Black legend

A 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. 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.
Black legends have been perpetrated against many nations and cultures, usually as a result of propaganda and xenophobia. For example, the "Spanish Black Legend" () 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".
Origins.
The term was first used by in 1893:
Historian Manuel Fernández Álvarez defined a black legend as:
According 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. The black legend of empires would be the result of the following combined factors:
The said black legend tends to fade once the next great power is established or once enough time has gone by.
Common elements of black legends.
The defining feature of a black legend is that it has been fabricated and propagated intentionally. Black legends also tend to share certain additional elements:
Narrations of black legends tend to include:
Strong pathos, combined with a narrative that is easy to follow and emotionally loaded, created by:
Black legends.
The Russian Black Legend.
There is an argument to be made about Russia suffering from a black legend of its own. Forgeries such as The Will of Peter the Great would be part. Lydia Black describes in her work "Russians in Alaska" what she considers part of the development of a Russian black legend.
The Roman Black Legend.
Growing bodies of evidence have shown that many of what was "known" about Rome's late days, regarding reports of moral decadence, sexual depravity, and excess – the stories about Romans making themselves vomit in order to keep eating – had little to no ground in reality. These elements all fit the model of a black legend and can be the surviving remains of one who affected the Roman Empire during its life and the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, and was reverted by medieval authorities who needed the legacy of Rome to legitimize their power.
Anti-Americanism.
Jean-François Revel, in his book "L'Obsession Anti-americaine" describes the treatment of the US in the press of various nations in terms that remember those of a black legend, even though he does not use the term. The existence of an anti-American black legend is very contested but is a notion being discussed in some circles nevertheless.
The Spanish Black Legend.
Factors that would set the Spanish Black Legend apart from others might include its abnormal permeation and outreach across nations, its racialized component, and its abnormal persistence through time. The causes of this have been suggested as:
The hypothesis of a Spanish Black Legend assimilating anti-Hispanic propaganda from the 16th and 17th centuries has a high level of acceptance among specialists, but the extent of its reach and the data it affected, and what may have actually occurred instead, is still debated, especially regarding the Spanish colonization of the Americas, where few written sources have been proven reliable. Historians are now exploring genetic as well as new scientific and statistical investigative techniques.
There is also debate regarding whether the Spanish Black Legend is still in effect today. While some authors like Powell believe that the Black Legend continues to influence modern-day policies and international relationships, other authors, like Henry Kamen, believe it has been left behind. Some have attributed many of the problems between the Episcopal Church and the Latin Community to the Black Legend.