Indigenous allies helped the Spanish gain a foothold in the Americas. What did these Indian conquistadors expect from the partnership, and what were the implications of their involvement in Spain's New World empire? Laura Matthew's study of Ciudad Vieja, Guatemala--the first study to focus on a single allied colony over the entire colonial period--places the Nahua, Zapotec, and Mixtec conquistadors of Guatemala and their descendants within a deeply Mesoamerican historical context. Drawing on archives, ethnography, and colonial Mesoamerican maps, Matthew argues that the conquest cannot be fully understood without considering how these Indian conquistadors first invaded and then, of their own accord and largely by their own rules, settled in Central America. Shaped by pre-Columbian patterns of empire, alliance, warfare, and migration, the members of this diverse indigenous community became unified as the Mexicanos--descendants of Indian conquistadors in their adopted homeland. Their identity and higher status in Guatemalan society derived from their continued pride in their heritage, says Matthew, but also depended on Spanish colonialism's willingness to honor them. Throughout Memories of Conquest, Matthew charts the power of colonialism to reshape and restrict Mesoamerican society--even for those most favored by colonial policy and despite powerful continuities in Mesoamerican culture.

Indigenous allies helped the Spanish gain a foothold in the Americas. What did these Indian conquistadors expect from the partnership, and what were the implications of their involvement in Spain's New World empire? Laura Matthew's study of Ciudad Vieja,

The conquest of the New World would hardly have been possible if the invading Spaniards had not allied themselves with the indigenous population. This book takes into account the role of native peoples as active agents in the Conquest through a review of new sources and more careful analysis of known but under-studied materials that demonstrate the overwhelming importance of native allies in both conquest and colonial control. In Indian Conquistadors, leading scholars offer the most comprehensive look to date at native participation in the conquest of Mesoamerica. The contributors examine pictorial, archaeological, and documentary evidence spanning three centuries, including little-known eyewitness accounts from both Spanish and native documents, paintings (lienzos) and maps (mapas) from the colonial period, and a new assessment of imperialism in the region before the Spanish arrival. This new research shows that the Tlaxcalans, the most famous allies of the Spanish, were far from alone. Not only did native lords throughout Mesoamerica supply arms, troops, and tactical guidance, but tens of thousands of warriors—Nahuas, Mixtecs, Zapotecs, Mayas, and others—spread throughout the region to participate with the Spanish in a common cause. By offering a more balanced account of this dramatic period, this book calls into question traditional narratives that emphasize indigenous peoples’ roles as auxiliaries rather than as conquistadors in their own right. Enhanced with twelve maps and more than forty illustrations, Indian Conquistadors opens a vital new line of research and challenges our understanding of this important era.

The smell of sweet cinnamon on your morning oatmeal, the gentle heat of gingerbread, the sharp piquant bite from your everyday peppermill. The tales these spices could tell: of lavish Renaissance banquets perfumed with cloves, and flimsy sailing ships sent around the world to secure a scented prize; of cinnamon-dusted custard tarts and nutmeg-induced genocide; of pungent elixirs and the quest for the pepper groves of paradise. The Taste of Conquest offers up a riveting, globe-trotting tale of unquenchable desire, fanatical religion, raw greed, fickle fashion, and mouthwatering cuisine–in short, the very stuff of which our world is made. In this engaging, enlightening, and anecdote-filled history, Michael Krondl, a noted chef turned writer and food historian, tells the story of three legendary cities–Venice, Lisbon, and Amsterdam–and how their single-minded pursuit of spice helped to make (and remake) the Western diet and set in motion the first great wave of globalization. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the world’s peoples were irrevocably brought together as a result of the spice trade. Before the great voyages of discovery, Venice controlled the business in Eastern seasonings and thereby became medieval Europe’s most cosmopolitan urban center. Driven to dominate this trade, Portugal’s mariners pioneered sea routes to the New World and around the Cape of Good Hope to India to unseat Venice as Europe’s chief pepper dealer. Then, in the 1600s, the savvy businessmen of Amsterdam “invented” the modern corporation–the Dutch East India Company–and took over as spice merchants to the world. Sharing meals and stories with Indian pepper planters, Portuguese sailors, and Venetian foodies, Krondl takes every opportunity to explore the world of long ago and sample its many flavors. The spice trade and its cultural exchanges didn’t merely lend kick to the traditional Venetian cookies called peverini, or add flavor to Portuguese sausages of every description, or even make the Indonesian rice table more popular than Chinese takeout in trendy Amsterdam. No, the taste for spice of a few wealthy Europeans led to great crusades, astonishing feats of bravery, and even wholesale slaughter. As stimulating as it is pleasurable, and filled with surprising insights, The Taste of Conquest offers a fascinating perspective on how, in search of a tastier dish, the world has been transformed.

