Playing devil’s advocate: a Mexican historian defends the Conquistadors

Many books claim to describe junctures that changed the world but few examine ones as consequential as Conquistadores: A New History. Hailed by the Romantics as courageous explorers, the Spanish conquerors are increasingly seen as violent and rapacious exploiters. That, says Fernando Cervantes, oversimplifies the complexities of the early modern period.

Cervantes, a Mexican historian, places the conquest of the Americas in Spain’s political context. In 1492, at great cost to the royal purse, Spain recovered Andalucía from the Moors. So when a charismatic Genoese navigator proposed to sail southwest in search of a new trade route to Asia, Ferdinand and Isabella approved. Columbus’s voyage was the first step to transforming a young nation into the greatest imperial power on Earth.

Over the course of four expeditions, Columbus found Caribbean islands and some of the Central and South American mainland, laying the foundations for Spanish control. But it was up to the next generation of conquistadors to defeat the region’s great civilisations — the Mexica (Aztecs) and the Inca.