Interpretations: discovery, conquest or invasion?
Why Interpretations of 1492 Differ
The events of 1492–1522 have been interpreted very differently across five centuries. An interpretation is not simply a description of what happened — it is a judgement about what those events meant, who was responsible and how they should be evaluated. Interpretations change because new evidence is found, because the societies writing history change, and because the questions historians ask change. The conquest of the Americas is one of the most contested events in world history precisely because so much was at stake: empire, religion, race, identity and memory.
For exam questions about why interpretations differ, you need to focus on the authors themselves: who they were, when they wrote, what evidence they used, and what purpose they had. The “what” (what each interpretation says) is easier but earns fewer marks than the “why” (why they differ).
Interpretations differ because of: the author’s identity and background; the purpose of the account (justification, criticism, commemoration); the evidence available to the author; and the time and context in which they wrote. All four factors matter for the 10-mark Compare Interpretations question.
Spanish Chronicles: Cortés and Bernal Díaz del Castillo
Bernal Díaz del Castillo was a soldier who participated in the conquest of Mexico and wrote his memoir, the Historia Verdadera (“True History of the Conquest of New Spain”), completed around 1568 — nearly fifty years after the events. His account is vivid and detailed, describing Tenochtitlán’s wonders and the brutality of combat with equal honesty. He is often praised as a more reliable witness than Cortés himself, because he had less to gain from distorting the record.
Cortés’s own Cartas de Relación (Letters of Account) were written to King Charles I to justify his unauthorised expedition and secure royal favour. They emphasise Spanish bravery, the justice of the conquest and the need to bring Christianity to the Americas. Cortés routinely minimised his own brutality, presented indigenous peoples as barbaric and his actions as necessary for civilisation and Christianity. These letters are invaluable as sources — but they are advocacy documents, not neutral history.
The Black Legend (Leyenda Negra) was a narrative used by Spain’s Protestant rivals — England, the Netherlands and France — to portray Spanish colonial rule as uniquely cruel and barbaric. It drew heavily on Bartolomé de las Casas’s Brief Account (1542), which had been widely translated and illustrated with graphic images of Spanish violence. The irony is that Las Casas wrote to reform Spain from within; his words were used externally to condemn Spain as a whole. Spanish defenders argued that the Black Legend was propaganda, pointing out that other European colonisers (English, Dutch, French) were equally violent and exploitative but were not held to the same standard. This debate — whether Spanish colonialism was uniquely brutal or simply characteristic of its era — continues among historians today.
Nahua and Indigenous Accounts
The most important indigenous-perspective source is the Florentine Codex, compiled by the Spanish friar Bernardino de Sahagún in the 1570s using interviews with elderly Nahua informants who remembered the conquest. Book 12 of the Florentine Codex contains the Nahua account of the conquest — one of the few surviving indigenous-perspective narratives. It describes the terror of the Spanish advance, the smell of gunpowder, the shock of horses and the devastation of the siege. The Nahua informants do not portray the conquest as a heroic liberation but as a catastrophe.
However, the Florentine Codex was compiled decades after the events, in Spanish colonial conditions, and mediated through Sahagún’s translation and editorial decisions. Historians debate how far the Nahua voices in the codex were shaped or distorted by the friar’s own agenda (he wanted to understand indigenous culture to convert it more effectively) and by the changed political context in which survivors were speaking. It is a crucial source — but its limitations must be acknowledged.
The Florentine Codex (1570s), compiled by Friar Sahagún with Nahua informants, is the main indigenous-perspective account of the conquest. Its limitations include: compiled fifty years after the events; in Spanish colonial conditions; translated and edited by a Spanish friar; informants may have shaped their testimony to suit the post-conquest environment.
Modern Historians: Hugh Thomas and Decolonial Perspectives
Hugh Thomas’s Conquest: Montezuma, Cortés and the Fall of Old Mexico (1993) became the most widely read modern account of the conquest. Thomas drew on a vast range of sources in Spanish, Nahuatl and other languages to present a nuanced picture of all the main actors. He is sometimes criticised by decolonial historians for emphasising individual agency (Cortés’s brilliance, Moctezuma’s miscalculations) in ways that can downplay the structural violence of colonialism and the scale of indigenous suffering.
From the late twentieth century, particularly around the 500th anniversary of 1492, a growing movement of decolonial historians and indigenous scholars challenged the framing of the voyages as “discovery.” They argued that the term “discovery” erases the millions of people who already lived in the Americas and frames the event from a European perspective. From an indigenous viewpoint, 1492 was not a discovery but an invasion, followed by genocide, slavery and cultural destruction. This interpretation emphasises structural injustice over individual stories and links the conquest to contemporary issues of indigenous rights, land ownership and cultural recognition. The debate over what language to use — “discovery,” “encounter,” “invasion,” or “conquest” — is itself a historical argument about perspective and power.