Anti-imperial propaganda and anti-Americanism
excerpts from Imperiofobia y leyenda negra (2016) by María Elvira Roca Barea
Translator’s note: This began to run long so I edited out some of the supporting examples and references to other parts of the book from the first section.
Rome as an unconscious empire
Ortega said there is a more formidable fact than the Roman Empire: its incomparable prestige, and that this has survived its disappearance as if it were immune to the passage of time. But this prestige wasn’t immaculate or even close to it. Rome had its own black legend and suffered all kinds of propaganda attacks. The prestige and admiration that Ortega talked about came later, but this was afterwards, during the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment. In the 19th century, with the development of the concept of imperialism, Rome would be questioned once again. Were the Romans guilty or innocent? The principal accusation is this: Was the Roman Empire created in a conscious and deliberate manner, or were the Romans more or less compelled to form an empire? Phrased this way, the subject produced perplexity, but the fact is that this is the subject to which many pages have been dedicated for more than a century and a half, starting with Theodor Mommsen, author of the monumental History of Rome. For this great historian, all of Rome’s wars began with an enemy offensive, and were then continued for the purpose of having no more problems in the future. Verdict: Rome is innocent. Sergey Kovalev and other later historians such as William Harris, on the other hand, have thought that the Romans’ preemptive wars were nothing more than a pretext to pursue their expansionist plans[1]. Verdict: Rome is guilty.
The opinion of Tenney Frank, in Roman Imperialism, that “the free Roman people stumbled on falteringly and unwittlingly into ever-increasing dominion”[2] can be compared with another famous quote in the Anglo-Saxon world by John R. Seeley, according to which the British apparently acquired their empire “in a fit of absence of mind.” Seeley’s book entitled Expansion of England was published in 1883. It enjoyed such success that ten editions of it were made in one year. In 2004, Bernard Porter published an essay titled The Absent-Minded Imperialists: What the British Really Thought About Empire. Although it was directed at the academic world, the book had a wider reception than what this kind of work usually receives, on both sides of the Atlantic, and one of the irrefutable reasons for its success is that it alleviates the conscience of his readers by trying to demonstrate that the greater part of the English population lived completely on the margins of the empire and that they even had a bad opinion of it. In reality, the empire was constructed in the middle of a general apathy where some people were allowed to do whatever they wanted: expanding by 31 million square kilometers in a moment of distraction.
In the 1st century AD, Polybius, a Greek from Megalopolis who spent the majority of his life in Rome, rejected the argument of some Greeks, whom he doesn’t name, who thought Rome had built that enormous empire by chance, obliged by circumstance (I, 63, 9.). This topic has reappeared many times. What is really being argued is whether the Romans deserved such an empire. If that unprecedented power was the product of an accidental series of fortunate events, then there was nothing extraordinary about the Romans and no people would have to feel inferior in comparison. The subject is simple from the Greek point of view. If Rome had built an empire defensively and it was more or less forced by circumstance, then it was something that any other people could have done in the same circumstances. Therefore, there is nothing admirable about the Romans. They are exactly what they seem: a bunch of ambitious yokels.
Cicero firmly opposed this favorite argument of anti-Roman propaganda: Non fortuito populum Romanum sed consilio et disciplina confirmatum esse (De Rep. II, 2). Good judgement and discipline were thus the foundations of the empire for Cicero. Livy (IX, 17-9) rejects the idea promoted by those he called “levissimi ex Graecis” [some frivolous Greeks], according to which Rome would have been no enemy to Alexander. This idea was very beloved by Greeks and Plutarch would repeat it (De fort. Rom. 326 a-c), implying that if Alexander hadn’t died prematurely, the destiny of Rome would have been different, because at that point Alexander would have stopped being a peripheral, semi-barbaric Macedon who threatened the freedom of Greece to make himself a Greek prince, and been instead elevated to the category of a demigod, who was about to conquer the entire known world. Hellenist historians adore him because he is the only thing Greece could produce which resembled Rome.
If Rome did nothing more than respond defensively to challenges that were presented to her throughout her history, that is, if she went around fighting and conquering basically to defend herself, then she is innocent; she has no blame for having built such a tremendous empire. Against this argument, it could be answered that other peoples, surely all of them, face challenges and find themselves compelled to defend themselves, but almost none of them construct an empire in consequence. Spain could have discovered America and not have created an enormous empire there. In fact, it’s possible that the Norwegians arrived first, something that they, as insistently as inefficiently, want to make known. It’s very possible that they did arrive, but that doesn’t mean anything to anybody. The argument about the accidental or premeditated construction of the empire is very old, and it will have many uses later. As we said, the sophisticated Alexandrians used it, not to morally judge Rome but to dismiss her accomplishments.
