Images of Barbaric Spain in Eighteenth-Century British Travel Writing By: Ana Hontanilla Ana Hontanilla. "Images of Barbaric Spain in Eighteenth-Century British Travel Writing." Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 37.1 (2008): 119-143. Made available courtesy of Johns Hopkins University Press: http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/sec.0.0029 ***© American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Reprinted with permission. No further reproduction is authorized without written permission from American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies & Johns Hopkins University Press. This version of the document is not the version of record. Figures and/or pictures may be missing from this format of the document. *** Abstract: Europe has traditionally been studied as a political, economic and cultural unity that historically developed in connection with the ideas of Christianity, civilization, and empire. After the New World was "discovered," Europe's imperial and civilizing mission was no longer contained within its western boundaries but also occurred within an expanded sense of geography. This is to say that the status of civilized and civilizing Europe was not defined solely from within its geographical limits but also in contrast to its colonial world. Much of the work of describing the discovery, interpreting the exploration, and articulating the connection of the newly-found territories to the motherland in Europe was done through the writings of explorers, ambassadors, soldiers, adventurers, and missionaries. The recovery and analysis of these various kinds of travelers' narratives about foreign and exotic places where they went and lived have brought a new perspective to our understanding of the historical development of the imperialized world. Spain | Travel Writing | Imperialism | Europe Keywords: Article: Europe has traditionally been studied as a political, economic and cultural unity that historically developed in connection with the ideas of Christianity, civilization, and empire. After the New World was "discovered," Europe's imperial and civilizing mission was no longer contained within its western boundaries but also occurred within an expanded sense of geography. This is to say that the status of civilized and civilizing Europe was not defined solely from within its geographical limits but also in contrast to its colonial world. Much of the work of describing the discovery, interpreting the exploration, and articulating the connection of the newly-found territories to the motherland in Europe was done through the writings of explorers, ambassadors, soldiers, adventurers, and missionaries. The recovery and analysis of these various kinds of http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/clist.aspx?id=588 http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/sec.0.0029 travelers' narratives about foreign and exotic places where they went and lived have brought a new perspective to our understanding of the historical development of the imperialized world.1 Throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Spanish explorers and conquistadors in America predominantly produced the colonial discourse. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the imperial discourse was for the most part a British and French production, not only in America but in Africa, Asia, and even Europe as well. In the process of examining the rise of British and French imperialism during the eighteenth century, it is crucial to acknowledge these nations' reaction to the 'Other' beyond their shores. But it is also of prime importance to investigate how they constructed the European 'other.' As Katherine Turner has argued, postcolonial studies that assume an undifferentiated European imperial center during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries presuppose homogeneity among European nations, which in practice did not exist.2 Enlightened notions of civilization and culture served to delineate the division between civil society and barbarism, between Europe and the rest of the world. However, the Enlightenment served to demarcate new ideological borders that not only operated in the overseas colonial world but also within the boundaries of Europe itself. Therefore, the initially uniform picture of imperial Europe or the assumption that modern Europeans defined themselves as a single people breaks down in the context of describing the literature of inter- European tourism, most visibly, perhaps, in British travel writing concerning Spain. In the following essay, I limit my exploration of British travel writing to accounts regarding Spain during the eighteenth century. I study how these narratives produced and disseminated a perception of Spain as an uncivilized and barbaric country, ruling it out as a member of "Enlightened Europe." Spaniards' religious practices were generally tied in with ancient paganism and therefore the population was commonly perceived by foreign visitors as pagan and primitive. In addition, the Spanish Inquisition provided the travelers with a dangerous, threatening ethos that promptly resolved any doubts of whether or not Spain was an enlightened civilized country. The seemingly outdated commercial and political institutions of Spain also contributed, in the minds of British explorers, to the formation of a nearly enslaved population in need of liberation from the tyranny of governmental tax control and its subsequent state of poverty. The local inhabitants too closely resembled the Indian or African savages and exhibited a state of personal and cultural corruption, as well as an economic dependence only potentially alleviated by adopting British institutions. A postcolonial analysis of British inter-European travel accounts shows how differential forms of religious, political, scientific, economic, and social progress in eighteenth-century Spain highlighted discrepancies in the stage of the same civilizing path that all European societies should attain.3 As the idea of civilization emphasized the movement towards political, economic, and scientific progress, demanding an accumulation of spiritual, technical, economic, and political values in the evolution of a nation, not all countries, and particularly not the Iberian countries, matched up with eighteenth-century British standards of commercial and political reforms. Therefore, the location of Spain as a civilized country became extremely problematic. By referring to Spain's dramatic change of status from imperial power to a culturally-regressive and economically-dependent land, I do not intend to insinuate that these eighteenth-century British travel narratives contemplate Spain in the same way as travel literature later constructs India, Africa, or South America. A key distinction upon which I base my study of the representation of eighteenth-century Spain is the difference between the notions of imperialism and colonialism. Colonialism refers to a specific dynamic of strictly political systems of rule by one group over another when the dominant one claims the right to exercise exclusive sovereignty over the second and to shape its destiny. Imperialism, by contrast, is a much broader term that may emphasize various aspects of international relationships. Imperialism could refer to the power or purposefulness of colonial rulers. It may also refer to less obvious and direct kinds of control or domination by one people or country over others. Pertinent to this study is the less formal sort of domination through cultural or economic imperialism, which has always been closely related with economic underdevelopment and is currently associated with the notion of globalization. David Spurr has suggested that the imperial-colonial discourse is neither a restricted collection of texts nor a monolithic operative system. Instead, the imperial discourse is a series of discursive strategies, each tailored to precise historical conditions, yet having in common certain elements. Spurr draws his examples of analysis primarily from British, French, and American fiction and non-fiction writings regarding India, Africa, and Latin America. A few of the rhetorical devices he studies in Western imperial discourse are the persistent surveillance from a hierarchically superior eye; the right of appropriation and exploitation of native wealth; demonstrations of moral superiority, which involves a continual debasement of local customs; and the perception of the 'Other' as