Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest

Having spent much of winter break surrounded by family members who think that being a historian merely entails the accumulation of facts about the perfectly knowable past, I opened Restall’s book about common “myths” regarding the early Spanish experience in the Americas with glee.  Unfortunately, the book left me feeling disappointed and even a little hollow.  This is not to suggest that the book was bad, but rather that I did not find much illumination in it.  During the course of my education I have never received exposure to any of these seven “myths,” and was really unaware that there were in fact such common misconceptions.  This may be a credit to my high-school world history teacher, but I think rather that Restall has set up a bit of straw man (mostly in the form of the 1992 film 1492: Conquest of Paradise) so as to be able to go about debunking his “myths.”

Having said all of that, I did still find much of value in the book and found it an enjoyable read.  It certainly makes for a handy reintroduction to the topic as a means of preparing for our course.  I simply would have preferred a straight-forward approach and something aimed at a more scholarly audience than Restall seems to have had in mind.

Finally, I’d like to say that historians should really follow Restall’s lead in including student term papers in their bibliographies.