| Title | : | América: The Epic Story of Spanish North America, 1493-1898 |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1632867222 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781632867223 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 544 |
| Publication | : | First published March 5, 2019 |
At the conclusion of the American Revolution, half the modern United States was part of the vast Spanish Empire. The year after Columbus's great voyage of discovery, in 1492, he claimed Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands for Spain. For the next three hundred years, thousands of proud Spanish conquistadors and their largely forgotten Mexican allies went in search of glory and riches from Florida to California. Many died, few triumphed. Some were cruel, some were curious, some were kind. Missionaries and priests yearned to harvest Indian souls for God through baptism and Christian teaching.
Theirs was a frontier world which Spain struggled to control in the face of Indian resistance and competition from France, Britain, and finally the United States. In the 1800s, Spain lost it all.
Goodwin tells this history through the lives of the people who made it happen and the literature and art with which they celebrated their successes and mourned their failures. He weaves an epic tapestry from these intimate biographies of explorers and conquerors, like Columbus and Coronado, but also lesser known characters, like the powerful Gálvez family who gave invaluable and largely forgotten support to the American Patriots during the Revolutionary War; the great Pueblo leader Popay; and Esteban, the first documented African American. Like characters in a great play or a novel, Goodwin's protagonists walk the stage of history with heroism and brio and much tragedy.
América: The Epic Story of Spanish North America, 1493-1898 Reviews
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I've struggled with this book, not so much because it is poorly written or obtuse. Goodwin is lucid as always and writes straightforward prose. My difficulty was with the unfamiliarity of the subject. Like most citizens of the US, I had a smattering of knowledge about the Spanish settlers of our country about their predations on the local people, their victory by spreading diseases like smallpox to the Aztec civilization, but also about their willingness to marry the daughters of men who could trace their nobility almost one thousand years. Unlike their Puritan counterparts, they possessed incredible resolve and certainty. They came to the New World armed and ready for conflict. They were willing to sell their services to the nearest dissident kingdom to help achieve hegemony. The story of the establishment of the capital of New Spain and the courageous predations on the North America extending as far as Florida and Oregon is one to elicit admiration for the conquistadores and sorrow for the natives who often tried to placate the intruders or absorb them in their mighty empires. The indigenous emperors had been lords of all they surveyed for almost a thousand years.
The Spanish were religious zealots and representatives of the greatest nation in Europe. They believed their faith was the one true faith. They brought priests and monks, frequently sending them into the frontier to become martyrs. The Indians they stole enough precious gold and silver to make Spain the richest nation on earth to the extent that the wealth of Europe was put out of joint. To add to this looting, the men who brought Christianity to the Aztecs and Apache also brought slavery, exporting ship after ship of unwitting "Christians" who were exposed to the lash and death.
This story should be read by every US classroom. Why people are coming to our borders with only their children in their hands, why Spain lost its place in the world in spite of such resources, and why religious zealotry led to monstrous behavior, while placing Jesuits and Franciscans in the position to protect their new lambs from the country that had supplied them. The courage of the church, unarmed and in the wilderness, in the face of the religiosity of the conquistadors will hearten every Christian. The complicity of some of the Church in the predation of the invading Spanish is a blemish of immense expanse in the history of the church. This book is immense. It's worth it. -
This is a book that is a TEXTBOOK. . .worthy of schools and study. It is a new look at an old subject and as full as the bottomless well. Topics I care about, and want to know more about, but I could not make it through before 2 renewals at the library, so I'm callin' it and telling the truth. I didn't finish. I might some day, but this is not that day.
Movin' on. . . . . -
A fascinating narrative of a very underappreciated part of American history. A must-read for those interested in a non-Anglo-centric view of American history and exploration.
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A very good read ... though disheartening ... the human species proves once again that its great pleasure seems to be the killing of others, all dressed up in righteous language and religious fervor.
It's a remarkable story - how Spain created and then tried to maintain an empire, and did so for a long time, though at the cost of much bloodshed (what else is new?).
I was also pleased to learn that there were plenty of folks involved in the empire who defended the cause of Indigenous Peoples, and there were instances in which overzealous officials were reprimanded and even jailed. While much of the church turned a blind eye to abuse, and engaged in abuse itself, there were priests and missionaries who stood up for a better way. But, in the end, their voices were drowned out by the savagery of empire-building.
It was a terrible mix of Spanish power, British desires, French trading, and after 1776, American lust for land ... and then into this, the Apache and the Comanche, and various other tribes and peoples, struggling to maintain their traditional lands and rights. All of it drenched in blood.
After 1810, Mexican Independence, it was Mexico that that had to deal with America, and by 1846-48, America was determined to have its way, and make America Great, from sea to shining sea. Am I being sardonic?
California and the entire Southwest was annexed by the United States.
And then Texas - while some Americans in Texas were opposed to slavery, they all realized that Texas needed to be a slave state to prevent slaves from revolting in Louisiana; the great fear of all slave holders, rebellion. So, they encouraged Southern migration to Texas, and those migrants carried the day for slavery.
Andrew Jackson cut his teeth on killing Indigenous Peoples ... and that blood lust pretty much characterized his career.
