Latinforme

Perhaps in the spirit of patriotism, American historiographers of colonialism are most accustomed to discussing is Great Britian. The American Revolution no doubt influenced this feeling of superiority over European powers, with American historians echoing the major grievance of ‘taxation without representation’ as a reason for our rebellion against British colonial tyranny. British colonialism itself, however, has notably been omitted from the grievance list. Spanish colonial efforts predate those of Great Britain, yet there is undoubtedly a different tone historiographers take when discussing Spain’s effects on the Americas. American historians’ evaluations of Spanish colonization of the Americas have undoubtedly evolved through the nineteenth to twenty-first century from viewing Imperial Spain as a righteous colonizer, to focusing on its inefficiency as an imperial force due to the inherent failure of Catholicism, to criticizing Spain for its cruelty against indigenous peoples. Further, these evaluations reflect cultural attitudes such as nationalism and anti-Catholic sentiments and presently question America’s own colonization efforts and relationships with indigenous Americans. Only recently has American historiography shifted away from the ‘Black Legend,’ aiming to capture a more nuanced understanding of Spanish colonialism and how it altered the development of Latin America. By analyzing how Americans’ historical evaluations of Spanish colonialism in the Americas have changed over time, we can further understand how American historians have crafted exceptions to colonialism and the religious and racial standards for its acceptability.

Columbus and Las Casas: Flawed Primary Sources

Two of the most cited Spanish colonial accounts are those of Christopher Columbus and Bartolomeo de Las Casas, whose writings are pointed to as cornerstone works to understanding Spanish colonialism as a whole. Reviewing the correspondence of Christopher Columbus to the Spanish crown during his first voyage, it is apparent that his initial impression of the native Hispaniola people has had a great deal of influence on the western historiography of European colonialism in the Americas. He describes the people as “well-formed” but “timid” and observes their seeming lack of private property and nudity as strange curiosities, essentially painting them as blank canvases ripe for his stated purpose of Catholic proselytization.[1] It is evident Columbus views them with a paternalistic attitude, calling them “idiots” for bartering poorly by not understanding his Eurasian conception of value and remarking how they viewed him as descended from the heavens. Columbus presents himself as a generous diplomat, freely giving goods to the natives to earn their goodwill; however, he admits to forcing several into his custody upon his arrival to teach them Spanish and use them as translators. At face value, Columbus may give the impression he is simply a benevolent voyager engaging in cultural exchange on a royally sponsored expedition, but his language displays a clear self-superiority and objectifies the Hispaniola people into potential conversions for Catholicism with a hint towards their value as laborers, given his emphatic admiration for their bodies. In addition, Columbus reports of the island’s many natural resources, heralding the eventual establishment of slave labor colonies to harvest and extract those same resources for Spanish merchants and European markets.

In stark contrast to Columbus, Dominican friar Bartolome de Las Casas offers a harrowing account of the cruelties inflicted upon the indigenous populations of Latin America by the Spaniards. Writing on Hispaniola, the first island Columbus had visited, Las Casas speaks to how the Spanish took women and children as slaves when the goods those same people had offered did not “satisfy their own base appetites.”[2] Instead of the generosity and grace Columbus described himself in his dealings with the natives, Las Casas tells of brutal massacres and rapes perpetrated by the Spaniards. He goes into disturbing detail, telling of infants being torn from their mothers and dashed against rocks and of people being butchered as though they were playthings. It is due to Las Casas that history has an alternate eyewitness perspective from the Spanish side concerning the administration of their colonies, a perspective that often went dismissed or unaddressed by earlier historians in favor of praising Columbus’s intrepidness as an explorer and reinforcing beliefs that the natives were savages needing European civilization to tame them. However, Las Casas’ accounts are arguably too heavily relied on in past and contemporary historiographies alike. Coming from the perspective of a friar, Las Casas never takes the position that the Christianization of Caribbean natives is wrong – he only condemns the physical violence inflicted upon them by Columbus and his conquering crew. He begs contemporary and future readers to feel pity for their plight, and not to question whether they should be Christianized, and thereby civilized, in the first place. Las Casas further shares a similar mythologization of the ‘New World,’ a land once untouched by civilization and in need of social and spiritual salvation. Neither of these accounts, despite their undeniable importance, should continue to be depicted in future historiography as solely representative of Spanish colonial perceptions.

