Download Ebook When Montezuma Met Cortés: The True Story of the Meeting that Changed History, by Matthew Restall

Download Ebook When Montezuma Met Cortés: The True Story of the Meeting that Changed History, by Matthew Restall

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When Montezuma Met Cortés: The True Story of the Meeting that Changed History, by Matthew Restall

Download Ebook When Montezuma Met Cortés: The True Story of the Meeting that Changed History, by Matthew Restall

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Review

“Restall skillfully describes a subtler story of relationships both loving and coercive. . . . Bold.” (New Yorker)“Restall has a well-earned reputation as a mythbuster in the history of the New World. . . . A lively, original, and readable book aimed at a wider audience. . . . A remarkable achievement.” (Wall Street Journal)“Blending erudition with enthusiasm, Restall has achieved a rare kind of work—serious scholarship that is impossible to put down.” (Publishers Weekly (starred review))“A methodical deconstruction of the myths surrounding Hernando Cortés’ “Mexican conquest” and the surrender of Montezuma. . . . Throughout, Restall’s assertions are well-supported and difficult to refute, and the timeline that opens the book is particularly helpful. An engaging revisionist exploration of one of human history’s great lies.” (Kirkus)“A narrative that complicates our understanding of a history that, though well-known, is wrong in many of its details. In correcting it, Restall makes a fine contribution to the history of the New World, one that should inspire other re-evaluations of our cherished stories.” (Kirkus (online))“Brilliant deep dive into the history and scholarship. . . . Through diligent research, Restall presents readers with a fascinating view of Montezuma, mounting a convincing argument that Cortes’ self-serving accounts and the traditional narrative are almost surely false.” (BookPage)“Matthew Restall illuminates every topic he touches. His new book is the best study ever--the subtlest, most sensitive, most challenging, and best-informed--on the conquest of Mexico.” (Felipe Fernández-Armesto, author of Columbus and Amerigo)“A new, startlingly persuasive picture of what actually happened during the Spanish Conquest, based on a radical question: What if the tough, canny leaders of these native military empires didn’t suddenly fold up like wet cardboard at the arrival of a couple of hundred bearded oddities from some faraway place?” (Charles Mann, author of 1491)“In a deeply learned history that reads like a detective story, Restall reveals the Gordian knot of myth and fiction that have long hidden the real history of the encounter between Montezuma and Cortes. The history of the Americas will never be the same.”  (Louis S. Warren, author of God’s Red Son:  The Ghost Dance Religion and the Making of Modern America)

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From the Back Cover

A dramatic rethinking of the encounter between Montezuma and Cortés that completely overturns what we know about the Spanish conquest of the AmericasOn November 8, 1519, the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortés first met Montezuma, the Aztec emperor, at the entrance to the capital city of Tenochtitlan. This introduction—the prelude to the Spanish seizure of Mexico and to European colonization of the mainland of the Americas—has long been the symbol of Cortés’s bold and brilliant military genius. Montezuma, on the other hand, is remembered as a coward who gave away a vast empire and touched off a wave of colonial invasions across the hemisphere.But is this really what happened? In a departure from the traditional tellings, When Montezuma Met Cortés uses “the Meeting”—as Restall dubs their first encounter—as the entry point into a comprehensive reevaluation of both Cortés and Montezuma. Drawing on rare primary sources and overlooked accounts by conquistadors and Aztecs alike, Restall explores Cortés’s and Montezuma’s posthumous reputations, their achievements and failures, and the worlds in which they lived—leading, step by step, to a dramatic inversion of the old story. As Restall takes us through this sweeping, revisionist account of a pivotal moment in modern civilization, he calls into question our view of the history of the Americas, and, indeed, of history itself.

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Product details

Hardcover: 560 pages

Publisher: Ecco; 1st Edition edition (January 30, 2018)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0062427261

ISBN-13: 978-0062427267

Product Dimensions:

6 x 1.4 x 9 inches

Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review:

3.3 out of 5 stars

21 customer reviews

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:

#72,181 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

To begin with what's new and convincing, the author builds a good case that Montezuma's "surrender" of his country, a major part of the legend about him and Cortes, may well have originated with a bad translation. To paraphrase the author's explanation, the English language equivalent of Montezuma's welcome was something like, "Let my home be your home." By the time it went through at least one and maybe two translations, it became something like, "I give my country to your king." The mistranslation was undoubtedly helped along by the Spaniards wanting to hear something like it.Another new feature involves seeing Montezuma as a collector. The author makes a good case that Montezuma collected animals of all descriptions including unusual people. Once Cortes and the other Spaniards arrived in his capital, he may well have decided to add them to his collection. Where I had a problem was with the idea that Montezuma wanted to "collect" Spaniards from the moment he heard about them landing in what is now Mexico. A variety of sources have stated that, rather than lure Cortes to the Aztec capital, Montezuma tried to bribe him to stay away. Once the Spaniards did arrive, Montezuma may well have decided to add the invaders to his collection, but it seems unlikely that he started out wanting to do so.So what else is wrong with this book? His view of Cortes fits that category. While it does give a reader pause to realize that Cortes had only one truly successful event in his life, the capture of the Aztec capital, the author tears him down at every opportunity. He comes across as, at best, a tool of the other Spanish commanders and at worst, a mediocrity without authority or a single useful idea in his head. Even Cortes's worst enemies never underrated him so much.Then there is the author's unwillingness to face the role sacrifice played in the Aztec religion. Justifiably he does question the claim that vast numbers of captured warriors ended up on Aztec sacrificial stones. Starting in the Classical world, European writers did have a fondest for adding zeros to any number they wrote down. That said, as often as possible when writing about the Aztecs, the author insists on using the term "execution" rather than sacrifice. He does this in large measure so that he can claim that the Spaniards killed more people than the Aztecs. That is very probably true. The trouble is emphasizing Spanish brutality conflicts with his next claim, that in the wars of the Aztec wars of the 1520s, the Spaniards were more or less along for the ride.The author's enthusiasm to see the defeat of the Aztecs as primarily a victory for their indigenous rivals leads to his claim that the Spaniards played a rather minor military role in the victory. Having painted himself into that corner, the author has no way to explain how the Spanish killed or enslaved vast numbers of not only Aztecs but other Mesoamericans as well and finally ended up in control of what they called New Spain. In fact the author doesn't even try to explain it.Despite these objections, the author has unquestionably done his research and has valuable contributions to make. Less special pleading would have helped communicate these useful contribution much more effectively.

To be honest I'm just halfway thru the book. Had to stop twice because the writing style makes it very difficult to get thru a chapter without having to yell out loud things like "yes, you've told me that a hundred times in the last 50 pages".It is obvious the writer fervently believes in his theory and 'facts',exhaustively repeating them over and over. And repeats them. And repeats them. And.....Another annoying constant is that the author is always indicating that a subject or reference "will be covered in a subsequent chapter", it's so frequent you want to scream -again!This is one of the most frustrating books I've ever (attempted) to read).

Matthew Restall is right: our view of what happened "when Montezuma met Cortés" has been completely distorted by 5 centuries of mythmaking, misrepresentations, and outright fabrications, all centered on the larger-than-life figure of Cortés. Beginning with his letters to Carlos I in the 1520s, and the hagiography of him by Gómara shortly thereafter, Cortés's central role in the Conquest has been portrayed as one of complete control and mastery of the events that led to the fall of Tenochtitlan. Even as historical interpretations of Cortés have changed throughout the centuries--from a courageous deliverer of Christianity and civilization to a brutally violent and genocidal warmonger-- he is constantly portrayed as a brilliant, yet conniving, strategist, with perfect information, and in complete control of the events.Restall's thoroughly researched book does two things brilliantly. One, he shows us, through what must have been an exhaustive reading of every narrative ever written about the Conquest since it happened more than 500 years ago, HOW the story became shaped and WHY it's been so hard to dislodge, even today. And two, he broadens our view of those events between 1519-1521 as they actually unfolded in the real world of Mesoamerican politics, a world Cortés had little insight into (his two translators notwithstanding), and even less control over.There is a lot of underlying humor in the book as Restall highlights some of the more absurd reimaginings various authors came up with recreating the narrative. I found myself chuckling many times as I listened to the book. I thought the narration was terrific, spot on.

Scholarly deconstruction of the Cortez story, one of my favorites in history. It helps, going into this, to be familiar with it already. The author makes a good case, I came away convinced, but felt a little sad to have the splendor, if that's the word I want, stripped from the familiar tale. One thing that kind of annoyed me was his insistence on calling Aztec human sacrifice, " ritual execution." Come on, dude!

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