Spain’s Expulsion of the Moriscos was a panicked response to crisis, not imperial confidence

Evidence

We must inevitably tend to see the Expulsion as the measured action of a great world power contemptuously tidying away an unimportant minority. If the document is to be taken at something near its face value, however, we have to see the Expulsion as not at all such a manifestation of confident imperial might, rather as the worried reaction of an insecure ruler who felt himself unable to control a rapidly deteriorating crisis. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1411

Categorization

• XREF: Reverses the common image of empire tidily removing minorities — parallels the discards/kept notes on decolonization and imperial anxiety narratives.