Socializing Myself

This week I left behind the gory priests and hardy adventurers of the Conquest of Mexico and began to peel back the layers of the social history of early modern Latin America. Though I may catch flack for this, I have to say the change was welcome…or maybe the weather had something to do with my mood as well. Blue skies and warm weather almost always beat clouds and cold, at least in my book. I read James Lockhart’s collected essays first and got quite a bit out of them. Though I should probably look this up, it seems that he is an important figure in the historiography of the era. Hat he can put forth a 300+ page book of his work does not necessarily make him a great scholar, but the proof is in the reading. It was interesting to see the ebb and flow of his intellect over a thirty year period. While his last essay/ professional memoir summarizes the changes in the field and perhaps even history as a whole, the remainder of the essays offers the same view at a much less general level. As far as I can tell Lockhart’s scope touches on about everything without neglecting anything within a given category. Institutions, economics, narratives, culture, language, linguistics, historiography, and even the profession itself are within his body of work and he treats all of them admirably. This book seems like it will be a nice foundation in that it picks up where the narrative histories left off. The Conquest didn’t happen, it continued. One concept in particularly struck a chord with me, his idea of a “double mistaken identity”. This sounds really similar to Richard White’s idea of the “middle ground” with his “creative misunderstandings” and both men were publishing these ideas at around the same time so it’s interesting to note the similarities. (Now that I actually look for the note it seems that Lockhart cited White). Overall I felt satisfied with a filling chunk of Lockhart-ness.
Gibson’s work was similarly fulfilling. Though from an earlier generation than Lockhart’s latest essays, he still helps out a person who has never read anything about the early colonial period in Mexico. His focus is less culture than the institutions and interaction between people(s) within said institutions.
The question with which I want to wrestle at this point is the distinction between event and process. Obviously in a purely martial and narrative sense the Conquest happened. Of course this definition is contingent on the use of the definitions written by the likes of Prescott, Diaz, and (in a perhaps less ultimately triumphant sense) Cortes. Yet the processes begun and redirected by these individuals through both pens and swords continued, as Lockhart and Gibson attest. The major difference that I see is a difference in sources. Is this difference a function of the goal of the writer? I think that it is. Wills, legal cases, essentially bureaucratic documents relay more information of the individuals being conquered than the narrative histories. This leads to an evolving diachronic view of the Conquest. Again I will be somewhat general here, but, when the fighting stopped the “fighting” did not end. So I wonder…Is the grand narrative of the Conquest which focuses on its completion an essentially synchronic “thing” or a process which has only been studied from one perspective?