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malektewaus OP t1_ja619pi wrote

I learned about the Spanish Armada in high school, and they didn't mention this at all.

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Perpetual_Doubt t1_ja7t4qt wrote

One of the reasons not to mention it was that England was a second rate power at the time. This is easy to miss given the later strength of the british empire - but back in the 16th century the Spanish Empire was one of, if not the most powerful nation in the world.

If I remember correctly the English Armada was meant to be opportunistic raids, while the Spanish Armada planned to entire subdue the English kingdom. This makes the former's humiliating failure far less significant than that of the Spanish Empire's.

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RikikiBousquet t1_ja82klh wrote

If I know something of English history, is that no defeat is a real defeat, but luck or not important, and that all victories are unique and ingenious, solely due to genius planing.

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macksters t1_ja9hq8k wrote

Every state tells fairy tales to its pupils. That's what the history lectures are all about.

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Gisschace t1_ja9y5nb wrote

Yes in English history defeats are actually glorious and heroic victories which we venerate for ever.

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hudson2_3 t1_jaa8a6w wrote

Charge of the Light Brigade was the most awesome achievement ever.

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Frexulfe t1_ja889m2 wrote

I think you are wrong (read it like a person to person comment, not a horrible furious scream in the internet).

AFAIK, there has been a real propagandistic push agains Spain and Catholics from UK and others. The theory is mostly accepted, only aspects of the theory are debated:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Legend_(Spain)

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Perpetual_Doubt t1_ja8fd52 wrote

Oh yeah I'm familiar with the black legend.

To be sure, nationalism tends to ignore inconvenient truths for the sake of a good story, but common appreciation of history will also ignore the more convoluted or less significant data - so it sometimes becomes hard to distinguish one from the other. Certainly at the time, the propagandists would have been in full swing - after all this was the time of the Wars of Religion. If we think social media today to be reductivist, that has nothing on the early printing press.

English policy in this period swung a bit wildly and without landing any significant blows. They were participants in the French Wars of Religion (for instance the disastrous campaign to try and help La Rochelle under Charles I) and bizarrely with the Netherlands iirc (despite backing the Netherlands in the wars of religion). I think in the Spanish-French War they didn't know which to back, and their involvement wouldn't have been too important anyway. I think James was criticised for not getting more involved in helping the Palatinate, but England was quite poor after Elizabeth so that was probably prudent.

All of that is fairly messy and doesn't produce an interesting narrative - and certainly not one to be championed by nationalists.

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Unleashtheducks t1_ja8jr6s wrote

So it was the English version of what the US did in the War of 1812, “We defeated the world’s greatest superpower, we must be a superpower now. Or not.”

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TreesACrowd t1_ja9u9n8 wrote

How so? The U.S. didn't suffer a crushing defeat in the War of 1812. It essentially ended in a draw.

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ThatOnePunkEmpath t1_ja6wc3z wrote

Thank you the interesting post, I sourced this from halfway into your article.

The English weirdly, tied 3 missions into one and mopping up the remaining Spanish ships was just a third of an optimistic journey. (It's all in the wiki for more detail.)

"However, the English fleet was completely exhausted and crippled after preventing the Spanish invasion attempt and Elizabeth's coffers were empty.[20] Furthermore, like its Spanish predecessor, the English expedition suffered from unduly optimistic planning, based on hopes of repeating Drake's successful raid on Cadiz in 1587. There was a contradiction between the separate plans, each of which was ambitious in its own right, but the most pressing need was the destruction of the Spanish Atlantic fleet lying at port in A Coruña, San Sebastián and Santander along the northern coast of Spain, as was directly ordered by the Queen."

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Glancing-Thought t1_jaehzg4 wrote

The English have actually managed some really good propaganda in several instances.

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