Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517–1570 (Cambridge Latin American Studies, Series Number 61)

This is both a specific study of conversion in a corner of the Spanish Empire, and a work with implications for the understanding of European domination and native resistance throughout the colonial world. Dr Clendinnen explores the intensifying conflict between competing and increasingly divergent Spanish visions of Yucatan and its destructive outcomes. She seeks to penetrate the ways of thinking and feeling of the Mayan Indians in a detailed reconstruction of their assessment of the intruders. s/t: Maya & Spaniard in Yucatan 1517-1570 In what is both a specific study of conversion in a corner of the Spanish Empire and a work with implications for the understanding of European domination and native resistance throughout the colonial world, Inga Clendinnen explores the intensifying conflict between competing and increasingly divergent Spanish visions of Yucatan and its destructive outcomes. In Ambivalent Conquests Clendinnen penetrates the thinking and feeling of the Mayan Indians in a detailed reconstruction of their assessment of the intruders. This new edition contains a preface by the author where she reflects upon the book's contribution in the past fifteen years. Inga Clendinnen is Emeritus scholar, LaTrobe University, Australia. Her books include the acclaimed Reading the Holocaust (Cambridge, 1999), named a Best Book of the Year by the New York Times Book Review, and Aztec: An Interpretation (Cambridge, 1995), and Tiger's Eye: A Memoir (Scribner, 2001). ""Inga Clendinnen has written a remarkable book about the encounters of Spaniards and Maya peoples of the Yucatan Peninsula during the sixteenth century. Like the self-conscious categories used by the actors, separate halves of the book are devoted to the Spaniards and the Mayas, but at nearly every point Clendinnen connects the two histories and shows their interrelationships. People on both sides were changed, even transformed (when they were not destroyed) but she shows that in fun-damental perceptions and boundaries, they remained true to their past. Book jacket."--Jacket. Spaniards. Explorers ; Conquerors ; Settlers ; Missionaries ; Conflict ; Crisis ; Attrition ; Retrospections ; Epilogue : The Hall Of Mirrors -- Indians. Finding Out ; Connections ; Continuities ; Assent ; Epilogue : Confusion Of Tongues. Inga Clendinnen. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 230-239) And Index. European domination and native resistance play significant roles in this analysis of Mayan conversion amid competing and increasingly divergent Spanish visions of 16th century Yucatan.