the site for cruelty, torture, and death.4 Treading on the unstable ground of the discourse of imperialism, my discussion identifies the gestures and signs of this discourse in eighteenth-century British travel accounts. My study aims to explore how British travel writings produced the image of a decadent and backward Spanish Empire for British readers at a particular moment of Britain's expansionist trajectory. I study how signifying practices of the travel narrative encoded and legitimated aspirations of economic and commercial expansion while elaborating England's differentiated conceptions of its own imperial mission in relation to the falling empire that Spain was imagined to represent. In the pages that follow, a close reading of British travel narratives reveals how Spain, while being excluded from modern notions of civilization and Enlightenment, was also perceived as a market for British commercial and economic advantage, fostering an image of dependency closely linked with economic and political decline. I show how Spain was transformed, from a harmful imperial model into a real or imaginary site for cultural degradation and economic exploitation. From 1660 to 1780, the history of traveling in Europe was marked by the emergence of a new model for traveling, that of the Grand Tour. The purpose of the Grand Tour was to complete the education of young men of the ruling classes by exposing them to the treasured artifacts and ennobling society of the Continent. It typically occurred after formal studies at Oxford or Cambridge University and lasted from one to five years. The Tour was a social ritual intended to prepare these young men to assume the leadership positions already assigned to them at home. The first outcome intended was an understanding of the classical tradition. As England's overseas empire expanded, well-to-do Englishmen observed parallels between their nation and the Roman Empire. In 1776, Samuel Johnson indicated that "A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority. . . . The grand object of travelling is to see the shores of the Mediterranean. On those shores were the four great Empires of the world; the Assyrian, the Persian, the Grecian, and the Roman—All our religion, almost all our law, almost all our arts, almost all that sets us above savages, has come to us from the shores of the Mediterranean."5 England, therefore, looked back to the different Mediterranean empires as a measure of its own. Italy clearly represented a way to learn the roots of civic republicanism and was the locus to find corresponding similarities between imperial Rome and the new British expansionism. Spain, by contrast, was the still living, if failing, rival empire that embodied principles England had once conflictingly emulated and since the Reformation continuously sought to displace.6 Another objective of the Grand Tour was for travelers to mingle with the social and political elite of the different countries visited. The unified form of identification for those in equal positions across courts created a link between the higher classes in Britain with their counterparts on the Continent, imposing upon the Grand Tourist a sense that he ought to share the common responsibility for the welfare of Europe as a whole.7 However, as Jeremy Black correctly notes, Spain was not often visited on the Grand Tour. According to Black, the reasons were Spain's inaccessibility and the inconveniences and discomfort that were part of travel in the country at the beginning of the eighteenth century.8 John Lynch also points out that, during the eighteenth century, the rivalries between the two countries were still alive as Spain continued to occupy the role of England's political rival and also its most dreaded religious enemy. In this way "informal war or real war [. . . ] rather than peace was the normal condition of Anglo-Spanish relations."9 Therefore, travelers from England undertook the journey to Spain with a completely different reasoning. Visitors to Spain were not young aristocratic tourists completing their education and becoming acquainted with their enlightened Continental counterparts. Instead, travelers in Spain were merchants, appointed officials joining diplomats in times of peace, and soldiers posted in strategic locations in times of war. They typically entered Spain via Lisbon, Perpignan, or Gibraltar and tried to enjoy their experience in Spain the best they could, since no peer would take an assignment in the country because of its undesirability. As late as 1783, an anonymous Polite Traveler corroborated the unpopularity of Spain for the foreign tourist in the following way: Nothing but necessity can induce a man to travel in Spain: he must be an idiot, if he make the tour of this country from mere curiosity, unless he has a design to publish memoirs of the extravagancies of human nature. In that case, he cannot do better, for he will every where find pride, baseness, poverty, ignorance, bigotry, superstition, and ridiculous ceremonies. This is a faithful abstract of the character of the Spaniards.10 Spain did not offer any of the amenities a polite traveler would expect in a civilized country other than extravagant material that will guarantee the writing of fascinating and unique memoirs. The Polite Traveler summarized the preconceptions of what a barbaric society should be like and inexorably found features in Spain to fit this model. Among the soldiers, merchants, and diplomats stationed in Spain, many were widely traveled and knowledgeable. Some of them were interested in adventure, and through their readings of travel narratives they had probably familiarized themselves with the habits of peoples who were considered uncivilized by British standards. Therefore, an excellent way for these soldiers and diplomats to take advantage of their placement in Spain was to record the peculiarities of this mysterious country that ultimately helped them to enter the competitive publishing world. One of those designated officers forced to stay in Spain was John Armstrong, an engineer who in the beginning of 1738 was stationed in the Balearic Island of Minorca, located in the Mediterranean Sea. There he wrote, most probably between 1740 and 1742, The History of the Island of Minorca. The first edition of the book was published in 1752 and a second edition in 1782 under the new title Letters from Minorca. Armstrong's History of Minorca includes seventeen letters and a map, and is addressed to Richard Offarrel, the Colonel and Brigadier General in command of the administration of the island during the years of his placement. In his account, Armstrong attempted to describe the situation of the island; its dimensions; the government, taxes and number of inhabitants; trade and manufactures; and the customs and manners of the Minorquins. He indicated that he became proficient in Spanish in order to learn, "from the best Authorities" and from "any authentick Materials" that came into his possession, the civil history, constitution, produce, antiquities, cities, buildings, and life style of the country.11 His design was to offer a topographical description of Minorca with the minerals found there, to present a natural history of the island by collecting and classifying fossils, and to inquire after the animal and vegetal kingdoms. Armstrong indicated that he embraced his work not as a naturalist or as a botanist, but instead as an economist who wished to learn the use the natives made of their natural resources. Indeed, Armstrong's attitude with regard to civil life in Minorca is based on his perception of the government's economic policy, production system, and foreign exchange. As he explains: "I have ever thought it a useful and entertaining Study, to enquire into the Trade and Manufactures of a Country, and to note down whatever was excellent or defective in either; from hence a valuable Lesson is learned, of imitating the one, or avoiding the other."12 However, soon after he started his inquiries in Minorca, Armstrong promptly discovered with astonishment and concern that there was neither industry nor foreign trade on the island, and that the poor locals "trifled away their Time in childish Amusements, and neglected almost every Advantage of their Climate and Situation, and were contented to import a thousand Necessaries, and twice the Number of Superfluities, from foreign Countries, for which they paid ready Money."13 Twenty years later, Christopher Hervey, brother of William Hervey, British