Professor Matthew Restall from Penn State University joined Oxford University History Society to discuss competing narratives of the Spanish Conquest, and the possibilities of uncovering an indigenous history of the invasions.

Conquerors control narratives. We know this well, and yet in the case of the Spanish Conquest—as it is traditionally called—we have for five centuries accepted without question the narrative that they created. Why have we done that? What was their narrative? What really happened in those much-fabled years? And how can we uncover an Indigenous history of the Spanish invasions of the Americas?

Matthew Restall is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of History and Anthropology, and Director of Latin American Studies, at the Pennsylvania State University. British-born, educated at Oxford and the University of California, he grew up in Spain, Venezuela, and East Asia, before settling in the United States as a professional historian. He has written some thirty books and eighty articles and essays on Maya history, on the Spanish Conquest, on Indigenous and African experiences in Spanish America, and—contrastingly—on popular music. His best-known books are Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest (2003 and 2021) and When Montezuma Met Cortés: The True Story of the Meeting That Changed History (2018).