Early American Historical Perceptions

American historical opinion of Spanish conquest began on particularly unstable foundations. Benjamin Keen identifies historiographical trends within American writings on colonial Spanish America, particularly the stereotypes and bad-faithed analyses of nineteenth and early twentieth century American historians. He identifies two prejudices which are prevalent in American scholarship on Spanish conquest: a categorization of Indigenous Americans as inferior obstacle to Anglo-American civilization, and an image of Spaniards as romantic and backwards Saint-worshippers.[3] He offers a holistic understanding of a century of historical writings on Spanish America beginning in 1820 and to what extent these historians were influenced by the political, cultural, and economic conditions of their respective eras. Keen writes that William H. Prescott’s History of the Conquest of Mexico (1843) epitomizes pre-Civil War thought on Spanish colonization, as Prescott notably describes Spain as an “inferior variant of white civilization” that humbled themselves by mingling with “lesser breeds” in their efforts to civilize indigenous Mexico.[4] Post-Civil War era historiography embodied the Social Darwinist fervor of scholars like Lewis Morgan and Hubert H. Bancroft, who write to absolve Spanish colonizers of their destruction of pure, untouched civilizations by painting its natives as lesser civilizations that needed European and Christian salvation. Tall tales of Aztec and Mayan cannibalism and sacrifices were especially cited in the defense of Spanish colonialism.  Between 1880 to 1890, Keen describes a notable historiographical shift towards “Pan-Americanism,” bolstered by depressions that reoriented North American businessmen towards economic partnerships in Latin America, particularly Cuba.[5]

Early twentieth century historiography saw a rise in anti-Spanish sentiment (importantly, not anti-colonial, just anti-Spanish), idealizing the civilizing of the Americas but depicting the Spanish as inefficient rulers, doomed by their romanticized dedication to Catholicism and the mixing of races. Keen most highly praises the recent revisionist historiography of the 1950s through 1970s, describing them as having significantly improved the scholarship on Spanish colonialism by rigorously correcting oversimplified, anti-Spanish literature of their predecessors.[6] However, he laments their partiality towards Spanish elites, and faults them for still not being proactive enough in centering black, indigenous, and mixed-race voices. He concludes that his contemporaries, especially younger scholars, provide hope in giving more attention to the often forgotten, non-white ‘masses’ that continue to deal with the effects of Spanish colonialism. Relying on secondary sources from the 1820s to the 1970s to draw his analyses from, he proves his credibility through his professional commitment to critically examining the history of colonialism in Latin America. His analyses would be improved, however, with more attention towards how American Evangelicalism may have altered the evolving historiographical analyses on Spain, choosing instead to prioritize how these movements responded to political and economic changes in the United States.

Historical discourse from the turn of the twentieth century reveals a significant disconnect between the Latin American and American and European understanding of colonial Latin America. H. D. Money’s article from the North American Review provides a rather crude example of the nationalism that plagues much of pre-twentieth century American historiography, especially as his article is published close to the beginning of the Spanish-American War. He responds to an article of the same year by Mexican diplomat to America M. Romero, who recounts the history of the Latin American independence movements from Spain and argues that the United States did not offer enough support to the Latin American revolutionaries.[7] Romero cites the American Revolution as the catalyst for proving to the Latin Americans that colonies could secede from their European empires. He further marks several moments where the United States refused and delayed meetings with Latin American representatives, believing this to be proof of U.S. preference towards Spain as a European power. In response, H. D. Money passionately argues for the United States as an inspirational force of freedom in the Atlantic, not unlike President Theodore Roosevelt’s brotherly approach to the Americas. Money makes his own evaluation of Latin American independence by describing Latin Americans as having suffered under so much Spanish cruelty that revolution was inevitable.[8] In this same vein, he dismisses the enslaved black people of La Plata and Venezuela as being unfit for self-government.

