Did the Spanish Conquest happen?

It's more complicated than you think

The Book:

Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest
By Matthew Restall
Oxford University Press
2021 (First edition 2004)

The Talk:

Napoleon Bonaparte once said, “Imagination rules the world.”

He was, of course, the master of public imagination through his use of the printing press and propaganda. He intuitively realized that “what happened” has as much to do with the pictures in our heads as it does the facts on the ground.

This is never more apparent than when thinking through the Spanish Conquest. What did the Spanish imagine they were doing? What did native civilizations imagine was happening? How was it imagined a hundred, two hundred, three hundred years after Cortes? And what do we imagine what happened today?

In his book Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest, historian Matthew Restall lays out seven myths about this pivotal moment in world history—from the idea that it was the result of “Great Men” to the idea that the Spanish won due to their “superiority.”

Of all the explorers, Columbus surely comes out the worst. The reason why he thought he could get to the Indies by going west was that he thought the Earth was much smaller than the scientific consensus of his day. Nobody believed him—and they were right not to. Within years of his expeditions, it became clear that he had failed and that his “theory” was wrong. But if he admitted he was wrong, he would lose the benefits of his royal contract. So he had to spend the rest of his life claiming a lie to save face (and money and title) when everybody knew he was lying.

The Columbus story points to a major theme of the book: Conquistadors weren’t soldiers. They didn’t have troops. They were more like entrepreneurs, with bands of artisans and status-seekers in tow. They had backers, funders, and legal contractual obligations. Like a startup founder on a call with angel investors, they reported back the most positive and optimistic perspective possible. We are wildly successful. The people love us. We have founded cities. Everybody’s a Christian now. The chance for more gold is high, etc. (And like most startups, the majority of expeditions ended in failure.)

The point is not that conquistadors were shady or liars, but rather that they had do this to be competent conquistadors. It’s hard to imagine a CEO today who would give a “neutral” take on a quarterly earnings call. He would be booted in a week. Legally, in order to fulfill the contract, conquistadors had to make a strong, convincing argument that they were meeting the terms of their payouts. And, notably, those glass-half-full reports became the primary sources for future European histories of the Spanish Conquest.

But even close readings of these reports point to a much more complex story than the one that gets repeated in contemporary culture. Notably, the conquistadors weren’t sweating it out alone. They often had thousands of native allies that worked with them and supported them for their own self-interested reasons. They also had many free and enslaved Africans, including African Muslims. In fact, it was common for black Africans to outnumber Europeans in expeditions. Some free Africans even held leadership roles and became conquistadors themselves.

In addition to being the Spanish military, natives were essential as translators, porters, guides, and they often moved “up the ladder” in expedition and colonial leadership. Natives even held celebrations of “Spanish victories” in which they performed mock battles, playing both sides.

This gets to the heart of the book, which is the way in which native populations opposed, defeated, resisted, absorbed, and adapted to the Spanish and maintained continuity with the past many centuries after the Spanish declared the Americas “conquered.” Many native elite families stayed in power for centuries and traced their lineage back into pre-conquest days. Communities often pretended to follow Spanish governmental patterns, like holding elections, while still keeping their traditional roles intact.

Some native empires actually expanded their territories after they had been “conquered.” Native languages, cultures, and religions persisted, grew, flourished, and merged with Spanish influences—to the point that it’s now impossible to tell what’s European or Native in many South American countries. Natives learned Spanish and then wrote books about their pre-Columbian past, using Spanish culture to carry on their native identity. And, according to Restall, natives rarely seem to imagine themselves as victims of a “Spanish Conquest.”

Restall doesn’t argue that the Spanish Conquest didn’t actually happen. But after finishing his book, I’m left with the sense that the conquest (as imagined by Europeans) was much more limited than we think. They founded many “cities” that never became cities. They converted many into “Christians,” though often following patterns of Muslim mass conversions from centuries prior. They “conquered” whole regions that would continue on for centuries the way they had before the Spanish arrived.

Instead of a story of a superior civilization steamrolling primitive peoples wherever they go, it’s much more complicated. Without the catastrophic population loss due to disease—90% of the native population died, almost entirely before Europeans made direct contact with them—followed by the support and labor of thousands of natives and Africans, it’s unclear if the Spanish could’ve achieved much at all.

And this seems to challenge both chauvinist colorations of the conquest history and more sympathetic interpretations as well. Europeans achieved much less than they claimed. But this also means that exaggerating the devastation (what Restall calls “the myth of desolation”) —motivated by a desire to side with the victims—erases the strength, resiliency, and modern day existence of native society, too. Both the pro-European and pro-native sides make the Spanish much more powerful and more successful than they were. And it overlooks the way in which the merger of the two created something entirely new and different.

The discovery of the Americas was the biggest event in the history of civilization, like finding another Earth right next door. The cataclysmic die-off of American populations due to disease was the single greatest loss of life in the history of civilization. If this die-off had not happened, what would history have been like? Given what the survivors were able to accomplish in the aftermath, the New World surely would’ve rivaled the Old.