The Dialectic

For those interested in the history of history, and how our narratives change over time, I present to you my most recents papers, with a Robert Plant interlude. The first post is about the Spanish Conquest of Mexico, and examines literature from 1839 to 2008. As it demonstrates, there has been a dramatic shift in the actors and events deemed important. It is long, but I think you will find it interesting.

The second post addresses the culture war battles over the National History Standards in the mid-1990s. This is an ongoing process, and one that is not pretty to look at. I hope you enjoy it.

Democratizing the Conquest

Introduction and Thesis

The Spanish Conquest of Mexico (hereafter referred to as “the Conquest”) received renewed attention from historians after the mid-twentieth century, as new methods and sources became available. There was a time when historians considered the subject exhausted, with every question that could interest the white male European descendant answered. William Prescott – a renowned 19th century historian and subject of this analysis – wrote in the preface of Conquest of Mexico that “it might seem that little could remain at the present day to be gleaned by the historical inquirer.”[1] Of course, society and culture evolved, and power changed hands, or at least achieved a different balance, so that the questions asked of sources changed in a corresponding manner. In the twentieth century it wasn’t just society in general that changed, but the academy more specifically: women and non-white people joined in more representative numbers, and brought with them new perspectives that had been marginalized or simply not previously considered. And while it is beyond the scope of this paper to argue causality, it is probably not dangerous to assume that these new perspectives and questions contributed to the search for and analysis of source materials more directly associated with indigenous Americans.

Corresponding to this shift in power were changes in the historical paradigm. Seemingly anxious to shed its nineteenth-century Rankian objectivity and explore anew its rhetorical pedigree, the historical discipline shattered into a plethora of sub-genres, borrowing methodology from fields as diverse as economics and anthropology. More importantly, this paradigm shift focused on what became know as “history from below”, the notion of granting significant agency to historical actors previously ignored for not being central to events. Dubbed Le Nouvelle Histoire by its French proponents, the movement sought to overturn much conventional wisdom. Suddenly, indigenous American sources gained newfound weight, and a dramatically different narrative of the Conquest began to emerge. I hope to demonstrate that the convergence of newly discovered source material and the rise of the Nouvelle Histoire movement created the environment for a democratized history of the Conquest.

Structure of Paper

This analysis is divided into two sections. In the first section, I will describe the sources analyzed; explain their significance and their place in the historiography. The sources are listed in chronological order, because for this purpose that is the order that makes the most sense.

The second section is labeled “Issues of Contention”, in which three significant issues that support the thesis are discussed: the causes of success as viewed by various authors; differing voices granted throughout the historiography, and; the significance of Le Nouvelle Histoire. The selected literature clearly demonstrates the dramatic and exciting change in the direction of scholarship over the past fifty years, to the point where one must wonder what Prescott would think.

Description of Sources

Although many modern historians still grant William Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico hallowed status in the historiography of Spanish colonialism, it was superseded decades ago by other scholars incorporating indigenous source materials and utilizing different methodologies and voices. Nevertheless, Prescott – the nearly blind victim of a freak accident at Harvard and expert on sixteenth century Latin America – influenced his field for at least one hundred years. In the cited edition of 1934, Carl Van Doren wrote in the introduction, “Ever since 1843 when the Conquest of Mexico was first published, it has been praised and honored by all good judges and has been a stirring experience to many readers.”[2] Prescott’s vivid history relied upon first-hand accounts of conquistadores and chroniclers, and while thorough and seminal at the time, it was overwhelmingly Eurocentric. However, for a cornerstone in the historiography of the Conquest, no other work can substitute for Prescott’s.