Ambassador to Spain from 1758 to 1761, similarly declared that "all the necessaries of life are very dear in Spain, which must be the case of a country that abounds in gold, and nothing else. . . . Gold alone can never make a nation plentiful, on the contrary, that very gold must go to other kingdoms to buy what the indolence of the inhabitants denies them in their native country."14 Armstrong observed that people in Minorca continued with their old constitution, and as a consequence, they paid a multitude of taxes and impositions to the government. The inhabitants also had large sums extorted from them for the support of their clergy, "as they are excessively burthensome and oppressive." Hence the population of all districts ran into great debts, which were continually increasing. But the poverty of the island was by no means compensated by the wealth and affluence of individuals, as he indicated was the case of Genoa. On the contrary, individuals from every class were loaded with numerous taxes that fell heavily on their industry, and therefore "all traffick with them, [is] as our merchants do with the Savages, exchanging Beads, Pictures, and Baubles, for every Thing of Value they have in the World."15 Armstrong, then, easily concluded that native Minorquins wasted their lives away in indolence under the oppression of the Church and government with no regard for the opportunities and natural resources offered by the island. Armstrong's words regarding the exchange system of Spain with Great Britain brings to mind seventeenth-and eighteenth-century trade lists of British ships trading with Africa in which there appeared, along with salt, brandy, cloth, and iron, items such as rings, false pearls, bugles (small glass beads), looking-glasses, little bells, false crystals, shells, bright rags, glass buttons, small brass trumpets, amulets, and arm rings.16 Going further back in time, Armstrong observations were significantly similar to Christopher Columbus' remarks regarding the reactions of the Caribbean natives when the Spaniards negotiated with them. As Tzvetan Todorov explains in The Conquest of America, for Christopher Columbus the natives did not understand the value of things since "all they have they give for any trifle we offer them, so that they take in exchange pieces of crockery and fragments of glass goblets. . . . Even bits of broken cask-hoops they took in exchange for whatever they had, like beasts."17 Ironically, in Armstrong's account, the Spaniards appeared as the naïvesavage, ignorant of the value of their own wealth and giving it away for trifles of little worth. Furthermore, Armstrong proudly explained that the English presence on the island was already having an impact on the natives' taste and customs. Many of the inhabitants naturally desired to imitate the British and consequently learned how to multiply their needs and wants to the point of falling "into a Way of Luxury and Extravagance, perfectly new to them."18 The position of the Englishmen in the island is therefore translated into terms of superiority, with the native Minorquins dwelling in an inferior evolutionary state of the economic progress and England feeding into their ignorance and commercial dependency. In Culture and Society, Raymond Williams studied how in the eighteenth century the idea of culture initially arose as a response to emergent commercialism and to the new political and social developments of the time. Culture emphasized the role of intellectual and moral thought as a court of appeals to be set over the processes of practical judgments. It offered itself as an impartial view that regarded economic wellbeing or material happiness as the touchstone of moral evaluation.19 Against this intellectual and moral utilitarian background, even if Spain had been and still was considered an imperial power, the country was clearly perceived and judged as the antithesis of the enlightened commercial society. In a world where commerce made man gentle and trade eventually would make war archaic, Spain was declared to be in an earlier stage of cultural development. The Spanish Monarchy was seemingly committed to old-fashioned notions of tax control, which in Armstrong's view had caused the Spaniards to fall into a decadent indolence and had prevented them from dedicating themselves to civilizing commercial ventures. Notwithstanding that the Spaniards exhibited a number of habits that Armstrong regarded to be at the opposite pole of civilization, there was no consequent need to instruct them in the ways of commercial civil society. On the contrary, Spain's economic dependence on England was a point of great satisfaction for John Armstrong. Despite of Armstrong's triumphant observations, the Reverend Edward Clarke, chaplain to Ambassadors Benjamin Keene and George William Hervey from 1758 to 1761 in Madrid, worried that the balance of commercial exchange between Spain and Great Britain during the decade of the 1760s was declining. This descent was due to, among other factors, the increasingly tough French and Dutch competition over Spanish markets.20 In his Letters Concerning the Spanish Nation, Clarke recalled with nostalgia the reign of the last Habsburg Charles II, a time when Spanish commercial exchange was unquestionably under England's control and the country took off "at least two thirds of all the produce of SPAIN, which made our manufactures an easy purchase to the Spaniards, who nevertheless paid us a very considerable balance in bullion."21 Unfortunately, since the accession of the French House of Bourbon to the Spanish monarchy, France shared a "great part of the gold and silver of the Spanish West-Indies, in return for her silk, her linen, and other manufactures introduced into Spain."22 For Clarke, Spain was the locus of fierce international competition for access to Spanish and Spanish American consumers. The struggle for influence in the Spanish Empire and for control over its traffic signaled one of the major themes of the eighteenth-century's antagonistic Anglo-French relations since the War of Spanish Succession (1702–1713).23 Clarke recognized that in spite of fierce French competition, England's trade with Spain was still considerably extensive. This commercial exchange mainly consisted of English manufactures for raw materials from the Peninsula and the Spanish-American colonies. Since the seventeenth century, peninsular and colonial consumer demand was satisfied by the importation of foreign goods, a situation that led to a steady increase in Spain's foreign debt. During the eighteenth century, the intellectual elite in the service of King Charles III recognized that the increase in consumption of foreign goods was detrimental to the already declining national industries and that the increasing international debt also caused a large financial loss for the Spanish state.24 In Clarke's view, this situation was maintained due to the regressive Spanish domestic industry, generally behind not only because of state's regulations and the natives' indolence but also because of the "oppressive spirit of that superstition which reigns there, under the mask of religion."25 Regarding the Spaniards' religious practices, most travel accounts offered puzzled representations of popular customs and rituals of the Spanish Catholic Church. At the beginning of the century, in his Trip to Spain, an anonymous officer of the British Royal Navy observed that "it is their Custom to [...] recommend themselves to the Relicks they carry about them, by which they hope to Prosper."26 He also indicated that "at the Corner of every Street, and, indeed, in almost every Stable, there's a Statue of our Blessed Virgin, with a pair of Beads in her hand, Dressed after the Country Fashion, with a Wax-Candle or Lamp burning before her; for these people are most Abominably Superstitious, or rather Abominably Religious."27 French travel writer Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy (1650–1705), whose work became popular in English translation, suggested that indeed Spaniards "pay an excessive Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and put an extraordinary confidence in her; there's hardly any Man that does not wear a Scapular, or some embroidered Image, that hath toucht some of those that are held to be miraculous."28 John Armstrong declared that "there is no Degree of Superstition into which these People have not been led," since after all the religious practices of the Spaniards do not differ a great deal from those