Beyond Cortés and Montezuma examines both European and Nahuatl texts and images that shed light on the complex narrative of contact and the ensuing conflict, negotiation, and cooperation that continued well after the colonial period.
 
A diverse group of scholars from Europe, Mexico, and the US with varied methodological backgrounds—linguistics, history, art history, and cultural studies—query the “conquest,” or rather conquista, of Mexico through a series of case studies that interrogate how historians, especially in Europe, Mexico, and the US, understand and interact with this concept. They consider the language used to encapsulate the event in Nahuatl documents from the colonial period, how the Spanish veterans led the transition to settlement in taking land for themselves, and the legacy of the conquista in discrimination against Tlaxcallans in modern Mexico.
 
Beyond Cortés and Montezuma is a compilation of nuanced reflections on the language, narratives, and memories of the conquista that balances the crimes of Spanish colonialism and asymmetries of power that existed within early New Spain with the abilities of Native peoples to resist, negotiate, and survive.
 
 

The special relationship between the United Kingdom, an established and secure power, and the United States, a rising one, began after the War of 1812, as the former enemies sought accommodation with, rather than the annihilation of, one another. At the same time, Mexico, also a rising power, was not so fortunate. Its relationship with Spain, an established but declining power, turned hostile with Spain’s final exit from North America after Mexico’s War of Independence, leaving its former colony isolated, internally unstable, and vulnerable to external attack. Significantly, Mexico posed little threat to its northern neighbor. By the third decade of the eighteenth century, then, the fate of North America was largely discernable.

Nevertheless, the three-century journey to get to this point had been anything but predictable. The United States’ rise as a regional power was very much conditioned by constantly shifting transcontinental, transpacific, and above all transatlantic factors, all of which influenced North America’s three interactive cultural spheres: the Indigenous, the Hispano, and the Anglo. And while the United States profoundly shaped the history of Canada and Mexico, so, too, did these two transcontinental countries likewise shape the course of U.S. history.

In this ground-breaking work, Kevin Fernlund shows us that any society’s social development is directly related to its own social power and, just as crucially, to the protective extension or destructive intrusion of the social power of other societies.