Charles Gibson wrote Tlaxcala in the Sixteenth Century in 1952 using Nahuatl documents, a groundbreaking development. And while it would be several decades before other scholars would make headway with these sources (even Gibson would publish subsequent works without them), this book represented an inflection point in granting agency to indigenous Americans. The study analyzed Tlaxcala in three phases: conquest, acculturation and decline. Each phase gave voice to the Tlaxcalan people and Gibson argued that during most of the century the Spanish maintained a subordinate role in daily affairs. Although white civilians eventually did subvert the Crown’s authority and undermine Tlaxcalan culture, the data presented by Gibson challenged the entrenched Eurocentric narrative of the Conquest that indigenous cultures were completely subsumed. Also significant was the positive reception the book received from not only historians but also scholars in fields such as anthropology, economics and demography. Tlaxcala in the Sixteenth Century asked new questions of new data and helped to revitalize colonial Latin America scholarship.

In 1982, Tzvetan Todorov – a Bulgarian-born linguist living in Paris – published The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other (the English edition appeared two years later.) Todorov attempted to explain the Conquest through the identification and sublimation of “the other.” He accepted the known historical events but questioned the longstanding narrative of Spanish strategic, technological and moral superiority. Instead, he examined the role of myth and communication in determining the actions of conquest stakeholders. Throughout the book Todorov employed his knowledge of semiotics to provide an explanation for the curious results of Cortés’ mission while removing the cultural bias of past chroniclers and historians. In this endeavor he was only partially successful, as will be argued later, but the book made a tremendous effort to present an alternative argument, if not an alternative voice. Unfortunately in doing so it relied upon differences in culture to explain the outcome, even if Todorov refrained from judgment. Because of this, The Conquest of America fell into a category of hybrid works: those that defined the transition from the Eurocentric narrative to a narrative of equal agency.

Nine years later Inga Clendinnen, an Australian ethno-historian, published two significant works. Her article “Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty: Cortés and the Conquest of Mexico” appeared in the journal Representations. Clendinnen began by redefining the expectations of Spanish success, and then advanced a more balanced view of political prowess and military success. She argued against the ethnocentric models advanced by Prescott and Todorov (claiming his concept of “the other” was very similar to cultural superiority), instead focusing on politics and miscommunication. Because of this, the image of the Conquest portrayed was indefinite, costly, and a failure in many respects. When she summarized with, “[i]f for Indian warriors the lesson that their opponents were barbarians was learned early, for Spaniards, and for Cortés, that lesson was learned most deeply only in the final stages…”[3] her clear intent was to validate the agency of the indigenous people in defining the shape of Spanish colonization.

At the same time her book Aztecs was published. It was Clendinnen’s ethnohistorical account of the Mexica people, and it represented a new wave of scholarship in the historiography of the Conquest. Aztecs was an interpretation of events centered on indigenous life and its response to the arrival of the Spaniards. Clendinnen made it very clear that her work was “inescapably quixotic”, and focused “less on words than actions, and especially ritual actions, not only because they are the best documented, but because of their revelatory potential.”[4]

James Lockhart’s The Nahuas After the Conquest was published in 1992, and represented a social history of the Indians of central Mexico from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. Lockhart utilized primary sources more recently available, from court records to land titles to probanzas. Although similar documents were previously known, his focus was those created by the indigenous Nahuas, as opposed to previously examined Spanish records. The difference in focus shifted the narrative voice back to the indigenous population, and presented a history that illustrates the agency of natives. The book detailed eight areas of life, including social organization, kinship structure, class, religion, and cultural expression. Unlike Clendinnen, Lockhart was less concerned with interpretation, but they shared a criticism of the Eurocentric narrative that dominated the historiography into the late twentieth century. The Nahuas After the Conquest successfully demonstrated that the indigenous Americans were part of an ongoing dialectic in colonial Latin America, shaping the social and cultural landscape even while bending to the forces imposed upon them.

