#conquistadors

[1five1two]

'The Conquest of the Colorado'. Augusto Ferrer-Dalmau. 2017.

[obsessedwithhistory1999]

[swedebeast]

Aaaaand I have just finished watching a 3 hour long essay of a book I haven't read. Man, the magic of DJ Peach Cobbler is strong.

[pulpsandcomics2]

Aztecs fight the Spanish Conquistadors

[tootditoot]

Trying to gauge how I'm gonna draw an entire armada of this fellows

[angelanvar]

My last miniatures of the year. The Halberdiers are really intended as a detachment, but I had spare parts to make another command group and a unit filler for a regiment of 15.

[occvltswim]

❝ Capac Cuna Inca o Genealogía de los Incas (18th century) ❞

This canvas illustrates the “Inca family tree”. The Spanish monarchy of the time sought to legitimize its absolute power over the conquered territories. To this end, the Spanish were obliged to demonstrate that the conquest of Peru did not spell the end of the Inca dynasty, and that the kings of Spain were their only legitimate heirs. In this painting, the Holy Roman Emperor Carlos V appears as the successor to Atahualpa, and Carlos IV – the last king represented – figures as the 25th Inca emperor of Peru.

[semper-legens]

112. Conquistadors, by Michael Wood

Owned?: No, library Page count: 282 My summary: The history of Europe's contact with the Americas is a fraught one. From the instant that Europeans arrived on American shores, the Europeans have wished to take over, and claim the land for their own, in the name of their rulers and their religion. This is the story of some of the early conquistadors - Hernán Cortés, Francisco and Hernando Pizarro, Francisco de Orellana, and Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. My rating: 4/5 My commentary:

This book was interesting. I picked it up as part of my research - another tangential one, I'm interested in the Spanish colonisation of the Caribbean, not mainland America, but it's useful to know just what was going on in mainland America as a point of comparison and historical interest. This book, per its name, focuses on five of the conquistadors who had a major impact on the colonisation of Central and South America, and in particular on the Aztec and Inca peoples. Well, except the last name. Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca was on a conquistador voyage, got shipwrecked, and was taken in by the local people of what we think is Galveston Island. He then spent years as something of a wanderer, before chancing across other survivors of his shipwreck and walking to Mexico, then rejoining the Spanish. His time with the indigenous peoples he came across made him sympathetic to them, and he seemed to have an admiration for them and their cultures as he wandered - not uniquely for people from this time period, but in a time when white Spaniards were en-masse denouncing 'Indians' as being bestial savages, he stands out as a sympathetic voice. The others…not so much. I already knew some of the brutality with which the conquistadors treated Indigenous people (even other white Spanish people thought their methods extreme) so seeing it here was no surprise, but it was still eye-opening just how quickly any pretense at diplomacy was dropped in favour of kidnap and murder. Great civilisers, my arse.

But yeah, how does this book specifically portray the conquistadors and Indigenous America? I'd say it's trying to be balanced and nuanced while reporting fact. It condemns the brutality of the conquistadors, while painting a detailed picture of them so that we understand, as best we can, why the events transpired as they did. It uses Native writings as well as Spanish writings, so that we get both portrayals of an event and see where they agree and where they disagree. It doesn't shy away from the massacres committed by the Spanish, it just tries to portray them as openly and honestly as it can, which is fair enough. I'm not in the business of portraying people who committed atrocities as complete inhuman monsters, it detracts from the reality that, if you are a person who sees people of other racial groups as 'other' or 'lesser', this could be you - genocidal people are still people, and anyone can be caught up in that ideology. I only really have two complaints with the book as a whole. One, that the author refers to Indigenous people as 'Indians' pretty openly. This book was written in 2000, mate, you should know better than that. The other was that at times, it turned into something of a travelogue for the author's own travels across America making a documentary on the conquistadors (to which this book is a companion). Him describing his modern-day journey just felt like padding at best, and lowkey boasting of his adventures at worst. But overall, this is a pretty solid book, and some good coverage of a pretty awful historical period.

Next, Ancient Britannia proves to be a dangerous place for three kids…