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Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest

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Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
List Price: $19.99
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Here is an intriguing exploration of the ways in which the history of the Spanish Conquest has been misread and passed down to become popular knowledge of these events. The book offers a fresh account of the activities of the best-known conquistadors and explorers, including Columbus, Cortes, and Pizarro.
Using a wide array of sources, historian Matthew Restall highlights seven key myths, uncovering the source of the inaccuracies and exploding the fallacies and misconceptions behind each myth. This vividly written and authoritative book shows, for instance, that native Americans did not take the conquistadors for gods and that small numbers of vastly outnumbered Spaniards did not bring down great empires with stunning rapidity. We discover that Columbus was correctly seen in his lifetime--and for decades after--as a briefly fortunate but unexceptional participant in efforts involving many southern Europeans. It was only much later that Columbus was portrayed as a great man who fought against the ignorance of his age to discover the new world. Another popular misconception--that the Conquistadors worked alone--is shattered by the revelation that vast numbers of black and native allies joined them in a conflict that pitted native Americans against each other. This and other factors, not the supposed superiority of the Spaniards, made conquests possible.
The Conquest, Restall shows, was more complex--and more fascinating--than conventional histories have portrayed it. Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest offers a richer and more nuanced account of a key event in the history of the Americas.


DESCRIPTION:

Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 980.013072
EAN: 9780195176117
ISBN: 0195176111
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 240
Publication Date: 2004-10-28
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA


SIMILAR ITEMS:

• Colonial Latin America
• Colonial Latin America: A Documentary History
• Victors and Vanquished: Spanish and Nahua Views of the Conquest of Mexico (The Bedford Series in History and Culture)
• The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico
• The Conquest of New Spain (Penguin Classics)


CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

Customer Rating:
Summary: Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest
Comment: Matthew Restall, Seven Myths Of The Spanish Conquest. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.


Restall tries to deal with the different interpretations and perspectives of the Spanish conquest in Latin American history to come out with a coherent rethinking of the event, and a logical account of its outcomes. The book is divided into seven chapters that focus on seven distorted aspects of the Spanish conquest which embodied our knowledge of history, from Columbus to recent times. The author treats the perception of history through `important' characters of the period, their incomplete accounts, the alliance with natives and West Africans, and the non-qualification of conquistadors for military knowledge.

Some men like Columbus, Cortez and Pizarro had the monopoly on `history'. Restall says that many other conquests and heroic achievement have been done the same way as this "handful of exceptional men"; they followed the same procedure of Conquest of many others and have not been alone in their adventures. However, maybe the fact of being the first conquistadors to achieve such adventures can be seen as an exceptional accomplishment; regardless of the means they used to do it. The `non-important' Conquistadors following these heroes were not soldiers. They were mainly artisans and farmers and learned using weapons practicing in the Americas. Thus the average conquistador according to Restall "would be a young man... semiliterate ...trained in a particular trade or profession ... armed as well as he could afford ... would be ready to ... risk his life ... in order to conquer somewhere wealthy and well populated. He would not in any sense be a soldier in the armies of the king of Spain." (43) Spanish troops were also made of voluntary native alliances in order to conquer other cities. It is true that each party used the other for, more or less, the same main motive i.e. the possession of territories; nevertheless, the Spanish conquistador camp ended up victorious, since it was using natives to persecute other natives.

Then Restall talks about the partial account of conquistadors regarding the non-conquest of some nomadic and semi-sedentary populations, the illusion of achieving a "peaceful and benevolent" action towards natives as they were spreading the word of god and the resistance of natives in terms of religion, language and habits. The difference of culture and the different accounts of events by natives, Spaniards and historians make it difficult to have an accurate history of native-Spaniards relationships. Restall indicates that some meanings were lost during the process of the indirect interpretation as was the case with Cortés and Moctezuma, "Cortés spoke Spanish to Aguilar, Aguilar translated into Yucatec Maya, which Malinche then translated into Nahuatl, before repeating the process in reverse" (85).

The author concludes by explaining the conquest outcome mentioning the diseases issue, natives' disunity, the superiority of Spanish weaponry and the different view of war each side had. What I find interesting in the book process is that Restall makes us consider accounts of similar cases in history that happened elsewhere and in other periods of time, yet with the same Western protagonist trying to `civilize' African natives on the pretext of spreading the will of God.

The book is a good lesson of history that teaches us how past facts are subject to change according to perspectives and point of views related to the historian (researcher, reporter, witness), and how "historians have become increasingly concerned with the problem of subjectivity and our inability to escape it." (xv)

Customer Rating:
Summary: Academic history
Comment: This is a reasonably well-written history of the conquest of Mexico and other Latin countries. His points are belabored and not in my opinion not of general interest.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Interesting but not all that.
Comment: Interesting book. Had an interesting perspective, but it was not the grand and iconoclastic book most reviewers seem to presnt it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A good revisionist book
Comment: Though I had to read this for a college course, I still found this book fascinating. I really thought that Restall's arguements were sound and his conclusions were perfect. I especially found it intersting that he talks about black conquistadors. That is something that is not discussed in history books. The myth of just the white conquistador has definitely been debunked. He does a superb job with this book by using the conquistadors own words. I definitely recommend it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great attack on the Great Man theory of history
Comment: While I love the stories of the Spanish conquerers, this book makes some great points that chip away at viewpoint of Cortes and his soldiers as brilliant strategists. Simple put, Restall analyzes the Spanish conquest through contextual history, not the Great Man theory of history. This was a very refreshing work and should be read by all students of Latin American history.

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