Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest

European colonial observers’ writings, like those of Bernal Díaz, have shaped the modern view of the Spanish Conquest of the Americas that took place between 1492 and approximately 1700. The conquistador, Hernán Cortés, is one of the most heroic and celebrated figures in the Conquest’s history, and the seven myths Matthew Restall highlights grew out of the legendary history centered on this historical figure. Restall assesses historical sources and addresses modern scholarly debates surrounding The Persistence of Historical Myths concerning the Conquest and their representations in art, film, and popular culture.

Modern analysis of Spanish and Indigenous primary sources from colonial Latin America provides new insight into the Conquest’s history. Restall argues that complete objectivity in historical analysis is impossible because subjectivity provides unique opportunities for insight into the ways culture and context shape memory and history. Subjectivity “can lead to genuine insight into an historical phenomenon such as the Spanish Conquest—and a better understanding of how such a phenomenon has been understood over the centuries” (xv).

The book’s first chapter interrogates the “myth of exceptional men” and centers upon three interconnected sub-myths. First is the notion that Europe’s “discovery” of the American continents was a remarkable feat of history. Colonial writers crafted this myth as early as the 1500s and it persists in current historiography and popular culture. The Genoese explorer who inadvertently landed in the Caribbean, Christopher Columbus, is the “heroic” figure credited with this discovery. The second myth is thus linked to the first and holds that the Spanish Conquest was successful because daring and exceptional “great men” led it. Columbus, Hernán Cortés, and Francisco Pizzaro are some of these “great men” in this reductionist interpretation of history, which ignores context and historical processes that informed their actions, obscuring lesser-known figures who took part in the Spanish Conquest.

Some scholars of Latin American and world history have moved away from discussing Europe’s exploration of the globe and their subsequent colonialism in the context of an “Age of Discovery.” Instead, they emphasize this period as an “Age of Encounters.” Such a framing rejects Eurocentric history, de-emphasizing the exceptional nature of these “great men” and introducing a more global context that includes Indigenous Americans. After all, the Indigenous peoples were certainly aware that the North and South American continents existed, and their ancestors “discovered” and populated them thousands of years before Columbus arrived in the Caribbean. The Erasure of Indigenous Roles in Conquest History has thus been a persistent and insidious by-product of the traditional Eurocentric accounts. Considering this history as one of “encounters” instead of “discovery” gives equal weight to Indigenous cultures and pre-colonial history, centering the impact that contact had on Europeans and Indigenous peoples alike.

Indeed, Restall argues that Columbus is only “exceptional” because of the accidental nature of his “discovery.” Columbus was not a lone actor; he was part of a broader “historical process” that led to the Conquest (4), as discussed in the theme The Importance of Historical Context and Processes. When viewed within the context of these more generalized processes, it becomes apparent that Columbus was a product of Portuguese exploration and early colonization in the Atlantic during the 1400s (See: Background). In fact, before approaching the Spanish crown to back his trip across the Atlantic, he was refused Portuguese support.

Understanding that Portuguese navigators were exploring the Atlantic before and simultaneously means that Columbus “had neither a unique plan nor unique vision nor a unique pattern of previous experience” (8). His “discovery” was the result of competition between the Spanish and Portuguese empires over exploration of the Atlantic, and had he not landed in the Caribbean, it is likely that another contemporary navigator would have eventually done so. The myth of his exceptionalism is informed by Columbus’s extant writings because after he lost Spanish support, he presented himself as a great man who had been “wronged” (8). In other words, what was “true” to Columbus became true to subsequent generations, thereby generating a long-lasting myth of Columbus as remarkable and unique in his time.

The Spanish probanzas (proofs of merit conquistadors wrote to gain the crown’s support) and Franciscan-authored chronicles also gave rise to the mythology of Cortés and Pizarro as “great men.” The quest for royal recognition and support thus contributed to these myths because conquistadors emphasized—or even exaggerated—their successes to garner favor. Franciscan chroniclers elevated these men because they believed the Conquest was an act of divine providence meant to further the spread of the Christian faith. Cortés and his allies absorbed and promoted this vision in their own writings.

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, Spanish colonial documents were published in print for the first time, but “the nineteenth century hardly unraveled the colonial-era development” of the legendary “great men” (17). William H. Prescott, for example, “repackaged” and perpetuated this mythology for readers who devoured stories about a few heroic men who “triumphed over numerous barbarian natives despite the odds and hardships” (18). Indeed, the 19th century witnessed the rise of the concept of “civilization” against a backdrop of supposedly “inferior” and “savage” peoples that justified past and contemporary European colonialism and imperialism. Therefore, 19th-century political and intellectual forces shaped this historical writing. Prescott’s book, History of the Conquest of Mexico, remains in print, with some modern historians embracing this 19th-century perspective rooted in Spanish colonial literature of the 15th century.

The third sub-myth covered in the first chapter concerns how so few Spaniards managed to conquer the numerically-superior Indigenous peoples in the Americas. This question creates a circular logic: the answer is that these men conquered the Americas because they were “great” while their success buffers their presumed “greatness.” Scholars have assumed that the conquistadors after Cortés imitated his tactics, thus turning him into the archetypical conquistador. Nevertheless, Cortés was not entirely innovative. He employed “Conquest procedures that had Iberian roots predating the Conquest” (19, emphasis added).

Restall explains:

In the decades before the major Spanish invasions of the American mainland, Castilians and their neighbors had developed conquest practices and routines through the acquisition of a string of possessions in the southern Mediterranean, northern Africa, and the Caribbean (26).

For example, Cortés built alliances with Indigenous peoples to defeat the Mexica Empire, a strategic move for which previous authors have celebrated him. However, this strategy existed prior to his rise, as did the use of Indigenous translators—people whom Cortés relied on significantly in his negotiations with the Mexica emperor, Moctezuma II.

These men were therefore not unique, as their conquests grew out of a broader European context of exploration and imperialism. In placing the conquistadors within this broader context, Restall hopes to offer a more nuanced understanding of what they achieved and how they did so, as well as the distortions of the historical record that have given rise to the seven major myths about the Conquest in the centuries since.