The electronic resource presented here is the result of a two year project funded by the NWO in the Netherlands, a research network bringing together universities in the Netherlands, Spain, the UK, Germany, and Switzerland in order to examine how the Black Legend influenced Spain's self-image, and how Spanish intellectuals responded to and countered foreign propaganda in the most popular cultural form of the period, drama. Across two workshops and publications, the project team analyzed the terminology and meaning of the Black Legend, whether this was a useful analytical category, before studying how the Eighty Year War and growing, negative reputation of Spain in early modern Europe figured in the drama and plays they produced between 1580 and 1665.
The version of the resource presented here is a beta-version of a database that is still in development. It allows users to look at the works, mostly plays, in which the Low Countries wars figured, search for particular figures, places and in some cases the specific scenes where the nature of the rebels or Spanish themselves are represented.