The esteemed and prolific Latin American scholar Matthew Restall wrote a revisionist history of the conquest in 2003 entitled Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest. His choice of the number seven was deliberate albeit far-reaching. However, Restall did a credible job of debunking existing myths in the Spanish Conquest narrative, and in this particular book he was content to attack a substantial amount of the historiography. With new primary and secondary source material available, Seven Myths set aside narrative elements of European exceptionalism, the sudden and complete conquest, Spanish apotheosis and the nobility of the conquistador, paving the way for new scholarship addressing different voices and questions. In relation to other literature reviewed in this analysis, Seven Myths attempted to reset much of the Conquest history.

Also in 2003, Camilla Townsend’s “Burying the White Gods: New Perspectives on the Conquest of Mexico” was published in The American Historical Review. Townsend sought to debunk the apotheosis myth much like Restall, but relied heavily on the notion that Spanish technology was critical to affecting a successful conclusion to the Conquest. She began her article with the assertion that the Mexicans “…knew before we did, it seems, that technology was the crux.”[5] For the remainder of the article, Townsend examined military hardware, logistical supply chains, disease and even agricultural components in the Mexica diet to support the idea that the Spanish successfully concluded the Conquest without cultural superiority or the aura of omnipotence. Additionally, she examined the Quetzalcoatl myth directly, and found a number of discrepancies that damage the credibility of the narrative that Moctezuma was paralyzed by religious superstition and unable to act decisively. Very damaging was the research cited from Susan Gillespie, who proved from an inventory of contemporary sources that the Quetzalcoatl myth as we understand it did not even exist until the 1560s.[6] Although criticized by her contemporaries for relying too much on the role of technology, “Burying the White Gods” fit well in the modern effort to present a rational, culturally neutral explanation of Spanish success.

Ross Hassig’s Mexico and the Spanish Conquest represented a subsequent stage in the historiography of the Conquest. Hassig, a historical anthropologist focusing on Mesoamerica, dismissed most of the arguments requiring European superiority, advanced technology, or cultural differences. Instead, he asserted that the success of the Conquest could be explained by Indian manipulation of the Spanish to achieve their political ends, and the perfidy of Cortés at a crucial moment.[7] The book began with a structural analysis of the genesis of the Aztec empire, and decisions made by the Mexica to build an economic hegemony across central Mexico. Once Hassig established the Aztec’s choice to favor economic reach over military control, he could demonstrate the precarious hold that the Mexica maintained over other cities. When Cortés arrived and battled the Tlaxcalans, the political and military situation prejudiced the Tlaxcalans to enter into an alliance with the Spanish, who were then manipulated to disrupt the political balance in central Mexico and create a new order favorable to non-Aztec stakeholders. While this was not as beneficial for the Tlaxcalans as they had planned, it does fit the available source material without relying on improbable or weakly supported assertions.

The last and most recent article in this analysis was Amos Megged’s “Testimonies of the Spanish-Indigenous Conquest: Hernando Cortés, Tepexic, and the Mixtecs, 1521-1590.” Published in 2008, Megged examined a different region of central Mexico just subsequent to the fall of Tenochtitlan, controlled by the Popollocans of Tepexi. Megged’s argument harmonized with Hassig, for he demonstrated that Indian elites from Tepexi allied themselves with the Spanish in order to not only maintain their own local power and standing but also engage in their own conquest of other cities toward the Pacific coast. Such an alliance eliminated the threat and resource drain facing both the Popollocans and Spanish, provided the Spanish with a proxy army to the Oaxacan valley, and greatly expanded the wealth of the Popollocan elite. Like Hassig, Megged illustrated tensions – if not outright derision – felt by Tepexi towards Tenochtitlan that eroded loyalties and encouraged the adoption of Spanish relations. Megged’s examination of probanzas and court records depicted a political scenario almost identical to the one found in Tlaxcala when Cortés arrived in 1519. These final two works represented the modern state of Conquest historiography and provided striking contrast to past narratives.

