Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest

“As a result, a set of interrelated perspectives soon developed into a fairly coherent vision and interpretation of the Conquest—the sum of Spanish conquest activity in the Americas from 1492 to 1700.”

Early modern politics and social forces shaped the way that Spanish writers and participants in the conquest present themselves, their campaigns, and the peoples they conquered. The literature they produced gave rise to a shared, Eurocentric view of the Conquest that fostered the myths Restall dissects, and which persisted for generations.

“The fact that it was Columbus’s voyages, not da Gama’s, that would lead to the changing of world history was not to the Genoese’s credit. His discoveries were an accidental geographical byproduct of Portuguese expansion two centuries old, of Portuguese-Castilian competition for Atlantic control a century old, and of Portuguese-Castilian competition for a sea route to India older than Columbus himself.”

The Genoese explorer, Christopher Columbus, is not an exceptional historical figure. His encounter with the Caribbean was the result of wider historical processes that grew out of the rivalry between the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal. The Portuguese ambitiously explored the Atlantic, colonizing islands like the Azores and Canaries before making their way to West Africa and the Indian Ocean. The navigator Vasco da Gama eventually sailed from Portugal and around Africa, sailing to southern India. This passage debunks the idea of Spanish exceptionalism, exemplifying the theme of The Importance of Historical Context and Processes.

“Yet whether the Genoese explorer is vilified or celebrated as a hero, our Columbus—the one of present-day myth, history, and debate—is not a fifteenth-century man, but a nineteenth-century one, with a twentieth-century veneer.”

Restall argues that modern views of Christopher Columbus are largely the product of 19th-century thought. Writers in the United States rehabilitated Columbus and his legacy while Irish and Italian Catholic immigrants formed fraternal orders (like the Knights of Columbus) that turned him into a heroic Catholic figure. Restall thus speaks to