Conquest of the Americas

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Conquest of the Americas" on Not Just the Tudors

Release Date: April 3, 2025
Host: Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Guest: Professor Matthew Restall, Edwin Earl Sparks Professor of Colonial Latin American History at Penn State College of the Liberal Arts

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Introduction

In the episode titled "Conquest of the Americas," Professor Susannah Lipscomb delves into the complex history of the Spanish conquest, challenging long-held narratives that have shaped our understanding of this pivotal period. Joined by renowned historian Professor Matthew Restall, the discussion centers on debunking seven pervasive myths surrounding the Spanish colonization of the Americas.

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Motivation for Challenging Traditional Narratives

Professor Restall elucidates his impetus for questioning the conventional stories taught for centuries. Originating from his experiences in graduate seminars, he noticed a recurring pattern where students uncritically accepted the "traditional narrative" derived from conquistador accounts. This realization propelled him to author Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest, aiming to present a more nuanced and accurate portrayal of historical events.

Notable Quote:
"Those of us who work for universities sometimes complain about the demands on our time that take us away from doing our research and scholarship. So it's always good to remember that, in fact, our interaction with students can be crucial to that scholarly process..."
—Professor Matthew Restall [03:58]

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The Seven Myths

1. Myth of Exceptional Men

The first myth challenges the glorified image of conquistadors like Columbus, Cortés, and Pizarro as lone heroes whose exceptionalism solely drove the conquest.

Key Points:

• Historical Context: The "great men" narrative simplifies history by attributing significant events to a handful of individuals, ignoring broader socio-political factors.
• Reality Check: The conquest involved numerous individuals and was facilitated by complex alliances and circumstances beyond any single leader's control.
• Impact of Repetition: Stories of heroism were popularized because they were easy to retell and remember, reinforcing the myth over time.

Notable Quote:
"The more you can find a society which already does that, with the majority of the population already live in peace, providing labor and goods to support a social and political hierarchy, the better your chances are of success."
—Professor Matthew Restall [22:44]

2. Myth of the King's Army

Contrary to the belief that the Spanish conquest was executed by a formal army directly under royal command, Restall posits that conquistadors were more akin to "armed entrepreneurs."

Key Points:

• Lack of Standing Armies: Early 16th-century Spain did not maintain permanent armies in the Americas; conquistadors were private individuals funding their ventures.
• Nature of Conquest: These "armed entrepreneurs" operated independently, often driven by personal gain rather than direct orders from the Spanish monarchy.

Notable Quote:
"The Spaniards did not have an army in the Americas, ever. Not only was the conquest not carried out by a Spanish army, but those colonies were not maintained by a permanent Spanish army either, not one that was sent from Spain."
—Professor Matthew Restall [27:29]

3. Myth of Miscommunication

While traditional narratives suggest that language barriers led to misunderstandings and facilitated conquest, Restall argues that communication was more complex and bidirectional.

Key Points:

• Role of Interpreters: Figures like Malinche were pivotal, but their portrayal as mere conduits overlooks their agency and the intricate dynamics of translation.
• Flawed Systems: The "game of telephone" resulting from multiple layers of translation often led to significant misinterpretations, affecting negotiations and alliances.

Notable Quote:
"Even indigenous language sources aren't the smoking gun that explodes the myths. Just because something was written in an indigenous language doesn't mean to say that it provides us or offers us a window onto the truth that has been denied us by the foggy windows of conquistador accounts."
—Professor Matthew Restall [10:41]

4. Myth of Completion

The notion that the Spanish quickly and fully subdued the Americas is debunked by highlighting the prolonged and incomplete nature of conquest.

Key Points:

• Extended Warfare: The conquest spanned decades, with continuous resistance from indigenous populations, notably the Maya, well into the 17th century.
• Autonomy of Indigenous Communities: Even during the colonial period, vast regions remained under indigenous control, maintaining their autonomy and governance structures.

Notable Quote:
"The conquest of Mexico did not end in 1521, it began in 1521."
—Professor Matthew Restall [35:06]

5. Myth of Native Desolation

Contrary to the image of conquered indigenous populations as passive victims, Restall emphasizes their resilience and active role in shaping colonial societies.

Key Points:

• Cultural Continuity and Adaptation: Indigenous peoples incorporated Christianity into their own belief systems, creating diverse forms of Catholicism.
• Agency and Resistance: Instead of succumbing to "desolation," indigenous communities actively negotiated, resisted, and adapted to colonial pressures, preserving their identities and cultures.

Notable Quote:
"Culture doesn't remain static, it evolves. And an indigenous person wearing indigenous clothing that actually doesn't date from before Spaniards arrived anyway and is using a cell phone is still an indigenous person..."
—Professor Matthew Restall [46:45]

6. Myth of Superiority

The belief that Spanish military technology and divine favor were the sole reasons for their success is challenged.

Key Points:

• Questioning Military Advantage: While Spaniards had certain technological advantages, they were not insurmountable. Factors like alliances, disease, and indigenous support played significant roles.
• Rejection of Simplistic Explanations: The conquest cannot be solely attributed to Spanish superiority; it resulted from a combination of factors, including internal divisions among indigenous groups.

Notable Quote:
"They were not really the best. And they were a number of complex factors."'
—Professor Matthew Restall [22:44]

7. Myth of Imperial Justification

Historically, the conquest was framed as a divine mission to civilize and convert indigenous populations, serving as ideological justification for imperialism.

Key Points:

• Circular Justifications: The narrative of divine approval was reinforced by the apparent rapid conversion of indigenous peoples, perpetuating the idea of a godly mandate.
• Ideological Persistence: These justifications evolved over time, adapting to new contexts but maintaining the underlying rationale for empire-building.

Notable Quote:
"Religion is the great justification. ... There's a kind of a circular argument, right? We're here because God wanted us here in order to convert indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples have embraced Christianity, which therefore confirms that that's what they wanted all along..."
—Professor Matthew Restall [37:53]

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Rethinking Terminology: The "Spanish Conquest"

Restall critiques the term "Spanish conquest" for its inherent biases and historical baggage. He highlights how the phrase originated from biased 16th-century accounts aimed at glorifying conquistadors like Cortés. The term perpetuates a one-sided narrative, overshadowing the collaborative and multifaceted nature of colonization.

