'Stranger Tides' and the motives of historical actors.

I went to see the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie the other day and rather liked it. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a rating of 33% which is lower than any of the previous films. However, I thought it stripped away a lot of what I disliked about the sequels while retaining some of the charm of the original. It could have done without the unnecessary Judi Dench cameo and the flat Penelope Cruz character though. (Spoilers ahead so cover your eyes if you haven't seen the film and want to keep the ending a surprise.)

One of the things I liked best about it was the response of the Spanish fleet to the discovery of the fountain of youth. The Pirates movies have never really portrayed a single nation as the 'goodies' (The villainous East India Company representatives in the second and third films tarnished the British claim somewhat). However, it is a staple of films and other media set in this period to make the genocidal and catholic Spanish the bad guys. Throughout most of the movie I was pretty sure that 'Stranger Tides' was going to stick to this pattern by having the Spanish as the 'greatest evil' that the other factions would eventually team up against in order to stop them taking the fountain.

These expectations were confounded when, in the final scene, the Spanish arrived and calmly began the demolition of the 'pagan' fountain as a distraction from the true salvation that they believe only comes from faith in God.

This discrepancy between my expectations and the ending of the movie can be explained by the fact that the makers of 'Stranger Tides' didn't fall into one of the most tempting traps that anyone studying history must avoid. Namely the temptation to assume that every human throughout history has thought just like us.

I can't remember if the dates of the events of the movie are ever made explicit but the presence of George II of Britain and Ferdinand VI of Spain as reigning Monarchs means that it must have been between 1746 and 1759.

The legacy of Spain in this period was an inextricably religious one. One of the formative events of the united Spanish nation hade been the expelling of Jews and Muslims from the country after the brutal 'Reconquesta' war against the Moors. In the sixteenth century the Iberian peninsula had remained Catholic despite the spread of the Reformation through Northern Europe. During this period the Spanish Inquisition had actively worked to root out dangerous ideas by persecuting Spanish mystics, closely watching those who had recently converted to Christianity and even forbidding Spaniards from studying at foreign universities. During the later years of the Reformation they had aided their Habsburg cousins in their ultimately futile attempt to enforce Catholicism on the whole of Germany. The decline of the Spanish empire in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, indicated and partially caused by the Wars of the Spanish and Austrian Successions, did little to weed out this extremist vein in Spanish history or cause any reconciliation with Protestant nations such as Britain that hired privateers to prey on Spain's trading ships.

In view of this history of religious strife and suppression of dangerous ideas it makes perfect sense that the Spanish would destroy the fountain. It only seems weird to us because in our (mainly) secular society we cannot see how anyone could hold such strong beliefs that they would pass up the chance of eternal youth. This lack of understanding can cause us to flatly disbelieve historical actors when they explain the motives for their actions. 'The German princes claimed to be converted to Protestantism', we think, 'but really they just saw an opportunity to increase their power relative to the Holy Roman Emperor'. The unspoken rider on this sort of logic is always, 'because that's how I'd do it if I were in their situation'. Our unfamiliarity with the culture of the time warps our perception of events. Avoiding this error doesn't mean we have to take all historical sources at face value. Obviously people did lie about their motives in the past, just as people do today (coughTonyBlairIraqcough). However, criticism of a historical actor's stated motives needs to be more substantial than just arguing that the rationale doesn't fit in with your own world view.

Recognition that 'the past is another country' is an impressive feat of logic for a summer blockbuster and I think it made a far better ending to the film than if the Spanish had just been another faction squabbling for possession of the fountain of youth.