When Montezuma Met Cortés

<p><strong>A dramatic rethinking of the encounter between Montezuma and Hernando Cortés that completely overturns what we know about the Spanish conquest of the Americas</strong></p><p>On November 8 1519 the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortés first met Montezuma the Aztec emperor at the entrance to the capital city of Tenochtitlan. This introduction--the prelude to the Spanish seizure of Mexico City and to European colonization of the mainland of the Americas--has long been the symbol of Cortés's bold and brilliant military genius. Montezuma on the other hand is remembered as a coward who gave away a vast empire and touched off a wave of colonial invasions across the hemisphere.<br/><br/>But is this really what happened? In a departure from traditional tellings <em>When Montezuma Met Cortés</em> uses the Meeting--as Restall dubs their first encounter--as the entry point into a comprehensive reevaluation of both Cortés and Montezuma. Drawing on rare primary sources and overlooked accounts by conquistadors and Aztecs alike Restall explores Cortés's and Montezuma's posthumous reputations their achievements and failures and the worlds in which they lived--leading step by step to a dramatic inversion of the old story. As Restall takes us through this sweeping revisionist account of a pivotal moment in modern civilization he calls into question our view of the history of the Americas and indeed of history itself. </p>