To Money and nationalists like him, the United States was a liberating force in the Atlantic world that inspired the lesser American nations to rebel against European tyranny, akin to the American Revolution, yet still in-need of a white savior to relinquish them from native barbary (and even worse, Catholicism, the less-white version of Christianity.) He makes no citation nor evidence of his credibility as a historian other than his appeal to the readers of the North American Review to discount the Spaniard-sympathizing Romero. This American perspective points to an evolution of hypocrisy within U.S. foreign policy and societal perceptions of Spain. Money’s opinionated historical evaluation reflects nationalist feelings of the United States leading up to the Spanish-American War and how that climate influenced the writings and interpretations of American historians to take a more derisive view of Spain and its former colonies.

The American historiography of colonial Spain had a noticeably anti-Spanish slant by the turn of the twentieth century, emphasizing and often over-exaggerating the failures of Spanish colonial rule to make English colonialism appear masterful by proxy. Blackmar gives a critical account of Spain’s colonial history, defining the crown as an imperialist oppressor and infringing on the civil liberties of its people with the church augmenting its arbitrary power.[9] In keeping with the definition of colonial Spain as overly centralized, he labels the economic system as monopolist and selfish, leading to self-destruction and debt. In contrast, the nations of the United States and Britain are compared favorably as having more freedoms and autonomous governance, being of the “enlightened” type. The date and context of writing, during the Industrial Revolution era of the United States and its espousal for laissez-faire economics informs the angle of criticism the author employs. Spain’s biggest vices are in the trade interference and oppressive mismanagement of its colonies, according to Blackmar. He especially laments the tariffs Spain placed on foreign goods, leading to foreign merchants from America and Britain shipping their products with a Spanish label to skirt the tax.[10] This source demonstrates a clear bias in American historiography at the turn of the twentieth century for viewing Spanish colonization as a failure compared to British colonization, but the way in which the failure is measured is in Spain’s excess of metropolitan management and inability to take advantage of America’s vast natural resources. Blackmar explicitly endorses Christianity, he sees the Catholic Church of Spain as being a sprawling institution with far too much involvement that cannibalized colonial Spain’s economic potential through burdensome taxes. He frequently labels Spanish administration as evil, but in the sense that it was evil for restricting the economic rights of its colonists and foreign merchants. The plight of enslaved people and indigenous people are a footnote in the author’s writing on the economic development of America.

Modern Historiography: Combatting the ‘Black Legend’

Misinterpreted accounts from Spanish conquistadors in the Americas have been the predominant resource for historians who followed Keen’s aforementioned trend of dehumanizing natives to justify their genocide. Columbus’ words, however, are becoming of less value to more recent historians of the late twentieth century like Patricia Seed. Seed analyzes the prevailing historiographical trend of painting indigenous Americans as being both susceptible to Spanish colonization and in-need of Western civilization to save them from their native-ness. She begins with the analysis of first-hand accounts from the early sixteenth century, such as the words of Dominican Fray Antonio Montesinos, who advocated for the humane treatment of indigenous peoples who were subject to Spanish “cruel and horrible servitude.”[11] While she praises the contemporary trend of Hispanist historians combatting the ‘Black Legend,’ a trend which exaggerates Spanish cruelty towards their colonies, she criticizes their tendency to oversimplify stories of colonial violence by acquitting ‘most’ Spaniards of being nonviolent offenders. This sort of “Rose Legend” both treats Spanish violence against natives as a rare exception to their colonial pursuits and fails to critically examine the words of Las Casas, who is often cited as proof of their claims of exceptional violence.[12] Most prevalent in the historiography, she writes, are colonial Spanish narratives of indigenous peoples being animalistic enough to be distinct from whites, but human enough to be Christianized and civilized. She concludes that indigenous Latin Americans continue to suffer from the effects of Spanish colonialism, as contemporary narratives surrounding the necessity for their assimilation prevail in Latin American countries. Similar to Keen, she adds to a burgeoning scholarship that aims to provide a more nuanced understanding of how American opinions on Spanish colonialism have changed for the better over time.

