The Black Legend of Spain and its Atlantic Empire in the Eighteenth Century

What are the stories that we tell about ourselves and others, and how do those stories contribute to the construction of a collective memory and national identity? The Black Legend—the representation of Spaniards and the Spanish Empire as cruel and intolerant—first emerged in response to accounts of Spanish abuses during the sixteenth-century conquest period. It lived on in the eighteenth century in the context of evolving imperial, religious, and commercial rivalries in Europe and beyond, even as Spanish imperial power was waning, and cultural and political hegemony was shifting from Spain to France and England.

This is the first book in English to focus on the Black Legend in the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment period. Scholars from the United States, Spain, and Latin America offer transnational and transdisciplinary approaches to understanding how the Black Legend was deployed during the construction of national identities in the eighteenth century. The essays’ interconnecting themes—violence; intolerance; difference; the role of the Inquisition; the legacy of Bartolomé de las Casas and Columbus; transnational relations; translation and gender—informed the emergence of modern political systems and national identities, and still resonate in references to the Black Legend today.