Notable Quote:
"The word conquest is so heavily freighted... Our phrase comes from the Spanish la conquista de Mexico, which is really set in stone by a book that was written by someone who was hired by Cortés's son to write a story, to write the history of the conquest of Mexico as a kind of hagiography of Cortés to glorify his father, Cortés."
—Professor Matthew Restall [51:16]

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Conclusion

The episode "Conquest of the Americas" offers a profound re-examination of the Spanish colonization narratives, urging listeners to move beyond simplistic and glorified histories. Professor Restall emphasizes the importance of understanding the complexities, alliances, and indigenous agency that shaped the conquest. By debunking the seven myths, the discussion encourages a more balanced and accurate appreciation of this significant historical epoch.

Notable Quote:
"The more we're talking about these things and throw different words and phrases and terms back and forth, the more we're thinking along the right lines and beginning to unpack that traditional narrative and replace it with a story that is, yes, not as simple, but it's far more interesting."
—Professor Matthew Restall [53:37]

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Final Thoughts:
This episode serves as a crucial reminder of the importance of critical historiography. By challenging entrenched myths and advocating for a more inclusive and multifaceted understanding of history, "Conquest of the Americas" provides invaluable insights for both history enthusiasts and scholars alike.

Transcript

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb. If you'd like Not Just the Tudors ad free to get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to historyhit. With a historyhit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my own recent two part series A World Torn the Dissolution of the Monasteries and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com forward/subscribe.

[Holly Fry]

Our Skin Tells a Story Join me, Holly Fry, and a slate of incredible guests as we are all inspired by their journeys with psoriasis. Along with these uplifting and candid personal histories, we take a step back into the bizarre and occasionally poisonous history of our skin and how we take care of it. Whether you're looking for inspiration on your own skincare journey or are curious about the sometimes strange history of how we treat our skin, your find genuine, empathetic, transformative conversations here on our skin. Listen to Our skin on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb and welcome to Not Just the Tudors from History Hit the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to samurais, relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. For five centuries we've been told heroic tales of brave conquistadors who ventured into unknown lands and toppled mighty empires with just a handful of men. Christopher Columbus, the intrepid explorer who discovered the New World Hernan Cortes, conqueror of the Aztec empire and Francisco Pizarro, who brought down the Incas. They, among others, have been immortalized as larger than life heroes who changed the course of history through sheer force of will and military genius. Columbus Day is celebrated each October in the United States, glossing over the less palatable aspects of his voyages. Columbus is painted as an exceptional visionary who proved that the world was round. Cortes cunning conquest of Mexico is attributed to his personal courage and innovative strategies and is often portrayed as one of the most significant events in world history, achieved by Spanish superiority and ingenuity. And Pizarro is remembered for sports, swiftly establishing Spanish dominion over Peru. But how much of what we think we know about the conquest of the Americas is myth? And how much is reality? Throughout this month on Not Just the Tudors, I'll be peeling back the layers of legend to reveal a more complex and nuanced history involving diverse groups of people, complex alliances and factors far beyond the control of any individual conquistador. To get our series underway, my guest today is Professor Matthew Restor, Edwin Earl Sparks professor of Colonial Latin American History at Penn State College of the Liberal Arts in Pennsylvania. Professor Restore has published an extraordinary 30 books in seven languages and 80 articles and essays. An updated edition of his best known work, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest, was released in 2021. I'm Professor Sidan Lipscomb, and you're listening to not just the Tudors. Professor Restall, welcome to the podcast.

[Professor Matthew Restall]

Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Can I start by asking you why you decided to challenge the widely believed myths about the Spanish colonization of the Americas?

[Professor Matthew Restall]

Those of us who work for universities sometimes complain about the demands on our time that take us away from doing our research and scholarship. So it's always good to remember that, in fact, our interaction with students can be crucial to that scholarly process at both ends of it, as it were, not just at the other end. Once the book is out and one is able to then use the book in the classroom and get feedback from students and use it as a teaching tool, but at the beginning, end, and that's how I got to this particular topic is I realized during the course of teaching, first of all, very early in my career, only undergraduates and then graduate students as well, doctoral students, that I kept talking about the traditional narrative. What's the traditional narrative? They'd say, explain. This is the traditional narrative that stems from accounts written by the conquistadors. Okay, so far, so good. And then they said, but you keep talking about myths. What do you mean by myths? The misconceptions that stemmed from that traditional narrative. Essentially, my arguments that that narrative is wrong and that we can therefore revisit all of the sources, look for new ones, revisit that history, and tell a different story that may or may not be better, more complicated, more interesting, and so on. So it was out of the classroom that the idea came. And in fact, the book that you mentioned earlier, the Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest, came, came out of a graduate seminar I taught with that exact title. And by the end of that semester teaching that class, I realized that this was not just a class, that this was a book that I needed to write.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And why do you think these myths had become widely accepted as true?

[Professor Matthew Restall]

I think there's two reasons there, and one is fairly simple and one is a little more complicated. And the simple one is just that we like good stories. And the traditional narrative persisted not just because the victors write History, they had a lock in on the story. It was repeated over and over. It was advantageous to the Spanish perspective. It wasn't just that, it was that it was a good story. And in fact, if you look in detail at what the Spaniards wrote, by Spaniards, I mean the conquistadors, friars, chroniclers, royal historians and so on, they actually wrote a variety of different versions of the story. And there are many details in there that have not survived in the popular imagination. So over time, the traditional narrative became more and more simple, more and more a kind of a good swashbuckling story. There are elements that weren't really in there at the beginning that got added, like the myth of the great romance between Hernando Cortez and his indigenous interpreter, who's gone down in history with the name of Malinche. So these elements get added to make it even more of a good story. And that helps to explain way it survives into this century. The other reason is a little more complicated, and it's to do with imperial justification. Traditional narrative was created in order to justify invasion and conquest and colonization. And so as a basic story with crucial elements like the inferiority of indigenous cultures, their need to be civilized, mythological moments like the surrender of Montezuma, these kinds of elements translate over into larger stories of imperial justification. So as we move through the centuries, from the moment when the Spaniards encountered the Aztecs to the present, the world becomes more and more imperial. The world gets taken over by empires. And so the need for imperial justification for an ideology that justifies those empires becomes more and more important. And that helps to give that traditional narrative and all its mythology life again, you know, through the 20th century.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

So to what extent then are these myths things that have contemporary roots? I'm thinking of, you know, Cortes's letters, for example, back to Spain. And to what extent are they later propagations in order to justify empire?

