Hernán Cortés

Las Cartas de relaci n escritas por Hern n Cort s, fueron dirigidas al emperador Carlos V. En estas cartas, Cort s describe su viaje a M xico, su llegada a Tenochtitl n, capital del imperio azteca, y algunos de los eventos que resultar an en la conquista de M xico.

Las Cartas de relaci n escritas por Hern n Cort s, fueron dirigidas al emperador Carlos V. En estas cartas, Cort s describe su viaje a M xico, su llegada a Tenochtitl n, capital del imperio azteca, y algunos de los eventos que resultar an en la conquista de M xico.

Hernan Cortes's Cartas de Relacion, written over a seven-year period to Charles V of Spain, provide an extraordinary narrative account of the conquest of Mexico from the founding of the coastal town of Veracruz until Cortes's journey to Honduras in 1525.

The publications of the Hakluyt Society (founded in 1846) made available edited (and sometimes translated) early accounts of exploration. The first series, which ran from 1847 to 1899, consists of 100 books containing published or previously unpublished works by authors from Christopher Columbus to Sir Francis Drake, and covering voyages to the New World, to China and Japan, to Russia and to Africa and India. This 1868 volume contains the first English translation of Hernán Cortés' 1526 report to Emperor Charles V on his expedition from Mexico to Honduras to subdue the rebellion in the Spanish colony which had been founded there. The colony was used to supply native workers for the Spanish Caribbean plantations, and was a recurring source of trouble for its overlords. The early years of Spanish colonisation in Central and South America were marked by power-struggles between the Conquistadors themselves, as this account shows.

Hernán Cortés’s Cartas de Relacíon, written over a seven-year period to Charles V of Spain, provide an extraordinary narrative account of the conquest of Mexico from the founding of the coastal town of Veracruz until Cortés’s journey to Honduras in 1525. Pagden’s English translation has been prepared from a close examination of the earliest surviving manuscript and of the first printed editions, and he also provides a new introduction offering a bold and innovative interpretation of the nature of the conquest and Cortes’s involvement in it. J. H. Elliot’s introductory essay explains Cortes’s conflicts with the Crown and with Diego Velazquez, the governor of Cuba.“The definitive edition [of the letters] in any language. . . . The book is a ’must’ for all those who are seriously interested in this traumatic clash of civilizations and the consequences, both for good and ill, which ensued.”—C. R. Boxer, English Historical Review“One of the most fascinating Machiavellian documents to come out of the Renaissance.”—Carlos Fuentes, Guardian “[Pagden] provides us with two important innovations: the first reliable edition of the most important Spanish text . . . and annotations that draw on Pagden’s own profound knowledge of Mesoamerican cultures.”—Helen Nader, Sixteenth Century Journal