The Conquest of Mexico: 500 Years of Reinventions by Peter B. Villella and Pablo García Loaeza

IF 0.3 4区 历史学 Q2 HISTORY
Ida Altman
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

According to a recent article in the New York Times entitled “Demoting the Conquest: How the Denver Art Museum Kicked Columbus Out the Door,” a Colorado art museum “obliterated all references to the canceled hero from its collections.”1 Regardless of how one views Columbus, the effort to “cancel” historical figures and events that have resonated for good and ill over the centuries is far from straightforward. In our continuing fascination with the conquest of Mexico, as with Columbus, the actual history can seem to take second place to the many interpretations that have colored our understandings of it.The conquest of Mexico usually is assumed to have been a singular, transformative episode in which the lands and peoples of what is now modern Mexico were brought definitively under Spanish rule. Scholars who have examined the events leading up to, resulting in, and following the fall of the Aztec (Mexica) capital of Tenochtitlan to the Spanish-Indigenous forces led by Hernando Cortés, however, paint a different picture of events. Over time, most have concluded that the ostensible conquest was far less definitive than generally thought, that Indigenous forces played a far greater role in the apparent Spanish victory over the Mexica than long assumed, and that the immediate impact of Cortés’ victory was limited to a relatively small area even within central Mexico, with large swaths of peoples and territories remaining outside the scope of Spanish domination, in some cases for years, decades, or even centuries.The chapters in this volume survey how the conquest of Mexico has been depicted, studied, understood, and portrayed in everything from history books to literature and opera. The editors write that the contributors consider the conquest of Mexico through an Atlantic lens, rather than an exclusively Mexican or even Spanish-American one. Thus, although chapters in the first part of the volume trace changing views and uses of the conquest in Mexico itself over time, contributors to the second part address such topics as the English response to the conquest, representations of the conquest in Enlightenment-era French and Italian opera, and the impact of William Prescott’s enormously influential mid-nineteenth century history of the conquest in the United States.Scholars and other readers with a solid command of Mexican history likely will not find a great deal that is new in the first part of the volume, although the interdisciplinary nature of the contributions, which range from Terraciano’s discussion of revisionist scholarship to Myers’ use of oral history to understand contemporary views of the conquest, should be noted. The second part, however, broadens considerably our understanding of the range of responses that the history of the conquest has evoked, in perhaps surprising ways.Altogether, this is a very readable and enjoyable volume—a useful reminder of the value of addressing historiography in conjunction with history. As Villella writes in the conclusion, “cultural observers and political leaders in Mexico and beyond repeatedly reinterpreted the events of 1519–21 to both reflect and influence contemporary values and concerns.” The result is what he calls the “Eternal Conquest,” “a poignant example of the perpetual contemporaneity of history” (295).
《征服墨西哥:500年的重新发明》作者:彼得·b·维利亚和巴勃罗García Loaeza
根据《纽约时报》最近一篇题为《贬低征服:丹佛艺术博物馆如何将哥伦布赶出门外》的文章,科罗拉多州的一家艺术博物馆“从其藏品中删除了所有与这位被取消的英雄有关的内容”。不管一个人如何看待哥伦布,要“取消”几个世纪以来一直引起人们善恶共鸣的历史人物和事件,远非直截了当。在我们对征服墨西哥的持续迷恋中,就像对哥伦布一样,真实的历史似乎可以让位于我们对它的理解的许多解释。对墨西哥的征服通常被认为是一个独特的、变革性的事件,在这个事件中,现在墨西哥的土地和人民最终被置于西班牙的统治之下。然而,学者们研究了阿兹特克(墨西哥)首都特诺奇蒂特兰(Tenochtitlan)被埃尔南多·科特萨姆斯(Hernando cortsamas)领导的西班牙土著军队占领之前、导致和之后发生的事件,描绘了一幅不同的画面。随着时间的推移,大多数人得出的结论是,表面上的征服远不如通常认为的那样具有决定性,在西班牙对墨西哥的表面胜利中,土著力量发挥的作用比长期以来所认为的要大得多,而且科尔塔姆斯的胜利的直接影响仅限于墨西哥中部相对较小的地区,在西班牙统治范围之外还有大片的人民和领土,在某些情况下,几年,几十年,甚至几个世纪。在本卷的章节调查如何征服墨西哥已经被描绘,研究,理解,并描绘从历史书到文学和歌剧的一切。编辑们写道,撰稿人是从大西洋的视角来看待墨西哥的征服,而不是仅仅从墨西哥人或西班牙裔美国人的角度。因此,尽管卷的第一部分的章节记录了随着时间的推移,墨西哥本身对征服的看法和用途的变化,但第二部分的贡献者讨论了诸如英国对征服的反应,启蒙时代法国和意大利歌剧中征服的表现,以及威廉·普雷斯科特19世纪中期对美国征服历史的巨大影响。对墨西哥历史有扎实了解的学者和其他读者可能不会在本书的第一部分中发现很多新的内容,尽管应该注意到这些贡献的跨学科性质,从Terraciano对修正主义学术的讨论到Myers使用口述历史来理解征服的当代观点。然而,第二部分以令人惊讶的方式,极大地扩展了我们对征服历史所引发的一系列反应的理解。总而言之,这是一本非常可读和令人愉快的书,它有效地提醒了我们将史学与历史结合起来的价值。正如Villella在结论中所写的那样,“墨西哥内外的文化观察家和政治领袖反复重新解释1519-21年的事件,以反映和影响当代的价值观和关注点。”其结果就是他所说的“永恒的征服”,“历史永恒的当代性的一个令人心酸的例子”(295)。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
0.60
自引率
20.00%
发文量
68
期刊介绍: The Journal of Interdisciplinary History features substantive articles, research notes, review essays, and book reviews relating historical research and work in applied fields-such as economics and demographics. Spanning all geographical areas and periods of history, topics include: - social history - demographic history - psychohistory - political history - family history - economic history - cultural history - technological history
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