Search Results: History -- Central/South America from I Cannot Live Without Books

Inca Apocalypse: The Spanish Conquest and the Transformation of the Andean World by R. Alan Covey
Previous accounts of the fall of the Inca empire have played up the importance of the events of one violent day in November 1532 at the highland Andean town of Cajamarca. To some, the "Cajamarca miracle" -- in which Francisco Pizarro and a small contingent of Spaniards captured an Inca who led an army numbering in the tens of thousands -- demonstrated the intervention of divine providence. To others, the outcome was simply the result of European technological and immunological superiority.
Inca Apocalypse develops a new perspective on the Spanish invasion and transformation of the Inca realm. Alan Covey's sweeping narrative traces the origins of the Inca and Spanish empire, identifying how Andean and Iberian beliefs about the world's end shaped the collision of the two civilizations. Rather than a decisive victory on the field at Cajamarca, the Spanish conquest was an uncertain, disruptive process that… Read More

The Last Emperor of Mexico: The Dramatic Story of the Habsburg Archduke Who Created a Kingdom in the New Worldby Edward Shawcross
In the 1860s, Napoleon III, intent on curbing the rise of American imperialism, sent French troops to Mexico, overthrew its government, and replaced a republic with a monarchy, persuading a young Austrian archduke and a Belgian princess to leave Europe and become the emperor and empress. Then only thirty-one and twenty-three years old and political novices, Maximilian and Carlota arrived in a Mexico ruled by terror, where revolutionary fervor was barely suppressed by French troops. As they redecorated palaces and created a court in a place they knew nothing about, Mexico's great liberal leader Benito Juarez continued to fight the new regime. When the United States, now clear of its own Civil War, aided Juarez's forces in pushing back Maximilian's imperial soldiers, the French army withdrew, abandoning the young couple. The regime fell apart. Maximilian was executed by a… Read More