Why read When Montezuma Met Cortés?

Book cover of When Montezuma Met Cortés: The True Story of the Meeting that Changed History

Book description

A dramatic rethinking of the encounter between Montezuma and Hernando Cortes that completely overturns what we know about the Spanish conquest of the Americas

On November 8, 1519, the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortes first met Montezuma, the Aztec emperor, at the entrance to the capital city of Tenochtitlan. This introduction-the…

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Why read it?

1 author picked When Montezuma Met Cortés as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

David Carballo

Author

For a couple of decades, Restall has been at the vanguard of a group of historians developing what is known as the New Conquest History, an effort to balance the Eurocentrism of earlier histories of the Aztec-Spanish War and its aftermath. I’ve used an earlier book of his, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest, in my teaching, as it is succinctly argued and provokes students to think critically about the early history of Latin America. This book builds on that and narrows the focus to how the historic encounter between Moctezuma, the Great Speaker of Tenochtitlan and the most…

From David's list on The best books on the Aztec-Spanish War (aka “Conquest of Mexico”).