If anything is clear, it is how the manipulation of the term empire has been used by those countries whose economic, social and political failures and mistakes they use to excuse their guilt for them. To speak of empire is to speak of a pejorative term. Their detractors often omit and reject as much as possible the history of empires, focus on the present and use the past to legitimize their present. That is to say that the cause of their mistakes has to do with the experiences of the past. Therefore, a coherent and systematic interpretation of the term empire and all that it entails is essential to understand the history and political realities of different eras.
If anything has been made clear throughout history it is that not all empires are the same, some have been short-lived and others have maintained their status for hundreds of years. It is for the same reason that the historical functions of the Mongol Empire led by Attila the One should not be confused with those of the Macedonian Empire of Alexander the Great, the British Empire with the Spanish Empire or the Roman Empire. The main thing to note then is how intellectuals and researchers in their studies use and start from the same version of empire, that is, for intellectuals an empire is always the same, a state whose power serves to conquer, dominate and rule over others. However, this is not the case at all.
Gustavo Bueno, a Spanish philosopher, established the differences between the different empires. He classified them into two categories: generating empires and predatory empires respectively in a work entitled "Spain in front of Europe".
According to Bueno, the concept of empire is an abstract concept, an idea based on philosophy that consists of hierarchical societies that can only be delimited or overthrown by factors external to the empire itself i.e.: Another empire. This hierarchical system is established unilaterally or multilaterally in relation to a particular political society.
So from this book by this author we can discern between two different types of empire, those empires that generate and those that are predators. The empires they generate, despite the actions of colonial exploitation, turn colonized societies into fully-fledged societies. In other words, it is a state that is responsible for transforming and improving the living conditions of its settlers, and therefore intervenes in society to improve and develop their social, political, cultural and economic conditions. Empires such as the United States and Spain are clear examples of an empire that it generates. While one empire seeks to impose itself on others, this type of generating empire always ends up being beneficial. Many critics in the United States today do not see the positive changes that have taken place around the world. Despite their great mistakes we live in the most peaceful times we have ever lived. More and more we live better and more and more we have to worry about less and less. Well, when he makes an example of Spain, he says:
A través de sus actos particulares de violencia, de extorsión y aun de esclavización, por medio de los cuales estos imperios universales se desarrollaron, lo cierto es que el Imperio romano terminó concediendo la ciudadanía a prácticamente todos los núcleos urbanos de sus dominios, y el Imperio español, que consideró siempre a sus súbditos como hombres libres, propició las condiciones precisas para la transformación de sus Virreinatos o provincias en Repúblicas constitucionales
Through his particular acts of violence, extortion and even enslavement, through which these universal empires developed, the Roman Empire ended up granting citizenship to practically all the urban centres of its domains, and the Spanish Empire, which always considered its subjects as free men, promoted the precise conditions for the transformation of its viceroyalties or provinces into constitutional republics.
On the contrary, they are predators if they maintain a structural relationship of exploitation with the societies they organize. This means that the empire, in this case, prevents the political, social, cultural and economic development of such societies in order to take advantage of their resources and even destroy them. Clear examples of this would be the English Empire and the Dutch Empire.
Generating empires share language and technology with the societies involved. While predatory empires use their own technology to destroy the reality of the intervened society. A characteristic that manifests the nature of predatory empires is the refusal of biological mixing with the indigenous population of the occupied territory. This can be seen in Australia, where settlers from the English Empire became more accentuated and as they grew up they exterminated the Australian Aborigines, described them as soulless, stupid and idiotic. In the colonization of North America it can also be seen how the English colonists always traveled with their wives and kept the native population in reserves, enclosures or ghettos as they did in Australia. One of the identifying features of any predatory empire is the prohibition of so-called mixed marriages.
This distinction has served as a basis for authors such as Iván Vélez, one of the main authors and interpreters of the Black Legend (List of real events that took place in a period of the history of a country interpreted in a negative way.) against Spain. As far as the Spanish Empire is concerned, data of this nature are often deliberately omitted, such as mixed marriages and mestizo descent or the fact that the Spaniards considered the indigenous as people who had souls for the propagation of beliefs that pejoratively seek to ruin Spain's reputation as a country that generated progress and development in Latin America.
