casas published his famous ''Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias'' ('' A Short Account Of The Destruction Of The Indies ''), a polemical account of the abuses that accompanied of the colonization of New Spain, and especially the island of Hispaniola (now home to the Dominican Republic and Haiti ). In the section regarding Hispaniola, Las Casas compares the indigenous peoples to tame ewes and blames Spaniards for the murder of 30,000 to 50,000 Arawak s native to the island. The work of Las Casas was first referred to in English, with the publication in 1583 of ''The Spanish Colonie, or Brief Chronicle of the Actes and Gestes of the Spaniards in the West Indies'', at a time when England and Spain were preparing for war in the Netherlands. Many scholars agree that Las Casas' work is exaggerated. The Duke Of Alba 's actions in the United Provinces contributed to the Black Legend. Sent to a part of Europe where printing presses were a constant source of heterodox opinion to stamp out heresy and political unrest in August 1567 , one of Alba's first acts was to gain control of the book industry. In a single year, several printers were banished and at least one was executed. Book sellers and printers were raided in the search for Banned books, many more of which were added to the '' Index Librorum Prohibitorum ''. In 1576 Spanish troops attacked and pillaged Antwerp , over three terrible days that came to be known as " The Spanish Fury ". The soldiers rampaged through the city, killing and looting; they demanded money from citizens and burned the homes of those who refused to (or could not) pay. Plantin 's printing establishment was threatented with destruction three times but was saved each time when a ransom was paid. Antwerp was economically devastated by the attack, and Plantin's business suffered. Such facts similar to German rampages in the Sack Of Rome ( 1527 ) were enlarged upon to enhance the Black Legend. Other critics of Spain included Antonio Pérez , the fallen secretary of King Philip II of Spain. Pérez fled to England, where he published attacks upon the Spanish Monarchy under the title ''Relaciones'' (1594). These books were extensively used by the Dutch during their Fight For Independence from Spain, and taken up by the English to justify their piracy and wars against the Spanish. Foxe's book was among Sir Francis Drake 's favourites; Drake himself was and is regarded by the Spaniards as a cruel and bloodthirsty pirate. The two northern nations were not only emerging as Spain's rivals for worldwide colonialism, but were also strongholds of Protestantism while Spain was the most powerful Roman Catholic country of the period. Comparison with Portugal Most telling is that other similar Roman Catholic nations, such as Portugal , have never been subjected to Black Legend type treatment to the extent that the Spanish have been. The Inquisition was also active in Portugal, the Portuguese Jews were also expelled, slavery was more important in the Portuguese colonies than in the Spanish colonies, there were violent conquerors like Afonso De Albuquerque and brutal governors like Mem De Sá . Perhaps the long strategic alliance between England and Portugal explains why these events and practices were not seen through the same lens as similar matters in Spain. The Enlightenment Guillaume Thomas François Raynal published in 1770 his most important work, ''L'Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes'' (''The philosophical and political history of the establishments and commerce of Europeans in the two Indies'', that is to say the East Indies and the West Indies ). Also during The Enlightenment , the imprisonment and death of Don Carlos, mentioned above, inspired the blank verse play ''Don Carlos, Infant v. Spanien'' (''Don Carlos, Prince of Spain'', 1787), by Friedrich Schiller , and later the opera '' Don Carlos '' by Giuseppe Verdi . Romantic travellers In the 19th Century , many writers, such as Washington Irving , Prosper Mérimée , George Sand , and Theophile Gautier , invented a mythical Andalusia . In their writings, Spain is converted into the Orient of the Western World (''Africa begins in the Pyrenees ''), an exotic country full of Brigands , economic delays, Gypsies , Ignorance , Machismo , Matador es, Moors , Passion , political chaos, poverty and fanatical religiosity. From this literature, the figure of the Latin Lover still survives. In classical music, Georges Bizet with Carmen (1875) and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov with Capriccio Espagnol (1887) contributed to this theme. ''Westward Ho!'' (heavily drawn upon by academic historians in Britain and America) cite ''Westward Ho!'' as a factual source when dealing with Elizabethan figures. Modern historiography Marcel Bataillon (1895-1977) revealed the extent of Erasmus 's influence in Spain in ''Erasme et l'Espagne'' (1937). Erasmus was a Humanist , and the popularity of his ideas in Spain goes against the stereotype of the country as being a monolith of fanatical Catholicism. Black Legend in the United States of America In his book ''Tree of Hate'', Philip Wayne Powell wrote that the United States Of America inherited the Black Legend from the British Colonization Of The Americas . These Anglo-Saxon prejudices toward Spaniards