Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest

by Matthew Restall

Overview

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, Cort?s, 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199839759
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	10/28/2004
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	604,387
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Matthew Restall is Professor of Latin American History, Women's Studies, and Anthropology, and Director of Latin American Studies at Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of five books, including Maya Conquistador and The Maya World. He lives in State College, Pennsylvania.

Editorial Reviews

According to historical consensus, the Spanish conquest of the New World was a cataclysm in which superior European technology and organization overwhelmed Native American civilizations. In this daring revisionist critique, Penn State historian Restall describes a far more complex process in which Indians were central participants on both sides of the struggle. Far from regarding the Spaniards as gods, Restall argues, Indians offered a variety of shrewd, pragmatic responses to the invaders while advancing their own political agendas. Indeed, given that the conquistadors were vastly outnumbered by their Indian allies, the Conquest was in many respects a civil war between natives. Nor did Indian societies fall apart at one blow: independent Mayan polities, for example, persisted into the 19th century. Even under Spanish rule, Indians continued to live in self-governing communities, where they maintained their own languages, cultures and leaders who had considerable clout with the colonial administration. Drawing on Spanish, Native American and West African accounts of the Conquest, academic studies and even Hollywood movies, Restall examines the paradigm of European triumph and Indian "desolation" as it evolved from the conquistador's self-serving narratives to contemporary interpretations by such writers as Jared Diamond and Kirkpatrick Sale. Rejecting the implicit juxtaposition of "subhuman" Indians with "superhuman" Europeans, Restall asserts instead that, through war and epidemic, native societies retained much of their autonomy and cohesion, and "turn[ed] calamity into opportunity." Restall's provocative analysis, wide-ranging scholarship and lucid prose make this a stimulating contribution to the debate on one of history's great watersheds. Photos. (Aug.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Was Christopher Columbus considered a great explorer in his day? Were all of the Conquistadors white? The answers to these questions and more are found in this loosely connected collection of essays designed to correct misconceptions that pervade most accounts of the Spanish conquest of the New World. Restall (director, Latin American studies, Pennsylvania State Univ.; The Maya World: Yucatec Culture and Society, 1550-1850) relies on both Spanish sources and often ignored native accounts (primarily Maya) to argue that the Spanish efforts in the Americas would have never succeeded without the immense contributions of their rarely acknowledged allies, namely, Native Americans and Africans. His compelling and revisionist presentation ultimately demonstrates that from the beginning of the Spanish Conquest, the way of life that evolved in the Americas was shaped in concert by diverse peoples of European, Native American, and African descent. This multidisciplinary work is recommended for all academic libraries and larger public libraries.-John Burch, Campbellsville Univ. Lib., KY Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Provocative if dry essay in New World historiography, gainsaying a large body of received wisdom. Over the last half-century, many writers on the Spanish conquest of the Americas have confronted such thorny problems as the Black Legend and the demography of the pre-Columbian hemisphere, dispelling once-prevailing notions about, for example, why Coronado found so few Indians on his trip across the Great Plains and why Montezuma's Mexico fell so quickly to Cortez and company. But many of those notions remain, writes Restall (History/Penn. State Univ.), even in such contemporary texts as the supposedly iconoclastic works of Tzvetan Todorov and Kirkpatrick Sale. Using the word loosely enough to give folklorists fits, Restall brands as "myth" the idea, for instance, that a mere handful of conquistadors took down Mexico and Peru, and the concomitant canard that the Indians thought that the Spanish were strange gods from across the sea. The Spanish were indeed few, he acknowledges, but backed by great numbers of Indian allies and, more to the point, by non-Spanish conquistadors, particularly black Africans like Juan Garc'a, who hauled a comfortable amount of gold to Spain from Peru and lived well thereafter. "There was no apotheosis," he adds, "no 'belief that the Spaniards are gods,' and no resulting native paralysis." Some of these myths, Restall holds, came from the pens of Columbus and certain of his contemporaries, who had an understandable interest in promoting themselves as lone heroes; others came from the likes of Washington Irving, whose romantic views of Columbus the visionary entered the historical record in the 19th century and have been hard to root out ever since. Restall'salternative history of the Conquest emphasizes the multiethnic nature of the newcomers and the practicality of those who ceded land and wealth to them. For specialists, mainly, though useful to those interested in how empires-and myths-are made.

Kirkus Reviews

"A work of this kind brings good scholarship together with the arguments and contributions of the author and puts it between two covers, where we can have our whole feast on Conquest history. Well conceived, researched, and written, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest is a valuable synthesis of this important event in human history and a good candidate for the colonial Latin American history and historiography classroom."—Patricia Lopes Don, San Jose State University

"A daring revisionist critique.... Restall's provocative analysis, wide-ranging scholarship and lucid prose make this a stimulating contribution to the debate on one of history's great watersheds."—Publishers Weekly

"Compelling and revisionist.... Demonstrates that from the beginning of the Spanish Conquest, the way of life that has evolved in the Americas was shaped in concert by diverse peoples of European, Native American, and African descent."—Library Journal

"Matthew Restall is one of the leading pioneers of a new approach to the history of European colonization in the Americas, re-integrating indigenous perspectives and exploiting indigenous sources. The conquest of Mexico puzzled even participants in it and generated legends which have continued to hold historians spellbound: Restall subjects them to re-examination with a ferociously critical intellect, a historically disciplined imagination, and exceptional command of the sources. By unpicking the myths, Restall makes possible, for the first time, a believable reconstruction of what really happened."—Felipe Fernández-Armesto

"Restall's simple prose is deceptive because he confronts and overturns hoary myths of some of the most controversial and complex aspects of the conquest of Spanish America. Based on a deep knowledge of the Spanish and indigenous sources, he clearly shows how the myths of Spanish prowess and Indian inabilities were created, and why and how they have been perpetuated. This is revisionism at its best." —Stuart B. Schwartz, Yale University

"This is a work of clear significance for the understanding not just of the Conquest itself, but also the means by which we have mythologized it. Restall displays both wit and erudition as he reveals the invention and persistence of some key images of the conquistadores. Seven Myths is a scholarly yet accessible text that should be required reading for any course that touches upon colonial conquests and the culture of the Americas."—Neil L. Whitehead, University of Wisconsin-Madison

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