Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest

Editorial Review:

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.

Customer Reviews:

Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0

Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest:

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... more info

Academic history:

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.

Interesting but not all that.:

Interesting book. Had an interesting perspective, but it was not the grand and iconoclastic book most reviewers seem to presnt it.

A good revisionist book:

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.

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