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9 - The Americas in the age of indigenous empires

from Part Two - Macro-regions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2015

By
Matthew Restall
Edited by
Jerry H. Bentley ,
Sanjay Subrahmanyam  and
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
Jerry H. Bentley
Affiliation:
University of Hawaii, Manoa
Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
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Summary

This chapter explores imperial history in the America from early fifteenth to late sixteenth centuries. It focuses on the parallel lives of the three empires, the Aztec, Inca and Spanish, each developing unbeknownst to the others. Inevitable conflict has tended to be a common theme in the history of the Americas in the age of indigenous empires. The reluctance of sixteenth-century Spaniards to believe that Native Americans built their own civilizations is part of a thread of Western thought that survives to this day. Many Mesoamericans lived in cities that featured monumental urban architecture; the Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlan was a striking example of this phenomenon. The Incas were heirs to the great tradition of civilization in the central Andes. They were a Cuzco-based, Quechua-speaking people. The chapter also explores the expectations that shaped the Spanish Empire in the Americas before the meeting between Moctezuma and Cortes.
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge World History , pp. 210 - 242
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

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References

Further reading

Bauer, Brian S., Ancient Cuzco: Heartland of the Inca (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2004).Google Scholar
Carrasco, Pedro, The Tenochca Empire of Ancient Mexico: The Triple Alliance of Tenochtitlán, Tetzcoco, and Tlacopan (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999).Google Scholar
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Cook, Noble David, Born to Die: Disease and the New World Conquest, 1492–1650 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).Google Scholar
D'Altroy, Terence N., The Incas (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002).Google Scholar
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Fitzpatrick, Scott M. and Ross, Ann H. (eds.), Island Shores, Distant Pasts: Archaeological and Biological Approaches to the Pre-Columbian Settlement of the Caribbean (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2010).Google Scholar
Gillespie, Susan D., The Aztec Kings: The Construction of Rulership in Mexico's History (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1989).Google Scholar
Hassig, Ross, Aztec Warfare: Imperial Expansion and Political Control (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988).Google Scholar
Julien, Catherine, Reading Inca History (Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press, 2000).Google Scholar
Keegan, William F., Taíno Indian Myth and Practice: The Arrival of the Stranger King (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2007).Google Scholar
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Las Casas, Bartolomé, An Account, Much Abbreviated, of the Destruction of the Indies, Knight, Franklin (ed.), Hurley, Andrew (trans.) (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2003).Google Scholar
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Restall, Matthew, “The New Conquest History,” History Compass 10 (2012), 151–60, http://history-compass.com/caribbean-latin-america.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Restall, Matthew, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Restall, Matthew and Asselbergs, Florine, Invading Guatemala: Spanish, Nahua, and Maya Accounts of the Conquest Wars (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007).Google Scholar
Restall, Matthew and Fernández-Armesto, Felipe, The Conquistadors: A Very Brief Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2011).Google Scholar
Restall, Matthew and Lane, Kris, Latin America in Colonial Times (Cambridge University Press, 2011).Google Scholar
Sanders, William T., Mastache, Alba Guadalupe and Cobean, Robert H. (eds.), Urbanism in Mesoamerica (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia; University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003).Google Scholar
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Wilson, Samuel M. (ed.), The Indigenous People of the Caribbean (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1997).Google Scholar

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