[Professor Matthew Restall]

As that becomes more important, the original accounts, the Ur texts, if you like, the sort of foundational texts, are obviously really important. And in the case of Mexico, there is one particular set of original texts that is extremely important for various reasons and helps to explain why the story of the conquest of Mexico, more so than the story of the conquest in other parts of the Americas, is the one that has most seized the popular global imagination for so many centuries. And you mentioned it, Susanna, I mean, Cortez. I have a very negative opinion of Cortez. As a result of studying him for many years. He went from being someone I thought was a flawed character to somebody who just strikes me as an absolute monster. But one still has to recognize the talents and skills that monsters have and try to be objective about that. He was not a great general. He was not a great diplomat. He was not those things that he wanted the world to believe he was. He was a great opportunist and a manipulator and a master liar. And he wrote accounts of his actions during the war of invasion that were very skillfully crafted with just enough elements that were true to kind of lend a sort of tint of veracity to the entire story, but with just absolute ball face lies in there and inversions of reality. All of it designed to make him look good. It was all really about him. But of course, in justifying his presence and his actions, he ended up providing a great rationale for justifying the general Spanish presence in Mexico. And those letters survived because they were published, and they were published almost immediately before the wars were over. Obviously, we, therefore, we don't have the original letters. We have many different versions of the. Of the printed version. But that means that the story became widely known, not just in Spain, but throughout Europe almost immediately. And it's not just a question of the history being written by the victors. It's history's written by the storytellers. And whoever gets the first story in always has an advantage. And sure, we could say, well, Cortez was the victor. I would say Cortez was the first storyteller, and he told a good story. And the problem is what he told is not all true.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And I suppose one of the ways in which one starts to go about breaking down some of these myths is turning to different sources where possible. Indigenous language sources, for example, how much has it been necessary to analyze those in order to try and get closer to the truth as far as we can access it?

[Professor Matthew Restall]

This is a really important topic. And I would say, first of all, as a general principle in the 2000s, but it has been true for a while, but it definitely is true now. If you want to study indigenous peoples, you have to learn their languages, as much of their languages as you can. I'm not saying that work on Mexico is invalid if you're not a fluent speaker of Nahuat. Nahuatl was in central Mexican language that was spoken by the Aztecs. It's still spoken by millions of people today. Absolutely. A living language. It's very possible to learn it and to be able to speak it. I'm not saying one has to become fluent in Nahuac to study the Aztecs or in Mayan. Languages, of which there are dozens. However, there are many ways in which you can acquire enough knowledge, particularly knowledge of written Nahuatl and other Mesoamerican languages, that will help you to better understand indigenous perspectives, indigenous ways of seeing the world. I think there's just, as I said, kind of a principle there. It seems very wrong to me to write about indigenous peoples, even indigenous peoples who live 500 years ago, without taking the time to learn as much of their language as you can. And I think this is a general, even a larger general principle. If you're going to write about colonial Mexico, colonial Central America, and perhaps your work is focused more on Europeans and African descended peoples in those parts of the world, it's still important to understand indigenous languages, particularly as those languages survive to this day. The Mesoamerican languages, Mexican and Central Mexican languages, with a very few exceptions, are living languages that are still spoken today. Having said that, indigenous language sources aren't the smoking gun that explodes the myths. Just because something was written in an indigenous language doesn't mean to say that it provides us or offers us a window onto the truth that has been denied us by the foggy windows of concubine accounts. So indigenous sources have to be treated with the same delicacy as Spanish sources. My argument about Cortez's letters is you have to assume that every single sentence in those letters is a lie. And then you can then discover which parts aren't lies or which parts are half truths by comparing what Cortez says against other sources. That sounds very like an extreme way of reading a text. It's just that's how one should approach any historical text, particularly something from 500 years ago. And I would argue that one has to approach indigenous language sources with exactly the same kind of pinch of salt, maybe a whole salt shaker, in order to figure out, well, really who wrote this and when did they write it and why? What was their purpose? What was their audience? What are the conventions of the genre that are determining why they're writing it? An example that I love is an amazing letter that is in the archives in Seville, written in Latin, written in the mid 16th century, beautiful Latin, written by a nephew of the emperor Montezuma. So he was a teenager during the war, survived the war. The Spaniards confirmed members of the Aztec royalty and nobility in their high offices as part of how their project of colonization succeeded. They didn't actually take everything over and run everything. The empire essentially continued to be run by indigenous nobles and former members of the Aztec royal family. So this chap, this nephew, he survives as someone of. Of status. He's an aristocrat. He's educated by Franciscan friars in Tenochtitlan, as it is slowly turning into Mexico City. And he becomes a very skilled writer of his own language of Nahuat, which is immediately alphabetized. Central Mexicans like Myers understand the concept of the Alphabet immediately and immediately start to use it. They already had a writing system, so they understand the concept. So he writes in Nahuat, he writes in Spanish, and he writes in Latin, a beautiful Latin, and writes a letter to the king of Spain, and that's why that letter is still in the archives in Seville. And he talks about his uncle and what happened in the war. An indigenous source. It's so tempting to think, okay, this is it. Now I'm going to be able to tell you a story that counters the traditional narrative, because this is the indigenous perspective. Except here's the thing, Susanna, what does this nephew say? Oh, my uncle. As soon as the Spaniards arrived, he knew that they were the true rulers of our land and that they brought the true faith. And he begged them to convert him to Christianity immediately. So not only do we have a sort of a confirmation of the Cortez based traditional narrative, but this is an even more extreme version. This is sort of the most extreme hispanocentric, Christian centric version of the story that we could possibly find written by someone who's, you know, a member of the Aztec royal family. Doesn't mean we have to throw that source out. No, not at all. It just means that it's a good example of how using indigenous sources, whether they are in Nahuat or written in another language by an indigenous person, we have to handle that very gingerly and be very careful as to how we allow that to change the story for us. And of course, in this particular case, it's all about the impact of Christianity and the impact of this new system of how this guy preserves his position. Why is he writing to the king? Well, he wants an increased in the pension amount that he gets. He wants confirmation of certain titles and lands that he's claiming in competition with other members of the royal family, Aztec royal family. He's writing as one royal to another, hoping to, you know, be able to connect with him and. And improve his own personal status. So it's not simple, it's more complicated. But I think in the end, it's a far more interesting story.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Matthew, I don't think I've ever heard someone say quite so explicitly, treat every source as if every sentence is a lie. Brilliant approach to the study of history. Let us then try to look briefly at the seven myths that you've identified. So the first is what you call the myth of exceptional men. We've talked a little bit about Cortez already, but this is also about extraordinary skill and heroism of the big names like Columbus and Pizarro as well. What do you make of them? Were they not exceptional men in your view? And what was the purpose in glorifying them as exceptional men if they weren't?