of the Moors.29 He continued explaining that Spaniards "pay large contributions towards praying the Souls out of Purgatory; and many Times a devout Person gives a Hog, a Sheep, and even a Fowl, to be sold by Auction, and the Money applied to this pious Use."30 On holidays, the religious establishment entertained the populace with spectacles and comedies "making all the publick Diversions subservient to their Interests."31 Therefore, the Priests and Friars lived well in Minorca; they ate and drank wine freely from the best harvests of the island, indulged themselves in conversation with the opposite sex, and had free access to all private houses.32 In his Travels through Spain and Portugal, Major William Dalrymple, stationed at a garrison at Gibraltar in 1774, observed that "Religious bigotry and superstition still prevail here." To prove his statement, he ironically explained the fetishistic procedure followed by the court doctors to cure the prince's illness in the following way: "The Prince of Asturias' son being extremely ill, and given over by the physicians, the bones of a saint were sent for from Alcala, and brought in procession to the palace, to work his cure; but unfortunately, the saint was not in humour to perform the miracle, and the poor infant died."33Major Dalymple also commented on simple gestures or signs and indicated that "not a woman gets into a coach to go a hundred yards, nor a postillion on his horse, without crossing themselves; even the tops of tavern bills, and the directions of letters, are marked with crosses."34 Alexander Jardine, another English officer who was stationed and had traveled in Spain, also indicated in his Letters from Barbary, France, Spain, and Portugal that "nothing but the rapacity of the Catholic church, and the great influence of their clergy over the minds of this superstitious people, could make the tithes and religious contributions so productive as they are found to be in Spain."35 Edward Clarke proposed a detailed explanation regarding the origin of the religious practices observed in Spain. In his view, the Spanish Church remained pure, uncorrupted, and unpapist until the eighth century. Before that time, there was no image-worship, no prayers addressed to saints or angels, no purgatory, no sacraments, no transubstantiation, no auricular confession, and no adoration of the host. However, from the eighth century onward, perhaps due to the influence of the Muslim traditions after the invasion of the Peninsula in 711, "paganism artfully, and by almost imperceptible insinuations, gradually stole in, wearing that mask or vizor, which we now call Popery. Whatever triumphs Christianity may formerly have gained over the Gentile worship; Paganism, in all catholic countries, is now entirely revenged; she triumphed in her turn from the moment she established herself in the form of Popery."36Therefore the absurdity of Catholic practices was beyond measure, ridiculous; and more specifically, in all Roman Catholic, apostolic, papist, temples everything was pagan. In this sense, Clarke noted a number of striking resemblances between Catholic practices and paganism. For instance, he highlighted the similarities between the use of the ancient Thura and the modern incense; the aspergillum lavacrum and the holy water; the ancient votiva tabulae and the modern votive limbs; the Spanish Flagelantes and the old self-lashing priests of Jove; the mass for the dead and the parentation of the heathens; and little pictures or images of the Virgin Mary and the talismans of the ancients.37 The religious and profane aspects of the luxurious Roman Catholic ceremonies were the reasons that led seventeenth-century Protestant European travelers to connect the objects of Catholic worship with those of the African fetish adoration, as Pieter de Marees commented in his Description and Historical Account of the Gold Kingdom of Guinea, published in 1602.38 Later, in 1705 Dutch merchant Willem Bosman in A New Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea suggested that if "it was possible to convert the Negroes to the Christian religion, the Roman Catholics would succeed better than we should, because they already agree in several particulars, especially in their ridiculous ceremonies."39 Bosman provided the concept of the fetish that intellectuals of the eighteenth century used in the elaboration of enlightened theories about primitive religions. In 1757, French philosopher Charles de Brosses coined the word "fetishism" and in his work introduced the term to the French intellectual community.40 Eighteenth-century British travelers in Spain echoed Dutch merchants' perceptions and associations between Catholic and African religious rituals. The Protestant British enlightened mind, in contrast to Catholic beliefs, was felt to have risen above superstitions and ancient fetish worshiping and it could not regard with indulgence a branch of Christianity imagined to be still mesmerized by the magical powers of crosses, images, and amulets. As enlightened observers, these travelers in Spain were rational male Europeans passing across the English Channel and not only going to a distant place but also regressing back in time to an archaic zone populated by dervishes and fetish worshipers. These traditions derived from an Institution that for centuries Europeans had unquestionably considered not only the direct heir of Christendom, but also the foundation of early Europe's imperial mission. In these travel narratives, however, Catholic beliefs came to be regarded as pagan practices. The debasement of Catholicism, as it became associated with the habits of distant peoples who were considered to be primitive by European standards, by association made Spain fit into the model of the barbarian at an early stage of cultural development. This degradation of Catholicism excluded Spain from enlightened notions of Christianity, while it confirmed the cultural distance of Protestant societies and established their moral superiority. But even more than Catholics' pagan practices, the Spanish Inquisition continually provided material for condemnation of a special nature. The Holy Tribunal embodied the monstrous, the inexplicable, and the obscure part of human nature and primal societies. It offered the vaguely threatening and dangerous drama of the most morbid, primitive, cruel instincts. Travelers in Spain were probably well-versed in the treatises concerned with the history of the Inquisition, such as the Reverend M.A. Baker's The History of the Inquisition, as It Subsists in the Kingdoms of Spain, Portugal, Sc.41 In all these works, the Inquisition was represented as "the most bloody, as well as the most terrible Court, that ever was invented [and] Wherever it exerts its Authority, Men forget to search the Scriptures, or to gain a rational Belief in CHRIST."42 In addition to the historical accounts, a number of more of less fictionalized personal narratives of Englishmen who adventured in Spain and had to endure the cruel prosecution of the Inquisition were also available. In 1724, Isaac Martin published his Tryal and Sufferings in which he relates his experience with the Holy Tribunal during the years he lived and worked as a merchant in Malaga on the southern coast of Spain. Martin blamed a local Irishman who turned him into the Inquisition under the accusation of publicly speaking against the Catholic religion.43 In 1756 and later in 1770, John Marchant also published his Bloody Tribunal: or, an Antidote Against Popery, a review of the "horrid Cruelties of the Inquisition." The book contained a description of "the most dreadful and exquisite Tortures" inflicted upon several people who have "unhappily fallen into the Hands of those Tyrants." The book was designed for the use and instruction of all Protestant families to secure them against the attacks of the papacy that were threatening Protestant liberties and religion.44 The Loyal Marthyrs: or the Bloody Inquisitor, published in 1775, was an eight-page poem that narrates the story of a newly- married British couple who agreed to travel into foreign countries for their honeymoon. As soon as they entered Spain, both of them were seized by surprise, separated, examined, and charged with crimes they had never committed, tortured, convicted and condemned to be burnt alive by order of the Inquisition.45 The History of the Inquisition published anonymously in Dublin 1798, besides providing an explanation of the historical evolution of the institution