We will call this approach the Unconscious Empire argument. We will see that it will be used in excess throughout the history of Rome, Spain, the United States, and Russia, and that it has been used to provide a basis for many different conclusions. On one hand, it is intended to reduce the glory and eminence that one particular people can attain because of the fact that they have created an empire. This is the case of the Alexandrian intellectuals with respect to Rome and of the Italian humanists with respect to Spain. On the other hand, once the time for moral judgement had arrived, the same argument served to absolve or to reproach Rome for the crime of having created an empire. And not only Rome. The similarities between empires are very evident, especially among those who assume empire-phobia as a moral point of view[3]…
Our understanding of the black legend of Rome depends on the extant sources and is naturally imperfect but sufficient. It is above all Roman historians, although not uniquely, who inform us of the particulars of anti-imperial propaganda. The Romans, as now with the Americans, had a clear sense of their shortcomings, especially in foreign policy. This should come as no surprise to Spaniards. A significant part of anti-Spanish propaganda has been fueled by self-criticism, which in our country has always been healthy, especially in the times of the empire. It is possibly the only living inheritance of the empire that exists in Spain today.
One of the most eloquent texts about the topics of anti-Roman propaganda is from Sallust. It is about a letter that was supposedly written by Mithridates, King of Pontus. Mithridates was one of the most formidable enemies with which Rome clashed. The Kingdom of Pontus was on the southern coast of the Black Sea. It had borders with Bithynia, Cappadocia, and Armenia, and was dangerously close to the Roman province of Cilicia. Mithridates fought continuous wars with Sulla, Lucullus, and Pompey, all excellent generals. His letter refers to historical events which took place in 69 BC. In this year, Mithridates and Tigranes of Armenia, who had been defeated by Lucullus, tried to reorganize their armies to continue the fight against Rome. In this context, Sallust delivers us a letter that Mithridates wrote to Arsaces, King the Parthians, with the intention of winning him over to his cause and incorporating him into the anti-Roman coalition. If the mentioned letter existed or not, we can’t know. It’s very possible that Sallust made it up himself, but we also cannot rule out that Sallust was inspired by or knew of such a letter that really did exist. In any case, as it happens with the speeches that the classical historians put in the mouths of their subjects, authenticity dominates historical literary creativity. If Mithridates didn’t write the letter, he could have written it. The majority of modern historians agree that Sallust took advantage of the chance to expose the main topics of anti-Roman propaganda in his day.
There are many accusations that are made toward Rome to convince the Parthian Arsaces. Firstly, Mithridates is eager to highlight the main reason for which Rome had gone waging war from one side of the world to the other, and it was nothing other than a deep desire for riches and power: cupido profunda imperii et divitiarum (Historiae IV, 69, 5). Naturally he stresses the fates of various oriental monarchs. The Romans and their promises must not be trusted because they are experts in tricks and lying: callidi et repertores perfidiae. Remember Phillip and his son Perseus of Macedon, Eumenes of Pergamon, Antioch and the monarchy of Bithynia. The conclusion is clear: the Romans have no respect for the old oriental monarchies, not for the people of royal blood, and the proof is that they sold Eumenes as a slave without any shame. Rome has no qualms about destroying monarchies which for Mithridates are the legitimate power, and here Sallust presents us with one of the main reasons of anti-Roman propaganda (and of all anti-imperial propagandas): Rome represents an illegitimate and alien power that destroys legitimate and local powers. The legitimacy of power is an enormous subject. We will let it pass. It is enough to keep in mind that, according to Sallust, Arsaces, King of the Parthians, would be receptive to the argument that for Rome neither the monarchies nor the monarchs would be quaintly praised. If Rome can’t make use of them, she removes them.
This irreverence of young, rising empires with respect to local, traditional, and semi-sacred powers is a classic. That memorable scene of MacArthur crossing his legs and putting his boots on the tea table of the Japanese emperor comes to mind. There are other similar images in the historical collective imagination, such as Hernán Cortés in the petrified court of Moctezuma, or Genghis Khan at his first contact with the highly civilized Chinese after the conquest of Xi Xia. Following this thread, we will see later that this is one of the reasons that empires triumph. They break the structures of local, old, and almost sacralized powers, with very consolidated and thus inflexible patronage networks. The empire appears and breaks up the old local, arthritic arrangement. For the moment, it offers opportunities for social promotion that didn’t exist before… Empires are principally meritocratic.
