Collision of Worlds: A Deep History of the Fall of Aztec Mexico and the Forging of New Spain

by David M. Carballo

Mexico of five centuries ago was witness to one of the most momentous encounters between human societies, when a group of Spaniards led by Hernando Cort�s joined forces with tens of thousands of Mesoamerican allies to topple the mighty Aztec Empire. It served as a template for the forging of much of Latin America and initiated the globalized world we inhabit today. The violent clash that culminated in the Aztec-Spanish war of 1519-21 and the new colonial order it created were millennia in the making, entwining the previously independent cultural developments of both sides of the Atlantic.

Collision of Worlds provides a deep history of this encounter, one that considers temporal depth in the richly layered cultures of Mexico and Spain, from their prehistories to the urban and imperial societies they built in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Leading Mesoamerican archaeologist David Carballo offers a unique perspective on these fabled events with a focus on the physical world of places and things, their similarities and differences in trans-Atlantic perspective, and their interweaving in an encounter characterized by conquest and colonialism, but also resilience on the part of Native peoples. An engrossing and sweeping account, Collision of Worlds debunks long-held myths and contextualizes the deep roots and enduring consequences of the Aztec-Spanish conflict as never before.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Latin American History, Archaeology, The Americas, Anthropology

360 pages, Hardcover

Published July 1, 2020

About the author

David M. Carballo is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Boston University.

Reviews

[James Bechtel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This the third book I have read in recent weeks examining the encounter between the Spanish and Mesoamericans in 1519. This is the best of the three. Published in 2020 by Oxford University Press.

[David G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really a very good, objective assessment.

[David Bird · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, this work represents a welcome effort to recount an important inflection point in world history without recycling the ‘great man’ and Eurocentric conventions that are all too ubiquitous. It strives to present the Spanish and the meso-Americans as equally alien to modern assumptions, and emphasizes the importance of indigenous actors and politics.

In all of this it is generally successful.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has a lot of great information but the way it is written made it a chore to get through.