Philip Wayne Powell

Philip Wayne Powell
Born	October 30, 1913 Chino, California, United States
Died	Santa Barbara, California, United States

Philip Wayne Powell (Chino, California, United States, October 30, 1913 – Santa Barbara, September 17, 1987) was an American university professor, historian and writer.

Powell was educated at Occidental College and at the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned his B.A. in 1936 and his Ph.D. in 1941, studying with historians such as Herbert I. Priestley and Herbert E. Bolton. During World War II, he served in the United States Army. He taught at the University of Pennsylvania in 1943 and at Northwestern University in 1944, before joining the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1947, where he was a professor until his retirement in 1981 and became professor emeritus.

Powell is recognized for his contributions to the study of the Spanish frontiers in America and of the relations between the Hispanic world and the United States. He devoted considerable effort to dismantling the Spanish Black Legend, a mission that led him to travel to numerous libraries in Europe and America in search of primary sources. The fruit of his work was set down in the book The Tree of Hate: Propaganda and Prejudices Affecting Relations with the Hispanic World, translated into Spanish as Árbol de odio, in which he sets out the effects of the Spanish Black Legend on the West and, especially, on the US.

Biography

Philip Wayne Powell was born in Chino, California on July 29, 1913. He attended Occidental College and later transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, where he graduated in 1936.

Around the time he was carrying out his doctoral studies at the University of California, and beginning his long periods of paleographic research in the archives of Mexico and Seville, Powell married María Luisa Crespo, who would become not only his life partner but also his closest collaborator during the intensive research work.

He continued his studies at Berkeley, focusing on Hispanic philology under the tutelage of the renowned historians Herbert I. Priestley and Herbert E. Bolton. Powell completed his doctorate in 1941 with the thesis Génesis y evolución de los consulados mexicanos, 1821-1850 (Genesis and Evolution of the Mexican Consulates, 1821–1850).

Still from Saludos Amigos, a 1942 animated film produced by Walt Disney.

Shortly afterward, he enlisted in the United States Army. The start of his military service coincided with the entry of the U.S. into World War II, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Owing to his command of Spanish and his deep knowledge of Hispanic American history, Powell was assigned to roles supporting cultural intelligence, propaganda and diplomacy. He worked with the Division of Cultural Relations of the Department of State from 1941 to 1943, promoting what was known as the Good Neighbor policy, which had among its objectives countering Nazi influence in Latin America, translating materials, analyzing enemy propaganda, and helping to create American propaganda of its own. His work was crucial in the context of the wartime mobilization of intellectuals and professionals from various fields, helping to forge inter-American alliances that proved crucial for the supply of Allied resources and troops.

After being discharged in 1943 he began his academic career at the University of Pennsylvania., and in 1944 at Northwestern University.

In 1947, he joined the history department of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Under his influence and that of other scholars such as Wilbur R. Jacobs, Donald Marquand Dozer, C. Warren Hollister, Joachim Remak, Leonard Marsak, Frank J. Frost, Robert O. Collins, Alfred Gollin and Otis L. Graham, the department expanded considerably, establishing itself as a center of excellence in the study of history, particularly in the area of New Spain.

In 1957, at that same University, Powell attended a lecture by Francisco Guerra Pérez-Carral, in which the latter set out little-known historical facts about the Spanish Viceroyalties in America. The presentation made a strong impression on the audience and especially on Powell, who would later transcribe the following quotation in a revision of his most influential work, Tree of Hate:

"Lima, Peru, in viceregal days, had more hospitals than churches and, on average, there was one bed for every 101 inhabitants, a ratio considerably higher than that of a city such as Los Angeles today".

Inspired by the lecture by Guerra and other historians, Powell decided to investigate the roots of the Black Legend more deeply. His work was based on an exhaustive compilation of studies by various figures from around the world. Among them were Salvador de Madariaga, Constantino Bayle and Julián Juderías (Spain); Rómulo Carbia (Argentina); Carlos Dávila (Chile); Sverker Arnoldsson (Sweden); and Lewis Hanke (United States). Powell also made numerous research trips, consulting historical archives at various institutions of recognized prestige in Europe and America.

Powell retired as professor emeritus in 1981, and died of a heart attack in Santa Barbara on September 17, 1987.

Work

His field of research centered on the Spanish frontier, between Hispanic and Anglo-Saxon America, and early viceregal history in the southwestern United States.

To decipher the 16th-century manuscripts on which his books were based, Philip Wayne Powell and his wife María Luisa had to master cortesana and procesal paleography, the two most common handwriting styles in the documents of the Hispanic viceregal bureaucracy.

In cases where a manuscript was physically destroyed, Powell would then apply cross-referencing of sources, searching for what is known as the "mirror document." In the Spanish viceregal administration everything was sent in duplicate or triplicate. If a supply order for a presidio in Zacatecas was damaged in the local archive in Mexico, Powell would travel to Seville to look for the control copy that had been sent to the Council of the Indies, cross-checking both texts to achieve as exact a transcription as possible. In his book War and Peace on the North Mexican Frontier: A Documentary Record, written in 1971, Powell not only translated the contents but also published the transcriptions letter by letter (respecting the original 16th-century spelling), so that other historians around the world could read the documents without having to spend years deciphering the original manuscripts.

The joint work with his wife, María Luisa Powell, was a true model of academic and intellectual collaboration in the mid-20th century. María Luisa was explicitly acknowledged by Powell as co-author and a fundamental part of the compilation and transcription of thousands of 16th-century manuscript pages. Thus, while Philip took charge of reviewing the catalogs and the boxes of bundles of files, identifying which records (viceregal orders, captains' letters, frontier trials) brought real value to his research, María Luisa devoted herself to transcribing them directly, becoming a true expert in deciphering the difficult chained procesal script and in untangling the abbreviations of the 16th-century scribes.

