The Conquest of America by Tzvetan Todorov Essay

Matthew Restall, a Professor of Latin American History, Women’s Studies, and Anthropology at Pennsylvania State University. He also serves the Director of the university’s Latin Studies. Throughout “Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest,” he discusses many false truths that have been passed down through history. For instance, he discusses, “The Myth of Exceptional Men.” “The Myth of Spanish Army,” and “The Myth of Completion.” For the sake of time, I will discuss three myths that correlate with class lectures and serve as the topic of this paper, “The Myth of Exceptional Men,” “The Myth of the King’s Army,” and the “Myth of the White Conquistador.” It should be noted that Restall speaks to his audience assuring us that his “...his purpose is not to degenerate this technique of historical writing completely...Nor do I mean to create a narrative in which individual action is utterly subordinated to the larger structural forces and causes of social change.” (4). He states that his intentions are to react to more than just the works of Columbus, Pizzaro, and Cortez.

In the novel, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, Charles C. Mann enlightens and captures how Columbus’s expeditions united the lands of Eurasia and America. It is a well-written and informational book that successfully displays much of the development and foundation of our present all from the European discovery of the new world. Charles C. Mann’s main objective with this book was to extend on the geographer, Alfred W Crosby’s explanation of “Ecological Imperialism.”

For decades, the history of Latin America has been shrouded in a cover of Spanish glory and myth that misleads and complicates the views of historians everywhere. Myths such as the relationship between natives and conquistadors, and the individuality of the conquistadors themselves stand as only a few examples of how this history may have become broken and distorted. However, in Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest Matthew Restall goes to great lengths to dispel these myths and provide a more accurate history of Latin American, in a readable and enjoyable book.

For the longest time, Americans have celebrated Columbus day, commemorating the admiral’s supposed discovery of America. But, in “The Inconvenient Indian”, Thomas King shatters this idea and develops a new thought in the mind of the reader about natives. By using excellent rhetoric and syntax, King is able to use logos, ethos and pathos in his chapter “Forget Columbus”, where he develops the argument that the stories told in history aren’t always a true representation of how it actually happened.

Columbus’s big plan for Hispaniola since the beginning was to take advantage of the natives and take their land, and the gold he believed was located there. He built the first fort in the Western Hemisphere, and left some of his men to find and store gold there. Columbus had to ask for a little more help from their majesties, he convinced them by saying he would take them “as much gold as they need ... and as many slaves as they ask” (Zinn,6 ) Columbus’s plans affected the natives, in many ways; first of all they were going to lose their land, and also they were going to be taken captive for slave labor.

The full measure of Columbus's failure as a colonizer was not yet apparent when he returned to Castile in 1496. Yet by the end of six or seven years of his governorship, with his own, the monarchs', and the settlers' objectives all still unachieved, and Hispaniola suffering an apparently interminable series of rebellions not only by the Indians but by the colonists too, Columbus was to be superseded and disgraced, and shipped home to Spain in chains.1 Overall, Fernandez-Armesto depicted Columbus as an annoyingly eccentric person incapable of succeeding. Although, he discovered the Americas, he failed to be a leader to his crew and the natives. Instead, he was on the lookout for ways of manipulating the motives for profit.

When we begin to colonize the stars, there is a chance that we could come into contact with members of life not from our original planet. If contact with another civilization occurs, we must be mindful to understand exactly (or to the best of our ability) where the other is coming from (their motivations, ideas, wants) in order to be able to live in harmony together. One specific case where beings were unable to understand the other in terms of their human motivations was in the fiction The Conquest of America written by Tzvetan Todorov.

