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The year is 1642. The Puritan colonies of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and Connecticut are conspiring against settlements at Providence and on Aquidneck Island, then small clusters of religious dissidents living under the protection of Roger Williams and his Narragansett allies. As the pressure mounted, the Rhode Islanders asked Williams to go to England and secure legal protection for their land and self-government. Williams would sail to England in 1643, and outmaneuver all of New England’s enemies of religious freedom. He would do this by writing an astonishing book about Indians. Among other things.
Against daunting odds, Williams would persuade Parliament, then dominated by Puritans and engaged in a great civil war with the royalists loyal to Charles I, to grant him a patent for Narragansett Bay that explicitly authorized rule by the majority of citizens. Williams had secured English protection for the freest place in the world for non-conformists, independent thinkers, and, TBH, cranks.
Oh. And he may well have persuaded John Milton to come out for freedom of the press.
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Selected references for this episode
John M. Barry, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul
Roger Williams, A Key Into the Language of America
Anglosaxons, who created the Black Legend about Spain, love to believe that it is true, that Spanish colonisation of the Americas was the most brutal by far. Yet, the majority of the population in Latin America is “indian” or mestizo. In the land of freedom, the USA, there are barely any.
Fair, although I would add a qualification — the “Black Legend” was pretty darn true when it began in the 1500s, and Spaniards (Las Casas, for example) contributed to it. What is also fair is that the English and their American descendants would eventually match the Spanish for cruelty, and that the Spaniards would be kicked out of most of the Americas not long after the Americans really got going with it.
Also, one of the reasons why there are so few Indians in today’s United States is that there weren’t very many to begin with compared to central and South America. Probably 85% of all the indigenous peoples in the Americas before Columbus lived south of the Rio Grande.
Many thanks for you thoughful reply. Anglosaxon mind is so comfortably impregnated by the Black Legend that it is near impossible to change it substantially. Trying to be neutral, this is a brief dialogue with Bard. Hope it helps:
– Was there a Spanish reaction following de las Casas denonciation?
– Yes, there was a positive Spanish reaction following Bartolome de Las Casas’s denunciation of the Spanish conquest and colonization of the Americas. Las Casas’s writings, such as A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1542), exposed the brutality and atrocities committed by the Spanish conquistadors against the indigenous peoples. His work had a profound impact on Spanish society and led to a number of reforms in the Spanish colonial system.
In 1542, the Spanish Crown passed the New Laws, which were designed to protect the indigenous peoples of the Americas from abuse and exploitation. The New Laws prohibited slavery and forced labor, and they established a number of other protections for the indigenous peoples, such as the right to own property and to practice their own religion.
Myself: Of course, they were not always adhered to, but they are very significant. I think you will understand how heavy on Spanish minds it is no be continously exposed to this demonization of their country.
Of course. I am sure I do not fully appreciate how the “Black legend” still influences Spaniards. Thank you for your comment!