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Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest

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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.

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.

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.

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.

In Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest (2003) Matthew Restall challenges both popular memory and traditional historiography by analyzing the development of popular myths and by discussing more accurate positions as supported by evidence. Restall argues that much of what people believe about the conquest of the Americas is rooted in cultural bias, tendencies to overemphasize dramatically new events, and accidents of time and place, for example. By carefully showing the development of myths as related to the conquest and legacies over time, Restall also shows how the Atlantic World contributed to these myths and was subsequently shaped by these myths. In addition, this approach provides agency to more actors; therefore, Restall provides a more believable account of events.

In the first several myths, Restall challenges accepted ideas about those who came to and settled in the Americas. The notion that Christopher Columbus and Hernan Cortes were exceptional men has carried great importance when their discoveries and accomplishments (from a European point-of-view) would have happened without them. In addition, there were no armies of soldiers as popularly portrayed. Once again, it was everyday people--sailors, farmers, artisans, merchants, farmers, slave owners, royal officials, aides, or secretaries--who conquered the so-called New World. Like those who later colonized parts of the present-day United States, these men sought wealth, while risking everything. Moreover, it was not simply a group of "white" men involved in deliberate conquests and sometimes murders, as the Black Legend tends to suggest. Both Native-Americans and African-Americans were important allies for Europeans.

The next series of myths relate more directly to the relationship between the peoples of the so-called New and Old Worlds. The "myth of completion" discusses how that the Spanish Conquest was never truly complete and explains that Indians were never as docile as suggested by then-contemporary reports. Due to constraints of geography and acts by Native-Americans, Spaniards were not always successful--present-day Florida and New Mexico proved to be too difficult at times. Even in places more completely conquered by Europeans, Native-Americans retained much of their dress, religion, and other cultural mores. Additionally, Indians but especially Europeans thought they were able to communicate with signs and symbols and with translators. In reality, there was a great deal of miscommunication. For instance, translations went from Spanish to Yucatec Maya to Nahuatl. The next myths, "the myth of native desolation" and the "myth of superiority" say that Indians were uncivilized, thought Spanish explorers were gods, lacked true speech, lacked writing, and underused or misused environmental resources, for example. These beliefs can simply be explained by recognizing that anytime one culture attempts to conquer another culture, the invaders accuse the "invadees" of not being civilized. In reality, any decline in the strength or power of Native Americans can be explained by recognizing the unintended exchange of disease, which killed approximately ninety percent of all peoples in North and South America in one generation - a factor that cannot be underplayed and one that deserves more attention than found in Seven Myths for its role in creating fictions.

Methodologically, Restall uses a variety of sources to touch on the historical memory, intellectual history, and social history of the conquest. Seven Myths makes use of novels, films, television programs, Internet sites, images, and extant texts to discuss and debunk popular notions. This monograph is somewhat limited by only exploring seven myths and by not explaining why these myths were most important. Readers could benefit from some kind of introduction that clearly and accurately provides an overview of the Spanish Conquest. With all of these myths explored, what else is inaccurate? What is true? Nonetheless, Seven Myths is an interesting and exciting read that sheds new light on important areas of historical discourse and deserves wide readership.

While I love the stories of the Spanish conquerers, this book makes some great points that chip away at viewpoint of Cortes and his soldiers as brilliant strategists. Simple put, Restall analyzes the Spanish conquest through contextual history, not the Great Man theory of history. This was a very refreshing work and should be read by all students of Latin American history.

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.

This is an excellent book that shows other aspects of the conquest, that will enrich the information about this time.

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 perception of history through `important' characters of the period, their incomplete accounts, the alliance with natives and West Africans, and the non-qualification of conquistadors for military knowledge.

Some men like Columbus, Cortez and Pizarro had the monopoly on `history'. Restall says that many other conquests and heroic achievement have been done the same way as this "handful of exceptional men"; they followed the same procedure of Conquest of many others and have not been alone in their adventures. However, maybe the fact of being the first conquistadors to achieve such adventures can be seen as an exceptional accomplishment; regardless of the means they used to do it. The `non-important' Conquistadors following these heroes were not soldiers. They were mainly artisans and farmers and learned using weapons practicing in the Americas. Thus the average conquistador according to Restall "would be a young man... semiliterate ...trained in a particular trade or profession ... armed as well as he could afford ... would be ready to ... risk his life ... in order to conquer somewhere wealthy and well populated. He would not in any sense be a soldier in the armies of the king of Spain." (43) Spanish troops were also made of voluntary native alliances in order to conquer other cities. It is true that each party used the other for, more or less, the same main motive i.e. the possession of territories; nevertheless, the Spanish conquistador camp ended up victorious, since it was using natives to persecute other natives.

Then Restall talks about the partial account of conquistadors regarding the non-conquest of some nomadic and semi-sedentary populations, the illusion of achieving a "peaceful and benevolent" action towards natives as they were spreading the word of god and the resistance of natives in terms of religion, language and habits. The difference of culture and the different accounts of events by natives, Spaniards and historians make it difficult to have an accurate history of native-Spaniards relationships. Restall indicates that some meanings were lost during the process of the indirect interpretation as was the case with Cortés and Moctezuma, "Cortés spoke Spanish to Aguilar, Aguilar translated into Yucatec Maya, which Malinche then translated into Nahuatl, before repeating the process in reverse" (85).

The author concludes by explaining the conquest outcome mentioning the diseases issue, natives' disunity, the superiority of Spanish weaponry and the different view of war each side had. What I find interesting in the book process is that Restall makes us consider accounts of similar cases in history that happened elsewhere and in other periods of time, yet with the same Western protagonist trying to `civilize' African natives on the pretext of spreading the will of God.

The book is a good lesson of history that teaches us how past facts are subject to change according to perspectives and point of views related to the historian (researcher, reporter, witness), and how "historians have become increasingly concerned with the problem of subjectivity and our inability to escape it." (xv)

Iconoclastic, restrained and erudite, this outstanding contribution to historical truth was judged by the Economist to be one of the ten best history books of 2003.