In addition, Spaniards are often accused of murderers and genocide without having exact figures for such genocide, only estimates based on interpretations by pseudo-historians such as Francisco Galeano. If we compare in quantitative terms those societies conquered by predators with the generators, we see that although both have imposed themselves on other societies, we see that in countries colonized by generators such as Peru, Mexico and Ecuador, the lineage of pre-Columbian descendants is still maintained, while in countries such as Australia or New Zealand ethnic cleansing has taken place.
The Spanish settlers of the Golden Age taught the indigenous population to read and write in Spanish. The issue of language is crucial. The knowledge of a European language gave access to the cultural manifestations translated into this language and allowed for integration into Hispanic institutions. For their part, the British and French predatory empires frustrated African political development. For example, when the slave trade ended, Europeans forced Africans to work for them in the fields and in the mines. While the colonising countries did their best to keep Africa backward by encouraging tribal wars, limiting the education of Africans and, above all, preventing the colonies from developing an industrial infrastructure that could have allowed them to compete in the world market once they gained political independence. As clear predatory empires, they denied their technologies to the colonized and hindered their political progress for the exploitation of their resources.
Unlike the Spaniards who, in their great majority, married indigenous women, giving way to mestizaje and evangelization, phenomena that prevailed, which is far removed from the extermination policy that other empires such as the English practiced. The indigenous population decreased mainly due to the mixture with the Spanish, the hard work they had to face at the beginning and the diseases brought from Europe as the main cause, data that is often ignored by many pseudo-historians who promote and encourage the thesis of the backwardness of Latin America because of the empires. It was not a massacre, much less a planned massacre aimed at the destruction of a group, as if it had been carried out in Australia, where there was an organised system of population extermination, ethnic cleansing.
The Spanish invented a new model in America that neither the Portuguese nor the Turks had applied. The Spanish model approaches the model of the Roman Empire but maintains a substantial difference: slavery was prohibited. The evangelizing stamp of the presence of the Spaniards in America prevented this institution.
This concern for the dignity of the indigenous population did not exist in the later colonial era. Only in this framework could the inevitable abuses be denounced. Along these lines, the Ordinance for the treatment of the Indians or laws of Burgos were issued, in which indigenous slavery was abolished in December 1512. The Indians had the status of free men. Later, in 1542, the so-called New Laws were enacted also on "the governance of the Indies and the good treatment and conservation of the Indians". The need to provide a legal basis for the conquest of the Indies gave rise to interesting debates. One of them was the one that took place in the city of Valladolid (1550 and 1551) where the positions of Bartolomé de las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda clashed. This debate is known as the Valladolid controversy'.
The Spaniards transplanted their culture to America and incorporated the indigenous population into it, as well as founding cities, universities and printing presses. What they did, in short, was replicate the model of the metropolis in the conquered territories. The great mission of the Spanish crown was an evangelizing mission. We must not forget that the Spaniards believed that their culture was far superior in many respects to the culture they found on the other side of the ocean with their human sacrifices, tribes that practiced anthropophagy, and less technological development.
The Spanish empire did not annihilate the indigenous people; it protected them and mixed with them biologically. According to figures from Ángel Rosenblat, a Venezuelan philologist and essayist, there are more indigenous people in America today than before the arrival of the Spaniards, despite the conquest, the epidemics and the crossbreeding. The Inquisition did not punish the indigenous people for their religion as is often believed. In addition, the missionaries were busy studying the native languages, preparing grammars and writing texts to support their work. One of the American languages used in evangelization was Nahuatl.
Every dominant empire has had its Black Legend. However, it would be wrong to catalogue those who seek to discredit the historical trajectory by considering the Empire as a predatory machine. Yet the generator/predator division is not a moral distinction. It is a question of two conceptions, two different models, with this we do not want to exonerate ourselves of the atrocities that occurred with the Spanish empire, it would be absurd to understand that in the generating empires there is no death, injustice, moral superiority and even depredation. However, we must not generalise about the term empire and how it is and has been used to justify the backwardness of an entire continent. A tool well known by the left-wing populist leaders in Latin America who keep their citizens in ignorance by telling a manipulated version of the facts.
Notes:
- España frente a Europa - Gustavo Bueno
- Imperiofobia y leyenda negra: Roma, Rusia, Estados Unidos y el Imperio español - Elvira Roca Barea
- Sobre la Leyenda Negra - Iván Vélez
- Roots of Empire: Forests and State Power in Early Modern Spain
- The First Imperial Age European Overseas Expansion