Archaeological evidence in historical Latin America is displaying the ways in which indigenous America culture influenced the development of Spanish American communities. Deagan writes about the several ways in which Spanish colonization of the Americas transformed indigenous society, contextualizing Spain’s own imperial origins in the history of the Iberian Peninsula as once ruled by Muslims and a great deal more tolerant and diverse before the domination of Catholic monarchs instituted a project of religious zeal.[13] She covers the evangelization goal of colonization as the crown’s official justification and points out the conflict between the Catholic Church that the indigenous had rights and were souls for conversion and colonists who viewed them as subhuman laborers. Throughout, Deagan cites archaeological evidence of Spanish colonial life, finding class and religion dictated social structure more than race and that intermarriage was common as per crown policy desiring better assimilation to Spanish culture.[14] Deagan’s work demonstrates the value of interdisciplinary studies contributing to the historical understanding of Spanish American colonization and European colonization in general.

By examining archaeological evidence like the predominance of American elements over Spanish ones in Spanish American households among women, Deagan constructs an understanding of Spanish colonization as one uniquely interwoven with indigenous culture. In rural areas further away from the reach of metropolitan Madrid, indigenous American cultural artifacts were even more prevalent. Outnumbered and deeper into the countryside, Spaniards adjusted their approach to accommodating the natives and did so in an effectively peaceful manner. Still, she acknowledges the hypocrisy of Spain’s Catholic-based justifications, identifying that the same justification used to proselytize and prevent enslaving the Indians was used to enslave Africans who were viewed as lesser due to the perception of the continent as Islamic. Bringing to light the ways in which Spanish Catholic missionaries adjusted their approach to better integrate native sensibilities disputes the anti-Catholic association brought forth by Protestant historians of the Anglo-world subscribing to the ‘Black Legend’ and elucidates why modern Catholic rituals in the Latin American world are a unique fusion of indigenous American culture and imported Catholic practices.

To better understand how American historians have both praised and condemned Spanish colonialism over the Americas, it is necessary to understand the structures the Spanish imposed in order to solidify cultural domination over indigenous Americans. Tamar Herzog takes a balanced view of the Spanish colonization of America, finding that the imposition of Spanish-style administration simultaneously granted natives many new rights and removed many of their previously held rights pre-contact. Herzog argues that through the recognition of indigenous land rights, native communities were not completely erased at the hands of Spanish colonialists, contrary to the ‘Black Legend’ trend in American historiography.[15] Oftentimes, the Spanish recognized the natives’ land rights, but they also required the natives abandon their indigenous names and adopt Christian ones. The repartimiento is defined as a redistribution of native land that led to displacements of groups onto other groups’ ancestral territories, land grants that could be revoked if not paid, and stipulations that the crown could requisition land “not properly worked.”[16] Herzog’s work represents the advancement of colonial Spain historiographies, avoiding the twentieth century tendency to hyperbolize Spain’s shortcomings but still critiquing its erasure of native culture and coercion from indigenous to Spanish entitlements. She gives the natives proper consideration as their own peoples having existed in America with their own system of rights pre-colonization, using that foundation to examine how Spain re-ordered their society by introducing its own system.

Recent Historiography: Revisiting and Redefining Colonialism

The historiographical assumption of the Spanish territories in the Americas as being colonial is one that is often ascribed without much interrogation, especially so amongst historians from the English-speaking world. Hispanist historians like Rafael D. Gracia Pérez are helping re-write this understanding with critical re-examinations of the assumption of Latin America’s colonial status under Spain. Pérez traces the historiographical discourse in the Spanish speaking world about whether the status of the Spanish American colonies should remain as “colonies” or be re-interpreted as “provinces” of the Spanish monarchy proper, a debate that originates from Argentinian historian Ricardo Levene’s 1948 argument that Spanish America should be treated as the latter.[17] He cautions that such a re-framing should not be mistaken as an endorsement or whitewashing of the Spaniards’ abuses of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Giving his own evaluation of the evidence, Perez recalls Philip II’s Ordinances of the Council of the Indies that ordained Spanish America be governed with Castilian laws as they were part of the Crown; what followed was the division and provincialization of the territories.[18] In action, this process socially homogenized the diverse indigenous groups into “Indians” and resembled more of a Roman Empire approach to incorporating new lands rather than that of Spain’s European contemporaries. Pérez’s work builds on the existing body of Latin American historians seeking to re-define their histories not as helpless victims of Spanish imperialism, but as integral to the creation of Spanish American laws and culture. This is a distinction that, as Pérez notes, has largely gone unacknowledged in the Anglo-Saxon sphere of historians.

