black legend

Genericized use of Black Legend, a calque from Spanish Leyenda Negra coined by Julián Juderías in his 1914 book La Leyenda Negra y la Verdad Histórica. The Spanish term is in turn likely a calque of French légende noire, an expression by Arthur Lévy in his 1893 book Napoléon intime.

black legend (plural black legends)

1. Historiographical phenomenon in which a sustained trend in historical writing of biased reporting and introduction of fabricated, exaggerated and/or decontextualized facts is directed against particular persons, nations or institutions with the intention of creating a distorted and uniquely inhuman image of them.

   Coordinate term: white legend

the black legend

1. Alternative letter-case form of Black Legend.
   • 1992, Edwin Williamson, The Penguin history of Latin America, London, New York: Penguin Books, →ISBN, page 84:

     Here the problem is aggravated by the mutually reinforcing influences of the ‘black legend’ of Spanish greed and cruelty, and the contrasting myth of the American Indian as ‘noble savage’.