Columbus arrived on North American shores in 1492, and Cortés had replaced Moctezuma, the Aztec Nahua emperor, as the major figurehead in central Mexico by 1521. Five centuries later, the convergence of “old” and “new” worlds and the consequences of colonization continue to fascinate and horrify us. In Transcending Conquest, Stephanie Wood uses Nahuatl writings and illustrations to reveal Nahua perspectives on Spanish colonial occupation of the Western Hemisphere. Mesoamerican peoples have a strong tradition of pictorial record keeping, and out of respect for this tradition, Wood examines multiple examples of pictorial imagery to explore how Native manuscripts have depicted the European invader and colonizer. She has combed national and provincial archives in Mexico and visited some of the Nahua communities of central Mexico to collect and translate Native texts. Analyzing and interpreting changes in indigenous views and attitudes throughout three hundred years of foreign rule, Wood considers variations in perspectives--between the indigenous elite and the laboring classes, and between those who resisted and those who allied themselves with the European intruders. Transcending Conquest goes beyond the familiar voices recorded by scribes in central colonial Mexico and the Spanish conquerors to include indigenous views from the outlying Mesoamerican provinces and to explore Native historical narratives from the sixteenth through the eighteenth century. Wood explores how evolving sentiments in indigenous communities about increasing competition for resources ultimately resulted in an anti-Spanish discourse, a trend largely overlooked by scholars--until now. Transcending Conquest takes us beyond the romantic focus on the deeds of the Spanish conqueror to show how the so-called “conquest” was limited by the ways that Native peoples and their descendants reshaped the historical narrative to better suit their memories, identities, and visions of the future.

Conquest and Community, by prize-winning historian Shahid Amin, is a kaleidoscopic look into one of the most divisive issues in South Asian history: the Turkic conquest of the subcontinent and the subsequent spread of Muslim rule. Covering more than eight hundred years of history, the book centers around the enduringly popular saint Ghazi Miyan, the youthful and lovable soldier of Islam to whom shrines have been erected all over the country. After detailing the warrior saint s supposed exploits, Amin charts the various ways he has been remembered throughout the last millennium. As he shows, the charming stories, ballads, and proverbs that grew up around him domesticated the bloody conquest and made it appear both virtuous and familial. Amin brings the story of Ghazi Miyan s long afterlife into the contemporary period through his ethnographic analysis of the still-active shrines as sites of interreligious public piety. What is at first glance a story of just one mythical figure becomes through Amin s thoughtful treatment an allegory for the history of Hindu-Muslim relations over an astonishingly long period of time. As the Muslim conquest of India is being mobilized for dangerously polarizing political ends in India today, this nonsectarian account of religious strife will be a timely and sane contribution to the vexed historical debate."

A masterful reconstruction of one of the worst Indian massacres in American history In April 1871, a group of Americans, Mexicans, and Tohono O?odham Indians surrounded an Apache village at dawn and murdered nearly 150 men, women, and children in their sleep. In the past century the attack, which came to be known as the Camp Grant Massacre, has largely faded from memory. Now, drawing on oral histories, contemporary newspaper reports, and the participants? own accounts, prize-winning author Karl Jacoby brings this perplexing incident and tumultuous era to life to paint a sweeping panorama of the American Southwest?a world far more complex, diverse, and morally ambiguous than the traditional portrayals of the Old West.