[Professor Matthew Restall]

I think that there's always been a trend in the way that human beings have remembered history and created history, going back long before the creation of formal discipline of history to shape simple, exciting stories around heroes. I think that's, that's in all human cultures there were always heroes. Because of the nature of human history, those heroes tend to be men, right? That's obviously like a whole other subject, that's a whole other podcast series. Why is it, why is it such a blokes all the time, right? So that aside, it's going to be men. And you want your men to be, to be heroic figures in order to sort of put them up against the flawed heroes, the anti heroes and so on. But all that does is just reinforce the notion that events are created by, changed by a very small number of figures, whether they are heroic or flawed. It makes the story easier to tell. It makes the story easier to remember in the days when stories are being passed on orally only it makes those stories easier. Even if we go, let's go forward through the centuries from the era of the Spanish conquests, we get to the 19th century when stories are being passed around through broadsheets and newspapers and so on. Again, there's not a lot of space. You don't have a lot of attention from people. It's much more effective to shape those stories around great men. And then in the 19th century, that becomes an entire philosophy of a way of looking at the world and looking at history. In fact, you know, historians refer to it as the great men view of history with a capital G and a capital M. So it shouldn't surprise us that the traditional story elevates certain figures, particularly those who did something first, like Columbus, right? He's kind of tagged with being the first. He gets primacy. And it doesn't matter whether he was or not and how much that is challenged. And it's challenged immediately, and it's challenged, you know, for all the last 500 years or so. It doesn't matter he's got that kind of tag on him as the first Cortez as the first to enter into the Aztec capital, and then Pizarro with the Inca empire as well. So that shouldn't surprise us. It all kind of makes sense when we look at the reality. It helps us to understand even more why the great men version of history has survived for so long. Because the reality doesn't make for a story that as simple and straightforward. For example, to kind of attack that Columbus is a better case really than Cortez. Because if you pick up any book on Columbus, you'll see there's. There are maps of the Atlantic Ocean showing his four voyages and these little dots going across the ocean indicating which of the voyages we're mapping. But a really accurate map of the Atlantic Ocean in the late 15th and early 16th century, so in Columbus's era would have hundreds of lines going across the ocean. I actually tried to make such a map in order to illustrate this point, and in the end gave up because first of all, I couldn't be sure what route different people were taking. That information simply wasn't there and available. But even by guessing, the whole Atlantic Ocean just became all shaded in. I realized, wow, I'm actually convincing myself of something that I wasn't sure was really true. Even more so, there were thousands of Spaniards, Portuguese and Northern Italian men sailing into the Atlantic Ocean for decades before Columbus made his crossing. There were voyages going out into the Atlantic every year. And they're getting further and further out that gradually, one by one, discovering all of the islands that are in the Atlantic Ocean. And inevitably, once they had figured out where the currents and winds went, what that kind of cycle was, there are things called gyres, the kind of huge loops that determined where you can sail across to from Europe to the Atlantic and where you can sail back. And once those had been discovered through trial and error, it was inevitable that people by the hundreds and then thousands were going to make that voyage. And so to attack Columbus's exceptionalism, from my point of view, isn't really about his primacy. Going after whether he was the first or not is a show. It's a valid discussion. We can talk about Vikings, we can talk about, you know, the unknown pilots. There's many things that we can talk about. You know, fishermen from Bristol, did they actually technically discover America by some of them set foot on the coast of Newfoundland or something? They certainly would have seen that coast. So does that count? Sure. That's a fun conversation to have. I think a more profitable One is to think about the sheer number of people who are making those journeys and the counterfactual. Oh, what would have happened if Columbus had his ships had all gone down in the Caribbean on his first voyage? Would we know about him? Would he matter? Yeah, we'd know about him. He'd be one of any of the others, like the Vivaldi brothers, who, you know, who did it in a previous century, who never came back. We would know about Columbus on that level. But more famous would be whoever happened to do it. Maybe the very next year, maybe months, within. Definitely within a few years, somebody else would have discovered those islands on that coastline, and they would then have been the exceptional man. Right. So when you look at it that way, you see how kind of absurd the. The creation of these heroes really is.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And you argue in your book that the techniques of colonial expansion were a lot more complex than just the skill of a glorified leader. So what kind of techniques were deployed? And also, what were the factors that were important in the success of conquest that couldn't just be put down to the military genius of their leaders?