Having just seen the movie "Harriet," I so want her on the 20 Dollar Bill - Jackson doesn't belong there; Harriet does.
We took PR, Cuba, the Philippines, and just about everything else we could. Treachery and violence, flavored by white nationalism ruled much of the time.
Whether it was the Spanish who were obsessed with "pure blooded Spaniards," and then England and France as well ... "whites are superior, Christianity is superior, and everyone else, and every other religion, better knuckle under."
Though in the end, romance wins the day - peoples mixed, and to this very day, the Southwest if populated by "mixed breeds" - and so it is, and I'd say, to the glory and wellbeing of humanity, always enriched by diversity.
I've learned a lot about the Spanish Empire, and to this day, whether it be the city of Galveston, or Los Angeles, or much of the territory between, these names reflect the Spanish Era.
And, as well, the sins of empire, racism, rapacious wealth (is there any other kind?), blood-lust - these are the elements that constantly bedevil the human race, requiring ceaseless diligence, to keep them in check with our better angels. -
Popular histories cannot be academic, and academic histories cannot be popular. This book attempts to be both but manages neither. What starts out as a promising new perspective on the history of Spanish North America is quickly derailed by the author's insistence on interjecting personal opinion. Within the first fifty pages the author recounts how "Ponce must have missed his nephew...and his multilingual diplomacy" (page 32), and "Velazquez appointed a giant ogre of a man" (page 36), as well as several other such observations without so much as a shred of evidence to support such a claim. Did people think of the man as an ogre? Did Ponce relate in some way that he missed his nephew during that particular interaction? If so, where are the primary sources? If not, why is the author cluttering up the page with meaningless asides? It seems that in an effort to make history more colorful and relatable, the author has watered it down.
While the narrative style is disappointing for those who want to read a more academic take on things, the author disappoints me specifically when he talks about the meeting between Montezuma and Cortes. He relays only the most conventional of Spanish narratives. I was hoping that he might take into account, or at least address, the scholarship of author Matthew Restall and his book
When Montezuma Met Cortes: The True Story of the Meeting that Changed History, but nary a word was said about it and his work does not appear in the bibliography. More's the pity.
I did not end up finishing this book because I have no need to torment myself reading this when I have already read other, superior, volumes on the same topic. When it comes to recent histories of Spanish North America, I would say to give this one a pass and instead read the much better
El Norte: The Epic and Forgotten Story of Hispanic North America by Carrie Gibson. She actually accomplishes what Goodwin attempts to in this book and provides a readable, yet academic, history of Spanish North America. -
América: The Epic Story of Spanish North America, 1493-1898 by Robert Goodwin is a free NetGalley ebook that I read in late December.
A deeper history on the discovery/formation of Puerto Rico, Florida, New Mexico, Arizona, the Baja, California, Texas, Louisiana, and Mexico within the greater totality of Spanish North America through the brutal pacification of the native populations, scouring for gold, the Spanish liberally financing their own ventures and using people as slaves/guides/converts, depicting native myth and legend against the relief of conquistador braggadocio, the missionary work of father Kino, Anza the elder and younger in Arizona and California, the weaknesses of religious leaders for drink, sex, and greed. Spain and France’s places in the American Revolution, the war of 1812 and the Mexican American Revolution, then the annexation of Puerto Rico. -
This book’s full title is America; The Epic Story of Spanish North America, 1493 to 1898. This is a book that I got from
Ben McNally’s Book Shop on Bay. I always find intriguing books when I visit this shop. And this book was certainly that.
I knew a bit about the Spanish in North America, because I do read history, but I did not know the full story. I knew that Spain was in the southern states (Texas to California). I knew that Mexico won their independence from Spain (around 8121). I knew the early history of Texas and also that the US took land from Mexico in the Mexico-American war (around 1846). I did not really know how Spain settled into this land. This gives a very good and full story of this adventure into North America by the Spanish. It is quite a story and it is told well.
There is a good overview of the book on
Kirkus. J.H. Elliott on
New York Review of Books magazine lets you read the first part of a good review. David Steinberg on the
Albuquerque Journal writes about this book and another popular book on Spanish North America called El Norte by Carrie Gibson. This was not the only book on Spain by Goodwin, he also wrote Spain: The Centre of the World, 1519–1682 and this has a review on the
Spectator. There are some reviews also on
Amazon (the USA site). It is interesting that for Amazon, you have to have purchased the book through them to be able to write a review.
There is little I can find online about the author. There is a bit of a biography on him at
Macmillan Publishers. The basic same information is at
Bloomsbury. At
Thrift Books they list books by Robert Goodwin. Also, Robert Goodwin wrote an article on
Five Books about the best books on Rewriting America. Robert Goodwin talks about himself on
The Viney Agency. -
A very thorough catalog of the entirety of the Spanish incursion into North America. It provides an enlightening context for the history of the United States, western states in particular. If you were ever curious to know where many of the Spanish place names in the U.S. come from this book will answer many of your questions.
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Filled with great facts and thoroughly researched this book weaves together the facts to turn an interesting tale of a wonderful topic into a must read.