Scholarship on the link between development levels and the extent to which imperial Spain was involved with a colony is encouraging a more multi-faceted understanding of colonial Spanish America as a whole. The experience of one Latin American country compared to another could differ greatly depending on the systems and structures put in place by Spaniards, especially in places where those systems helped facilitate greater economic gain for Spain. James Mahoney analyzes the development of Spain’s different colonies, finding that the economic and colonial importance of each territory to Spain inversely influenced how developed they would become. Mexico and Paraguay are recognized as outliers of this system, and the author uses various scales like GDP and democratic indices to measure development. He finds that the emergence of industrial capitalism and Spain’s efforts to introduce liberal reforms during the 1700s and early 1800s reversed the development of the colonies, leading to coastal regions like Costa Rica succeeding but central regions like Bolivia had tougher fates due to market uncertainty.[19] Mahomey provides evidence of the more nuanced historiography that has emerged as of recent, incorporating more sociological and economic factors into explaining the histories of Spanish America. Mahoney gives a logical, well-supported case for the positive impact freer markets and greater liberalization had in places that were further outside the Spanish Empire’s moderation, signaling an indictment of Spain’s colonial legacy having disrupted many Latin American nations’ development. This is especially so as Mahoney found in his analysis that a greater density of indigenous populations led to more ethnic stratification on the part of colonial governments that impeded later economic and political reform.

Most recent to the scholarship, and undervalued, is the critique of a gender hierarchy over the early Spanish colonies. Through a more thorough analysis of the writings of Columbus, Montaigne and Arthur Barlowe, Michael Householder explains how the language of these Spanish colonizers sought to justify the colonization of the Americas by characterizing its inhabitants as primitive, pure, and simple-minded beings, the inspiring fetish for cultural domination.^[20] He further critiques the Hispanist historiographical trends that have allowed these myths to prevail, especially in their continuation of promoting passive images of indigenous women at the hands of brutish, sexually frustrated Spaniards. The language these conquerors used to describe this antiquated paradise often constrained Indigenous women to two categorizations: sexually pure and naïve, or promiscuous temptress.^[21] In both categories, indigenous women are likened to Eve-innocent upon naked conception, but giving way to a sinful temptress that led to the downfall of Man.

These historiographical narratives of indigenous women needed to be saved from their original sin and tamed by the paternal & sexually dominant European man were prevalent in the late-nineteenth century response to rising American nationalism. Rape was a tool European conquerors relied on most to build the foundations for cultural and literal genocide, and intermarriage and acts of sexual dominance over indigenous women undoubtedly altered the racial and gender hierarchy in the Hispanic Americas. Householder further combats passive images of indigenous women by analyzing the writings of Italian chronicler Pietro Martire d’Anghiera, a contemporary critic of Columbus that depicted detailed portraits of indigenous cultures and offered complex descriptions of indigenous women as humans capable of rationality, heroism, and most importantly, becoming Christian.[22] Householder’s analysis exemplifies a historiographical shift from relying purely on Spanish accounts to understand Spanish colonialism, breaking away from the flaws of revisionists that accept Spanish accounts as if they were law, as described by Seed.

Conclusion

American historiographical perceptions of Spanish colonization have undoubtedly changed over time, with only recent scholarship truly taking aim at deconstructing narratives that both overembellish and dismiss Spanish cruelty against the indigenous inhabitants of its colonies. Incorporating the perspectives of Latin American historians, re-examining the definition of the Spanish American ‘colony’, and taking a multidisciplinary approach with archaeology and economics are some of the important ways the literature around Spanish colonization is evolving. However, there is still significant work to be done. Recent scholarship has recentered indigenous voices by challenging narratives of indigenous passivity, particularly viewing how Spanish hierarchies affected and interacted with indigenous femininity, a significant improvement from early American historiographical conclusions. A lens that requires further exercise is that of religion, specifically the extent to which American perceptions of Spanish colonization have been affected by Evangelical Christianity and the ways it has associated Catholicism with a distance from whiteness. The middle ground between the ‘Black Legend’ and the ‘Rose Legend,’ as described by Seed, still needs further support to better the understanding of Latin America’s Spanish colonial foundations, how indigenous Americans and enslaved Africans influenced those foundations, and how American historiography of the subject can ultimately reflect the nuances of Spanish colonization.

