Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España

The True History of the Conquest of Mexico
	Title page of an edition of 1632
Author	Captain Bernal Diaz del Castillo
Original title	Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España
Language	Spanish
Subject	Cortés, Hernán, -- 1485-1547.; Mexico -- History -- Conquest, 1519-1540.
Published	1800 (Printed for J. Wright, Piccadilly, by John Dean, High Street, Congleton); 1963 (Penguin Books)
Publication place	Spain
Media type	Print
Pages	514
ISBN	0-14-044123-9 (1963)
OCLC	723180350

Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España (The True History of the Conquest of New Spain) is a first-person narrative written in 1576 by military adventurer, conquistador, and colonist settler Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1492–1581), who served in three Mexican expeditions; those of Francisco Hernández de Córdoba (1517) to the Yucatán peninsula; the expedition of Juan de Grijalva (1518), and the expedition of Hernán Cortés (1519) in the Valley of Mexico; the history relates his participation in the fall of Emperor Moctezuma II, and the subsequent defeat of the Aztec Empire.

In the colonial history of Latin America, it is a military account which historian J.M. Cohen described as establishing Bernal Díaz del Castillo “among chroniclers what Daniel Defoe is among novelists”.^[1] Late in life, when Díaz del Castillo was 84 years old and living in his encomienda estates in Guatemala, he wrote The True History of the Conquest of New Spain to defend the story of the common-soldier conquistador within the histories about the Spanish conquest of Mexico. He presents his narrative as an alternative to the critical writings of Bartolomé de Las Casas, whose Indian-native histories emphasized the cruelty of the conquest, as well as the histories of the hagiographic biographers of Hernán Cortés (specifically that of Francisco López de Gómara, who Díaz del Castillo believed minimized the role of the 700 enlisted soldiers instrumental to conquering the Aztec Empire). That said, Díaz del Castillo strongly defended the actions of the conquistadors, whilst emphasising their humanity and honesty in his eyewitness narrative, which he summarised as this: "We went there to serve God, and also to get rich."^{[citation needed]}

The history is occasionally uncharitable about Cortés; like other professional soldiers who participated in the Conquest of New Spain, Díaz del Castillo found himself among the ruins of Tenochtitlán only slightly wealthier than when he arrived to Mexico. The land and gold compensation paid to many of the conquistadores proved a poor return for their investment of months of soldiering and fighting across Mexico and the Anahuac Valley.^{[citation needed]}

Unabridged Translations

The True History of the Conquest of Mexico by Captain Bernal Diaz del Castillo, translated by Maurice Keatinge, London, 1800
The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1844), translated from the Spanish by John Ingram Lockhart (writer) (2 volumes, 223 chapters with notes)^[2]
The True History of the Conquest of New Spain by Captain Bernal Díaz del Castillo, translated by Alfred Maudslay. London 1908 Hakluyt Society (5 Volumes, 224 chapters) from the only original copy published by Genaro Garcia in Mexico with notes and appendices - considered the most complete and authentic translation Volume 1, Preview Volumes 2,and 3 Buy volume 2 and 3, Volume 4, and Volume 5. An Abridged version with deleted passages and 116 chapters was published in 1928,titled . The History and the Conquest of Mexico 1517-1521

Notes

^ J.M. Cohen citing The Conquest of Mexico, by W.H. Prescott in The Conquest of New Spain J.M. Cohen, editor. London: Penguin Books, 1963. p. 9.
^ Roberto A. Valdeón (15 November 2014). Translation and the Spanish Empire in the Americas. John Benjamins Publishing Company. p. 251. ISBN 978-90-272-6940-9.

References

Díaz del Castillo, Bernal (1963) [1632]. The Conquest of New Spain. Penguin Classics. J. M. Cohen (trans.) (6th printing (1973) ed.). Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-044123-9. OCLC 162351797.

External links

Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España. Tomo I, facsimile of 1939 edition, with introduction and notes by Joaquín Ramírez Cabañas, published Mexico City by Pedro Robredo; reproduced online at the Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes (Alicante, Spain, 2005) (in Spanish)
Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, online reproduction by Biblioteca Virtual Antorcha, based on the 1961 Fernández Editores edition, published Mexico City (in Spanish)

[1] J.M. Cohen citing The Conquest of Mexico, by W.H. Prescott in The Conquest of New Spain J.M. Cohen, editor. London: Penguin Books, 1963. p. 9.

[2] Roberto A. Valdeón (15 November 2014). Translation and the Spanish Empire in the Americas. John Benjamins Publishing Company. p. 251. ISBN 978-90-272-6940-9.

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