[Professor Matthew Restall]

Once we try and pull the rug out from under the most famous man, Columbus, Cortes, Pizarro, if we're going to accept that they weren't in charge of everything that we can't understand and explain events based on their genius and brilliance, that opens up a whole other set of questions, right? We're like, fine, if you want to attack them, that's great, but you still have to explain what happened, therefore. And that's really where it gets more interesting and more fun. Because, of course, in reality, the explanations are many. There's a whole list of explanations. It's not just, well, where, you know, the Cortez view, well, we're the best. And we also had God on our side, incidentally, that. That. That kind of helped as well. That's it. It's very simple. The reality is, no, they weren't really the best. And they were a number of complex factors. And I would say, where are we going to begin with those factors? Let's begin with indigenous peoples, because this is ultimately all about indigenous peoples of the Americas. Spaniards were looking for people. They weren't looking for lands. They were looking for people. It's very easy for us to kind of forget that when going back to the map of the dots across the Atlantic Ocean, there's no people on that map. It looks as if Columbus and then all the Spaniards and other Europeans who come after are looking for the land to take the land and Especially those of us who, who live and work in, in the United States, in North America, where English colonists came. And again, this is a huge oversimplification, but they didn't want indigenous peoples. They weren't interested in them. They preferred. They weren't there. They just wanted the land. It's easy for that notion of what's sometimes called settler colonialism to be extended and wrongly extended to the whole history of the whole of the Americas, all of that hemisphere. So Spaniards are looking for people in order to build their colonies upon those people initially to trade, to acquire wealth, yes, to convert them to Christianity. But that's all about moving as quickly as possible from the uncertainties and the violence of initial contact to a peaceful situation in which indigenous peoples essentially provide the goods and the labor to underpin those colonies. Well, okay, so how do you do that? Already we're away from the great men view of history. It doesn't matter how great these supposedly great men supposedly are, they're not going to be able to persuade millions of people to live that particular life. So the more you can find a society which already does that, with the majority of the population already live in peace, providing labor and goods to support a social and political hierarchy, the better your chances are of success. And therefore, the ideal is you just insert yourself into the top of that social political pyramid. Easy, right? It's not that easy. And again, you know, a great man might be able to pull it off for a month or two, but in the long run, absolutely not. So how are you going to do that? You need to work your way into that hierarchy in a very complex, profound way that involves a combination, yes, of violence and diplomacy, the things we associate with war and invasion, but also a kind of an integration of political cultures, a way in which you, as a Spaniard, are becoming a Mexican. And what does that mean? Or a Peruvian. What does that mean? Well, Mexico is an indigenous place, but now has Spaniards as well. So your local aristocracy, the local elite, are becoming a little bit more like you, the former foreign interlopers, and you're becoming a little bit more like them. And you are together forging something new. And so the story of the conquest and colonization in a place like Mexico is really a multi generational, complex story of something completely new being created. It's not Aztec, Mexico, it's not Spain. It is what we, we think of as, you know, as Mexico or Peru today. We just instinctively grasp that those are complex, unique cultures with their own languages and food ways and political practices, their own history and way of seeing history and so on. But it's easy to forget that that didn't happen overnight. That was a gradual process and that's really what colonization is. Yes, it's one sided. I'm not kind of denying the top downness of it and the elements of it that included practices as slavery. But it is neverthele a long term collaborative process. And once we get into the deep weeds of that, those great men just kind of disappear into the woods.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

I think we'll come back and talk a bit more about that. But let's go to your second myth, which is you set out to dispel the idea of the king's army. You refer to Columbus's men as armed entrepreneurs rather than soldiers. Can you tell me about that? And what do you think was different from the conventional narrative that the conquistadors are acting on behalf of the the Spanish monarchs?

[Professor Matthew Restall]

This is a myth that originates in the colonial period itself and even in the 16th century, because the era of the early conquests, 15, 20s and 30s, is an era before the modern army is created. But the modern army is about to be created. And in fact, in some ways the best way of seeing it is not where are the armies in the conquest of Mexico, but instead, or the conquest of Mexico and Peru and so on, but instead to see how Spanish conquest activities in the Americas actually became an important factor that helps us to understand how modern armies were created. The Spaniards did not have an army in the Americas, ever. Not only was the conquest not carried out by a Spanish army, but those colonies were not maintained by a permanent Spanish army either, not one that was sent from Spain. So by the time we get to the late 16th century, Spaniards and other Europeans were accustomed to standing armies existing in Europe. And by standing army, I mean, you know, any listener would immediately associate with an army. Standard uniforms, equipment, ranks, training, salaried. You know, you're a soldier, that's your profession. You're not going to fight just during the war season and then go back to being an agricultural laborer. So that kind of army does not exist early in the 16th century. Great. So that's the sort of the first point of the myth. But then that begs the question, well then, who are the conquistadors? Why do they have weaponry and what are they wearing and why are they fighting? Well, they are investors in companies. Yes. Some of them are sailors that are on some kind of a stipend. There are some specialists, like artillerymen, who kind of anticipate the future way in which armies are structured. But the vast majority are there to fight only if they have to, for as long as they have to, in order to then settle down as colonists.

[Holly Fry]

Our Skin tells a story. Join me, Holly Fry, and a slate of incredible guests as we are all inspired by their journeys with psoriasis. Along with these uplifting and candid personal histories, we take a step back into the bizarre and occasionally poisonous history of our skin and how we take care of it. Whether you're looking for inspiration on your own skincare journey or are curious about the sometimes strange history of how we treat our skin, you'll find genuine, empathetic, transformative conversations here on our skin. Listen to our skin on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Can we talk about the role of indigenous allies? When it came to the conquest, they're significantly outnumbering the Spanish forces. We've got allies like the Tlaxcala in Mexico, who was supporting the conquistadors on the ground, and why did they participate when they might have so much to lose in the long term?