also included a short sentimental narrative by a French girl. The girl related how, when she was fifteen years of age, she was taken away from her family under false accusations of having committed a crime against religion. While under the Inquisition's custody, Maria found out that she had been set up to follow the luck of countless girls before her: she was forced to become the mistress of the General Inquisitor Don Francisco Torrejón if she wanted to remain alive.46 According to these stories Spaniards and on occasion foreigners residing in Spain appeared unprotected by the restraining constructs of a more advanced, free, tolerant, and enlightened constitution. The contrast with other European Nations seemed stark and absolute. In France and Germany, philosophers since the sixteenth century had advanced numerous arguments denouncing tyranny, prosecution, suppression of truth, the Inquisition, judicial torture, shedding of blood in the name of infallibility, and divine rights. In the seventeenth century, John Locke in England and Baruch Spinoza in the Netherlands elaborated the two principal traditions of religious toleration theories.47 In Spain, however, no toleration theory had been developed and the Inquisition remained, for enlightened Europeans, as the most atrocious continuation of fanaticism. In his Letters Clarke understood that "there is an undoubted resemblance between a Spanish Inquisitor, and a Dioclesian, a Caled, or a Mustapha. . . . Such a tribunal, shocking as it is to humanity, has nothing but false political ends to plead in its excuse: And where nature and religion must be sacrificed, such a policy is only worthy of a Machiavel, a Ximenes, or an Emperor of Japan."48 Although in practice the religious and political tolerance in northern Europe was far more complicated than the elaboration of theories and possible idealizations may suggest, upon the persistence of the Holy Tribunal, Clarke cannot help but say that "the tender mercies of the inquisition are cruel; and if this be the justice of a Christian country, let me be thrown among barbarians."49 Clarke also complained that the medieval Spanish blind zeal in matters of religion had destroyed many remains of classical antiquity and that in the eighteenth century this old fanaticism still continued under the direction of monks and inquisitors. Books were prohibited, torn, or burnt if they contained anything against the Catholic faith: "As they formerly thought the Bible would appear to more advantage, when the pagan poets were destroyed; so they are still of opinion, that popery will always appear best, when evidence of its imposture is suppressed."50 But at least Clarke noticed some changes in the Spaniards' religious extremism. He merrily celebrated that in the last twelve years (since 1748?) no Auto de fe had taken place in Madrid. Nevertheless, he proceeded to minutely relate the circumstances of the last one performed at the Plaza Mayor in Madrid. A Jew, his wife, and their thirteen-year old daughter were all condemned to be burned alive. While the father and the mother were burning, the young girl was released by the inquisitors with the purpose of converting her by the power of their rhetoric, and the threat of immediately undergoing the same death as her parents. The child, however, rejected her cruel converters, and vaulted back in the fire, giving a shining example of the force of young piety, and heroic fortitude equal to that of the most unshaken martyr.51 The Inquisition and the Autos de fe perfectly justified expressions of outrage, in the view of the British travelers, while they also provided a macabre diversion. These chronicles expanded on the diabolical cruelties of the Spanish Inquisition with narratives significantly enlivened by exaggeration and unchecked fantasies. The continuation of the operations of the Inquisition, to the horror of other Europeans, lent renewed vigor to the old stereotype of the backwardness and cruelty of the Spanish character. Spain and its still-effective Inquisition satisfied the traditional demand for someone to play the role of the uncivilized other within nearby countries. Hence the fascination with religious fanaticism, bloodthirsty inquisitors, and unjustified atrocities inflicted upon innocent victims. The persistence of barbarity within the boundaries of Europe became the object of interest and attraction, as it perhaps offered a cathartic image of enlightened Britain's own past. Madness, barbarism, cruelty, and torture: all seemed closer to the surface in Spain, offering a constant source of grief. But British travelers experienced this dark tragedy safely by virtue of the aesthetic mediation of their narratives, whose cathartic power increased with cultural distance.52 The Spanish people, then, were governed by barbaric institutions, similar to those of uncivilized contemporary and ancient societies, a situation that urgently required cultural, social, economic, and political redemption. Following this line of thought, John Armstrong discussed not only the economic assimilation of Minorca, which had been inevitably in place for a number of years already, but also a possible political integration of the island to the crown of Great Britain. On this matter, he regretted that in 1713 the Minorquins did not accept the opportunity to be integrated into the benevolent British system: And though these Islands have been at different times delivered up to the Pillage of some of the most consuming Tyrants that ever disgraced human Nature by seeming to be of the Species, the Minorquins fatally missed a favourable Opportunity of becoming Partakers of all the various Benefits of the mildest Constitution of Government upon Earth. For at the Time that the Treaty of Utrecht yielded their Country to Great-Britain, if they had made Application that they might for the future be governed according to our Laws, I make no doubt but their Request would have been readily complied with.53 Although in need of the new liberal British system that would procure for them freedom and affluence, the people of Minorca simply appeared stuck within the old dynamic of feudalism. In Armstrong's writing, there is no sense that different cultures evolve in a different way regarding their social and political order; rather, he set forth a single standard of economic and political organization to which all nations must aspire. For Armstrong, there was no better constitution of government than that of Great Britain, and common sense dictated its acceptance as such, regardless of different peoples' historical traditions or political evolution. Likewise, Edward Clarke reinforced the powerful cultural myth of British political liberty when he stated the following: Let an Englishman go where he will, to Spain or Portugal, to France or Italy; let him travel over the whole globe, he will find no constitution comparable to that of GREAT BRITAIN. Here is no political engine, no bastile, no inquisition, to stifle in a moment every symptom of a free spirit rising either in church or state; no familiar, no alguazil to carry off each dangerous genius in arts or science, to those dark and bloody cells.54 Many other contemporary travel writers would undeniably have agreed with Clarke's remark that what he gained by writing about his experience during his post in Spain was to provide the reader with "a fresh proof of the happiness, which he enjoys in being born a Briton; of living in a country, where he possesses freedom of sentiment and of action, liberty of conscience, and security of property, under the most temperate climate, and the most duly poised government in the whole world."55 As the ideology of British commercial imperialism became progressively hegemonic, Spain and the notion of the Spanish Empire rapidly evolved as the paradigm of an archaic tyranny that had progressively yielded into an unrestricted expansionist power. In the sixteenth century the Spanish monarchy could be portrayed as the self-assured champion and exporter of Christian values, the secular arm of the papacy, and the sole guardian of political stability within Europe.56 In the eighteenth century, however, the perception of the Spanish State and government shifted from that of universal Christian monarchy to oriental and barbarian despot.57 Montesquieu summarized the role of Spain in the New World in the following terms: "To preserve America, [Spain] did what even despotic power itself does not attempt; she destroyed the inhabitants. To preserve her