Reseña del libro "The Nine Lives of Christopher Columbus (en Inglés)"
Christopher Columbus was born Cristoforo Colombo, in the autumn of 1451 in the Mediterranean port city of Genoa, and he died in the Spanish city of Valladolid in May 1506, as don Cristóbal Colón. More than five centuries later, we are still arguing over his life and its significance. Millions if not billions of people have learned his name. Most have some sense of what he did, that it was momentous, a great achievement, an act of primacy. But was his achievement "great" because he "discovered America" and thus made possible the hemisphere's "great" nations? Or was it an apocalyptic catastrophe for tens of millions of Indigenous and African peoples?In The Nine Lives of Christopher Columbus, acclaimed historian Matthew Restall, perhaps the leading scholar of the Spanish Empire, presents a new, authoritative biography of Columbus, while at the same time tracing his many afterlives down into our own time. He explores the mysteries, many of them manufactured, that color our understanding of Columbus even in the twenty-first century--mysteries surrounding Columbus's name, nationality, place of birth, ancestry, education, religion, intellectual vision, moral fiber, sexual proclivities, and current resting place. He shows how Columbus became an iconic American hero in the nineteenth century, and how a parallel hero emerged in the form of the Italian American Columbus.Restall takes us beyond polemic, sifting through the evidence across nations, languages, and five centuries to explore the many questions that make up what he calls "Columbiana." He demonstrates that, far from a uniquely talented individual, Columbus was typical of the Iberian and northern Italian men of his day--a merchant mariner who became an explorer, slave-trader, and conquistador-settler. And Restall challenges the notion, deeply held to this day, that Columbus can be credited or blamed for all that happened after 1492.Whatever one's views of Columbus, Restall's book is the necessary, definitive account. It dispels the myths and gives us Columbus as he was. It shows how he has been distorted in the centuries since his death--and how we might come to understand him, and his legacies, anew.
Matthew Restall es un historiador y antropólogo especializado en la historia de América Latina, las sociedades mayas y las relaciones entre los pueblos indígenas y los europeos durante la época colonial. Ha desarrollado gran parte de su trayectoria académica en la Universidad Estatal de Pensilvania (Penn State), donde ha investigado los procesos de conquista y colonización desde perspectivas que cuestionan las interpretaciones tradicionales. Su trabajo destaca por recuperar las voces, los testimonios y la participación de actores indígenas y africanos, a menudo relegados en los relatos históricos convencionales.
En Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest: Updated Edition (2021), Restall revisa siete creencias arraigadas sobre la conquista española de América. A partir de fuentes históricas, cuestiona ideas como la supuesta superioridad militar española, la conquista realizada por unos pocos conquistadores y la creencia de que los pueblos indígenas confundieron a los europeos con dioses. Esta edición actualizada incorpora un epílogo que examina la vigencia de sus argumentos y su influencia en la historiografía. Entre sus obras destacadas también figuran The Maya World y When Montezuma Met Cortés, que reflejan su compromiso con una historia más compleja y plural del continente americano.
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