The devil has a beach head in America? Seriously…….

Jorge Canizares-Esguerra’s book Puritan Conquistadors is a much different take on how the Americas were colonized. I have to admit I’m not real sure how I feel about this book. On the one hand it is an intensive examination of the religious aspect of the conquest but on the other hand that is really all there is. As this is our last book for the course I found it to be a kind of unceremonious end. Canizares-Esguerra’s take on conquest is interesting and he stresses that he is attempting to place the Spanish presence in the Americas more in the forefront of US history. However, I do not believe he accomplished his goal. Now all be it the book is designed to revolve around religion there is just too much. I know that sounds strange but I think you need background and explore other aspects of the culture in order to understand the circumstances in which events happened. As I was reading this book I was just overwhelmed. If I knew nothing about the conquest and picked up this book I would have received a very jaded view of what happened in the Americas. I have this image in my mind of Spanish and English settlers running around thinking every plant they encountered was made of evil and the devil ran up to the boat to shake your hand once you crossed the Atlantic. I don’t want to be to down on the book it did have its merit. Seeing how the English and the Spanish understood each other on a religious level and how that influenced how they dealt with one another was interesting. But what Canizares-Esguerra set out to do just didn’t quite make it the argument was far to one sided. So in the end the comparison of the two cultures was interesting is showing the religious tensions which existed during the conquest but they were not in a context that provided the culture with a clear picture of what was truly going on and how actual people dealt with the circumstances they found themselves in.