On William H. Prescott’s History of the Conquest of Mexico

James Lockhart wrote, “We must admire Prescott as an initiator, a supremely able person with narrative synthesis, a person of large vision and historiographical sensitivities. But in many ways he belongs to his time; he is by present standards extremely naïve, and he purveys some of the most pernicious, undying clichés known to the field … but if readers can learn to ignore or mentally translate a series of stereotypes, there is nowhere they can get as good a narrative of the main events, crises, and course of the Mexican conquest” (xxv). In a sense, this is what I tried, albeit much more clumsily, to convey with my photo essay—the Victorian drawing room as the reference point for Prescott’s worldview and mentalité, and the myths that he reproduces in crafting his narrative. And underneath the sweeping narrative conventions lies historical truth, like the Aztec ruins beneath so many foundations in Mexico City.

I appreciated Lockhart’s suggestion to first read Prescott as one might read James Fenimore Cooper—for as such, he succeeds. Then one can look past the mythic portrayal of Cortés, read Prescott’s often beautiful prose, and glean from his magisterial synthesis of the Conquest documents. Prescott is a romantic historian, a philosophic historian, and a damn good novelist—he tells a moving story. Also, he is clearly a genius to be able to compose such an epic without the use of his sight.

It is important to remember that as a nineteenth-century American, Prescott understands the Aztecs on his own terms. He talks of Aztec feudalism—lords and vassals—and understands Aztec law in terms of property rights, compares Aztec marriage to Christian marriage.

The influence of antiquarianism and midcentury ideals is quite clear; ever present is the nineteenth-century dualism of “civilization” versus “savagery.” Prescott’s simultaneously condescending and romantic view of indigenous Americans and their civilization is characteristic of his era, and Prescott’s position is clear. He writes: “It was beneficently ordered by Providence that the land should be delivered over to another race, who would rescue it from the brutish superstitions that daily extended wider and wider, with extent of empire” (69).

As an historian of nineteenth-century America, I find it interesting how much Prescott’s narrative illuminates the ideas and prejudices of his own time and place.