chapter five
Banishing “all the Moors”
Lust’s Dominionand the Story of Spain
While Elizabeth wasscripting proposals to delineate and deport “black-
amoors” as an unwelcome, unwanted, and unfaithful “kinde of people,” in
Spain a related history was taking shape around the figure of the Moor. At the
turn of the century, the situation of Moors in Spain was reaching a point of
crisis that would climax in 1609 , when Philip III ordered their expulsion.
Until the conquest of Granada in 1492 , Moors lived within Spain’s borders
and colonies as practicing Muslims, their history, culture, and heritage an in-
delible part of Spain’s, as Barbara Fuchs has argued.^1 When the Spanish In-
quisition started policing the purity of the Catholic state, and Spanish
imperialists, publicizing Spain’s national supremacy, however, church and
state reinscribed the Moorish presence as a problem—according to Deborah
Root, ostracizing Moors first as “infidels,” then forcing them to convert to
Catholicism and assimilate.^2 Yet ironically, these “Moriscos” were subject to
increased suspicion and regulation. Conversion did not guarantee belief, and
the state could only legislate the performance, not the presence, of faith.
Moreover, the likelihood that Moors were simply “passing” raised the unset-
tling possibility that Catholic practitioners might be passing too. Hence, from
1520 on, Moriscos were targeted as Christian “heretics” in an increasingly hos-
tile Spain, until their expulsion ostensibly solved the problem.
It was very likely in the period between Queen Elizabeth’s propositions to
deport certain “blackamoors” and Spain’s official banishment of its Moors
thatLust’s Dominion; or, the Lascivious Queenemerged. Although the text,