Issues of Contention

One of the more fundamental questions considered when writing a history of the Conquest is “what constitutes success?” Past narratives – written at a time when history’s legitimate focus was considered the powerful and political – defined success as the total military conquest of the Americas, and the establishment of Spanish culture. The demonstration of the superiority of European military and legal structures, and the Catholic theology not only signified completion of the colonization process but also provided its justification. However, even contemporary source materials did not support that definition. In reality, the conquistadores and the various religious orders established in Mexico demonstrated much more flexibility in handling local conditions. Much of Cortés’ success relied upon alliances with existing indigenous political structures, and the Church was forced to accommodate pagan ritual practices alongside of Christian worship.[8] What many have argued was that transculturation occurred in many aspects of life, and Spaniards mostly accommodated this, while natives demonstrated their adeptness at manipulating the colonial system.

Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico provided the most straightforward definition of success and the causes that lay behind it. He was captive to the European-as-superior narrative, and this was manifest throughout his writing. Hence, on page 128 we are told,

[t]he Spanish Conquerors, to judge from their writings, unconscious of any worldly motive lurking in the bottom of their hearts, regarded themselves as soldiers of the Church, fighting the great battle of Christianity; and in the same edifying and comfortable light are regarded by most of the national historians of a later day.[9]

In a single, vivid sentence Prescott iterated the transcendent integrity of the European conqueror, the purity of the Church, the noble quest to civilize the barbarian, and the rightful praise and recognition from scholars. This righteous determinism continued throughout the book, and his account of the final battle of the siege of Tenochtitlan illustrated the inherent bias in his perception of Spanish military prowess. When confronted with a Mexica counterattack towards the end of the siege, Prescott described the Spanish response:

The brigantines thundered, at the same time, on the flanks of the columns, which, after some ineffectual efforts to maintain themselves, rolled back in wild confusion, till their impotent fury died away in sullen murmurs within the capital.[10]

While a lovely piece of writing, Prescott conveyed the barbarism and ignorance of the Mexica in contrast to the decisive superiority of the Spaniards.

In an effort to break from Prescott’s Eurocentric superiority perspective, Todorov asserted that the critical factor in Cortés’ success was the miscommunication that occurred between the two cultures. Because Spanish and indigenous Americans simply related to the world in radically different fashions – what Todorov described as man-man communication for Spaniards and man-world communication for Americans – the Mexica were slow to adapt and counteract the impact of the Conquest. He quoted the conquistador Bernal Díaz as observing that Moctezoma was dependent upon divine omens in order to assess the behavior of the Spaniards, and sacrificed youth each day in order to be given clear signs.[11] Unfortunately for the argument, he noted a few pages later that the reliance on prophecy and omen were rife throughout Christendom as well, which negated the critical influence that the practice would have exerted on one side of the Conquest. Instead, this tended to support assertions by Hassig and Megged that complex cultural explanations were unnecessary. Finally, Todorov also drew criticism from Camilla Townsend, who attacked his propagation of the Quetzalcoatl myth, arguing that original sources from Cortés never mentioned the conquistador’s treatment as a deity.[12]

If Todorov’s argument is considered as a hybrid – not embracing the Eurocentric perspective but struggling unsuccessfully to break free of it – then what followed was clearly a new direction. In “Burying the White Gods”, Townsend asserted that a wide range of technologies were attributable to the successful conquest, including disease. This argument certainly broke free of the cultural/ethical superiority claim, but it had unfortunate consequences of its own. Amos Megged explicitly attacked Townsend’s thesis by asserting that the Spanish arrival merely accelerated an indigenous process of conquest that was already underway.[13] Parsimony played an important role here: the technology argument was easily attacked (e.g., illustrating the difficulties Spaniards had with wet gunpowder) while making the claim that disease was a technology ignored the fact that both sides suffered from its effects.[14] In that instance, disease became little more than a metaphor, for its employer must manipulate technology, and there is certainly no evidence that the Spanish were in control of it.