Maybe too much credit is given to Cortés as one of the greatest Spanish conquerors who developed effective strategy to defeat the Aztecs. Restall see this as somewhat of a myth accounting for the failure of historians to look at history before the 1519 (Restall, 19). Restall says “However, too often, without any direct evidence, the actions of Conquistadors after the 1519– 21 invasion of Mexico are taken as deliberately imitating Cortés, while pre-1519 patterns are ignored.” Whatever the case for whom should be given the credit for the strategy used to defeat the Aztecs; one must admit Cortés was able the win the trust of the people and use the Aztecs’ fear of him to control their empire. Cortés harbored fear of his own. Elliott says, “Cortés felt some uneasiness, when he reflected that it was in the power of the Indians, at any time, to cut off his communications with the surrounding country, and hold him a prisoner in the capital.” The Omens of the Aztecs betrayed them and caused them to see the arriving settlers as gods. They were not prepared to defend themselves against the advanced weapons of the Spanish. Much like the Aztecs, the Mayans faced hard times at the hands of the Spanish conquerors, but their defeat came much easier to the Spanish.

From Reséndez’s foundation of European enslavement and its far-reaching impact on Native American populations, Reséndez examined racial components in the southwest. It is impossible to separate racial tension from the study of Indian slavery. Christopher Columbus’s journals as contemporary letters show the Spanish perception of

While addressing his men, Hernan Cortez made grand promises of honor, greatness, and riches to those who did not abandon him on his mission to conquer the natives. He vowed that the war would “bring [them] fame” and “make [them]… the richest of all men who have crossed the seas” (Document 3). In this speech alone, the main, overarching reasons behind the Spanish conquest of the New World are unveiled. Cortez’s promises of gold, glory, and God spread through the masses, creating the major objectives for the conquistadors. These three motives influenced the Spaniards’ attitudes and shaped them into ones of bigotry and disrespect, that were later morphed into the protection of the native Indians.

In a 200-year period spanning from the early 1500s to the late 1600s, three prominent titans of Europe would set their eyes on the New World with the goals of colonization and profit. When Columbus first sailed to the New World, he came across the Taíno, a native people of the island of Hispaniola. Upon seeing them, he remarked, “They were very well built, with very handsome bodies and very good faces...They do not carry arms or know them...They should be good servants” (Poole). This statement was simply the foreshadowing of something unimaginable; a series of conquests that would leave millions dead and millions more enslaved. Although the Native Americans were treated fairly by the French but at constant odds with the English, the true terror

     In 1519 Hernán Cortés led a couple hundred other Spaniards inland to the impressive Empire of the Mexica ruled by the Great Montezuma. Many historians today tell how quickly and almost effortlessly these Spaniards conquered the Empire. They paint an image of ignorant, helpless Indians practically giving up their land out of fear of this group because certainly the Spaniards must be gods since they have powerful weapons and strange animals. We know neither Cortés nor any of his men were gods, of course, but what was it that allowed Cortés to prevail over the inhabitants of the land?

After 1655, Animism was destroyed in the West Indies. The cause of this was not natural, or preferred, but rather coerced by other humans. What are the differences between “discovering” and “invading”? Discovering is defined as determining the existence or presence of something, whereas, invading means marching aggressively into another’s territory by military force for the purposes of conquest and occupation. In this essay, I will be extending very acutely into this issue, identifying the reasoning behind this case, so that I can easily be able to express my judgement on, Columbus discovering or invading the West Indies, with indomitable evidence.

This weeks reading concentrated largely on the discovery of the “new world” and how Europe came to understand the peoples from these newly discovered lands. Of course since this discovery was long before the advent of camera or telecommunications, artists were commissioned to interpret logs and accounts of those who experienced the Americas first hand. This made way for a great deal of artistic interpretation as the artist translated these descriptions in pictographic form. The three assigned readings each concentrated on an artist and their approach to depicting the Americas. Of course each had their own positive and negative aspects, but one thing that remained common between the three ( Stradando’s, de Bry’s, and Burgkmair’s) was the comparison

There are three points Todorov makes as to why Cortes managed the overflow despite these issues, they are Montezuma’s hesitation, internal divisions among the Mexicans and Spanish superiority of weapons (Todorov, 1984, pg 61). Though Todorov asserts that these factors are important, he identifies them as simply a common basis, and only takes one reason literally for the reason of defeat which is the Mexica account of loss of communication (Todorov, pg