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When the British Empire in America was forming, the identity of that project could most easily be forged in relation to earlier and contemporaneous empires. The English colonists of North America readily and favorably compared their endeavor to the Spanish colonization of the Americas begun a century before in which "12. 15. or 20. millions of poore reasonable creatures" had been murdered (Aliggrodo1). The rhetoric of the English tended to partake largely of religious discourse, implying in and of itself the lack of religion on the part of the Spaniards, who were, after all, mere Catholics. When being Catholics or mass-murderers was not sinful enough, Protestants would paint the Spaniards as accomplices to cannibals-running a butcher shop selling choice cuts of human meat-or as the cannibals themselves. Comparing themselves to the Spanish conquistadors, they could transform their belated entry into New World colonialism into a sign of moral superiority.
From the middle of the sixteenth century, England and Protestant Europe developed a hatred of the Spanish Empire, its power and cruelty, expressed in "the Black Legend" of Spanish terror in the New World, forming a paradigm which could be applied to Spain's influence and policies toward Northern Europe. English and Protestant attitudes and strategies of power are most evident in the reception of Bartolome de las Casas's book Brevisima relation de la destruction de las Indias (1552, Very Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies) in England (and Holland and Germany) and its repercussions in the English colonies. Bishop las Casas wrote to convince the Spanish king to Christianize and protect his new American subjects, and this work led to the abolition of Amerindian slavery in Spanish territories. To keep the Very Brief Account in print throughout the seventeenth century, in several different (often elaborate) editions and with several different translators and editors, may seem an odd practice for the English and other Protestant countries. Protestants were not usually in the business of reprinting pronouncements by Catholic bishops. The Very Brief Account, however, which alternates descriptions of Amerindian innocence and of the atrocities the conquistadors committed throughout the Americas, proved a convenient place to apply las Casas's reportage of the abuse of Spanish policy to a demonization of the Spanish empire, its foreign policy,...