This is an incredibly detailed account of the Conquistadores. There is obviously a huge amount of information which Cervantes wants to convey but I found his writing quite dull. It took a lot of effort to get through the book.
Cervantes states that his aim is for us to reconsider our perceptions of the Conquistadores but I do not personally feel he has brought forward any new arguments which put them in a better light. Despite this, the book provides valuable information to anyone interested in Spain's conquest.

A fascinating and very detailed account of European involvement in Latin American history, which I did not know a great deal about beforehand. Seems like it will be the seminal work on the subject for the present day.

Unfortunately I can only review the first 2 chapters as my android phone (new a few months ago) does not like the netgalley app. What I read I really enjoyed. Having colour and being able to use the index was great but alas once I exited I couldn't get back in. The book seemed really interesting.

"It is important that we do not reduce the richly complex world of the conquistadores to a sweeping caricature. Our view of their many atrocities needs to be grounded in historical context. Their world was not the cruel, backward, obscurantist and bigoted myth of legend, but the late-medieval crusading world which saw the stamping out of the last vestiges of Muslim rule on continental Europe."

Hmm, I have to say that I found this book more of an apologist for the often brutal activities of the conquistadores in the New World than I'd expected. Cervantes is right that there is a balance to be struck between our post-colonial condemnations and the early modern world-view of humanist exploration that co-existed with the desire for wealth - I'm just not completely convinced that this book strikes it.

Apart from the political framework that I didn't wholly buy into, this is well-researched and the author clearly has a meticulous knowledge of the existing literature. 30% of the volume is taken up with end-notes and references, something relatively unusual in a cross-over history. There are no superscripts in the text itself so readers may happily ignore the scholarly apparatus if they choose.

The narrative is dense - I was surprised to see how few direct quotations there are from the range of sources which, the introduction states, include 'diaries, letters, chronicles, biographies, instructions, histories, epics, encomia, and polemical treatises'. I'd have liked to have heard more original voices from these sources, rather than having their contents woven together into a story told in the author's voice. I'd also say that for a non-specialist lay reader, there are a lot of names, incidents, places etc. to keep hold off: this isn't a criticism of the book, merely a statement that this perhaps requires more opening knowledge than I had. I'd also say that this ended rather abruptly, without the conclusion that I'd have expected from such a revisionary narrative.

A sweeping, authoritative history that aims to deepen our understanding of the campaigns and conquests that propelled a small European kingdom to become one of the greatest empires in the world. Over the few short decades that followed Christopher Columbus's first landing in the Caribbean in 1492, Spain conquered the two most formidable civilizations of the Americas: the Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas of Peru. Hernán Cortés, Francisco Pizarro, and the other explorers and soldiers that took part in these expeditions dedicated their lives to seeking political and religious glory, helping to build an empire unlike any the world had ever seen.

Centuries later, two dominant narratives about these conquests have prevailed--one of the romance and exoticism of adventure, the other of cruelty and exploitation of innocent people at the service of politics and religious bigotry. In The Conquistadors, Mexican historian Fernando Cervantes--himself a descendent of one of the conquistadors--tells the complete story of the conquests while steering a middle course between these two viewpoints. He argues that, while the conquistadors had undeniable faults, the tendency to condemn them tells us more about our modern sense of shame than it does about their original intentions.

Drawing upon previously untapped primary sources that include diaries, letters, chronicles, and polemical treatises, Cervantes reframes the story of the Spanish conquest of the New World, examining the late medieval world from which the conquistadors emerged. At the heart of the story are the conquistadors themselves, whose epic ambitions and moral contradictions defined an era, as well as their supporters and detractors. Cervantes helps us understand them on their own terms and shows us how their achievements still have much to tell us in our increasingly post-nationalist world. This is a fascinating and informative deep dive into a much-misunderstood history. Written in an accessible and fluid style, it is an extensive, powerful and no-holds-barred account of the Spanish conquests of old. Highly recommended. Many thanks to Allen Lane for an ARC.