Regarding the future of this study, Bartolome de las Casas offers an important starting point, but he cannot speak for the natives themselves. The indigenous people were not just victims but active role players in the development of Latin America, and historians must continue to expand on these perspectives. To do this, it is imperative that scholarly voices from the Caribbean and Hispaniola are consulted, as much of Western historiography fails to consult Dominican, Haitian, and Puerto Rican historians, who would offer a significantly more well-rounded American perspective that included all of the former Spanish American colonies. With the growth of the internet as a tool to better connect with scholars from all around the world, there should be no excuse for the continuation of Eurocentric historiography in the modern era that upholds colonialist perspectives over indigenous experiences.

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[1] Columbus, Christopher, Select Letters of Christopher Columbus, with other Original Documents relating to this Four Voyages to the New World, Edited & translated by R. H. Major, London: Hakluyt Society, 1847, 10.

[2] Las Casas, Bartolomé de, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, Edited & translated by Nigel Griffin, London: Penguin Group, 1992. https://web.as.uky.edu/history/faculty/myrup/his208/Casas,%20Bartolome%20de%20las%20-%20Short%20Account%20(1992,%20excerpts).pdf, 14.

[3] Keen, Benjamin, “Main Currents in United States Writings on Colonial Spanish America, 1884-1984,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 65, no. 4 (1985): 657–82, https://doi.org/10.2307/2514891, 658.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Keen, 660.

[6] Keen, 669.

[7] Romero, M, “The United States and the Liberation of the Spanish-American Colonies,” The North American Review, vol. 165, no. 488, 1897, pp. 70–86. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25118849, 73.

[8] Money, H. D., “The United States and the Spanish American Colonies. A Reply,” The North American Review 165, no. 490 (1897): 356–63, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25118883, 358.

[9] Blackmar, Frank W., “Spanish Colonial Policy,” Publications of the American Economic Association 1, no. 3 (1900): 114, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2485793.

[10] Blackmar, 139.

[11] Seed, Patricia, “‘Are These Not Also Men?’: The Indians’ Humanity and Capacity for Spanish Civilisation,” Journal of Latin American Studies 25, no. 3 (1993): 629–52, http://www.jstor.org/stable/158270, 629.

[12] Seed, 630.

[13] Deagan, Kathleen, “Colonial Origins and Colonial Transformations in Spanish America,” Historical Archaeology 37, no. 4 (2003): 4, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25617091.

[14] Deagan, 8.

[15] Herzog, Tamar. “Colonial Law and ‘Native Customs’: Indigenous Land Rights in Colonial Spanish America.” The Americas 69, no. 3 (2013): 303–21. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43188904, 305.

[16] Herzog, 313.

[17] Pérez, Rafael D. García, “Revisiting the America’s Colonial Status under the Spanish Monarchy,” In New Horizons in Spanish Colonial Law: Contributions to Transnational Early Modern Legal History, edited by Thomas Duve and Heikki Pihlajamäki, 3:31, Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory, 2015, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvqhtsd.5.

[18] Pérez, 51.

[19] Mahoney, James, “Long‐Run Development and the Legacy of Colonialism in Spanish America,” American Journal of Sociology 109, no. 1 (2003): 70, https://doi.org/10.1086/378454.

[20] Householder, Michael. 2007. “Eden’s Translations: Women and Temptation in Early America.” The Huntington Library Quarterly 70 (1): 11-VII. https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/edens-translations-women-temptation-early-america/docview/215265981/se-2, 13.

[21] Householder, 14.

[22] Householder, 25.