An unprecedented reading of Mexican history through the lens of performance

Five hundred years ago, the army of conquest led by Hernan Cortés marched hundreds of miles across a rugged swath of land from Veracruz on the Mexican Caribbean to the capital city of the Aztecs, now Mexico City. This journey was the catalyst for profound cultural and political change in Mesoamerica. Today, many Mexicans view the Ruta de Cortés as a symbol of an event that forever changed the course of their history. But few U.S. Americans understand how the conquest still affects Mexicans’ national identity and their relationship with the United States. Following the route of Hernán Cortés, In the Shadow of Cortés offers a visual and cultural history of the legacy of contact between Spaniards and indigenous civilizations. The book is a reflective journey that presents a diversity of voices, images, and ideas about history and conquest. Specialist in Mexican culture Kathleen Ann Myers teams up with prize-winning translators and photographers to offer a unique reading experience that combines accessible interpretative essays with beautifully translated interviews and dozens of historical and contemporary black-and-white and color images, including some by award-winner Steven Raymer. The result offers readers multiple perspectives on these pivotal events as imagined and re-envisioned today by Mexicans both in their homeland and in the United States. In the Shadow of Cortés offers an extensive visual narrative about conquest and, ultimately, about Mexican history. It traces the symbolic geography of the conquest and shows how the historical memory of colonialism continues to shape lives today.

For more than one hundred years, the Conquest of the Desert (1878–1885) has marked Argentina’s historical passage between eras, standing at the gateway to the nation’s “Golden Age” of progress, modernity, and—most contentiously—national whiteness and the “invisibilization” of Indigenous peoples. This traditional narrative has deeply influenced the ways in which many Argentines understand their nation’s history, its laws and policies, and its cultural heritage. As such, the Conquest has shaped debates about the role of Indigenous peoples within Argentina in the past and present. The Conquest of the Desert brings together scholars from across disciplines to offer an interdisciplinary examination of the Conquest and its legacies. This collection explores issues of settler colonialism, Indigenous-state relations, genocide, borderlands, and Indigenous cultures and land rights through essays that reexamine one of Argentina’s most important historical periods.

Contact, Conquest and Colonization brings together international historians and literary studies scholars in order to explore the force of practices of comparing in shaping empires and colonial relations at different points in time and around the globe. Whenever there was cultural contact in the context of European colonization and empire-building, historical records teem with comparisons among those cultures. This edited volume focuses on what historical agents actually do when they compare, rather than on comparison as an analytic method. Its contributors are thus interested in the ‘doing of comparison’, and explore the force of these practices of comparing in shaping empires and (post-)colonial relations between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. This book will appeal to students and scholars of global history, as well as those interested in cultural history and the history of colonialism.

The start of the epic new Chronicles of the Invaders series from bestselling author John Connolly, and Jennifer Ridyard. For fans of THE 5TH WAVE and I AM NUMBER FOUR. She is the first of her kind to be born on Earth. He is one of the Resistance, fighting to rid the world of an alien invasion. They were never meant to meet. And when they do, it will change everything . . .

Re-evaluates the political integration and Christianization of Saxony following its violent conquest (772-804) by Charlemagne.

What can war tell us about empire? In Climate of Conquest, Pratyay Nath seeks to answer this question by focusing on the Mughals. He goes beyond the traditional way of studying war in terms of battles and technologies. Instead, he unravels the deep connections that the processes of war-making shared with the society, culture, environment, and politics of early modern South Asia. Climate of Conquest closely studies the dynamics of the military campaigns that helped the Mughals conquer North India and project their power beyond it. The author argues that the diverse natural environment of South Asia deeply shaped Mughal military techniques and the course of imperial expansion. He also sheds light on the world of military logistics, labour, animals, and the organization of war; the process of the formation of imperial frontiers; and the empire’s legitimization of war and conquest. What emerges is a fresh interpretation of Mughal empire-building as a highly adaptive, flexible, and accommodative process.