[Professor Matthew Restall]

The question of indigenous allies is a good one, and it comes up all the time in the classroom. And I find that students have an assumption which makes perfect sense from our perspective in the modern world, but which doesn't make sense in the 16th, 15th and 16th century. And that assumption is that indigenous peoples, all of them, if not all indigenous peoples of the Americas, but certainly indigenous peoples of any particular region, would have had a common sense of identity, at least enough to realize that if they all gang together and they showed some kind of solidarity, they would be able to expel the Spaniards. But that's not the nature of identity, actually, really anywhere in the world. We kind of see identity through the prism of couple of hundred years of the development of nationalism and everything that goes with it and how we are socialized to think in terms of nations and to be patriotic. And even if we object to patriotism, we're still thinking about it in some way. In the 16th century, the equivalent would be as a kind of a clunky word, but it works. And that's micro patriotism. People see their identity in terms of smaller regions, often just of city states or hometowns. So it's not, I would say it's not fair. It may be it it's not accurate for us to expect that anybody in Mexico or in Central America is going to see themselves in racial terms. Oh, but those are other indigenous people and those the Spaniards, they're foreigners and therefore they cross that line. They're the other and we have to fight them off. That's simply not how people saw each other or the invaders. So that's the first issue. However, I used to talk a lot about indigenous allies, and I have written about indigenous allies and never had any kind of problem with that. That phrase. If anything, I would want to argue about whether they're Indian allies or indigenous allies or native allies. We could talk about the terminology. I have recently come to see that phrase itself as being problematic because of understanding how in many cases it's the Spaniards who are the allies. And so, for example, towards the end of the war of the Spanish invasion, whatever we want to call it, the so called conquest of Mexico, that war really becomes an internal war or a kind of civil war where the number two city state in the Aztec empire, Tetzcoco, turns on the number one city state, Tenochtitlan. And these two cities look at each other across the lake. They can see each other. They are the same people, they speak the same language. In many cases, this divides families the way the English Civil War on the American Civil War divided families. You've got a brother on one side and a brother on the other. And there are specific examples and cases that we have of that. What's the role of the Spaniards? Well, they're the allies of the Tetscockens, the number two city. And if we kind of flip the terminology, it might seem trivial or pedantic, but by looking at that way, it allows us to see the war in a way that I think is more accurate and also helps to explain what happened. When I say, look, I kind of calculated that in the, the siege of Tenochtitlan at the end of the war, 97 or 98% of those participating are indigenous, and only the other 2 or 3% are Spanish. With a very small number of Africans who are fighting with them, either enslaved or free. People say, oh, well, that doesn't make any sense. How can that be? I mean, the Spaniards are the leaders, right? They're at the front. And the. And then you just got indigenous allies. They're just sort of cannon fodder, just warriors up behind. Like. No, just. Just based on sheer numbers. That doesn't make any sense. So I think the indigenous allies question is a really good one in that it forces us to rethink every one of these wars of invasion over and over in order to understand how they ended up the way they did.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And such an interesting perspective that can be gained just from changing the words we use. Okay, onto your fourth myth. I'm racing us through them now. What you call the myth of completion, which is that the Spanish had complete control over the Americas shortly after initial contact. Was that not the case? How autonomous did native communities continue to be?

[Professor Matthew Restall]

They continue to be extremely autonomous, and the vast majority of them are entirely autonomous. There are very few Spaniards there. I often say the conquest of Mexico did not end in 1521, it began in 1521. And I realize that's a little bit rhetorical and simplifies it, but it's a great starting point to then understand. Well, what do you mean? Well, the war was over, except it wasn't even over, because in Mexico, the war goes on for another 20 years, and in Peru, the wars of invasion and really go on until the 1570s. So you're really talking about a half a century of warfare in the Maya area. We're looking at about 30 years of invasions and warfare. Most of the invasions and expeditions are failures. Two small colonies get established that comprise a tiny fraction of the entire Maya area. There's still a Maya kingdom getting attacked as late as the 1690s. So in just in terms of warfare, this is an ongoing process. And we can't say this is the conquest period, and it ends here in Mexico. These are tidy dates. 1521 to 1821, a nice tidy 300 years of the colonial period, and then begins the modern period. But the fact is that the conquest and colonial periods completely dovetail in. In many ways, the conquest period continue all the way through the entire colonial period. So there's that question of the war, and then there's the question of who's actually ruling. If we were to go back, take any point in the early colonial period, let's say 50 years after the death of Montezuma, and we go back to Mexico and assume, therefore, we are now in Spanish Mexico, and we go village to village, and you'll find these are communities that are entirely indigenous and are run by local indigenous elites. And even if you realize that no, there are people in here of, in full or partial European or African descent, because there are as many Africans coming as there are Spaniards. Once we move sort of beyond these initial years and start looking at the sweep of the colonial centuries, the African presence is incredibly important and demographically as important or more so than that of the Spaniards, doesn't change the fact that these villages are not run by Spanish overlords. They are run by local indigenous communities. Yes, they have to pay tribute in the form of labor and taxes and goods that are working their way through Spanish officials. As we move more and more through the colonial period, you're going to find more Spaniards out in the countryside, in these villages. But essentially, the Americas up until the 19th century is overwhelmingly an indigenous place in terms of the number of people and where those folks are and the fact that they are continuing to govern themselves at these local levels within the colon or at state levels outside of the colonies.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And what is the connection between this kind of myth of completion which you have so neatly dispelled, and this idea that the conquerors were keen to propagate, that their success owed a lot to divine intervention, that the conquest of the Americas was somehow a godly act?

[Professor Matthew Restall]

So religion is the great justification. And regardless of whether we are talking about settlers, Spanish officials, colonists, or we're talking about friars and priests, everybody agrees that religion is a justifying factor. And therefore, for it to work, indigenous peoples have to be converted as soon as possible, or at least seem to be converted. And so there are huge baptism rituals and so on, and claims that the process of conversion is remarkably successful and rapid. And that goes along with the other claims, the parallel claims that the process of conquest and establishing Spanish or Portuguese dominion over these lands is also immediate. What that then does is two things. First of all, your religious argument for justification is shored up by the apparent fact that indigenous peoples throughout the hemisphere are now Christians. So there's a kind of a circular argument, right? We're here because God wanted us here in order to convert indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples have embraced Christianity, which therefore confirms that that's what they wanted all along and that that's why we were sent here, because God wanted us. And you can see how the argument goes round and round like that.