colony, she was obliged to keep it dependent even for its subsistence."58 Armstrong, for his part, explained that under the tyrannical Spanish rule in Minorca "[People] have lived long under a hard Government, and have Spirits broke to Servitude, and Bodies inured to Labour. They are effectually subdued to a blind Obedience to those that are set over them, and seem cheerful and contended under Poverty and Oppression."59 To Armstrong, the subjects of the Spanish monarchy have groaned under all forms of tyranny around the globe, and have been reduced to a state of slavery that has forever suffocated their ambitions for independence and domesticated their sprits into permanent submission. Spanish societies are therefore distant from the enlightened political model since "their ancient Freedom has been long lost, and the very Spirit of Liberty seems at present to have no Existence among them, and their Courage is vanished with it; as if an enslaved People were of Opinion, they had nothing left that was worth fighting for."60 The general anti-Spanish sentiment of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries found new expression in the eighteenth century. Although it still preserved the factor of religious fanaticism of the Spaniards already present in the black legend, it added new political and commercial elements of judgment. The portrayal of Spain was empirically qualified by the country's demonstrated incapacity to partake in the values of the new hegemonic liberal humanism. As a consequence, Spain and its people were universally excluded from the idea of civilized Europe on grounds of commercial and political backwardness. In the eighteenth century, the civility of human societies was established by the nature of their economic and political organization. This categorization provided a hierarchy of political configurations in Europe while plotting these "evolving" institutions in the temporal dimension along a single line of development. However, this notion that societies could be hierarchically classified according to their degree of political and economic advancement coincided with (and paradoxically, supported) the opinion that inherent ethical differences existed among peoples, and created intrinsic differences in character. Armstrong attributed the failure to pursue the advantageous prospect of joining the British crown to the decadence of the Spanish character, as if the inhabitants of the island became incapable of comprehending the value of political stability and freedom. Regarding the native temperament, Armstrong granted that the Minorquins demonstrated courage while they were engaged in continual wars with the Moors. Nevertheless, since the end of hostilities in 1492, he observed that, "what Tacitus says of the antient Gauls, Gallos in Bellis floruisse, accepimus, mox segnities cum otio intravit, amissa vitute, pariter ac libertate, may with equal Justice be applied to them: For as a long War trains an unwarlike Nation to Military Exploits, so a profound Peace, with a total Difuse of Arms, in Process of Time naturally dejects the Spirits of a People, and renders them supine and dastardly," to the point of sinking them "into shameful Degeneracy and Indolence."61 Furthermore, Minorquins "seldom practice those Diversions and Exercises in which the more warlike People of Europe delight."62 Besides establishing an obviously parallel between imperial Romans and the British on the one hand, and the ancient Gauls and the Minorquins on the other, what is striking in his opinions is his perception of the absolute dissoluteness and corrupt nature of the native Spaniards. Minorquins are "naturally contentious" and "suspicious of one another"; they "have a watchful jealous eye"; the little they learn in schools "is soon lost again"; "sciences are . . . unknown" to them; and they "seldom make [social] entertainments."63 Moreover, Spaniards are not great visitors, preferring the life of domestic quiet and retirement. Fortunately, Armstrong observed, this privacy is suitable to the economy they have to comply with for it is more agreeable to their passive disposition and natural taciturnity; and finally it enables the men to keep their wives under constant observation. Henry Swinburne went as far as to delineate the specific traits of the Spanish character: The listless indolence equally dear to the uncivilized savage, and to the degenerate slave of despotism, is no where more indulged than in Spain; thousands of men in all parts of the realm are seen to pass their whole day, wrapped up in a cloak, standing in rows against a wall, or dosing under a tree. In total want of every excitement to action, the springs of their intellectual faculties forget to play; their views grow confined within the wretched sphere of mere existence. . . . The poor Spaniard does not work, unless urged by irresistible want, because he perceives no advantage accrue from industry. As his food and raiment are purchased at a small expence, he spends no more time in labour, than is absolutely necessary for procuring the scanty provision his abstemiousness requires.64 According to David Spurr, in colonial discourse every personal weakness has its political counterpart. Uncivilized society, according to this logic, corresponds to the uncivilized mind and body. The qualities assigned to the individual savage such as dishonesty, suspicion, superstition, indolence, and lack of self-discipline are reflected more generally in societies characterized by corruption, tribalism, and the inability to govern themselves. In the same way, social or economic problems, undeveloped industry or trade, and unemployment come to be associated with individual filth and laziness.65 The poverty of Spain, therefore, can be also traced to the indolence, cowardice, cruelty, and deceitfulness of the Spanish character, marking the individual as both cause and emblem of a more general degradation. Perhaps due to this personal and general ruin, the Minorquins "neglected to take this salutary step" of becoming British at the beginning of the occupation. As a consequence of their native passivity, twenty years into British administration Armstrong judged it to be more convenient for the islanders to continue to be governed by their old laws without the slightest modification.66 He adduced this because "their mean Natures are apt to be too much exalted by Prosperity and Power, which give them a Glimpse of greater Happiness than they are able to compass, and then they grow factious and malecontent."67 Likewise, Christopher Hervey believed that Britain ought by no means to attempt to open the eyes of the Spaniards since their blindness was of too much service to England, not to wish them to continue in it. The balance of commerce, notwithstanding long wars, infinitely favored England, leading Hervey to conclude "I dare say they receive twice as many goods from us as we from them."68 In the same way, Colonel Dalrymple believed that the Englishmen should let the Spaniards enjoy their apathy while Britons "live happily, and triumph in the felicity of being formed a native of that country, where literature and commerce is encouraged and improved by liberty."69 Therefore, political intervention and ideological indoctrination depended on Britain's invested interests in the land or perhaps its widespread fears of resuscitating its dreaded centuries-old competitor. On November 22, 1975, two days after the death of General Francisco Franco, the new head of State King Juan Carlos I addressed the nation for the first time in his new political role: The idea of Europe would be incomplete without a reference to the presence of the Spaniard and without a consideration of the activity of many of my predecessors. Europe should reckon with Spain, and we Spaniards are Europeans. It is present necessity that both sides understand this to be so and draw the consequences that derive therefrom.70 As Paul Preston has noted, it may seem surprising that the monarch of Spain had to emphasize the Continental character of a country whose geographical situation alone appears to qualify it unquestionably as part of Europe. However, most Europeans have often placed Spain beyond the pale of central European civilization due to the persistence of its backwards social, economic, and religious behavior; the vestiges of Moorish culture; and particular aspects of the country's landscape. In Spain, since the second half of the eighteenth century, the argument over the advantage of adapting national