Camilla Townsend

Apr 18, 2024 | fivebooks.com | Camilla Townsend |Jorge Ibarüengoitia |Friedrich Katz |Ruth Behar

Why is Mexican history interesting to study? Mexico has played a crucial role in modern global history. It was the first part of mainland America colonised by a European people. It became the richest part of the biggest, richest early modern European empire—the Spanish empire. It produced a lot of the silver bullion that would drive European economic expansion and economic globalisation in the period between 1500 and 1800, roughly speaking, which coincided with the colonial period in Mexico.

Jan 24, 2024 | harvard.com | Camilla Townsend

In November 1519, Hernando Cortés walked along a causeway leading to the capital of the Aztec kingdom and came face to face with Moctezuma. That story--and the story of what happened afterwards--has been told many times, but always following the narrative offered by the Spaniards. After all, we have been taught, it was the Europeans who held the pens.

Nov 20, 2023 | publicbooks.org | Camilla Townsend |Charlotte Rosen

In an 1849 painting entitled The Conquest of the Teocalli Temple by Cortés and His Troops, Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze depicts the Spaniards fighting for their lives against (or in one case, being skewered by) the ferociously battling Aztecs, who wear the most gorgeous of outfits. This highly dramatic 19th-century painting well represents the message of the book for which it now serves as the cover.

Oct 26, 2023 | citylights.com | Camilla Townsend

The Lenape tribe, also known as the Delaware Nation, lived for centuries on the land that English colonists later called New Jersey. But once America gained its independence, they were forced to move further west: to Indiana, then Missouri, and finally to the territory that became Oklahoma. These reluctant migrants were not able to carry much from their ancestral homeland, but they managed to preserve the stories that had been passed down for generations.