Among his best-known works are:

• Soldiers, Indians, and Silver: The Northward Advance of New Spain, 1550-1600 (1952).
  • Spanish edition: Published by the Fondo de Cultura Económica under the title La Guerra Chichimeca (1550-1600).
• Mexico's Miguel Caldera: The Taming of America's First Frontier, 1548-1594 (1977).
  • Spanish edition: Published as Árbol de odio: la Leyenda Negra y sus consecuencias en las relaciones entre Estados Unidos y el Mundo Hispánico.
• The Tree of Hate: Propaganda and Prejudices Affecting Relations with the Hispanic World (1971).
  • Spanish edition: Published under the title Capitán Mestizo: Miguel Caldera y la Frontera Norteña.

In addition to his three major monographs, Powell published a series of specific studies, documentary compilations and academic essays on the dynamics of the American frontiers:

• The Chichimecas: Scourge of the Silver Frontier in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (1944): An early monograph focused on the impact of the nomadic peoples on the silver trade routes.
• Spanish Warfare Against the Chichimecas in the 1570s (1945): An analytical essay focused on the bloodiest decade of the war and the transition of Spanish military tactics toward "peace by purchase."
• Presidios and Towns on the Silver Frontier of New Spain, 1550-1580 (1946): A detailed study of the defensive architecture of defense (the presidios) and the founding of the first mining towns in northern Mexico.
• War and Peace on the North Mexican Frontier: A Documentary Record (1971): A compilation and paleographic transcription of historical documents essential to the study of the Chichimeca conflict.
• Essays on Frontiers in World History (1983): Co-author of this volume derived from the prestigious lectures in memory of Walter Prescott Webb, in which he extends his frontier theses to a global scale.

The "Tree of Hate"

Main article: Tree of Hate

Cover of the Spanish edition of the "Tree of Hate"

The Tree of Hate: Propaganda and Prejudices Affecting Relations with the Hispanic World, translated into Spanish as Árbol de Odio, includes the study of numerous historical documents such as various Dutch and English pamphlets and literary works, drawn from a variety of historical archives, such as the Huntington Library, the Dutch Royal Archive, the Library of The Hague and the Library of the University of Amsterdam, as well as institutions in Spain, Sweden and other countries, which give his work great reliability and verifiability.

Powell sets out the effects of the Black Legend on the West and, especially, on the US. He also analyzes the Hispanophobic contents of twelve United States textbooks (the States of California, Colorado and Utah), the opinions of various 20th-century American politicians, and the ACE report presented in 1944, denouncing the serious Hispanophobic errors in education that take hold of teaching, widespread public opinion and even scientific knowledge. Powell's conclusion on the matter is clear: to demand the correction of the Black Legend in school textbooks and in the foreign policy of the United States. On this subject he wrote the following:

"... (the textbooks) are a mixture of Las Casas with the notorious Protestant prejudices and the Nordic superiority complex".

"... arrogance of power (…) our well-known distaste for 'racial' mixing (…) our persevering faith in industrial might and technological advancement as criteria for evaluating civilization and progress".

"The dogmas of the Black Legend are frozen in our textbooks and teaching structures, where they constitute an eternal disparagement of Hispanic culture, both past and present".

The work is conceived in three parts: the dimensions of the Black Legend (chapters I and II), its growth (chapters III to VI) and the echoes of the Legend in the US during the 20th century (chapters VII to IX).

Chapter I presents the thesis of the book, explains the meaning of the Manichaean dualism between "Nordic heroes" and "Spanish villains," and highlights the definition by Julián Juderías and Charles Gibson of what the Black Legend is.

Chapter II develops the work and significance of Spain in America, the Inquisition Overseas, as well as the figure and work of Bartolomé de Las Casas, which represented "the first great debate of the modern world" about the indigenous peoples.

Chapters III to VI analyze and explain in detail the development of the Black Legend from the 16th century, when the enemies of Spain began to spread the work of Las Casas extraordinarily widely with the help of the printing press, up to the 19th century, when "the protagonists of the independence of Hispanic America sought to justify themselves through the use of the Legend with grandiose contempt for historical truth," ending with the influence of the Black Legend in the present-day United States, both in education and in politics, as well as the alternative proposed by the author to overcome all of this.

Originally published in 1949 by Blackstone Press under the title Tree of Hate: Propaganda and Prejudices Affecting United States Relations with the Hispanic World., the work is often referenced by the year of its original publication, but it is important to note that Powell later revised and expanded it. A notable edition is that of 1985, published by University of New Mexico Press, which includes an updated foreword by the author and an appendix with new information.

Other editions, such as the one published in 2008, are based on a 1971 version, and feature a foreword by the historian Robert Himmerich y Valencia.

Bibliography

• Folsom, Raphael B. "Philip Wayne Powell, the Cold War, and the Conquest of Northern Mexico". Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, vol. 31, no. 2, 2015, pp. 287–304. [www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/msem.2015.31.2.287. JSTOR]
• In Memoriam: Philip Wayne Powell (1913–1987). The Hispanic American Historical Review.
• The Philip W. Powell Papers. Special Collections, UCSB Library (University of California).

External links

• Árbol de Odio: La Leyenda Negra y Sus Consecuencias en las Relaciones entre EEUU y el Mundo Hispánico Online reading and download from Adelante Reunificacionistas Puerto Rico España. (in Spanish)
• "Árbol de Odio" Online reading and PDF download. (in Spanish)