A dramatic rethinking of the encounter between Montezuma and Hernando Cortés that completely overturns what we know about the Spanish conquest of the Americas
On November 8, 1519, the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortés first met Montezuma, the Aztec emperor, at the entrance to the capital city of Tenochtitlan. This introduction—the prelude to the Spanish seizure of Mexico City and to European colonization of the mainland of the Americas—has long been the symbol of Cortés’s bold and brilliant military genius. Montezuma, on the other hand, is remembered as a coward who gave away a vast empire and touched off a wave of colonial invasions across the hemisphere.
But is this really what happened? In a departure from traditional tellings, When Montezuma Met Cortés uses “the Meeting”—as Restall dubs their first encounter—as the entry point into a comprehensive reevaluation of both Cortés and Montezuma. Drawing on rare primary sources and overlooked accounts by conquistadors and Aztecs alike, Restall explores Cortés’s and Montezuma’s posthumous reputations, their achievements and failures, and the worlds in which they lived—leading, step by step, to a dramatic inversion of the old story. As Restall takes us through this sweeping, revisionist account of a pivotal moment in modern civilization, he calls into question our view of the history of the Americas, and, indeed, of history itself.
On November 8, 1519, Hernando Cortés first met Montezuma, the Aztec emperor, in Tenochtitlan. This introduction has long been the symbol of Cortés’s military genius. Montezuma, on the other hand, is remembered as a coward who gave away a vast empire. But is this really what happened?
In a departure from traditional tellings, When Montezuma Met Cortés uses “the Meeting” as the entry point into a comprehensive reevaluation of both Cortés and Montezuma. As Restall takes us through this sweeping, revisionist account of a pivotal moment in modern civilization, he calls into question our view of the history of the Americas, and, indeed, of history itself.
“In a deeply learned history that reads like a detective story, Restall reveals the Gordian knot of myth and fiction that have long hidden the real history of the encounter between Montezuma and Cortes. The history of the Americas will never be the same.”