institutions to those of the rest of Europe versus the benefits of progressive isolation has been the center of national political controversy. In the nineteenth century a number of prominent figures still emphasized the singularity of Spain's historical experience and geographical positioning from the rest of Europe. In the Episodios Nacionales, Benito Pérez Galdós, one of the most prominent literary figures of nineteenth-century Spain, projected the image of the country as "a sui generispolitical entity uncontaminated by Europe."71 The historian Américo Castro also maintained that "the Spaniards live alongside Europe, but ultimately they were alien to it."72 By contrast, for prominent nineteenth-century lawyer, writer, and politician Joaquín Costa, Europeanization provided the key to open the future of Spain, and José Ortega y Gasset contended that if Spain mainly consisted of an unresolved problem Europe was the answer to this dilemma.73 The twentieth century, as Preston notes, saw the legendary exploitation by General Franco of the isolationist nationalist sentiment to protect his own position whenever international censure threatened to converge with domestic opposition to challenge his regime.74 Neither the start nor finish of what has been a long historical process, the eighteenth-century representations of Spain examined above document one particularly interesting moment in the evolution of Spain's centuries-old alienation from Europe. British travel writings regarding Spain exhibit a number of rhetorical characteristic that emphasized Spain's degradation and alienation against England's superiority. These travelers' privileged point of view offered them aesthetic pleasure as well as authority, conveying a sense of mastery over the unknown and over what was perceived as strange. The examination of Spain's territory, of economic resources, social life, and religious practices constructed through a cultural distance favored demonstrations of Britain's moral superiority and the expression of its right to appropriate and exploit the natives' wealth. Travel writers' continual debasement of local customs, and their perception of the "Other" as a site for cruelty, torture, and death, presented sufficiently morbid material to entertain their readers and also offered a justification for British righteousness, exploitation, and economic dominance. All of these perceptions further confirmed –and validated– Spain's supposed inferiority and isolation in regard to the rest of Europe. Ana Hontanilla Ana Hontanilla is Assistant Professor of Spanish at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro and the author of Good Taste, Imagination and Virtue in Eighteenth-Century Spain (Madrid: Iberoamericana, forthcoming). Acknowledgement This article grew out of a presentation at the International Seminar on the Eighteenth Century ISECS "The Idea of Europe in the Eighteenth Century" in Genoa, Italy, October 2005. I would like to thank my colleagues and friends Jeff Curran, Stephanie O'Hara, Carmen Sotomayor, and Maria Paz Moreno for their help with the English version of this paper. Thanks to Will Derusha and Margaret Ewalt for providing invaluable help in earlier drafts. I thank Linda Zionkowski and the anonymous reviewers of SECC for their excellent comments and suggestions for revisions. Footnotes 1. In the English-speaking academic world, the close reading championed especially by the new historicism and the practice of discourse analysis was aimed not at the individual productions of a single canonical author but at the production of a collective corpus of travel texts. This innovative approach has created a new body of knowledge about imperial-colonial discourse and its variations. Orientalism is the first major work of contemporary criticism to take travel writings as part of its analysis. Edward Said examines British travel literature as a body of work that produced what he terms 'Orientalism;' a concept that since 1978 has offered particular insight into the operations of colonial discourses and therefore of Western imperial domination of the 'East.' See Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978) and Peter Hulme and Tim Young, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 8. Following Said's line of inquiry, Mary Louise Pratt's Imperial Eyes has become a model of how and for what purposes to analyze accounts of foreign or exotic places written by men from the Western or "developed world" who enjoy some kind of authority of speech. Imperial Eyes has provided an adaptable model for analyzing how "travel books by Europeans about non-European parts of the world went (and go) about creating the domestic subject of Euroimperialism." Pratt also emphasizes that scholars of European travel books regarding Europe have pointed out that many of the conventions and writing strategies associated in her book with imperial expansionism characterize travel writing about Europe as well. She suggests, then, that related dynamics of power and appropriation are likely to be found in European travel writing about Europe. Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992), 4, 10. 2. Turner also observes that while much of the period's literature of travel and exploration of exotic lands is self-consciously couched in the language of Enlightenment empiricism, that of European travel narratives gives way to less exclusive registers, both reflecting and encouraging the activities of increasing numbers of middle-class travelers in Europe. British travel writers converted their narratives of the European countries they visited not only into an accumulation of natural or ethnographical observations with occasional philosophical, political, and economic reflections, but also textualized the gender and class privileges they embodied. Katherine Turner, British Travel Writers in Europe, 1750–1800: Authorship, Gender, and National Identity (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 21. 3. Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process, trans. Edmund Jephcott, 2 vols. (New York: Urizen, 1978), 1:5. 4. David Spurr, The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 1–12. 5. James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, ed. George Birkback Hill, rev. L. F. Powell, 6 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934–50), 3:36. 6. Elizabethan expansionism adopted the Spaniards' logic for exploration and conquest, and made its initial claim to legitimacy in the name of the duty to convert the pagans to the faith. See Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c.1500–c.1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 36–37. Exploring a different angle of early British expansionism, Nicolas Canny studies how at the mid-sixteenth century, the Irish—a people with whom the English had always had some familiarity—came to be regarded as uncivilized, thereby providing a justification for indiscriminate slaying and expropriation. See Nicholas Canny, "The Ideology of English Colonization: From Ireland to America," in Theories of Empire, 1450–1800, ed. David Armitage, vol. 20 of An Expanding World: The European Impact on World History (Hampshire: Aldershot, 1998), 20:179–202. 7. James Buzard, "The Grand Tour and After (1660–1840)," in The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing, ed. Peter Hulmeand Tim Young (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002): 37–52, 41. 8. Jeremy Black, The British Abroad: The Grand Tour in the Eighteenth Century (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992), 76–77; and The British and the Grand Tour (London: Croom Helm, 1985), 17, 22. 9. John Lynch, Bourbon Spain, 1700–1808 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 131–32. 10. The Polite Traveler: Being a Modern View of Part of Italy, Spain, Portugal and Africa (London, 1783), 92. 11. John Armstrong, Letters from Minorca; Describing the Constitution, Government, Produce, Antiquities, and Natural History, of that Island (Dublin, 1782), v, vi. 12. Armstrong, Letters, vii. 13. Armstrong, Letters, vii. 14. Christopher Hervey, Letters from Portugal, Spain, Italy and Germany, in the Years 1759, 1760 and 1761, 3 vols. (London, 1785), 1:259. 15. Armstrong, Letters, 99–100. 16. Mary Kingsley, West African Studies (London: Macmillan, 1899), 612–25; and David Simpson, Fetishism and Imagination: Dickens, Melville, Conrad (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), 29. 17. Quoted in Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Harper and Row, 1984), 38. 