Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest

by Matthew Restall

Book 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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195176111
• ISBN13: 9780195176117
• Release Date: October 2004
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 3.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Finally the conquest makes sense

I have not even finished reading yet but had to write a review. I travel extensively and for all these years the Spanish conquest of Americas never made sense to me. A few hundred people against tens of thousands ; even with all the illness that was brought with them; even with the stories about the Spanish being viewed as gods; even with the muscat and the wheel and the alphabet; even with the inherent white supremacy of the theory of the intelligence of the conquistadors... it just did not make sense to me. Read this book and suddenly it starts to make sense. Thank you.

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.

Interesting points

Interesting book with seven excellent points of the Spanish Conquest. For those who have done any kind of research into this period of history, would for the most part, agree to Mr. Restall's points. I was curious to see his explanations to the myths and his justifications. I found it enjoyable reading as a whole and agreed to most of his myths. This book would be more meaningful and insightful to a reader who has done some previous reading in this area.

Underscoring seven key myths and the misconceptions

Seven Myths Of The Spanish Conquest by Matthew Restall (Associate Professor of Latin American History, Women's Studies, and Anthropology, and Director of Latin American Studies, Pennsylvania State University) presents an informed and informative survey of the events of war, dominance, and assimilation associated with the Spanish conquest of the New World and which have all too often been misinterpreted or skewed down through the ages. Underscoring seven key myths and the misconceptions and fallacies surrounding them, Seven Myths Of The Spanish Conquest unravels oversimplified and all too commonly held precepts to show the Spanish Conquest as a far more tangled and complex web of events and motives than popular memory or the remnants of high school textbooks convey.

Restall debunks historical myths.

This book is brilliant. I attended a seminar where we were lucky enough to read Restall's book before it was published. Our mission was to try and debunk at least one of Restall's seven myths. Mission Failure! We found little success. His thesis is tight, his evidence is sound, and is book is great.