were transferred to Mexicans in the 19th Century . The American historian obscuring of the historic facts and the current worldwide prejudice against Spain." Some people feel that the United States mass media and government have propagated the legend to justify United States actions against Spain or Latin America n countries, as in the Mexican-American War , the Spanish-American War or the colonization of the Philippines after the Philippine-American War . They allege that there exists clear evidence of the Black Legend in modern literature, movies, and web sites, such as in Dan Brown ’s '' The Da Vinci Code '' and Steven Spielberg 's '' Amistad ''. On the other side, the pirates of the Caribbean who used to attack defenseless Spanish merchant ships are turned into romantic and idealistic figures. White Legend In contrast to the Black Legend is the so-called '''White Legend''' (in Spanish, ''"leyenda rosa"'', literally "rosy" legend). Advocates of the Black Legend postulate the existence of a White Legend comparable to the Black Legend in extension, influence and persistence in time. An easily refuted ''' Straw-man ''' White Legend is then invoked as a rhetorical device in discussions concerning the Black Legend. A White Legend with reference to the history of Spain is argued to have only been prominent during certain limited time periods such as, for example, during the Falangist regime of Generalissimo Francisco Franco . Proponents of the White Legend tend to excuse the Spanish Inquisition, emphasizing that in form it merely copied institutions already in place in the rest of Europe (the suppression of Catharism in France, Italy, etc.; the already existing Inquisitions elsewhere in Europe), citing the unique situation of Spain as a country recently under Muslim Moorish domination, and comparing the Inquisition favorably with French Wars Of Religion , Oliver Cromwell 's Cromwellian Conquest Of Ireland or the Witch Hunt s in many Protestant countries. Similarly, these advocates tend to excuse the "The Spanish Fury" or the sack of Rome, emphasizing that troops of Habsburg Spain were composed by many different European nationalities and ethnicities but under “fragile” Spanish command. They criticized the fact that Belgian, Italian or German rampages were enlarged upon and attributed to Spanish soldiers in order to enhance the anti-Hispanic Black Legend. In an opposite sense, Henry Kamen used this information to place the Spanish contribution to the Spanish Empire in its proper European context. According to his book, the Spanish Empire was a multiethnic enterprise, with a testimonial and leading role of the Spaniards and including: #Armaments from Milan . #Genoese and German bankers, as the Fugger s. #Genoese ( Andrea Doria ), Portuguese (Magallanes, Quirós , Torres ) and Venetian sailors. #German and Italian soldiers, e.g. Ambrosio Spinola . #English (in America and Triangular Trade ) and Chinese (in the Philippines) merchants, and #Native American allies (as in the Conquest of Aztec and Inca Empire) Kamen is controversial and truistic - no European historical undertaking has ever been accomplished exclusively by a single nationality… or by excluding a single nationality. In that sense Kamen foresaw an early decline of European civilization pending the reintegration of Spain into its rightful place and leading role in European culture and diplomacy. The White Legend is most notable in portraying Spain as benevolent during the conquest of the Americas. For example, in dealing with Hernán Cortés 's conquest of Mexico, the White Legend emphasizes that Cortés's army consisted largely of Native American enemies (and disgruntled vassals) of the Aztec Empire and credits accounts of Aztec Human Sacrifice And Cannibalism . with the Laws Of The Indies (Spanish: ''Leyes de Indias''). As for destruction of populations and cultures, the White Legend claims that the demographics of much of Latin America today favor Spain's claims to benevolence. Today the descendants of the aboriginal Americans constitute the base of the population in many of the countries that comprised the Spanish Empire in America. Some Amerindian languages have reached rank of co-official tongues in Latin American countries ( Quechua and Aymará in both Peru and Bolivia and Guaraní in Paraguay ). It is likely that Spanish priests actually spread Quechua beyond its original geographic area. This active spread of a native language by Europeans has no equivalent in the American countries which were originally colonized by other European powers, nor in Australia . However, New Zealand , where the Maori Language is a comparable case of co-official status, could be regarded as one exception to this. The White Legend plays down the Spanish role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade by emphasizing the role of the English but also that of the Dutch, French, Belgian, Portuguese and other Europeans. The defenders of this point of view argue that Spain was prohibited by the Pope from taking part in such activities, together with the fact it would be in breach of the Treaty Of Tordesillas , which divided the world outside of Europe in an exclusive duopoly between the Spanish and the Portuguese, assigning Africa to Portugal . See also
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