[Holly Fry]

Our skin tells a story. Join me, Holly Fry, and a slate of incredible guests as we are all inspired by their journeys with psoriasis. Along with these uplifting and candid personal histories, we take a step back into the bizarre and occasionally poisonous history of our skin and how we take care of it. Whether you're looking for inspiration on your own skincare journey or are curious about the sometimes strange history of how we treat our skin, you'll find genuine, empathetic, transformative conversations here on our skin. Listen to our skin on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

So your fifth myth is that of miscommunication. How big a challenge was communication between the Spanish and indigenous peoples? And were interpreters deployed far more than is commonly talked about? And what does it mean if they were?

[Professor Matthew Restall]

This was the tricky, trickiest myth for me to construct, and the one that I find has the most thorny conversations, in that I always felt as if I styled this myth as a kind of trying to have my cake and eat it, where I'm arguing that there's no communication and yet there is communication. And it kind of goes in both directions. And in fact, originally I had a really terrible pun that I'm glad my editor convinced me to take out. Where miscommunication was also miscommunication with two S's, which was a reference to Cortez's famous interpreter, Malinsine, as her. As miscommunication. It's terrible. I shouldn't even have told you about it, in fact. But my point was that was supposed to evoke her role as someone who was incredibly important, and yet perhaps not as important as we might imagine. So to kind of back it up a little bit, Europeans are aware of how little they are able to communicate with indigenous peoples. And they deal with that in various ways. And one way is like, oh, no, we can kind of understand them, you know, because we're really smart that way. Another one is, well, they don't really have much of a language anyway. I mean, they're kind of barbarians. So, you know, just kind of grunts and gestures is all we're kind of getting from them. And that's really their language. So we don't really need to learn anymore. But then also, they are requiring interpreters, and they're acquiring them right from the beginning in as many numbers as they can. Absolutely. Standard technique during the early era of exploration is to grab people, take them on your ships, and essentially force them into being interpreters, learning their language. But, of course, what are the Spaniards more interested in doing? Getting these indigenous captives to learn Spanish in order that they can communicate. And they get very frustrated when the interpreters then escape at the first opportunity. Sometimes it requires kind of a what we would think of as a game of telephone. Because Cortez's interpreter, Malinche, does not, of course, initially speak Spanish. She speaks Maya. And there's a Spaniard who had been shipwrecked on the coast of Yucatan, who was then rescued by Spaniards after seven years. And he's on the Cortez expedition, and he speaks Maya from his years in Yucatan. And Malinsine also speaks Maya because she had been acquired by the Spaniards in a bilingual zone on the edge of Nahua and Maya speaking territories. So the idea is the Cortes or another Spanish captain would speak to the rescued Spaniard. Geronimo de Aguilar. And he would then speak in Maya to Malinche. And then she would translate that Mayan speak in Nahuat to Montezuma. Whoever it is, it's really obvious to us, I think, that that as a system of communication is flawed. And so that's a good example to have us thinking about all of these moments of interpretation and communication. And the ways in which they are flawed and incomplete. And how you have got indigenous and European peoples kind of speaking against each other and across purposes, where they're hearing what they think they want to hear.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Our penultimate myth is that of native desolation. This idea that the indigenous people saw themselves as conquered, that they felt that the Europeans were gods that they needed to make offerings to. And that they were kind of sunk into depression and inactivity because of the conquest. What ought we to make of this?

[Professor Matthew Restall]

The myth of native desolation is unlike the other myths in the sense that it's more of a modern myth. And I think that there's something happens in the 20th century where scholarly interest in this time period turns more and more to indigenous peoples. And there's a more of a concern to rescue their perspective. But what that does is it pushes the pendulum kind of all the way to the other extreme. And I think over emphasizes indigenous peoples as victims. So that the indigenous viewpoint, and I'm talking about scholarship and then popular perception, the 60s and seven 1960s 70s, is the indigenous viewpoint is to be sympathetic to indigenous peoples. Not to see them as barbarians who needed to be civilized and converted, but instead to see them as victims and therefore to over emphasize their victimhood and talk about the destruction of their culture. And we talked about religion a moment ago. That's part of the impact of that sort of myth about mass conversion. If it looks as if indigenous peoples all converted to Christianity, full stop immediately they lost their religious culture. Therefore, they lost all the other aspects of their culture that are religious related. Because they became Christians like Spaniards. That feeds into that myth of desolation or anomie, as though they're complete victims. And now we understand that's not the case. It was far more complicated than that. In fact, they weren't converting overnight to Christianity. They were adopting Christianity and incorporating it into their own religious systems. And in the long run, a collaborative process between Spanish friars, priests and indigenous community leaders resulted in the forging of multiple Catholicisms and multiple Christianities throughout the Americas. So those Christianities aren't the same as the ones in Spain, and the one in Mexico isn't the Same as the one in Guatemala or in Peru or in Bolivia. They're different. Different based on those particular indigenous peoples and those ethnic groups. So our modern myth of native desolation, now that pendulum has kind of swung around. And maybe some people might argue that people like me are pushing it too far to the other extreme and emphasizing indigenous continuities and survival and all different kinds of ways in which they resist. And talking about the colonies as really being constructed by indigenous peoples and so on. There's possibly, I would concede, a little bit of that. But the idea is, is to push it all the way so that we can find some kind of middle ground. And in that middle ground, indigenous peoples are not gone at all. And they're still there today by the tens and tens of millions. And that's kind of an important point to remember, right? That culture doesn't remain static, it evolves. And an indigenous person wearing indigenous clothing that actually doesn't date from before Spaniards arrived anyway and is using a cell phone is still an indigenous person, and they're still maintaining an indigenous culture and civilization.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Finally, then we come to what you call the myth of superiority. And this is multifaceted. We've got the idea that the Spanish were not as technologically advanced as have been portrayed, or at least that we have exaggerated the role played by Spanish military technology. We've got the ideas that, you know, the indigenous people were just not quite up to it in terms of their immune systems when faced with disease, and perhaps to an extent, the disease discounting of the sophistication of indigenous societies that the conquistadors encountered, what should we make of this?

