Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- A Note on Names
- Introduction
- 1 The Inquisition and the Campo de Calatrava in the Sixteenth Century
- 2 Literacy, Education, and Social Mobility
- 3 Justice and the Law
- 4 From Heretic to Presbyter: The Herrador Family, 1540–1660
- 5 Official Rhetoric versus Local Reality: Propaganda and the Expulsion of the Moriscos
- 6 Opposition to the Expulsion of the Moriscos
- 7 Those Who Stayed
- 8 Those Who Returned
- 9 Rewriting History
- 10 Good and Faithful Christians: The Inquisition and Villarrubia in the Seventeenth Century
- 11 Assimilation: Reality or Fiction?
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - Official Rhetoric versus Local Reality: Propaganda and the Expulsion of the Moriscos
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- A Note on Names
- Introduction
- 1 The Inquisition and the Campo de Calatrava in the Sixteenth Century
- 2 Literacy, Education, and Social Mobility
- 3 Justice and the Law
- 4 From Heretic to Presbyter: The Herrador Family, 1540–1660
- 5 Official Rhetoric versus Local Reality: Propaganda and the Expulsion of the Moriscos
- 6 Opposition to the Expulsion of the Moriscos
- 7 Those Who Stayed
- 8 Those Who Returned
- 9 Rewriting History
- 10 Good and Faithful Christians: The Inquisition and Villarrubia in the Seventeenth Century
- 11 Assimilation: Reality or Fiction?
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Propaganda has become such a part of twenty-first-century life that we sometimes forget that it is not a modern invention at all but can be traced back many centuries, even to a time when public opinion barely existed as a notion, when governments did not have to face daily on the television or the radio probing journalists, their critics, and their political opponents. The very modern concept of ‘burying bad news’ is not so modern as we might like to think, and even spin doctors spinning the news in artfully favourable ways have their counterparts in early modern Europe.
The expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain from 1609 to 1614 is an excellent event from which to examine all of these issues, since official propaganda, burying bad news, and spin doctoring were all to be found there to varying degrees and with varying degrees of success. The expulsion itself brought forth a multitude of propaganda works, favourable to the government position and in many cases instigated, aided, and abetted by members of the government. When things did not go as well as expected, and the expulsion, which was meant to last for a few months, a year at most, dragged on year after year with no end in sight, attempts were made to gloss over the (many) failures and to emphasise the (few) successes.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Tolerance and Coexistence in Early Modern SpainThe Moriscos of the Campo de Calatrava, pp. 101 - 122Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2014