Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest

Description

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 takethe 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 involvingmany southern Europeans...

First Sentence

One of the great themes of historical literature over the past five centuries has been the assessment of the European discovery of the Americas as one of the two greatest events in human history.

Subjects

Other Editions

• Seven Myths of the Spanish ConquestOxford University Press, USA2003-07-24
• Seven Myths of the Spanish ConquestOxford University Press2004-08-26
• Seven Myths of the Spanish ConquestE-bookOxford University Press2007-01-01