Lecture 8: Cortes and the Aztecs

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  • January 4, 2013 at 5:58 pm #16727
    david_konietzko
    Member

    Dr. J,

    in Lecture 8 you said that when Hernando Cortes was trying to conquer the Aztec empire, he made alliances with the Aztecs’ tributaries. But concluding a political alliance seems to require complex communication, and I guess Cortes and the natives had no common language. Do we know anything about how the negotiations were conducted?

    If I were to spend a few months in Russia and couldn’t take any formal lessons in Russian, I probably wouldn’t be able to translate in political negotiations between Putin and Obama.

    January 9, 2013 at 11:49 pm #16728
    Jason Jewell
    Participant

    The classic history describing the conquest (and which is available online) is William Prescott’s “History of the Conquest of Mexico.” I believe I link it in the resources for that lecture, and it discusses the translation issue.

    January 10, 2013 at 11:10 am #16729
    Jason Jewell
    Participant

    But to save you the time . . . the Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_conquest_of_the_Aztec_Empire) discusses the process by which Cortes used Mayan translators: Spanish ==> Mayan ==> Aztec language.

    January 11, 2013 at 7:10 pm #16730
    david_konietzko
    Member

    Thank you!

    I think this is the most relevant chapter in Prescott’s book for my question.

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