A more recent trend was to distill Spanish success down to an adept or lucky use of local politics within indigenous America. This required a large redistribution of agency amongst historical actors. Both Hassig and Megged argued that Cortés found himself in the middle of a fluid political hegemony and was willing to use that to whatever advantage he could, recognizing that he was also a tool for indigenous political players. This allowed him to maintain adequate power until the Conquest stabilized and additional logistical support arrived from Cuba. “Testimonies” presented Nahuatl court sources that detailed political divisions similar to those found between Tlaxcala and Tenochtitlan, presenting a unified set of conditions and deliberate response on the part of indigenous Americans. Citing a probanza of Don Joaquin de San Francisco Matzatzin – a Tepexic elite – Megged noted that “oral testimony presented that Tepexic’s most pressing concerns were its long-term relationships in the entire area, which extended well beyond the narrow and temporary allegiance established with the Spaniards.”[15] The question then became, “do we need any other factors to explain the Conquest?” From this recent scholarship, the answer appeared to be “no.”

The voice granted to historical actors evolved throughout the historiography in significant ways. Returning to Prescott, it is fair to say that he was a product of his time. As he mentioned in his preface, archives at the time of his research were restricted, and Madrid’s Royal Academy of History – an important source of material and knowledge for him – was a private organization. Additionally, he cited a number of private, titled individuals who granted him access to private collections of documents (including the Cortés family archive.)[16] These limited sources created perspective and bias that would influence any scholar examining the limited range they provided. Nor was it trivial to note that, in the early nineteenth-century, there was a belief that the only narrative that matter centered on those projecting power. Finally, there was a cultural bias that must be considered when reaching that far back in the historiography, as evidenced in Prescott’s explanation of something as simple as native orthography: “In these extracts I have scrupulously conformed to the ancient orthography, however obsolete and even barbarous, rather than impair in any degree the integrity of the original document.”[17]

Charles Gibson responded to this singular European voice in Tlaxcala in the Sixteenth Century, examining a number of indigenous sources that had been catalogued for centuries but not extensively studied. Gibson’s bibliography was thorough, and included the Lienzo de Tlaxcala (a painted, pictorial mural dating to the 1550s.) Three originals of the lienzo were created, and were copied through the ages, although in the present day only copies remain.[18] He also made use of several anales; lists of events detailing life in Tlaxcala as far back as 1453.[19] Reliance on native source materials fundamentally changed the perspective on the history being written. Cultural values were reflected in the content of these documents, as indigenous Americans decided what information was important to include, and how it was valued relative to other documents and data. Additionally, working with native language documents removed at least one layer of mediation between the scholar and the subject, if not several more. Even the forgeries that were noted in Gibson’s bibliography had importance, for they communicated what the author wanted to share with others, despite other facts. Tlaxcala in the Sixteenth Century represented a significant step toward changing the voice of Conquest history.

Inga Clendinnen took a more ideological approach to the Conquest, making a deliberate effort at granting voice to those who had previously been marginalized. Her admission was straightforward:

My concern in what follows is not with the world of the Mexica infant, which is lost to us, nor the hidden inner life of the Mexica, unknown even to themselves, but with expressed adult attitudes and those more oblique preoccupations which clustered around the potent image of the mother and the suckling child…[20]

Aztecs devoted almost its entire length to presenting the perspective of the Mexica through urban design, social roles, aesthetics and the reaching the sacred through ritual. Only the last chapter was devoted to Cortés and the Conquest, making clear to the reader that the history of the Mexica people comprised much more than the causeway battles and siege of Tenochtitlan.