But it is not only the cupido profunda imperii et divitiarum and the lack of respect toward those venerable monarchies, it’s that the Romans are also people of the worst kind, says Mithridates. Since they existed, they have done nothing but steal. First, they stole houses and women, and then, once elevated by this technique, they began to steal kingdoms and empires. Even their own myths say so, and this is what the rape of the Sabine women really means. They are in reality a gang of thieves without noble lineage. Once again, anti-Roman propaganda provides us guidance on the topics that form the model of anti-imperial propaganda. This is a motif that is repeated over and over: accuse the dominant people of coming from villanous origins, of having “base and lowly blood.” The Mithridatic propaganda elaborates on the matter from what Sallust promptly tells us: convenus olim sine patria, parentibus [once vagabonds, without fatherland, without parents] (Sallust, Epist. Mithr. 17).
Rome is like a scourge of the whole world (pestem… orbis terrarium) and doesn’t respect the divine or the human, says Mithridates. Again, Sallust explains that one of the greatest subjects of anti-imperial propaganda: the accusation of impiety. The imperial people don’t respect what is worthy of being respected and even venerated, including the gods. The Romans would be accused by their enemies of being an impious people, as would later the Spaniards, and this propaganda will be used to sustain the most interesting and bloody religious wars that Europe has ever known.
Mithridates continues. Rome destroys everything in its path, whether they be friends or enemies, weak or powerful, and if they attained so much power it must be because they’re good at war, but also because of their incomparable talent for deception. The King of Pontus must have put a spectacular propaganda campaign in motion against Rome, and this is why Sallust, with sound judgement, chooses him to be the spokesman for this propaganda[4].
Anti-Americanism: The black legend against the United States
“America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilisation in between.” —Oscar Wilde
Anti-Americanism offers us an excellent occasion to understand the black legend and determine how the mechanisms of empire-phobia work, identify which reasons are reiterated that constitute this inevitable stereotype born from the mix of admiration and envy, and finally to understand the individual and tribal means which set them in motion. Anti-Americanism has the advantage of being fully alive, one could say boiling, and is ubiquitous as no other black legend has been throughout history. Until the leadership of the United States, black legends lived in one or two continents and affected certain religions or religious groups. In the case of the United States, on the other hand, it is found in five continents and in diverse religious creeds, which proves that it is the first truly planetary empire that has ever existed.
For Phillippe Roger, the degeneracy thesis is the root of anti-Americanism[5]. According to that theory, America is a degenerate continent, meaning, the animal and vegetable species which in other continents have progressed, are found to be degenerated there. According to Roger, this theory of the Enlightenment underlies the entirety of subsequent anti-Americanism, with necessary transformations for style. The United States is nothing more than a degenerated version of Europe[6]: “It is a magnificent and terrible spectacle to see half of the planet so unfavored by nature, so that all that is found there is degenerate or monstrous.” This is how Cornelius de Pauw begins his study of America in three volumes. This Dutchman was a naturalist in the court of Frederick II of Prussia, and one of the greatest defenders of the degeneracy thesis, which many scholars consider to be the prehistory of anti-Americanism. This theory had been formulated by the Comte de Buffon and was rapidly taken over by Voltaire, who enriched Buffon’s arguments. Through De Pauw, the degeneracy thesis would proceed to Kant…
In a few decades, the general anti-Americanism which affected the Americas concentrated its attention only on the United States of America. Evidently the degeneracy thesis could not resist for much time. Those who opposed themselves to it won the debate. The points of view defended by Abbot Molina and Colonel Azara almost alone in the Hispanic world, and by Jefferson, Hamilton, and Franklin on the United States’ side, ended by imposing itself with the help of invaluable evidence… But if it turned out to be easy until a certain point to dismiss the degeneracy thesis, it was not yet easy to refute that the United States –in the 19th century it became the United States alone– was a social and politically inferior country[7].