18. Armstrong, Letters, 122. 19. See Raymond Williams, Culture and Society: 1780–1950 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), xviii–xix. 20. Edward Clarke performed his duty in Madrid for nearly two years, until 1762 when Spain entered the Seven Years' War, forcing Hervey and the members of his delegation to abandon the city. This event interrupted Clarke's original design to elaborate a much larger and more expansive work about Spain, which only added problems to the difficulties he had previously encountered such as the extremely reserved character of Spaniards as well as the "cautions they use, and the suspicions they entertain with regard to hereticks." Edward Clarke, Letters Concerning the Spanish Nation: Written at Madrid during the Years 1760 and 1761 (London, 1763), ii. In 1765 and 1770 the German and French editions were respectively published. 21. Clarke, Letters, 252. 22. Clarke, Letters, 252. 23. Jeremy Black, Natural and Necessary Enemies: Anglo-French Relations in the Eighteenth Century (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1987), 2. 24. See José Cadalso, Cartas marruecas (Madrid: Cátedra, 1995), 185–86; Juan Sempere y Guarinos, Historia del lujo y de las leyes suntuarias de España [History of Luxury and Sumptuary Laws of Spain], 2 vols. (Madrid, 1788), 2:85; Manuel Romero del Álamo, Efectos perniciosos del lujo: las cartas de D. Manuel Romero del Álamo al Memorial Literario de Madrid (1789) [Pernicious Effects of Luxury: Letters by D. Manuel Romero del Álamo al Memorial Literario de Madrid] (1789) (Oviedo: Publicaciones Universidad de Oviedo, 1985), 18; Jerónimo de Uztáriz, quoted in Marcelo Bitar Letayf, Los economistas españoles y sus ideas sobre el comercio en las Indias [Spanish Economists and Their Ideas Regarding the West Indies Commerce] (Mexico: Instituto Mexicano de Comercio Exterior, 1975), 105–15; Melchor de Macanaz quoted in Bitar, Los economistas españoles, 159. Contemporary historians who have studied the economic dependency of eighteenth-century Spanish and Spanish American markets upon international imports are José Ignacio Fortea Pérez, "The Textile Industry in the Economy of Cordoba at the End of the Seventeenth and the Start of the Eighteenth Centuries: a Frustrated Recovery," The Castilian Crisis of the Seventeenth Century, eds. I.A.A. Thompson and Bartolomé Yun Casakilla (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 136–67; Jean Olivia McLachlan, Trade and Peace with Old Spain, 1667–1750(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940); Joaquim Nadal Farreras, Comercio exterior y subdesarrollo: España y Gran Bretaña de 1777–1914: política económica y relaciones comerciales [Foreign Commerce and Underdevelopment: Spain and Great Britain from 1777–1914: Political Economy and Commercial Relations] (Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Fiscales, 1978). 25. Clarke, Letters, 263. 26. A Trip to Spain: or, a True Description of the Comical Humours, Ridiculous Customs, and Foolish Laws, of that Lazy Improvident People the Spaniards (London, 1705), 9. 27. Officer, A Trip to Spain, 12. 28. Marie-Catherine d' Aulnoy, The Ingenious and Diverting Letters of the Lady's Travels into Spain. Being the Truest and Best Remarks Extant on that Court and Country (London, 1706), 264. To differentiate his narrative from previous accounts, Edward Clarke pointed out in his preface to Letters Concerning the Spanish Nation that The Lady's Travels into Spain was obsolete by the middle of the eighteenth century and no longer offered a just description of life in Spain. He also indicated that The Lady's Travels into Spain had actually been pirated from a French book originally titled Les Délices d'Espagne. Clarke, Letters, iv. 29. Armstrong, Letters, 202, 212. 30. Armstrong, Letters, 202. 31. Armstrong, Letters, 202. 32. Armstrong, Letters, 201. 33. William Dalrymple, Travels Through Spain and Portugal, in 1774; with a Short Expedition Against Algiers, in 1775 (London, 1777), 49. 34. Dalrymple, Travels, 49. 35. Alexander Jardine, Letters from Barbary, France, Spain, Portugal. By an English Officer, 2 vols. (London, 1788), 2:58. Jardine was educated in the Royal Military Academy of Woolwich and published his Letters from Barbary, France, Spain, and Portugal in 1788; a second edition appeared in 1790. 36. Clarke, Letters, 11. 37. Clarke, Letters, 12–15. 38. Pieter de Marees, Description and Historical Account of the Gold Kingdom of Guinea, trans. Albert van Dantzing and Adam Jones (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 36. 39. Willem Bosman, A New Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1967), 154. 40. See Charles de Brosses, Du culte des dieux fétiches ou parallèle de l'ancienne religion de l'Egypte avec la religion actuelle de la Negritie (París: Fayard, 1989). 41. M.A. Baker, The History of the Inquisition, as It Subsists in the Kingdoms of Spain, Portugal, & c. (London, 1734). An extensive number of books was published in Great Britain about the Inquisition, the majority of them during the first half of the eighteenth century. A non-exhaustive list includes the English translation of Philippus van Limborch, The History of the Inquisition, trans. Samuel Chandler, 2 vols. (London, 1731); Bernard Picart, The Ceremonies and Religious Customs of the Various Nations of the Known World, 7 vols. (London, 1733–39); Anonymous, A General History of the Proceedings and Cruelties, of the Court of Inquisition; in Spain, Portugal (London,1737); Anonymous, A Short View; or History of the Inquisition of the Kingdoms of Spain, Portugal, &c. To this Day (London, 1739). 42. Baker, The History of the Inquisition, vi–vii. 43. See Isaac Martin, The Tryal and Sufferings of Mr. Isaac Martin, Who Was Put into the Inquisition in Spain, for the Sake of the Protestant Religion. Written by Himself, and Dedicated to His Most Sacred Majesty King George, by Whose Gracious Interposition He Was Releas'd (London, 1724). 44. John Marchant, The Bloody Tribunal: or, an Antidote Against Popery. Being a Review of the Horrid Cruelties of the Inquisition, as Practised in Spain, Portugal, Italy, and the East and West- Indies (London, 1756), 1. 45. Anonymous, The Loyal Martyrs: or, the Bloody Inquisitor. Being a Just Account of the Inhuman Barbarities Used in the Inquisition of Spain (Worcester, 1775?). 46. History of the Inquisition, as it Existed in the Kingdoms of Spain, Portugal and in Both the Indies (Dublin, 1789), 62–78. 47. See Jonathan Israel, "Spinoza, Locke and the Enlightenment Battle for Toleration," in Toleration in Enlightenment Europe, ed. Ole Peter Grell and Roy Porter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 102–13. 48. Clarke, Letters, 16. 49. Clarke, Letters, 34. 50. Clarke, Letters, 14. 51. Clarke, Letters, 37. 52. Spurr, The Rhetoric of Empire, 47. 53. Armstrong, Letters, 99. 54. Clarke, Letters, vii. 55. Clarke, Letters, vi. 56. See Franz Bosbach, "The European Debate on Universal Monarchy," in Theories of Empire, 1450–1800, 20: 81–98. 57. See Anthony Padgen, Spanish Imperialism and the Political Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 13–36, and Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c.1500–c.1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995). Padgen studies how two of the most prominent Neapolitan political and economic theorists of the eighteenth century, Paolo Mattia Doria and Antonio Genovesi, began to present Spain in the light of a tyrannical ruler. 58. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws, 2 vols. (London, 1777), 1:130. 59. Armstrong, Letters, 198. 60. Armstrong, Letters, 197. 61. Armstrong, Letters, 197. 62. Armstrong, Letters, 204. 63. Armstrong, Letters, 198–201. 64. Henry Swinburne, Travels Through Spain, in the Years 1775 and 1776 (London, 1779), 369– 70. 65. Spurr, The Rhetoric of Empire, 76. 66. Armstrong, Letters, 97. 67. Armstrong, Letters, 198. 68. Hervey, Letters, 259–60. 69. Dalrymple, Travels, 77. 70. Quoted in Paul Preston and Denis Smyth, Spain, the EEC and NATO (London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), 24. 71. Quoted in Raymond Carr, Spain, 1808–1975 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 105. 72. Américo Castro, The Spaniards: An Introduction to Their History (Berkeley: University California Press, 1971), 563. 73. Joaquín Costa, Reconstitución y europeización de España y otros escritos (Madrid: Instituto Estudios Administración Local, 1981), xxvii. 74. Preston, Spain, 27.