Lockhart’s The Nahuas After the Conquest demonstrated an interesting consequence of altering voice. Lockhart built on other work by Charles Gibson, investigating the structure and mechanics of the altepetl, a kinship unit that has similarities to the Andean ayllu. The altepetl was complex and scalable, and Lockhart argued that it was highly improbable that the Spanish understood it, as evidenced by their clumsy appropriation of the structure during colonization, and the fact that it took time and reorganization of colonial structures in order to achieve optimal alignment.[21] Discovering this co-option of indigenous structure by the Spanish in native documents indicated a slow transculturation process occurring in Mexico, something that earlier historical narrative rejected completely. Modern analysis of Conquest-era Nahuatl documents not only revealed the flexible, complex capability of social and economic structures, but also just how wrong centuries of western history was about the rapid, unidirectional completion of the Conquest. Providing a single perspective from the voice of the powerful and political provided no guarantee of an informed narrative, only one that emanated from an arbitrary authority.

Most of the works cited in this analysis were written after the genesis of Le Nouvelle Histoire, a movement in history determined to discard entrenched notions of “proper” scholarship. Related to this paradigm shift was the fracturing of traditional history into a variety of sub-genres reflecting inter-disciplinary studies. Sociology, anthropology and economics have provided considerable methodological resources to the study of the Conquest, Clendinnen and Lockhart being excellent examples. Not only did this inter-disciplinary approach allow for new questions to be raised, but also sometimes demanded it.

Corresponding to this development was the introduction of “history from below”, introduced in a paper by Edward Thompson in 1966, although a similar concept was mentioned in a paper presented to the American Historical Association by Carl Becker in 1926.[22] Thompson’s historical priority was to reconstruct a narrative for common people and understand structures and interactions that occurred outside of the realm of the powerful and political. Such an effort opened considerable opportunity for interrogating source material, and also removed some of the traditional limitations of Rankian history, embracing the rhetorical roots of the historical discipline. Jim Sharpe went on to argue that not only does history from below challenge the classic historical perspective, but that it also “offers a richer synthesis of historical understanding…”[23] The inter-disciplinary paradigm shift of the 1960s created a new dialectical conversation which allowed historians to develop new frames for old, stale narratives.

Finally, Le Nouvelle Histoire sought to overturn existing historical scholarship conventions of the kind that produced Conquest of Mexico. Of a number listed in Peter Burke’s essay, four are important and relevant to this analysis: the examination of events not inherently political (Clendinnen’s Aztecs and Lockhart’s The Nahuas After the Conquest); understanding how common people were affected by events (Todorov’s The Conquest of America); accepting non-traditional source material, and using traditional sources in novel ways (Gibson’s Tlaxcala in the Sixteenth Century and Megged’s “Testimonies”), and; discarding the constraint that history is objective, and using a conflict of ideas to define the narrative (Clendinnen and Restall.)[24] Each of these works were enabled – if not made possible – by the evolution of the historical discipline in the late twentieth century.

Conclusion

The past two centuries have manifested dramatic changes in the historiography of the Conquest, and these were driven by multiple factors that converged in time. Shifts in the historical paradigm have created a new dialectical conversation and generated a myriad of new questions for scholars to explore. The rejection of an objective history – popularized in the nineteenth century – has encouraged historians to rediscover the rhetorical roots of history, while inter-disciplinary alliances have merged history with the social sciences. Cultural changes, which have enabled a more diverse population in the academy, have encouraged new perspectives from those dissatisfied with classic narratives generated by white male Europeans. These changes from within the discipline created tensions that encouraged old narratives to be challenged.

Beginning with the classic history of William Prescott, changes in voice and source material began shaping the narrative of the Conquest. Charles Gibson examined native Nahuatl documents for his history of Tlaxcala, and the concept of history from below directly influenced Inga Clendinnen and James Lockhart. Lockhart’s work also demonstrated that native documents could challenge the credibility of historiography, by illustrating the relationship between local kinship structures and the process of Spanish co-option, thus discrediting the notion that the Conquest was swift and decisive. With each successive generation of scholar, the Eurocentric myth of superiority deteriorated and was replaced by a parsimonious, self-contained explanation of Spanish success in the New World. Recent theses by Ross Hassig and Amos Megged have asserted that Spanish success was contingent upon nothing more than a bi-directional relationship of political forces in Mesoamerica, with the Spaniards occasionally inhabiting the subordinate role. This historiography suggests that the convergence of the Le Nouvelle Histoire movement and new indigenous source material created an environment that gave rise to a democratized history of the Spanish Conquest of Mexico.