With Romanticism, it was no longer the unhealthy weather and physical environment which brought the degeneration, but the very ideas upon which the United States were founded that precluded this territory from producing any work of merit. The triumph of the United States, founded on the principles of rationalism, for the romanticists had been achieved by sacrificing all the beauty and nobility of the human being. The poet Nikolaus Lenau expressed in these terms what the romantics in general thought about the United States: “With the expression Bodenlosigkeit [rootlessness] I believe that I can indicate the general character of the American institutions… what we call Vaterland, is here only a kind of property insurance.” For Lenau “the American doesn’t know anything; he looks for nothing except money; he has no ideas.” In reality, it isn’t that Spain considered itself, at a point in time, the spiritual reserve of the West, it’s that all of Europe tended to see itself that way since the 19th century.
Lenau had emigrated to the US, but things didn’t go well for him and he returned in 1833. His experiences there served as the basis for a novel titled Der Amerika-Müde[8], which Lenau himself didn’t write but rather his friend Ferdinand Kürnberger. It was a resounding success in the German language and also in English with the title The Man Who Became Weary of America. Max Weber echoed the critiques of Kürnberger in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1930).
At the end of the 19th century the stereotype of the tasteless, ignorant, greedy, rude, and hyper-materialist American was already firmly established in Europe. The writings of travelers, above all Englishmen, contributed to this stereotype. Travel literature … is a trough of nourishing feed for black legends. The Englishwoman Frances (Fanny) Trollope opened the path in 1832 with her Domestic Manners of Americans[9]. Lady Trollope had travelled to America with her brother to join a utopian community that failed. Utopianisms aside, she found the egalitarianism of the American middle class intolerable. Her principal goal is to make it clear that Americans have a complete lack of refinement and good taste. Mark Twain, with his usual humor, always considered that Lady Trollope’s portrayal was very accurate and there was no reason to be upset with her. A little later, in 1839, Captain Frederick Marryat published Diary in America with Remarks on Its Institutions. A novelist, sailor, and friend of Dickens, Captain Marryat had fought against the United States in the War of 1812, but this wasn’t the origin of his book, which collects his experiences in a long journey through America and Canada which occurred some twenty years later. Marryat’s book offended Americans so much that they threw copies of it and images of him into bonfires in the streets of Detroit. Even though the books cited had some success, more widely read was The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens, also the product of a trip through the United States in 1842. It’s a satire which borrows from Swift and the picaresque novel. The tone is authentically corrosive and the United States is presented as a desert of civilization full of traveling salesmen.
However, leaving aside the global and interreligious extent of anti-Americanism, this is presented as a black legend that meets all the usual topics that we have already identified in the case of Rome: base or lowly blood and absence of noble ancestors; an insatiable desire for power and riches (cupido profunda imperii et divitiarum); impiety, etc.
[1] La monumental obra de Kovaliov se ha reeditado en español recientemente con notas y comentarios: Serguéi Kovaliov, Historia de Roma, Madrid: Akal, 2007. La primera edición es de 1948. William Harris, War and Imperialism in Republican Roma, 327-70 BC, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979.
[2] Roman Imperialism : Tenney Frank : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.
[3] Véanse los muchos parecidos que encuentra Pedro Luis Cano entre Roma y Estados Unidos. De hecho es la política exterior norteamericana en el golfo Pérsico la que provoca este artículo: «Invasores e invadidos: sobre dos discursos en el Agrícola de Tácito», Methodos. Revista electrónica de Didáctica del Latín 1 (2011), págs. 1-20. No tiene desperdicio. Disponible en http://ddd.uab.cat/pub/methodos/2013682Xn0a12.pdf. Consultado el 27 de febrero de 2015.
[4] E. Salomone Giaggero, «La propaganda antirromana di Mithridate VI Eupatore in Asia Minore e in Grecia», en Contributo in onore di A. Garcetti, Génova, 1977, págs. 89-107.
[5] Philippe Roger, L’Ennemi américain. Généalogie de l’anti-américanisme français, París: Éditions du Seuil, 2002.
[6] Anti-Americanism in Spain: The Weight of History - Real Instituto Elcano
[7] Hay varios trabajos excelentes de Andrei S. Markovits sobre este asunto, como Uncouth Nation: Why Europe dislike America, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.
[8] Winfried Fluck, The Man who became weary of America: Ferdinad Kürnberger’s Novel Der America-Müde (1885), Nueva York: Peter Lang Publisher, 2002.
[9] Fanny Trollope, Usos y costumbres de los americanos, Barcelona: Alba Editorial, 2004.