The Spaniards typically portrayed the conquest and fall of Mexico Tenochtitlan as Armageddon, while native people in colonial Mesoamerica continued to write and paint their histories and lives often without any mention of the foreigners in their midst. This title addresses key aspects of indigenous perspectives of the conquest.

The Spaniards typically portrayed the conquest and fall of Mexico Tenochtitlan as Armageddon, while native peoples in colonial Mesoamerica continued to write and paint their histories and lives often without any mention of the foreigners in their midst. Their accounts took the form of annals, chronicles, religious treatises, tribute accounts, theatre pieces, and wills. Thousand of documents were produced, almost all of which served to preserve indigenous ways of doing things. But what provoked record keeping on such a grand scale? At what point did pre-contact sacred writing become utilitarian and quotidian? Were their texts documentaries, a form of boosterism, even ingenious intellectualism, or were they ultimately a literature of ruin? This volume seeks to address key aspects of indigenous perspectives of the conquest and Spanish colonialism by examining what they themselves recorded and why they did so.

"The history of the world has been the history of peoples on the move, as they occupy new lands and establish their claims over them. Almost invariably, this has meant the violent dispossession of the previous inhabitants. David Day tells the story of how this happened - the ways in which invaders have triumphed and justified conquest which, as he shows, is a bloody and often prolonged process that can last centuries."--

Bringing to bear her extensive knowledge of the cultures of Renaissance Europe and sixteenth-century Mexico, Mónica Domínguez Torres here investigates the significance of military images and symbols in post-Conquest Mexico. She shows how the 'conquest' in fact involved dynamic exchanges between cultures; and that certain interconnections between martial, social and religious elements resonated with similar intensity among Mesoamericans and Europeans, creating indeed cultural bridges between these diverse communities. Multidisciplinary in approach, this study builds on scholarship in the fields of visual, literary and cultural studies to analyse the European and Mesoamerican content of the martial imagery fostered within the indigenous settlements of central Mexico, as well as the ways in which local communities and leaders appropriated, manipulated, modified and reinterpreted foreign visual codes. Military Ethos and Visual Culture in Post-Conquest Mexico draws on post-structuralist and post-colonial approaches to analyse the complex dynamics of identity formation in colonial communities.

Latin American fiction won great acclaim in the United States during the 1960s, when many North American writers and critics felt that our national writing had reached a low ebb. In this study of experimental fiction from both Americas, Johnny Payne argues that the North American reception of the "boom" in Latin American fiction distorted the historical grounding of this writing, erroneously presenting it as mainly an exotic "magical realism." He offers new readings that detail the specific, historical relation between experimental fiction and various authors' careful, deliberate deformations and reformations of the political rhetoric of the modern state. Payne juxtaposes writers from Argentina and Uruguay with North American authors, setting up suggestive parallels between the diverse but convergent practices of writers on both continents. He considers Nelson Marra in conjunction with Donald Barthelme and Gordon Lish; Teresa Porzecanski with Harry Mathews; Ricardo Piglia with John Barth; Silvia Schmid and Manuel Puig with Fanny Howe and Lydia Davis; and Jorge Luis Borges and Luisa Valenzuela with William Burroughs and Kathy Acker. With this innovative, dual-continent approach, Conquest of the New Word will be of great interest to everyone working in Latin American literature, women's studies, translation studies, creative writing, and cultural theory.

The first exploration of the profound and often catastrophic impact the American Revolution had on the rest of the world. While the American Revolution led to domestic peace and liberty, it ultimately had a catastrophic global impact-it strengthened the British Empire and led to widespread persecution and duress. From the opium wars in China to anti-imperial rebellions in Peru to the colonization of Australia-the inspirational impact the American success had on fringe uprisings was outweighed by the influence it had on the tightening fists of oppressive world powers. Here Matthew Lockwood presents, in vivid detail, the neglected story of this unintended revolution. It sowed the seeds of collapse for the preeminent empires of the early modern era, setting the stage for the global domination of Britain, Russia, and the United States. Lockwood illuminates the forgotten stories and experiences of the communities and individuals who adapted to this new world in which the global balance of power had been drastically altered.--Adapted from jacket.

"Nomadic Empires sheds new light on 2,000 years of military history and geopolitics. The Mongol Empire of Genghis-Khan and his heirs, as is well known, was the greatest empire in world history. For 2,000 from the fifth century b.c. to the fifteenth century a.d., the steppe areas of Asia, from the borders of Manchuria to the Black Sea, were a ""zone of turbulence,"" threatening settled peoples from China to Russia and Hungary, including Iran, India, the Byzantine empire, and even Syria. It was a true world stage that was affected by these destructive nomads.This cogent, well-written volume examines these nomadic people, variously called Indo-Europeans, Turkic peoples, or Mongols. They did not belong to a sole nation or language, but shared a strategic culture born in the steppes: a highly mobile cavalry which did not require sophisticated logistics, and an indirect mode of combat based on surprise, mobility, and harassment. They used bows and arrows and, when they were united under the authority of a strong leader, were able to become a deadly threat to their sedentary neighbors.Chaliand addresses the subject from four perspectives. First, he examines the early nomadic populations of Eurasia, and the impact of these nomads and their complex relationships with settled peoples. Then he describes military fronts of the Altaic Nomads, detailing events from the fourth century b.c. through the twelfth century a.d., from the early Chinese front to the Indo-Iranian front, the Byzantine front, and the Russian front. Next he covers the undertakings of the great nomad conquerors that brought about the Ottoman Empire. And finally, he describes what he calls ""the revenge of the sedentary peoples, exploring Russia and China in the aftermath of the Mongols. The volume includes a chronology and an annotated bibliography. Now in paperback, this cogent, well-written volume examines these nomadic people, variously called Indo-Europeans, Turkic peoples, or "