Bibliography

Becker, Carl. “What are Historical Facts?” Western Political Quarterly 8 (September 1955): 327-340.

Burke, Peter. “The New History: Its Past and its Future,” in New Perspectives on Historical Writing, Second Edition, ed. Peter Burke. University Park: The Pennsylvania University Press, 2001.

Clendinnen, Inga. Aztecs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Clendinnen, Inga. “A Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty: Cortés and the Conquest of Mexico.” Representations 33 (Winter 1991): 65-100.

Gibson, Charles. Tlaxcala in the Sixteenth Century. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952.

Hassig, Ross. Mexico and the Spanish Conquest, 2nd ed. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006.

Lockhart, James. Nahuas after the Conquest: a Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992.

Megged, Amos. “Testimonies of the Spanish-Indigenous Conquest: Hernando Cortés, Tepexic, and the Mixtecs, 1521-1590.” Colonial Latin American Review 17 (Winter 2008): 1-39.

Prescott, William H. The Conquest of Mexico. Garden City: International Collectors Library, 1934.

Restall, Matthew. Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Sharpe, Jim. “History from Below,” in New Perspectives on Historical Writing, Second Edition, ed. Peter Burke. University Park: The Pennsylvania University Press, 2001.

Todorov, Tzvetan. The Conquest of America: the Question of the Other. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1984.

Townsend, Camilla. “Burying the White Gods: New Perspectives on the Conquest of Mexico.” American Historical Review 108 (June 2003): 659-687.

Notes

[1] William H. Prescott, Conquest of Mexico (Garden City: International Collectors Library, 1934), v.
[2] Prescott, xiii.
[3] Inga Clendinnen, “A Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty: Cortés and the Conquest of Mexico,” Representations 33 (Winter 1991): 94.
[4] Inga Clendinnen, Aztecs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 5.
[5] Camilla Townsend, “Burying the White Gods: New Perspectives on the Conquest of Mexico,” American Historical Review 108 (June 2003): 660.
[6] Townsend, 668.
[7] Ross Hassig, Mexico and the Spanish Conquest, 2nd ed. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006), 5.
[8] Matthew Restall, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 74. “[T]he Archbishop of New Granada (colonial Colombia) lamented in a letter to the king that six decades of Christianization efforts had left the native Muisca as “idolatrous” as ever.”
[9] Prescott, 128.
[10] Prescott, 461.
[11] Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1984), 72.
[12] Townsend, 664.
[13] Amos Megged, “Testimonies of the Spanish-Indigenous Conquest: Hernando Cortés, Tepexic, and the Mixtecs, 1521-1590,” Colonial Latin American Review 17 (Winter 2008): 5.
[14] Hassig, 125.
[15] Megged, 17.
[16] Prescott, v.
[17] Prescott, vii.
[18] Charles Gibson, Tlaxcala in the Sixteenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952), 247-251.
[19] Gibson, 254.
[20] Clendinnen, Aztecs, 184.
[21] James Lockhart, The Nahuas After the Conquest (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 30.
[22] For Thompson see Jim Sharpe, “History from Below,” in New Perspectives on Historical Writing, Second Edition, ed. Peter Burke (University Park: The Pennsylvania University Press, 2001), 26 and for Becker see Carl Becker, “What are Historical Facts?” Western Political Quarterly 8 (September 1955): 337.
[23] Sharpe, 33.
[24] Peter Burke, “The New History: Its Past and its Future,” in New Perspectives on Historical Writing, Second Edition, ed. Peter Burke (University Park: The Pennsylvania University Press, 2001), 6.