[Professor Matthew Restall]

You're exactly right. You started by mentioning military superiority. I think in the modern era, military explanations, they replace religious ones. They're kind of the new religion. For several hundred years, the superiority of the Spaniards was defined in religious terms. By the time we get to the 19th and 20th century, which after all is an era of mass, massive military technology, right? Humankind has come to the point now where you can press a button and destroy the entire planet. So in a way, military might becomes a sort of scary new religion. We're afraid of it. This is a God that we have created that we should be deadly afraid of. And so that then becomes the new explanation. And it's an explanation that lasts a long time because it's compatible with late 20th century views that are anti racist. Right? We can't see indigenous peoples as being civilizations racially inferior. We don't want to look at them as barbarians. We want to now be more sympathetic to them and understand them. So how do we explain their defeat? Oh, it's just military technology, and that's not really their fault, and it doesn't make them inferior just because they didn't have steel swords and guns and horses and war dogs, which didn't exist in the Americas. So it's absolutely not their fault. And I think it's a red herring. It's a false explanation. If we actually look at the details of that military technology, only the steel sword is really advantageous. The nature of artillery and even guns in the modern word gun does not really apply to any kind of handheld device back in the early 16th century anyway. So it starts to pixelate and collapse, and then it leaves us with, okay, so then how did they do it? And I would say, right, that's the point at which we stop and challenge the very question itself. And that's why the myth of superiority is kind of the conclusion myth. It sort of wraps up all of the other things, because once we take away these notions of superiority. No, let's put the religion one aside. The military factor was a factor and a factor, but not the deciding one, disease. Oh, hang on. Haven't we just talked about how Spaniards and indigenous peoples worked together in these wars? That these wars were civil wars in many ways. So in terms of the war, who are the peoples? Indigenous peoples are most exposed to disease. They're those who are fighting with the Spaniards, not against them. So the disease factor doesn't work to explain the outcome of the wars. It does work to explain how over the course of generations and decades after the wars, the European presence remains a permanent one because indigenous population is declining by somewhere between 70 and 90%, but only over the course of about 150 years. So from the moment Columbus arrives, we have to go into the 17th century to see that absolute, the lowest point of the indigenous population. So all of these factors, they survive as factors, but they're not, not the smoking gun, decisive factor. So that forces us to then kind of go back to look at all those previous stories and realize, oh, okay, we don't have to come up with some argument about Spanish superiority because they actually didn't do everything. What they did was create chaos. They inserted new forms of violence and enslavement, and they brought diseases with them, and they brought Africans with them. And other Europeans came in after the Spaniards. And within that massive disruption, new political systems and new cultures emerge which are a result of over collaboration. Yes, admittedly, albeit often an unequal collaboration, But Nonetheless, a collaboration. And so our whole, well, how did they do it? What was the nature of their superiority? That question kind of. It sort of disappears and reveals itself as not really being the right question.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

So would it be fair to say that in some ways, given how you changed the wording around indigenous allies to make us rethink that relationship, that perhaps the conclusion of what you're arguing is that we need to rethink the word Spanish conquest to understand what happened in this period?

[Professor Matthew Restall]

Yes, I have mixed feelings, Susanna, about arguing over the terminology that we use, because on the one hand, it can seem very pedantic and it can seem like policing how we talk. And I don't like that. You know, obviously we want people to be able to say whatever they want to say, so we can then discuss and debate it. So I. There's that. On the other hand, the words we use really matter. They matter a huge amount. And a lot of these words carry huge baggage with them. And sometimes that baggage cannot easily be unpacked. I think with discovery. Columbus discovered. Actually, that's a pretty easy one. We just say he discovered it for Europeans. Columbus discovered the Americas for Europeans. For many people, that's not enough, not enough at all. I think that's perfectly enough. I think with the Spanish conquest, the problem with the word conquest is so heavily freighted. And in fact, I just was having a conversation with one of my doctoral students yesterday about the word conquest. And he pointed out that the famous Dominican friar Bartolome de las Casas objected to the word conquest. And he writes quite eloquently in the 16th century, this word. We don't want to use this word conquest, that now it's become in vogue. He sees that Spanish conquistadors and chroniclers start talking about la conquista. In fact, the phrase is the conquest of Mexico. Our phrase comes from the Spanish la conquista de Mexico, which is really set in stone by a book that was written by someone who was hired by Cortez's son to write a story, to write the history of the conquest of Mexico as a kind of hagiography of Cortez to glorify his father, Cortez. And that book, La Conquista de Mexico, sort of sets that phrase in stone. So that's a baggage that goes all the way back to the 16th century. And I'm not even talking about all the subsequent centuries of how the word becomes so important to that particular view viewpoint. So, yes, we could just say conquest, Spanish Aztec war, Spanish invasion. Honestly, I don't think it's about replacing the Spanish conquest with a phrase that I think is better and everybody has to step in line and follow. I think it's all about discussion. And the more we talk about these things and throw different words and phrases and terms back and forth, the more we're thinking along the right lines and beginning to unpack that traditional narrative and replace it with a story that is, is, yes, not as simple, but it's far more interesting, I think.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Well, thank you for inviting us into that conversation today. It's been stimulating and provocative and weighty and substantial. Thank you so much for your time.

[Professor Matthew Restall]

Thank you for having me on the show, Suzanne. It's been a pleasure.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Thanks for listening to Not Just the Tudors and to my researcher Alice Smith and my producer Rob Weinberg. And do join me, Professor Cesare Lipstick next time for another episode of Not Just the Tudors From History Hit.

[Holly Fry]

Our Skin Tells a Story. Join me, Holly Fry, and a slate of incredible guests as we are all inspired by their journeys with psoriasis. Along with these uplifting and candid personal histories histories, we take a step back into the bizarre and occasionally poisonous history of our skin and how we take care of it. Whether you're looking for inspiration on your own skincare journey or are curious about the sometimes strange history of how we treat our skin, you'll find genuine, empathetic, transformative conversations here on our skin. Listen to our skin on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.