An update of a popular work that takes on the myths of the Spanish Conquest of the Americas, featuring a new afterword. Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest reveals how the Spanish invasions in the Americas have been conceived and presented, misrepresented and misunderstood, in the five centuries since Columbus first crossed the Atlantic. This book is a unique and provocative synthesis of ideas and themes that were for generations debated or perpetuated without question in academic and popular circles. The 2003 edition became the foundation stone of a scholarly turn since called The New Conquest History. Each of the book's seven chapters describes one "myth," or one aspect of the Conquest that has been distorted or misrepresented, examines its roots, and explodes its fallacies and misconceptions. Using a wide array of primary and secondary sources, written in a scholarly but readable style, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest explains why Columbus did not set out to prove the world was round, the conquistadors were not soldiers, the native Americans did not take them for gods, Cortés did not have a unique vision of conquest procedure, and handfuls of vastly outnumbered Spaniards did not bring down great empires with stunning rapidity. Conquest realities were more complex--and far more fascinating--than conventional histories have related, and they featured a more diverse cast of protagonists-Spanish, Native American, and African. This updated edition of a key event in the history of the Americas critically examines the book's arguments, how they have held up, and why they prompted the rise of a New Conquest History.

Roman, bound by duty, has a major plan that’s sure to tip the scales all the way. But tip it in whose favour? They’re both billionaires running their global empires, which cancels out the material attraction altogether. He’s driven and headstrong, but so is she. Another stalemate. Yet when it comes to her body, Roman knows he blissfully owns it to hell and back. If it wasn’t for her overprotective father who starts snooping on Roman’s private affairs. Affaires that will devastate his daughter, not Roman. So he has to stop the father. Roman: I’m about to hurt her. Badly. I move closest and breathe her name. Softly cup her cheek in my palm, gentling her, readying her for the pain. Her lips, made for my kisses, get the pad of my thumb, tenderly, and her fingers fold around my wrist. Her other palm softly flattens on my chest, my lethal Huskies lock with my blues. She knows, oh fuck, she knows I'll hurt her, but remains silent, torching me with her gaze. But I’d rather kill our love than be with my empress bound in the chains of a dead man. Shana: From his touch on my skin, his gaze at me, the love pulsing off his pores, I know he has something horrible in store for me. Despite, or perhaps because of, the lust burning in his eyes for me. Each yearning blink tautens the tension as we stand facing each other, breathing each other’s air, our bliss threatened by lurking darkness. The man I’d wanted all my life, the man who restored my womanhood, becomes my executioner. Publisher Note: This book contains adult sexual material suitable for adults only.

The first biography of America's greatest twentieth-century sculptor, Alexander Calder: an authoritative and revelatory achievement, based on a wealth of letters and papers never before available, and written by one of our most renowned art critics. Alexander Calder is one of the most beloved and widely admired artists of the twentieth century. Anybody who has ever set foot in a museum knows him as the inventor of the mobile, America's unique contribution to modern art. But only now, forty years after the artist's death, is the full story of his life being told in this biography, which is based on unprecedented access to Calder's letters and papers as well as scores of interviews. Jed Perl shows us why Calder was--and remains--a barrier breaker, an avant-garde artist with mass appeal. This beautifully written, deeply researched book opens with Calder's wonderfully peripatetic upbringing in Philadelphia, California, and New York. Born in 1898 into a family of artists--his father was a well-known sculptor, his mother a painter and a pioneering feminist--Calder went on as an adult to forge important friendships with a who's who of twentieth-century artists, including Joan Miró, Marcel Duchamp, Georges Braque, and Piet Mondrian. We move through Calder's early years studying engineering to his first artistic triumphs in Paris in the late 1920s, and to his emergence as a leader in the international abstract avant-garde. His marriage in 1931 to the free-spirited Louisa James--she was a great-niece of Henry James--is a richly romantic story, related here with a wealth of detail and nuance. Calder's life takes on a transatlantic richness, from New York's Greenwich Village in the Roaring Twenties, to the Left Bank of Paris during the Depression, and then back to the United States, where the Calders bought a run-down old farmhouse in western Connecticut. New light is shed on Calder's lifelong interest in dance, theater, and performance, ranging from the Cirque Calder, the theatrical event that became his calling card in bohemian Paris to collaborations with the choreographer Martha Graham and the composer Virgil Thomson. More than 350 illustrations in color and black-and-white--including little-known works and many archival photographs that have never before been seen--further enrich the story.