1 “DISCOVERIES ARE NOT TO BE CALLED CONQUESTS”: NARRATIVE, EMPIRE, AND THE AMBIGUITY OF CONQUEST IN SPAIN’S AMERICAN EMPIRE A dissertation presented by Joshua Weiner to The Department of History In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the field of History Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts June, 2009 2 © 2009 Joshua Weiner ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 3 “DISCOVERIES ARE NOT TO BE CALLED CONQUESTS”: NARRATIVE, EMPIRE, AND THE AMBIGUITY OF CONQUEST IN SPAIN’S AMERICAN EMPIRE B y Joshua Weiner ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Northeastern University, June 2009 4 ABSTRACT This dissertation focuses on the intellectual issues that surround the most dramatic form of human encounter: that of imperial conquest. By examining the modes of thought available to conquering societies I examine the way in which specific narrative traditions influence the process of justification and legitimization of expansion. Based on my analysis of a specific set of narratives created by Spanish in the Americas, a wide variety of published primary resources, and research in Spanish archives, I look into the narrative traditions of a number of societies in history, assess the construction of the reconquista narrative in Spain, and then cross the Atlantic to examine variety of interest groups that emerged across Spain’s American empire and the narratives that were produced to justify those interests. In successful cases the drama of conquest is normalized through the adoption or construction of legitimizing narratives that tap into prevailing societal self-conceptions or historical relationships. As examples of this I examine a diverse set of societies including China during the Han Dynasty, Sassanid Persia, Turkic states of central and western Asia, and the Ottoman Empire. I then introduce the case of the Spanish, first in the Iberian Peninsula where their narrative traditions successfully justified and normalized the act of conquest, and then in the Americas. Spain’s American empire, I argue, constituted a situation so novel as to resist any attempt to make sense of it within the prevailing narrative tradition. Spain’s 5 central narratives fell apart in the face of such novelty, leaving narrative chaos and an imperial state unable to control the process of narrative construction. The result was a proliferation of narratives and a heated debate over the Spanish right to rule in their American possessions. This debate only diminished with the repudiation of the notion of conquest in the second half of the sixteenth century. Through this effort, this dissertation contributes to the general understanding of the role of ideas in empire while presenting the argument that Spain’s American empire represented a novel case in world history and it was this unprecedented novelty that was responsible for many of the intellectual challenges that the empire faced. Additionally, I contend that the narrative challenges faced by Spain in the sixteenth century left important intellectual legacies for future empires. 6 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation never would have been completed without the support of a number of people. I could not have asked for a better advisor than Pat Manning. He has been an absolutely invaluable source of advice and encouragement throughout the long process. I am indebted to him for his remarkable patience, his generosity with his time, and his confidence in my abilities. I cannot imagine a better exemplar of a mentor and consider myself incredibly lucky to have had the chance to work with him. Tony Penna has been an enormous help in the late stages of this process. Chairing my dissertation committee is, I believe, his last official act before his retirement from Northeastern University and I am grateful to him for his willingness to work with me when he could be easing into his post-academic life. Karin Vélez gave me extremely useful comments at a time when I very much needed them. She has also been full of good advice, encouragement, and good movie recommendations. Lastly, my family has been incredibly supportive from the beginning. In these past few months, as I drifted further and further into dissertation land, they gave me all the space, all the time, and all the confidence that I needed. My wife Janelle had to become almost a single mother recently yet never complained, never made me feel guilty, and still managed to transition from teacher to published writer. I love her, I’m grateful to her, and I’m proud of her. Finally, the hardest part of writing this dissertation was 7 getting to spend so little time with Isaiah and Milo. I don’t think they ever quite understood what a “diserpation” was or why I had to spend so much time with it, but there was no greater motivation for me to finish than to get to be their dad again. 8 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract 3 Acknowledgments 6 Table of Contents 8 List of Maps and Images 9 Chapter 1. Introduction: Conquest, Empire, and the Narrative 10 Challenges of Spanish American Imperialism Chapter 2. Legitimizing Narratives in World History 40 Chapter 3. The Reconquista: Spain’s Central Narrative 93 Chapter 4. Of Conquests and Conversions: The Narratives of 133 Bartolome de Las Casas and Hernan Cortés Chapter 5. Consolidating the Empire:The Rise of the Letrados 207 and the End of Conquest Chapter 6. After the Spanish: Expansion without Conquest 257 and the Story of Race Notes 282 Bibliography 320 9 List of Illustrations Image 2.1 -- Coins of Ardashir I with Inscriptions 49 Map 2.1 -- Anatolian Beyeliks 64 Map 2.2 -- Ottoman Expansion, 1300-1683 69 Map 3.1 -- Iberia during the Reconquest 98 Map 3.2 -- Taifa Kingdoms 110 Map 4.1 -- The Conquest of Mexico 184 Image 6.1 -- McKinley Campaign poster, 1900 276 10 CHAPTER 1 Conquest, Empire, and the Narrative Challenges of Spanish American Imperialism Humans are accustomed to stories. We take comfort in the notion that events, experiences, ideas, and lives all have distinct beginnings, middles, and ends, and that each step leads neatly into the next. Stories offer us a simplicity that is absent from our actual lives, which tend towards the messy and are filled with experiences that do not fit easily into any larger structure. They smooth the wrinkles out of experiences that initially seem to follow the expected course but end unpredictably -- without redemption, reconciliation, or any obvious lessons or legacies. In the hands of a storyteller, that which was unintelligible makes sense and, what is more, begins to seem natural or obvious. A recent example demonstrates the enormous potential power of storytellers. In his State of the Union address from January 28, 2003, U.S. President George W. Bush, after having addressed a wide variety of topics, turned his attention to national security. 11 “Today,” he said, “the gravest danger in the war on terror, the gravest danger facing America and the world, is outlaw regimes that seek and possess nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.” His point was dubious at best. He needed to convince members of Congress, the various opinion-makers of the print and television media, and the American people, that the presence of such a threat necessitated and legitimized a preventative war with Iraq. In order to make his case for what was a truly unprecedented action in the history of U.S. foreign policy, the president told a story. In telling this story, he and his speechwriters did not pioneer an innovative tool of statecraft; they simply made use of narrative as a technique for ordering information. We tend to think of the narrative as an objective means of representation, but as scholars since the 1970’s have highlighted, narratives can just as easily construct truth as represent it. To be successful as a means of providing legitimacy for the proposed war, the narrative Bush related had to persuade his audience that what he proposed was not, in fact, novel, but that it was, instead, perfectly in line with the traditional role of the United States in the world. As is crucial to any narrative that seeks to legitimize, the president’s narrative needed to connect to society’s sense of itself. Thus, Bush argued, the threat may have been new, but “America’s duty is familiar.” Americans, as I argue in greater detail in Chapter 6, have long held a view that their nation had a special role to play both historically, based on the principles established in the American Revolution, and in the contemporary world. As a result, this notion that 12 it was, once again, the duty of the United States to take action when the world needed it appealed to the people. Bush continued by stating that in the previous century the great global threat came from, “small groups of men [who] seized control of great nations, built armies and arsenals, and set out to dominate the weak and intimidate the world. In each case, their ambitions of cruelty and murder had no limit.” These threats, in the form of “Hitlerism, militarism and communism,” were, in each case, defeated “by the will of free peoples, by the strength of great alliances, and by the might of the United States of America.” At their most powerful, legitimizing narratives have the ability to impose meaning on people’s current experiences through allusions to experiences of the past. The president, after describing the great challenges of the twentieth century and how Americans overcame them, sought to challenge contemporary Americans to stand up to the great challenges of the new century.