The propaganda created by the many rival power factions within the empire itself against each other as part of their struggle to win more power.
The combined propaganda attacks and efforts of most smaller powers of the time, as well as defeated rivals. The black legend of empires would be the result of the following combined factors: as cited in Alfredo Alvar's book, La Leyenda Negra (1997:5)Īccording to historian Elvira Roca Barea, the formation of a black legend and its assimilation by the nation that suffers it is a phenomenon observed in all multicultural empires, not just in the Spanish Empire. For example, the " Spanish Black Legend" ( Spanish: La leyenda negra española) is the theory that anti-Spanish political propaganda, whether about Spain, the Spanish Empire or Hispanic America, was sometimes "absorbed and converted into broadly held stereotypes" that assumed that Spain was "uniquely evil". īlack legends have been perpetrated against many nations and cultures, usually as a result of propaganda and xenophobia. The term was first used by French writer Arthur Lévy in his 1893 work Napoléon Intime, in contrast to the expression " Golden Legend" that had been in circulation around Europe since the publication of a book of that name during the Middle Ages. De Bry's works are characteristic of the anti-Spanish propaganda that originated as a result of the Eighty Years' War.Ī black legend is a historiographical phenomenon in which a sustained trend in historical writing of biased reporting and introduction of fabricated, exaggerated and/or decontextualized facts is directed against particular persons, nations or institutions with the intention of creating a distorted and uniquely inhuman image of them while hiding their positive contributions to history. 
A 1598 propaganda engraving by Theodor de Bry depicting a Spaniard feeding Indian children to his dogs.
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