Revering Spain’s Colonial Past and Colonial Propaganda in the Prologue to Volume II of Antonio Ponz’s 'Viaje fuera de España'

Abstract

In recent years there has been no shortage of critics exploring the controversy that arose in Spain following the publication of Masson de Morvillier’s contentious entry on Spain in the 'Encylopédie méthodique' in 1782. Largely overlooked in these discussions, however, is the eighteenth-century travel writer Antonio Ponz (1725–92), whose prologue to the second volume of his 'Viaje fuera de España' (1785) is a direct rebuttal of Masson de Morvillier’s text. It is the aim of this article to shed light on Ponz’s second prologue and to reveal its contribution to eighteenth-century debates over Spanish colonialism. It analyses the overt colonial propaganda contained in Ponz’s prologue, which depicts Spanish imperialism as paternalistic, righteous, and benevolent, especially in comparison to the rapacious commercial imperialism of France, Britain, and Holland, and examines how the prologue in its vigorous endorsement of Spanish colonial rule conceals and misrepresents the reality of the Spanish empire in the late eighteenth century.