Скачать или смотреть The Fall of the Aztec: Part Two

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Credit:

MajoraZ for his invaluable research assistance
https://www.youtube.com/@MajoraZ/videos

Daniel Parada for his excellent and historically accurate mesoamerican illustrations, without which, I'd have to use some AI garbage which always looks ridiculous. https://www.artstation.com/daniel-parada

Over Time by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... in D Major by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...
ACTUAL DESCRIPTION:

I will get more into Aztec human sacrifice and the Spanish "Black Legend" in the final installment. Obviously Aztec religion is a huge missing component of this video, but it's so intertwined with the "cover-up" which I'll get into that I wanted to save it for then. It's a huge topic, and I do believe (although it's just a script at the moment) I have done it justice.

This project has made it clear to me that the scope of my history videos has made not citing sources irresponsible. The final installment and all future history videos will have their sources properly cited. For now, this is what I've got if you'd like to learn more:

"The True History of the Conquest of New Spain" by Bernal Diaz - a firsthand Spanish account of an ordinary conquistador, this book has a lasting legacy for a reason. It's thrilling, tense, romantic, and oftentimes hilarious. Its accuracy issues are significant, Diaz was writing decades later about events which he oftentimes didn't firsthand witness, and the expedition was not really legal. For entertainment value, it's incredible, but as a history it should be taken with a grain of salt and supplemented with other contradictory works if you want a real understanding of this event.

"A Short Account of The Destruction of The Indies" by Bartolome de Las Casas. - While Las Casas was present during the invasion of Cuba and certainly travelled around the Spanish New World extensively, he, too, was not an eyewitness to much he described. There are accuracy issues, which have been used to attack the broader life's work of Las Casas, but the fact remains he gave up "the good life" and did not stand to gain much from this and his other histories. Diaz was certainly inaccurate in numerous ways but his work was never as controversial as that of Las Casas, so it did not receive the same scrutiny. Las Casas attacked powerful people in his work, so every flaw has been used to discredit his broader point. That point is that the Spanish Indies were managed by heartless greedy men.

"When Montezuma met Cortes" and "Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest" by Mathew Restall - These were the books which first clued me in on just how contentious this whole subject is. He makes some points about human sacrifice that are, quite simply, not correct and we will get into that. I have sent Restall a "Not a Bug Person" certificate, but he is still a modern academic, and as such, will too often take the "nothing ever happens" position. By that I mean, "individuals have NO agency, they are exclusively trapped within economic, political, and government forces, and anything exceptional or insane is a lie." Crazy shit happens everyday, I dislike when historians take this position, and remove free will and random chance and exceptional men from the equation all-together. Regardless, if you only read one book on this subject, "When Montezuma met Cortes" is the best choice, and "Seven Myths..." is another great one with a more broad overview of Spanish colonization.

"Conquest: Montezuma, Cortes, and the Fall of Old Mexico" by Hugh Thomas - I wanted a "non-argumentative" modern history on the subject. Restall, at the end of the day, has a thesis to prove, and I wanted something boring and measured and boy did I find it! There's some weird word choice in here, namely as it pertains to conquistadors "seducing" native women (although I have no doubt that did occur), but the book provides a good deal of background on the Aztec and Spanish which is what I wanted. It's mostly just boring, but that could be because it was my third time reading about the same event.

"The Florentine Codex: Book 12": Without context, I don't think this is useful for the layman, and it's also like $40. That being said, it is (with a great deal of caveats I'll get into in the next video) the Aztec perspective of the fall of their empire.

The Letters of Hernan Cortes - Garbage. But necessary to understand the event and I'm running out of character space.