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Bernal Diaz and The Conquest of New Spain

Bernal Diaz, in The Conquest of New Spain, tells the story of the conquering of Mexico by the Spaniards under Hernan Cortes. The book is more than merely about Cortes, although he is certainly the center of the book. Diaz accompanied Cortes on his exploits and offers a thoroughly positive view of the Spanish conqueror and of the entire Spanish enterprise in the Mexico. As translator J.M. Cohen writes in his Introduction, Diaz's book is a report on

the overthrow of a great empire by a company of adventurers, inspired partly by a sense of mission and partly by a crude greed for gold. Their success, even their survival, could in his belief be accounted for only by the miraculous intervention of God and the Saints, who wished New Spain to be added to the realm of Christ and the Emperor Charles V (Diaz, 1963, 7).

Clearly, operating under such a philosophy, Diaz is not going to give the reader an objective account of Cortes and the Spanish conquerors. To the contrary, he assumes that the Spaniards were on a religious mission, ordained by God and Christ, and that therefore any action they took to succeed in that mission was justified. The Mexicans, on the other hand, are seen by Diaz as savages who can be saved only by being conquered by the Christian Spaniards. The reader, therefore, must keep in mind the author's biases and must assess the book accordingly.

If there is any doubt about the tack Diaz will take in the book, it is dispelled in his "Preliminary Note":

For properly to extol the adventures that befell us, and the heroic deeds we performed during the conquest of New Spain and its provinces in the company of that valiant and enterprising captain, Don Hernando Cortes--who, as a reward for his heroism, was afterwards created Marquis del Valle--would require eloquence and rhetoric far greater than mine (Diaz, 1963, 14).

Diaz offers no information on the earlier events in Cortes's life which might help the reader ...

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Bernal Diaz and The Conquest of New Spain. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 05:41, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1708883.html